Chlamydia Contracted in a Camry
The HPV in a Hyundai Case is Back and GEICO Could Owe $5.2 Million
Last week’s issue was heavy on information but short on snark. This week is basically the opposite as I have updates to two pretty silly stories I wrote about over the last year. But first, apparently, we have to talk about the tampon shortage.
I will admit that the last few times I shopped for period supplies I was alarmed by the empty shelves and had to make some compromises. I bought Always instead of Stayfree and paid extra for tampons in extra small wrappers for reasons I don’t understand. I blamed my local CVS which has been a bit of a mess recently. It didn’t occur to me that the problem was far bigger, but it is.
While Procter & Gamble would like to blame (or in this case congratulate) its ad campaign starring Amy Schumer for driving sales too high and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene would like to blame transmen for stealing all the feminine hygiene products, this is really just a result of the global mess caused by the pandemic.
Raw materials are more expensive and harder to come by. In this case, the cotton, rayon, and plastic that goes into making tampons was in higher demand because of its medical uses during the pandemic. Add to that the increased fees for shipping materials from overseas and China’s zero covid policies which backed up ports, and you have a shortage of tampons and a new, bigger price tag on the ones that are available.
This shortage comes at a time when we had just begun to discuss period poverty in this country. One analysis suggests that people who use tampons pay an average of $1800 over their menstrual years for supplies and those who rely on pads pay a whopping $4,750. There’s no federal supplements for people who can’t afford these products, and many states still charge sales tax.
Procter & Gamble, the maker of Tampax, says its plant is working round the clock to restock shelves while Kimberly-Clark which makes Kotex brand supplies says that it’s not having any issues filling orders. If the shelves remain bare, period-havers could consider reusable options like washable period underwear or menstrual cups that are inserted high up in the vagina to catch the flow. One thing not to do: stretch out the time between tampon changes. This could put you at risk for Toxic Shock Syndrome, a potentially life-threatening infection.
GEICO Not Off the Hook for HPV
To refresh everyone’s memory, a man known only as M.B. and a woman known only as M.O. had sex at least a few times in the backseat of his Hyundai Genesis circa 2017. They also had sex in other places like hotels, but those were presumably not covered by M.B.’s auto insurance or his additional personal liability policy. When M.O. was diagnosed with HPV at a routine visit to her gynecologist, she found out that M.B. had previously been diagnosed with a throat tumor caused by HPV and blamed him. She decided to pursue monetary damages.
Perhaps guessing that the driver of a three-year-old Hyundai did not have scads of money in the bank, M.O. went straight to M.B.’s insurer. She sent them a petition she was filing against M.B. and included an email which essentially said I’m willing to settle if you give me $1 million dollars (the limit on M.B.’s umbrella policy). She signed off with the most casual “let me know.”
Whichever junior adjuster got this email must have laughed it off as—let’s face it—we all did. GEICO chose not to settle or to defend M.B.—and in doing so, itself—in court. So the two former sex partners (though I suppose we have no proof that they’re not still having sex) entered into an arbitration agreement that awarded M.O. $5.2 million but limited M.B.’s liability to whatever the insurance company would pay. A court in Missouri enforced the arbitration deal.
At that point, the home of the everybody’s favorite Cockney-accented Gecko started paying attention and appealed the decision. The company, which had previously called the arbitration agreement “collusive and non-adversarial,” argued that it didn’t have a chance to defend itself in the deal, which was a violation of its constitutional rights to due process.
Last week, Missouri’s Court of Appeal western division issued a decision against the company. The three-judge panel said GEICO could have defended itself if it had paid attention to M.O.’s email and defended its policy holder (M.B.) against the lawsuit. Had they done that, there would have been no friendly arbitration and probably a much smaller settlement, if any.
The $5.2 million award stands for now, but there’s yet another lawsuit to be heard. Because they did arbitration (which, in this case, sounds just a few steps above insurance fraud), the facts of the case and the basic issue of whether a car insurance company can be responsible for non-automotive related injuries sustained while the vehicle was in park have never really been decided. As I said when we first learned of the case, it’s hard enough to prove she got HPV from him given its ubiquity, and it would be nearly impossible to prove that she got HPV in the car given that they had sex other places. Though old wives’ tales often suggest having sex in the backseat if you’re having trouble conceiving, car sex is no riskier than any other kind of sex for pregnancy or STIs.
GEICO has filed a federal lawsuit against the previous paramours which is scheduled to be tried in front of a jury beginning in October. (Now that’s jury duty that no one should try to get out of.) The insurer is arguing that it’s not liable for the STI, nor did it have a duty to defend the man from her claims. That lawsuit also accuses the two of fraud, collusion, and unclean hands (which in this case is a legal doctrine, not a result of the car sex).
I’m sure insurers across the country are watching this case carefully to find out if they’re suddenly going to have to pay out for chlamydia contracted in a Camry, gonorrhea given in a Gulf, or syphilis spread in a Skylark. Just in case, Flo, the emu, and J.K. Simmons might want to collaborate on a few safer sex workshops for the industry.
Nick Cannon, Soon-to-Be Father of 9, Not Clear on Safer Sex
It looks like Kevin Hart wasted his money pranking friend Nick Cannon with a condom vending machine for Valentine’s Day. In a recent interview, Nick said he continues to forgo the Trojans because he’s just not the safer-sex kind of guy anymore. That seems clear as he’s currently expecting both baby #8 and baby #9, and this time it’s not twins.
