The Hoely Hour - E31 Inner Monoliz

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Welcome to your inner monoliz, where Liz just says her inner thoughts out loud while Amelia is OOO. Finding work-life balance can be a struggle especially if you just wanna lay down 95% of the time. Everyone talks about kissing with your eyes closed, but what about sex? We NEED to hear your opinion! Liz shares everything you need to know about HPV, and the horrifying truth of how Gynecology started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. see terms welcome to asmr with liz Welcome to the Holy Hour. I am Liz Ball and I'm going to be hosting by myself today and it's because Amelia is visiting with her freshly vaccinated parents in Florida. So don't worry, we're not breaking up. I think that would be the most devastating breakup of my life if I we ever did oh god why did I say that um knock on wood uh so I will be hosting alone slash with my cat grandpa he's sitting right next to me licking his belly quiet for the first time in his entire cat life um I think I'm so nervous to host by myself because it's my personal

nightmare is just like other people hearing my incessant inner monologue and that's pretty much what this is gonna be so uh I hope that you enjoy it and um our inner monologues can relate to each other so before I get started with anything I just wouldn't feel comfortable if I don't just start by saying like what is on my heart and on my mind while I record today and I'm sure a lot of you might be in the same headspace as me. Today I'm recording on the 17th. There was a racially motivated hate crime that happened in Atlanta, Georgia and this white guy killed eight people in a few different spas because he saw them as areas of temptation because he blames Asian women for his sex and porn addiction. For those of you who have been listeners since

the beginning or even brand new listeners, I'm sure you know that both Amelia and I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of a lot to say about something like this but at the end of the day like where I'm going to leave it at is um you know this is an example of fetishization of Asian women and that's racist in itself and um fetishization is just another form of objectification and this is also misogynistic and uh I know that Amelia has shared in her link tree some resources um and I'm going to add the same ones to our link tree in our bio so check those out so I had a couple of things in mind that I wanted to talk about um today that uh you guys have you know requested from me so um I did an ask me anything little thing on Instagram

and I literally meant anything like ask me for advice ask me uh personal questions because I have given up any sense of privacy that I will ever have again um but we can start with some easy questions so someone asked um how I met my boyfriend and uh I won't lie like I feel like when I talk about my boyfriend it's just like because I feel this way sometimes when other people talk about their partner uh but your eyes kind of glaze over but I'll like uh get through pretty quickly pretty much we met on hinge uh he I messaged him actually I was like going through profiles and um I thought he was cute and then he had a picture of him dressed as Wednesday Adams and that's like one of my go-to costumes because I've been told I look like Christina Ricci since

I was a literal child and I was like you mean the Wednesday Adams girl great and now now I think it's rad but uh he was dressed as Wednesday Adams and he's like a foot taller than me so I also have a I had a picture of me dressed as Wednesday Adams so I was like okay if you're gonna be Wednesday can I be Lurch and then he did not reply which is a fire pickup line in my opinion he didn't reply and this was in my phase of like I don't want a boyfriend I'm not looking for a relationship I don't even really know what I'm looking for and then um something in me was just like this guy is so cute and he's not gonna ignore me so I messaged him again and I was like this was probably three days later and I was like I think you're cute and I'm not trying to like date

seriously so if that's okay with you and you're interested in that here's my phone number and then um he followed up with me pretty quickly and the rest is history uh so that's that's how we met and then um I got another question like tips for work-life balance and this is something that when I saw this question I was like I'm struggling with this myself right now like I have been I'm usually pretty good with uh with my work-life balance just because in the past I haven't been and it took a serious toll on my like emotional stability I felt like a firecracker like I could have just gone off at any second and I don't know about some of you but the way that like my anxiety shows up is I get really irritable and spicy and not in a

fun way and I don't want to be spicy if it's not fun so um getting that under control is the thing that was most helpful for me and like the biggest change I've seen in myself uh but lately you know work's unpredictable sometimes sometimes you're gonna be really busy and that's where I'm at right now but I liked this question because it reminded me that I need to keep myself grounded too but um it's easy for me to preach this and all I can do is encourage you guys to do the same thing but um I'm really protective of my time like I I I want my time to be respected when I'm at work so um sure like if I'm like dicking around and I'm I need to work late on something I know that's a result of my own consequence or like a consequence of my own actions because I was scrolling through

