Feministe on Gardasil

Complementing Pal’s essay on Gardasil yesterday is our buddy la Pobre Habladora guest blogging on Feministe.

Which, I think, brings us to a new angle on anti-vax denialism because as Pal mentions, the motivations behind harping on Gardasil are different than the usual nonsense. Gardasil, to everyone’s dismay, has become intertwined with sexual politics in this country. As the only vaccine that has been identified as preventing a sexually-transmitted disease (the HepB vaccine managed to avoid this, not to mention an association with IV-drug use) there has been a clear impetus among the anti-sex crowd to malign this treatment for girls.

Two things which I think are disgusting and idiotic about this practice. One, I’m willing to bet if it were for boys and not girls, we wouldn’t have this problem. Second, it suggests there is a subset of parents that feels that if their children somehow violate the rules of sex that disease and death should be the wages of their sin.

Is there nothing not disgusting about these attitudes? While the CNN article doesn’t get into this nonsense, let’s not forget the main obstacle to the acceptance of this highly-effective vaccine is not safety issues (it’s a very safe vaccine and the incidents cited in the article are likely coincidence) but rather the amoral bigotries of idiots who are desperate to control women’s sexuality – even to the detriment of women’s health.