But whoa, Caesar Squitti returns!

“14 species of large animals capable of domesitcation in the history of mankind.
None from the sub-Saharan African continent.
13 from Europe, Asia and northern Africa.”
Favor.
And disfavor.

They point out Africans’ attempts to domesticate the elephant and zebra, the latter being an animal they illustrate that had utmost importance for it’s applicability in transformation from a hunting/gathering to agrarian-based civilization.

The roots of racism are not of this earth.

Austrailia, aboriginals:::No domesticable animals, so this nulified diversity of life claims on sub-continental Africa, zebras being a fine example.

god is a computer
And we’re all on auto-pilot.

Organizational Heirarchy
Heirarchical order, from top to bottom:

1. MUCK - perhaps have experienced multiple universal contractions (have seen multiple big bangs), creator of the artificial intelligence humans ignorantly refer to as “god”
2. Perhaps some mid-level alien management ““
3. Mafia (evil) aliens - runs day-to-day operations here and perhaps elsewhere (”On planets where they approved evil.”)

Then we come to terrestrial management:

4. Chinese/egyptians - this may be separated into the eastern and western worlds
5. Romans - they answer to the egyptians
6. Mafia - the real-world interface that constantly turns over generationally so as to reinforce the widely-held notion of mortality
7. Jews, corporation, women, politician - Evidence exisits to suggest mafia management over all these groups.

I work in public health/sexual education in Portland, OR, US, so it was interesting to read people’s take on prioritization of health needs, and all the different factors that play out. It has been my experience that public health, at its best, tries to address the most serious and the most preventable harm. Of course, our efforts are often clouded by racism, sexism, queerphobia, classism, ableism, transphobia, etc. - the list goes on, unfortunately.

For example, we are dealing with a rise in cases of syphilis locally. Investigation revealed that two unique populations were affected: age 40+ urban caucasian MSM, both HIV+ and HIV-; and age 20-30 African American people presumed to be heterosexual, living in one or two zip codes. We are addressing each population’s specific needs, and have found some success with MSM and have brought cases in the 20-30 year old population to zero.

Ideally, populations and their unique needs aren’t pitted against each other. Obviously, economics play into that. I can’t say why an HPV vaccine would be targeted in the US toward females — it could be for a variety of reasons, and it sounds like people on this thread realize that those reasons could be legitimate or could be very messed up.

I also see females/women/girls, and transpeople, as natural allies. I was female for 25 or so years, and now I’m FTM, legally male, and queer, and every day of my life it is brought home to me that beings who are perceived as “feminine” are also perceived as “less than”.
Just sayin’, we could work and learn together.
Okay, back to work….

This is the first study to investigate the age-specific prevalence of anal HPV infection in HIV-negative MSM. The striking finding of the present study is that urban HIV-negative MSM have high rates of anal HPV infection across all age groups. Using PCR testing, we found that 57% of the HIV-negative MSM in the present study were HPV positive and that 26% were infected with a high-risk HPV type. Therefore, a high proportion of HIV-negative MSM may be at risk for developing anal cancer.

It’s too bad the misogyny issue would apply to a vaccine campaign targeting either gender. Men in sexist cultures may have greater license to be sexually active, but there’s a concomittant lack of responsibility to one’s partner.

Except that’s an ineffective message, because men are carriers. You don’t protect women by ignoring half your disease vectors.

Would it really be a budget-buster to tell men “Protect the woman you love; prevent HPV”? Or to simply say, yo, this is an STD and we have a shot to keep you from getting it ever?

You keep presenting the economic problem as though it is a fact. I have not seen any evidence that there is an economic problem that would dictate providing the shot to women only. Especially when you take into account the added costs of treating HPV-infected women who, had their partners been vaccinated, would not have been infected.

hpv as a wider issue, (i.e. warts, genital or otherwise), affects everyone equally and i think that in the media panic about hpv, people often forget or are simply unaware, that most hpv infections are not dangerous. they can be stigmatising and embarrassing, amongst many other emotions, but they are not fatal.

i agree that, in general, it is not a good idea to shove minority groups in with dominant groups, but my point was that, whilst i more than aware that gay men are at risk of anal cancer, the risk of them dying as a result of a high-risk hpv infection, as men, are no where near as high as women. i suspect we could argue this for the rest of our lives, or until the numbers change significantly one way or another, so again, i say, let’s drop it.

You have not shown me any statistics specific to gay men. You’ve shown me general male statistics, which aren’t a good indication of how likely it is that a gay man will get HPV or develop anal cancer. You’ve referred to numbers. I’m talking about rates. Numbers are not a good indicator when trying to assess risk to a smaller group. Bret Hume used the same logic to argue that it was more dangerous to be a civilian in California than a soldier in Iraq.