Cannon, who was already father to 10-year-old twins and a 4 ½-year-old daughter, has been particularly busy over the last two years. He has a 17-month-old daughter with model Brittany Bell; shares 11-month-old twins with model Abbey De La Rosa; and lost his son Zen, whom he had with model Alyssa Scott, in December at just 5-months old. Now, he has two more on the way: model Bre Tiesi posted pictures of their babymoon and De La Rosa just announced she’s pregnant again.
I’m all for open relationships and lots of babies. Presumably, the Masked Singer host can afford to provide financially for all of these children. Whether he can be an available and emotionally supportive father has yet to be seen. I can’t imagine bonding with a brood as large as Cannon’s—the two kids and one dog here often leave me emotionally exhausted—but Cannon has a lot of women involved and probably a nanny or two. So as I often say, quoting my Bubbie of course, gei Gezunterheit. (Go in good health.)
That said, his comments in that recent interview qualify for a full-on that’s not how it f**cking works rant.
In the interview, he told Lip Service host Angela Lee that he doesn’t use condoms because “I don’t have sex with anyone… that I need to be protected with.” He explained that this is a change from when he used to pick up women at clubs or after a show. Back then it was “condoms all day.” Now, however:
“I don’t have pointless sex. This needs to be something. We need to reach a certain level emotionally, spiritually… [that’s] probably why it ends up in children because I’m not interacting with [and] I’m not engaging with anybody that I don’t have a true love with and want to build something with.”
Have whatever kind of consensual sex you want with whomever you want, but there are so many things wrong with this statement.
Deep connections provide no protection. As Nick clearly knows by now, deep connections provide no protection against pregnancy. (We’ll deal with the idea that they cause it in a minute.) Deep connections that include mutual monogamy after a thorough round of blood tests and genital swabs are relatively safe when it comes to STIs, but it seems clear—when we count up the models and the babies—that Nick is not monogamous. Deep connections or not, he’s at risk for STIs.
It’s not just about Nick. It is possible that the women Nick is connecting with emotionally and spiritually are not connecting spiritually or emotionally with anyone else. If that’s true, this unique moms group might form a relatively safe closed circle, but if any one of those women is having sex with anyone else or has an STI from the past that could flare up (like Herpes), the other women need protecting too. Unfortunately, Nick didn’t sound too open to that idea. When Yee asked what he’d say if a woman asked him to use a condom, Cannon replied “Then we need to step back and have a whole other conversation.” No, you don’t. You need to put a quarter in the vending machine Kevin gave you and grab a condom because she asked you to.
Love doesn’t make a baby. When a 4-year-old asks where babies come from, you may be tempted to start with the classic “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much….” But Nick is 41, and it almost sounds like he’s still there. No, Nick, you have so many children because you aren’t using condoms or any other form of birth control, and nature clearly gifted you with some really good swimmers. If you’re okay with adding to the number of kids you have to send to college, keep going, but know that love doesn’t have much to do with fertility.
A couple of other things in the interview raised some additional that’s not how it f**king works flags. In no particular order:
Having sex is not a sign of weakness (but peer pressure is bad). In October 2021, as the number of newborns and pregnant partners grew, Nick publicly announced a “celibacy journey.” In the recent podcast he admits that he didn’t even make it until January and appears to blame friends and his grief over his son. He said he “got depressed with the loss of my son… And the thing is, because everybody saw I was so down, everybody was like, ‘Let me just give him a little vagina. That’s gonna cure it all.’” The singer added that he fell victim to the idea because he was in a weak state. Sex is good. If vaginas are what you like, great. Sex is not a cure all, but it can make you feel better whether you were happy or depressed to start. If you decide to be abstinent in October, that’s fine, and if you change your mind before Halloween, that’s fine too. It’s not a sign of weakness. Don’t have sex because your friends talked you into it, but don’t feel bad about it.
His therapist is right, he’s not a sex addict. Cannon’s therapist apparently told him he wasn’t a sex addict: he was a love addict. I’m going to say he’s neither. I’ve ranted about sex addiction before, but here’s a brief recap: The term sex addict is dangerous because it suggests that there is a right and wrong amount of sex or number of partners; sex addiction is often used as an excuse for behavior that others find unacceptable like cheating on a partner or worse, murder; research has found no evidence that sex or withdrawal from sex has the same effects on the brain as truly addictive substances like alcohol or opioids; and there are too many pseudo-mental-health professionals profiting off of the concept of and “cure” for sex addiction. As for love, we all need it in our lives to be happy and healthy, but needing it and being addicted to it are very different.
Babies don’t come from birds. Nick knows this, I think, but he did mention the stork a surprising number of times in the interview. So I wanted to make sure.
Cannon told Yee that he had no plans to change his behavior: “I feel like I'mma live this lifestyle for the rest of my life and I'm very comfortable with it."
Okay. Sure. But he’s only 41, he’s fathered 6 babies in 2 years, and while sperm quality goes down as men age, men have been known to father children well into their 70s.
This is like a bad word problem in fifth grade math class: Nick is on a train traveling South at 75 miles per hour. The train makes 6 stops. At the first stop 4 models get on, at the second stop 1 model gets off and 3 more get on, at all of the other stops twice as many models get on the train than off. Nick has a deep connection with 1/3 of the models on the train. If the train travels 4,754 miles, how many babies will there be by the time it reaches its destination?
I don’t know how to solve this problem exactly, but I’m pretty sure that X=condoms.