Without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV, which actually comes about from cunnilingus. I did worry if the stress caused by my son’s incarceration didn’t help trigger it. But yeah, it’s a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer.
(London Guardian, June 2, 2013)
This is the rather controversial way actor Michael Douglas explained, or warned about, the cause of the cancer that nearly killed him. He did so, ironically enough, during a promotional interview for the HBO biopic, Behind the Candelabra, in which he plays the flamboyantly gay pianist, Liberace.
I’ve read enough medical opinions on the media furor his comments ignited to know that there is a positive correlation between oral sex (cunnilingus as well as fellatio) and throat cancer.
But frankly, I don’t see why it is any more taboo (or TMI) for Douglas to reveal that he got human papillomavirus (HPV) from performing oral sex than it was for Magic Johnson to reveal that he got HIV from having unprotected sex (which, incidentally, could have been oral in his case too).
Of course I fully get that Douglas’s revelation might have inflicted undue emotional distress on his actress wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones – especially given her well-publicized history of mental problems. Indeed, columnist Andrea Peyser is evidently so sympathetic that she exhorted Zeta-Jones to:
Dump the bigmouth, lickety-split.
(New York Post, June 4, 2013)
But I couldn’t care any less about what impact his unwitting PSA might have on their marriage.
Except that, if this is reason enough for her to divorce him, then their marriage was probably already irretrievably broken down.
Instead, my sympathy goes out to the tens of millions of women for whom having vaginal orgasms is like winning the lottery.
Because I fear the real impact of Douglas’s PSA will be to give far too many men a credible excuse to avoid performing cunnilingus like the plague, making “going down” even more of a one-way street.