TikTok for 45 minutes. So I, outside of those scenarios, I will only work my designated eight hours a day. Like I'm only going to work nine to five. Props to people who want to work all fucking day but I don't want to do that um but I think the thing is being strict and not a pushover about my time so work-life balance to me also goes outside of like extracurriculars like um I love this podcast so much but it does require um dedication and concentration it's definitely not work but like my Liz time to me is like sleeping and uh reading and watching tv so that is something I would consider like life balance like life time um and it could also include things like cleaning and stuff like that so um I just make sure I check in with myself

before I say yes to something and it could be anything at all like um just if it's hanging out with my boyfriend like of course I love him and I love spending time with him but uh both of us are pretty independent people so like we're really respectful of the fact that like sometimes you need some alone time sometimes you need some time to yourself to be a blob on your couch um or clean up around the house and do some laundry like it's so much easier to be like yeah I want to hang out with my boyfriend because that sounds so much more fun than doing chores or work but then you feel anxious because you put off all of these other things that make you feel good like when your house is clean or when your fridge is full so just checking in with yourself is a huge

part of balance for me too is because like if you aren't giving to yourself first and I mean giving to yourself like do you feel safe and happy in your regular environment because if not you need to focus on you and once that section of your life is fulfilled you're going to be able to enjoy everything else and I've been trying to focus on mindfulness a lot lately like living in the moment and I know that sounds like YOLO-y or something like that or like pura vida but that's not how I mean it like I mean living in the present like being able to be in the moment that you're in and appreciate everything that is happening around you and like if you're having a good day to take a second and think about each thing that is making your day good and even if

it's not like you know something big happened that made your day good it could be something as simple as like I'm really enjoying this cup of coffee while the sun beams in my window like that's something pretty simple that we take for granted regularly because it's just like a regular event there's nothing big or dramatic or romantic about it and I think that we shouldn't be ashamed to romanticize little everyday things oh so excuse the intermission hit us up with a question and they asked worst slash most boring movie you watched on a date and I actually have a really good answer for this so in college I went on a date with a guy and um he wouldn't stop fucking talking about Kings of Leon oh and I was like okay I only knew that one song your sex is on

fire which like who knows maybe it's about STDs I'm clear um but then later that night we're like our date we like decided to make dinner together and we went to the grocery store and bought some like organic fancy vegetables because he was going through a vegetarian phase and then uh we went back to his place and started making dinner and while we were eating we started watching he's like i want to show you this documentary on kings of leon and he had already watched it like twice or something so then i had to sit through this most this boring fucking documentary about kings of leon like i can't even name another song besides uh your sex is on fire and i also can't even tell you anything about that fucking movie because i was not paying attention all i could think about

was how annoyed i was that i was trying to have like a romantic date with this guy and he's making me watch a documentary on the kings of fucking leon so that is the worst and most boring movie I've watched on a date. Hey, what's up? This is Tim Dowling, writer of the Average Citizen blog and co-host of the new Average Citizen podcast. What is Average Citizen? Well, it's you, me and everyone in between. We're all feeling a little overwhelmed and anxious at the state of our country right now. So join me and my co-host Tom Creighton as we research, discuss, debate and explore some bigger pictures about America's future and the world. We're all in this together. find us on the chatter network and at avgcitizen.com

um and this one they asked i want to hear your opinion on sex with eyes open versus eyes closed this is so interesting i've literally never thought of this like uh because usually i'm like too in the zone to pay attention to what my eyes are doing if that makes sense um oh my god i guess i've never really thought this in depth about this question before so like i'm thinking about like there gets to a point where my eyes are closed like if i'm about to orgasm my eyes are closed like I'm on another planet I am focusing on getting to I guess I guess the best I could think of like the best comparison I could think of is it's like when you are a woman trying to orgasm you need to focus to get to the top like nothing around you can distract you because

