FOX News<\/a>:<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>:<\/p>\n The day after the story broke, Douglas’ representatives clarified<\/a> that his cancer wasn’t caused by cunnilingus, but by the virus itself.<\/p>\n This is an interesting example of the way that a practice<\/em> can be falsely conflated with a disease<\/em>. \u00a0It brings back the fantastical stories of the 1800s that masturbation was the cause of<\/a> \u00a0liver, kidney, and lung disease; arthritis; headache, memory loss,\u00a0epilepsy, and neurological problems; back pain; impotence; cancer; and death.<\/p>\n Like masturbation was (and maybe still is), cunnilingus is taboo enough that it can be made into the villain in a story about cancer. \u00a0Imagine, as a counterfactual, a headline that said that syphilis was caused by sexual intercourse. \u00a0This is clearly wrong. \u00a0We all know that syphilis is transmitted<\/em> by unprotected<\/em> sexual intercourse. \u00a0As Douglas’ confession reveals, and the data demands<\/a>, it’s about time we were as comfortable talking about the risks and rewards of cunnilingus.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week Michael Douglas’ announced that his oral cancer was caused by a virus (human\u00a0papillomavirus) likely transmitted through oral sex. \u00a0Media coverage, however, has been conflating the virus and the sexual activity with headlines like this: ABC News: FOX News: San Francisco Chronicle: The day after the story broke, Douglas’ representatives clarified that his cancer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[403,252,253,129,120],"class_list":["post-55751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-deviance","tag-healthmedicine","tag-history","tag-media","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55759,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55751\/revisions\/55759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"1\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/06\/15.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"2\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/06\/21.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"3\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/06\/32.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n