I recently attended a cervical cancer prevention bloggers event courtesy of Glaxo Smith Kline held at Melo’s Quezon City. Although this is a boring topic, because of its scientific terms and all, GSK was able to make the bloggers participate in their impromptu play. So while having dinner, the actors from PETA were doing their impromptu acting. It was a 50′s set up dinner wherein the actors and some bloggers were asked to wear 50′s attire. Of course, I didn’t effort to do that but just went with the flow of the whole situation. The whole event focused on Jennifer, a married woman in the 50′s, who mysteriously died. Everybody in her family was a suspect when until they discovered that it was Cervical Cancer who killed Jennifer. During the 50′s, there was no preventive medicine yet for this disease and so Glaxo Smith Kline introduced their Cervical Cancer Vaccine which can be availed by Filipino women. This event made me thought of this: Cervical Cancer and Lesbians.

Question, are lesbians at risk for this killer disease?

Historically, it was a popular notion that Cervical Cancer can be transmitted through heterosexual sex. I guess this is because scientists then were heterocentric and never realized that women can also fuck other women. I am confirming that YES, LESBIANS are at risk for this disease even though you do not have sex with men. Even though I am not a scientist or a doctor, the thought that your partner or ex partner might have sex with men in the past, already is a reason for you to have the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) too. So even doing “digital” sex (fingering) or oral sex, whether with a man or a woman, a lesbian (er woman) can get this.

Basically, women who have sex with different partners have higher risks of getting this disease. It really doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is. This is not only transmitted through sexual contact, but also through skin-to-skin contact. The symptoms are not that evident at first, sometimes it takes years before the HPV is fully developed.

Cervical Cancer is the second most common killer among women. There is an estimate of 12 women in the Philippines who die everyday due to Cervical Cancer and an estimate of 510,000 new cases globally every year according to the World Health Organization.

The good thing is that Cervical Cancer can be prevented and this is by using condoms, smoking avoidance, eating nutritious food and by undergoing the vaccination. Glaxo Smith and Kline (GSK) already has a cheaper cervical cancer prevention vaccination which only costs around Php 7,000. Just go to your OB-GYN to ask for this. I better get myself vaccinated before it’s too late.

If you want to read up on this, maybe a simple brochure from ILGA on Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer can help you. To know the scientific stuff on cervical cancer, visit this page.

It was just recently when I started browsing through Mocha Uson’s blog. Someone I know gave me the link of her blog and voila, my Mocha time started. I knew that she wrote for Maxim Philippines but I never knew that she still continued blogging.

Well, Mocha has been known for being open about her sexuality. Although there are some who have doubts (like I used to before) about her sexuality, I learned to be open-minded about it. I have a thing with bisexuals before, probably an influence of my ex-girlfriend. I usually hear my lesbian friends complaining about bisexuals because of their fickle-mindedness and used to think that bisexuality is related to sexual adventurism or plainly being a swinger. But with Mocha’s case, I think this is is the right label for her and not bisexuality. If all boils down to sexual arousal and not involving emotions with it, then I could say she is a sexual adventurist (or a swinger) than bisexual. Anyway, if she chooses to be called as such, well, I can’t do anything about it.

Her blog mostly tackles sex advices but most of the photos and videos of her are usually with women than men. It’s weird because if she is indeed bisexual, she should show photos or videos of her having intimate moments with men. Apparently, it’s only women-to-women action and I guess it’s a way to attract more men to her blog. Also, I noticed that she doesn’t have any ads (yet) on her blog (I don’t know if she has advertorials or paid blogposts somewhere). With the amount of traffic she has, she can monetize her blog if she wants to. Most definitely, she can’t use Google Adsense because of the content of her blog.

Sexual politics and labelling aside, Mocha Uson is H-O-T (period). As a lesbian like me, she’s one hell of a turn on especially when she performs onstage (mostly in San Miguel Beer events). Now is not the time to be hypocrite about it.  I appreciate her frankness and it’s very seldom that a Filipina like her would be open about her sexuality. I guess she has already become a bisexual icon in the Philippines! Are there others that I don’t know of?

You may visit her blog (link is in my blog roll, side bar) but make sure that there are no kids around! Enjoy your Mocha time!