Brain Herpes
In which I rant about the anti-mask debates
I’ve been wanting to write about the anti-mask debates for a while so today’s issue is mostly about that, but before I start ranting I wanted to give you a quick update from last week. Mere hours after Sex On Wednesday arrived in your inbox, OnlyFans did a complete 180 and decided it loved porn after all. In a tweet the company said, “Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard. We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned 1 October policy change. OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.” A similarly short statement to the media noted that the assurances were from the company’s banking partners.
Some creators are worried that this change is only temporary and waiting for the puritanical shoe to drop again but perhaps the company, and its bankers, simply realized there would be far less money for everyone involved without adult content.
And Now I Rant—Masks Do Not Give Kids Brain Herpes
There were heated school board meetings across the country this week as parents from Tennessee to Pennsylvania fought for their right to send their children to school without masks.
I know a lot about heated school board meetings because I had a front row seat to the rise (and fall) of the abstinence-only movement during my SIECUS days. I am all too familiar with the small but vocal group of parents who push for conservative programs or rules by yelling loudly and swearing that they are the only ones looking out for the children. But this isn’t quite déjà vu all over again because this time I can’t get a handle on their underlying logic or ultimate goal.
The parents at the heated school board meetings of the 1990s and early 2000s argued vehemently to keep sex ed and condoms out of the classroom and screamed inaccurate facts about STDs, HIV, and pregnancy to support their beliefs. I didn’t agree with their arguments, but I could follow their flawed logic:
If you teach our kids that sex is anything but dangerous outside of marriage, they will see it as license to have sex outside of marriage and we think that is bad (ignore the fact that upwards 80% of us did it, we think it’s bad).
If you teach them that condoms work, give them a condom, or show them how to use one, they will see it as license to have sex outside of marriage and we think that is bad.
I could also grasp their ultimate goal which was to stop people from having sex outside of marriage because they considered it immoral and felt everyone else should too (ignore the fact that upwards of 80% of them did it).
This helped me argue against them (admittedly with varying degrees of success). I explained—with years of research on my side—that teaching kids about sex does not make them do it but does help them protect themselves. In fact, kids who have sex ed are no more likely to have sex than kids who don’t but are more likely to use condoms and contraception. I also pointed out that the abstinence-only programs they were pushing were not benign “just say no” programs because they included misinformation (sex with a condom is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute) and messages of fear (premarital sex has inevitable consequences) and shame (if you’re not a virgin, you are like a rose with no petals).
The anti-mask debates, however, are stumping me. I don’t know how to argue back because I can’t see the logic behind them (flawed or otherwise) and I can’t find the ultimate goal. There is just a lot of passion and misinformation.
One friend in Florida learned at her school board meeting that 15 minutes in a mask is equivalent to 2 shots of tequila in terms of impairing brain function. Parents in another Florida town argued through their attorney that kids in masks suffer: “Everything from physical harm like dermatology problems, headaches, poor school performance, difficulty paying attention, and that kind of thing.” Then there was the mom in Tennessee who went on a rant about how many germs get on masks during a day (it’s unclear if she meant the inside or the outside):
“…if you took those masks off at the end of the day and you did a basic pathogen swab you would find the most disgusting things and you see children with staph, MRSA, strep on their faces, up their noses, herpes in their brains because this mitigates up into their brains.”
I can take on the misinformation directly because that’s not how it f**king works. I can point out that surgeons spend upwards of 12 hours in masks at peak performance and no one accuses them of acting like they’ve had two shots of tequila (or 96 shots if we’re measuring in 15 minute increments). I can suggest that kids have headaches and trouble paying attention without masks. I can snarkily point out that if there are that many germs on the outside of the mask at the end of the day, the kid should be grateful for having worn it and that if those germs are on the inside, the kid should have stayed home anyhow. I can also promise that you can’t get herpes of the brain through your nose.
But I know all of this would fall on totally deaf ears because this isn’t really about masks. It’s identity politics at its worst but I also think it’s about control. These parents want to be in control of their kids’ lives and the pandemic robbed us all of any semblance of that. So, they’re arguing about something they might be able to control (whether they send their kid to school in a mask). And they’re going to school boards with their old playbook; using the same “won’t anyone think of the children” cries and relying on questionable “facts.”
The irony of comparing this to the abstinence-only-until-marriage debates is that when that movement was forced to reinvent itself—because school boards got wise to the fact that the programs did not actually prevent STDs, pregnancy, or premarital sex—supporters began using the term Sexual Risk Avoidance. They argued that sex education that included discussion of contraception and condoms only reduced the risk of health consequences while their programs, by continuing to focus on saving sex for marriage, eliminated the risk. These same forces are now arguing against a risk reduction measure not because they want something that eliminates risk but because it’s their right to decide. They are essentially fighting for their right to put their children at risk. (We can discuss the hypocrisy inherent in this my kid’s body/my choice argument coming from abortion foes and states that want to ban transgender therapies later, this is exhausting enough.)
What these parents are refusing to grasp in all of this, however, is that masks are not an individual choice, they’re a social responsibility. My mask is a little bit about protecting me and a lot about protecting you from me. Their kid is wearing a mask to protect his reading buddy and the reading buddy is wearing a mask to protect his math partner and the math partner is wearing it to protect the kid she sits next to on the bus. We know what happens when people take off the mask—an elementary school teacher in California infected 12 of her 22 students when she pulled her mask down to read a book and at least two school districts in Texas have already temporarily shut down because of outbreaks among students.
One of the things I did in my early days at SIECUS was coach parents who wanted to push back against a proposed abstinence-only program on how to deal with the school board. I helped them recruit likeminded parents, write statements, prepare testimony, and get the press to cover the event. The goal was to prove that the small but vocal minority pushing for a restrictive program was not representative of the community as a whole. Unfortunately, in the case of mask debates, the small but vocal minority is also potentially a danger to anyone else at the meeting and many mask supporters rightfully feel uncomfortable attending. I don’t think this was part of a great mastermind strategy but it’s certainly one way to make sure yours is the loudest voice in the room.