even even just your thoughts even your internal monologue is like oh this is amazing like you're in the zone like it feels really fucking great and then you have a little intrusive thought that's like oh I need to make sure I do this tomorrow you're like no no no no fuck off I can't think about that right now I'm trying I'm on a mission and um that's why like I close my eyes towards the end because I'm like I can't have additional stimulation zing uh pun intended um so I have my eyes closed but like when I'm thinking about watching a guy have sex like like it's a very like hot experience you know like you want to be making eye contact you want them to be in your ear like um I guess like I prefer if we're like making eye contact and it doesn't have to be the entire time

like there's always gonna be a point where you're not seeing their face and uh and I think ultimately it also comes down to like what do we each look like when when we're climaxing because like sometimes your your o face is like stupid looking I uh I don't know like the focus face I know we've talked about that um so like I'm self-conscious of what I look like because I have no idea what I look like when I come and I'm not about to record myself doing it but like I think uh I don't know it just it just really depends I it would be really weird to have sex with someone whose eyes were closed the entire time right like and also are you kissing the whole time I don't now I have a lot of questions and I need to survey everyone so um yeah this listener asked

us a great question and if you guys have thoughts please dm them to us because I'm so curious what everyone thinks about that I want to know what if your eyes are open or closed during sex and for how long and if your partner's eyes are open or closed and like what they do. Sex drive with long-term partners seems to be down during COVID for a lot of girls in my circle. I know this is true for me for a myriad of reasons, but I was shocked that the majority of my friends felt the same exact way for the last few months. Are people kind of bored right now? So this is so interesting and I actually before I started recording I had um my therapy appointment and I had mentioned the question that I was going to answer like this question that I was going to answer to my therapist

and like I've talked to her about sex before too and just um different things that I've experienced in my sex life uh so she was like well what do you think like how are you going to answer this and like for a second when I read this question I was like oh sometimes I forget that like sex is a thing I can do and I know that sounds weird because like this is a sex and dating podcast and like I would consider myself a pretty sexual person especially um like in the earlier episodes I was like really only looking for um a sex partner and now that I'm in a relationship like it's not because I'm bored with my partner like it I'm the happiest I've ever been and I think that might be a big part of it is um I kind of noticed like I think we all have experienced like

a drop in, um, sex when we're in a relationship. And there's so many different reasons that could be, but my therapist also pointed out, she was like, I mean, you can't relate to this because like your relationship has only existed within COVID. And it's, that was also a crazy thing to think about I'm in a COVID relationship um but in my my past long-term relationships like I've lost interest in sex because my emotional needs weren't being met and now I wouldn't say I'm not interested in sex I would say it's more like we know each other so much better and we're still continuing to get to know each other um in different ways and like the ways that we're intimate and vulnerable expand outside of just having sex so like there are just more opportunities

for us to feel connected and safe with each other that and I like it doesn't bother either of us so um and it's not like neither of us are like both of us are sexually satisfied so um it it's not a problem I am also really curious what that means for people who are like living with their partners like there could be so many different reasons that there is less interest in sex between partners like my therapist and I have discussed before in the past that like women controlling sex is a way for them to have control in a relationship because oftentimes like there are things that we don't feel like we're in control of and I think that's also a result of like generational patriarchal bullshit that we were all raised with uh and to believe and then

we're like hey wait why am I miserable because of this so I know that sometimes that that's how it can show up is um in sex and when you aren't emotionally fulfilled if you say no to sex that is control that is the control that you get to have when it comes to intimacy in your relationship with your partner they're not going to be emotionally intimate with you so you're not going to be sexually intimate with them and um I saw that a lot in my past relationships um and I also was made to feel like because I was their partner it was my job and expectation to have sex and I know I'm not the only one who's felt that way um I think you know a lot of us raised in religious families were made to feel that way like our body was never our own so um that might

not be the circumstance in like a covid environment and it might not just be like oh we're bored um it could also be like you see each other so much more now and I don't think that's a bad thing like it just is less exciting because we're all living the same we're living in groundhog day seriously so I feel like a lack of excitement in our lives in general could be a pretty big reason like why sex is less interesting so one last topic that I wanted to talk about was HPV because I feel like not a lot of people know a lot about HPV um I saw something on Twitter and I'm gonna read the tweet to you guys so uh this tweet says um it's like a picture a screenshot of an article and it says men who perform oral sex on women are quote more at risk of mouth and throat cancers and then