You have consistently conflated “gay men” with “men.” My point is that this is not a good idea from an epidemiological standpoint. “Gay men” are an easily-isolated, easily-targeted, easily-analyzed separate group, with one very important characteristic–”gay”–that should put them in a completely different category from men in general. Conflating the two–folding a higher gay male risk into a lower straight male one because straight men are more common–is heterosexist in application, if not in intent. Furthermore, gay men would probably not benefit very much either from a public-education campaign directed at “men in general,” because it probably won’t do much to address their specific risk factors.

I disagree with the idea that any attention to gay male HPV risk in addition to female HPV risk–which is most certainly not the same as an “androcentric” approach–would confuse women such that it would cause a greater public health problem than not educating gay men.

Neither of us is saying that only women should be vaccinated. I’m saying that women should be targeted and that gay men should also be targeted.

Getting back to the transsexual–not transgendered, btw–thing, it’s a really good example of what happens when a minority group is either ignored or inaccurately folded into a larger group. Ftms in general are pretty much ignored by healthcare providers and public health officials, and gay and bisexual ftms are acknowledged even less often. That puts us at very, very high risk for STDs, among many other things. Nor are any concerns specific to our bodies ever addressed. We generally only have access to reproductive healthcare that is specifically targeted towards women; this means that most ftms don’t obtain it.

i apologise to all the intersexed out there for calling them hermaphrodites.

i apologise for calling you an idiot and for being ignorant to your plight with healthcare officials.

i do not understand your last question piny, sorry. i would ask you not to rephrase it though, because this conversation has been going nowhere since the beginning. we are two disparate souls misaligned in communicative abilities and you know what they say about arguing on the internet…

i do not apologise for maintaining that i think the public hpv education drive should be directed at women.

i do not apologise for my only other point, which has been that i think economics, more than sexism, is driving the hpv vaccination campaign toward women.

piny, i think it is tragic that gay men die from anal cancer. terrible, tragic, awful. this is why, i have not said, and will never say, that only women should be vaccinated.

can we drop it now?

You did say, “that this is not a gay male issue in that sense.”? And you’ve said that this is not a significant health issue for men, completely negating the fact that gay men have different sexual habits and therefore different risk factors for sexually transitted disease than gay men.

You’re saying that a minority population should lose the right to effective treatment because they’re a minority. That’s crap.

*Snort* No, you just said that they should be left out of the equation altogether, because your illogical reading of statistics shows that they’re statistically insignificant, and also because you’re worried about your insurance premiums. That’s nothing like saying their health is a low priority, nooooo, not at all.

So you weren’t just pointing out the potential reason for the public health campaign to target women, you support its rationale. You don’t think that HPV in gay men is a public health issue.

And I stand by all of it. Can you tell me, also, what assuming “man with cervix” means “hermaphrodite” (sic) has to do with assuming that, “and for the last time, i completely disagree that high-risk hpv is an issue for men, gay or straight,” means any of the things I said?

Um, also, not to call you on not reading what I wrote when you so frequently do it to me or anything, but hermaphrodite is a slur. Intersex is the correct term.

and for the last time, i completely disagree that high-risk hpv is an issue for men, gay or straight.

…And when have I implied that you thought anything else, tank?

and for the last time, i completely disagree that high-risk hpv is an issue for men, gay or straight.

thanks piny, it’s been grand.

I am a man. I am bisexual (I have all kinds of sex, including the risky kinds, with all kinds of people, including men). I do have a cervix and everything that goes with it. I am not intersex and was not assigned intersex at birth. And I’m not some straight male misogynist whose other big issue is breast/prostate cancer inequalities. I would love to go on a book tour, but I’m not the only one of my kind, and other, better writers have gone before me.

Still drawing a blank?

*Also, go check out www.isna.org, if you want to learn about intersex people and get actual data on the health and bigotry issues they face. They’re not hermaphrodites, either.

I’m telling you that that is a ridiculous standard, totally unfair to impose on a minority group, and not one that public health officials follow. More white women than black women will die this year in this country of breast cancer. Does that mean that black women are at a lower risk? Does that mean that they are treated more effectively, or diagnosed more reliably, or that they receive better medical care? No. It means that _there aren’t as many black women_. Black women as a separate group are actually at a higher risk of dying of breast cancer, because they are less likely to be diagnosed and treated. _This_ is a public health concern. Fewer transwomen than non-trans-women die of AIDS each year. Does this mean that transwomen are less likely to contract HIV? Does it mean that they receive better treatment? No. It means that _transwomen are a tiny minority_. In fact, they have a _much higher_ likelihood of contracting HIV.

Both black women and transwomen deserve to be evaluated separately based on their separate circumstances. Lumping their risk and corresponding allocation in with a larger, lower-risk group, when both can be easily defined and separately evaluated, makes no sense. And in both cases, it would work out to dead women. It doesn’t make any sense to split the budget–for R&D, coverage, subsidies, education campaigns, whatever–along gendered lines if _gender is not the determining factor in risk_. Gay men are a minority. Of course there are fewer of them dying; there are fewer of them to begin with. And you’re constructing strawmen here yourself, if you think that I ever said that women shouldn’t be targeted as well.