the tweet says it's 2018 and men are still disregarding the carcinogenic risk of eating pussy because they don't want their haggard used up girlfriend to think they're misogynistic or whatever and then the person who retweeted that screenshot said if eating pussy kills me I died a noble death which is really funny and then when I retweeted it I said do men know they can get the HPV vaccine and I explored the conversation in that original tweet and like there's just like a lot of there's just like a lack of information and a lot of misinformation which was surprising to me because the human papillomavirus is I think um yeah nine out of ten people get it um and everything I'm about to say is um just based on my own research and also listening to the

podcast this podcast will kill you they recently did an episode on HPV and it is super interesting and I highly recommend listening to it if you're curious about HPV so the human papillomavirus has been around for a very long time and like even things like warts on your like feet and hands plantar warts those are HPV so most people have experienced like HPV in some sense by age eight so if you've gotten a plantar wart you know you have had HPV um and then the other types of HPV like that people are talking about in like a sexual connotation there's low risk HPV which are genital warts and then there's high risk HPV which is like they it has no symptoms and they're classified as low risk versus high risk because when you have low risk HPV

it's you you have very low risk of getting cancer but if you have high risk HPV you have a much higher risk of getting cancer and the thing about HPV is it goes away like most of the time it goes way and um it has like it's what what's called like a shedding period and um it like sheds pretty aggressively so like if you've ever gotten like a plantar wart on your foot like those things fucking spread like wildfire I was in dance in uh middle school and high school and there was like a time where like a bunch of the dancers got plantar warts because someone was like who had them was like walking around with no shoes on and then like everyone in the studio started to get them and I had to get a shot in my foot and it was the most painful experience

I've ever had like right in the heel of my foot so if you have an option to get it frozen off do that for sure but anyways I mostly want to focus on high-risk HPV so the tweet that I responded to this person said the risk is linked from infection with HPV so don't eat somebody out with HPV for a start and I mean this is like a pretty ignorant statement because most of the time people don't know they have HPV the reason that nine out of ten percent people get it is because you don't have to be having sex to get HPV and most of the time there are absolutely no symptoms and because there are no symptoms and because uh it's very likely that like I think something like I don't know 95 percent of people like clear HPV within the first two years with no

risks and they never know they had it and um that's like part of it there's no symptoms you clear it and uh there's no test for men there is no HPV test for men and um women can get tested for HPV during their pap smear but also like most uh gynecologists won't test for HPV before age 30 because of the high likelihood that you will get rid of it within the next two years so um insurances also don't cover you most of the time before age 30 if you're getting tested for hpv but also there's an alternative option to buy an at-home test for hpv um i think like what's it called like everly well or something like that yeah everly well has an at-home hpv test you can buy for like 50 bucks which would be probably about the same if it actually might

even be a little less if you went to your gynecologist and got tested for HPV and your insurance didn't cover it so if you are very curious and have had abnormal pap smears like it might be worth getting an HPV test but that being said it is cool that you can test yourself for it at home and um hopefully it becomes more affordable considering like how many fucking people get HPV and don't even know it the even cooler thing is there is a vaccine for higher for HPV it covers nine different kinds of HPV it's called Gardasil 9 and it is largely marketed towards women and when it first started being marketed it was like marketed as like towards you know girls who are 12 like teenagers like 12 to 18 or something um and it was like

they just didn't market it well as like it it was like seen as like give this vaccine to your young girl so they can become sexually active sooner essentially but that's not what it is at all like when you get the vaccine during that like at a younger age it is more likely to be effective and um the vaccine isn't to prevent like an std it's to prevent cervical cancer so um let's talk a little bit more about how hpv becomes cervical cancer so when you listen to this podcast will kill you they explain more of the science behind um hpv and how it it's it's like a very smart virus essentially um it embeds itself into your dna and that's how it changes the cells on your cervix and they um survive in like mucosal cells so like you know think of like

your mouth and genitals i mean the fact that they can like go undetected in your dna like undetected by i'm just thinking of like cells and like little shields and i know that's not correct but that's why I work in marketing and I'm not a scientist um but yeah your body like has a harder time clearing it because it is a smart virus and uh embeds itself into your DNA and replicates itself there so it can take like 15 to 20 years to develop into cancer um which is a pretty long time however like this is the first vaccine that can prevent a cancer we could eradicate this type of cancer if we wanted to and HPV doesn't only cause cervical cancer it's also responsible for a large percentage of penile cancers and anal cancers and throat cancers

so this isn't like a woman's issue like this is an issue for everyone uh and I think it's really fucking cool that there's a vaccine for this um like the fact that there's a type of cancer that we could eradicate if you know we were smart the two types of high-risk HPV that cause cancer are 16 and 18 and I know when I've like done research in the past um 18 and 45 are like lumped together I don't really know what that's all about but uh Gardasil 9 protects against both 16 and 18 men can get the vaccine too and I think that's the biggest thing to drive home like all boys like every every single person should get the HPV vaccine um because uh just because women get cervical cancer doesn't mean men are exempt from getting cancer in some

capacity and it also doesn't mean that like this is a woman's issue it's not just an issue for people with cervixes this is an issue for everybody um okay so let's say like you are tested and you do test positive for high risk hpv so what the next steps would look like they'll tell you what type of HPV you have because not all of the time your pap smear is abnormal doesn't mean you have HPV so I'm sure when they do that they're also testing for it and they'll know what kind you have and then after that you they'll request you go in again to get um, it's called a colposcopy and it's pretty much a biopsy of your cervix. So they put like a liquid on your cervix and it lights up like where your abnormal cells are on your cervix. And then they

will scrape a sample off to see like how intense it is. And then, um, like a few weeks later, they'll let you know what the results are and there's different levels. And, um, there's like, uh level one level two level three and level four is pre-cancer and then after that is um cervical cancer so level one they'll do like a wait and see type of thing they'll just be like because they don't know how long you've been carrying it you know you could have had it for three months and it's likely it'll just go away so they'll do level one like wait and see and then I think they do that with level two also, but, um, level three and level four, they're going to, um, urge you to, you know, take some proactive steps towards preventing cervical cancer,

which, um, typically they're going to tell you to do a leap procedure, which is like what it is, is basically like an electrical loop that they use to like burn off the normal cells and um there's not a lot of information about a leap procedure like there's not a lot of information about treatments and the sexual side effects so I remember googling a leap procedure when I was like looking this stuff up and an article came up that like um women have lost their ability to orgasm because of a leap procedure and it is really upsetting to me that sexual side effects aren't discussed when talking about these types of procedures because like we all know that if this was happening to men it would become a huge deal they would be finding something out like

the fact that insurance covers Viagra and Cialis, like, I, it blows my mind that, like, I don't know, women's health is so fucked up for a slew of reasons, and I'll go on that tangent in a couple minutes, but, um, I would say investigate other options before getting a leap. I know there's also like cryotherapy well you know you could go in for a couple sessions where they'll freeze it off and that might be safer I don't know and then there's also a cum biopsy which I think is like pretty hardcore and old school where they like use a knife and um the reasons that like women's health are so fucked up I so when I was listening to this podcast will kill you I learned that like gynecology only started as a way to like to like eliminate not eliminate but

to treat STDs in sex workers because of um the infections their male clients were getting so gynecology is like a branch of men's health which is appalling and explains so fucking much like it explains so much about how awful like things like a speculum are and just how archaic like our bodies are treated during these uh these different like routines and so many of them are ancient and have not changed and that's why it's because no one ever really gave a fuck about women's health um so that's my hpv rant and i hope that it like equipped you guys with some more information about HPV um and you you don't feel afraid of it and also you don't like you're not ill-informed and encouraging uh the men in your lives to get Gardasil 9 we could even say I'm

also going to classify gynecology my little gynecology fact as the sex fact of the week because I think that that's worth knowing how gynecology even got started but um thank you for joining me um and if you stuck around this long I appreciate you so much and now you know I honestly like my internal monologue is so much better put together than how I sound when I'm talking out loud like it's like in my head i sound like a philosopher and then when i start talking out loud i'm like you know how like eyes closed when sex talk about it that's how i sound out anyways i love you it's not the same singing this without amelia join us next week Oh, yeah.