The Hoely Hour - E74 Attack of the Femcels!

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

What would you do if you unbuttoned an adult partner's pants and were greeted by a diaper with no warning? You've heard of incels, you know them, you hate them, but it's time for us to direct that same energy to their equally ugly counterpart: femcels. A listener writes a detailed email about abnormal pap's and Liz sheds some light on her health. 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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$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. me slow when network is busy see terms i'm gonna leave you a secret message for when you're editing i'm right next to you don't listen okay liz liz if you were a hot dog would you eat yourself yeah welcome to the holy hour i'm amelia samson and i'm liz ball and i just bit my lip when we were doing that intro i was feeling really good about it i was like this is going smooth do you want me to kiss it better yeah thank you so much if you if you have us on patreon you know know that we

we just made out yeah we just made out subscribe to us on patreon even though this will be in the first 15 minutes yeah true i always shout out the patreon in the first like 30 minutes like if you have us on patreon but not everybody oh that's also a great plug we're on youtube we're on youtube we're on patreon we're on twitter instagram spotify we're no longer on soundcloud which is okay yeah because they're a distributor and not a music platform so much so we're distributing through our network so if you were listening through soundcloud now you can listen through you know apple podcasts or spotify um or you can go directly to blue wire podcast website and then we'll also start embedding the link to our latest

episode on our website so but ideally you'll just be listening on an easier platform than having to like go to our website every time yeah definitely no judgment no judgment you know if you want to go to our website every time go for it that's great yeah we pay for the domain um as a reminder we do have merchandise on our website yeah we like launched merch like a year ago um and then never really talked about it after that. So we do have some merchandise, but even more excitingly, we

are in the process of designing new merchandise. We just had a meeting on Sunday about it, and it's going to be really cool. We're stoked. Our designer is stoked. Her name's Allura, and her design handle is Hello Hysteria

on Instagram. podcast.com account is following her yeah that's an easy way to find her and she made all of like our first round of merch too yeah that y'all liked so much she designed the consent is my kink so we're really excited stuff is happening yeah i'm excited for more merch yeah me too me too i need a new gym shirt yes i already wear the one with our faces to the gym i'm always like i wonder if people are going to recognize that it's me yeah it's me bitches read it and weep i wear my holy hour sweatshirt to death i got a 3xl and i

sleep in it i need to get one it's so comfy i i only have the consent is my kink merch the crop yeah yeah do we have we have full-length sweatshirts for consent is my kink right i literally can't remember it feels like i think we do we made those it was like a year ago yeah it's almost a year ago wild um you have a fun story oh my god i'm so fucking excited to tell you this story um i'm not going to give any sort of information about who this person is you know i got a text on friday from a friend of mine and she was like i'm on a date with a guy that i met on tinder and he brought this and sent me a picture of it was like a child's backpack that had like um drawings all over it like it was like the design was like sketches okay but it was all

over and i was like okay like he's like eccentric you know whatever and she was like i don't know i feel kind of weird like i'm getting a weird vibe from this and i was like i don't know whatever and so i just like wrote it off a few hours later she texts me and she was like you are going to all in different texts you are gonna have no idea what kind of night i just had and i was like okay what apparently this man has we've talked about this on early episodes a kink of being treated like a baby oh no and did not ask for her consent before exposing her to this kink so that's fucked up they knew that they were gonna have sex like she sent me a screenshot of the conversation that they had where she was like i'm not gonna lie to you i'm just on tinder for sex and he was like

great let's meet up and so they went to a bar what was in the child's backpack was extra diapers they were adult-sized paw patrol diapers she he called her mommy she was like well i gave him my consent for sex i'm like but like a kink is a different layer of consent yes you can't just like expect somebody to like just be into your kink he breastfed no yeah no he asked her if she was just like well so she took off his pants and he was wearing a diaper and at first she was like medical condition you know what i mean like she was yeah you don't want to be judgmental because right you never know um nope no medical condition just wanted to be treated like a baby and then he asked her and again this

goes without saying i think y'all know us by now we're not kink shaming but this is wild like to expose someone to your kink like this without any sort of heads up is a jarring experience well also i feel like that's just kind of like if you talk to anyone involved in like bdsm and whatnot like they're um they're automatically gonna be like oh and we discussed that this was my kink beforehand like this is a big no-no yeah yeah exactly that's the thing is like it's and there are like multiple layers of this being pretty fucked up like he he asked her so he breastfed called her mommy all of this shit like um he asked her this isn't fucked up this is just strange if he could if she could put him in a playpen

and cuck him have sex with somebody else in front of him while he's in the playpen like as if a couple is having sex with their baby in the room no you're also like not supposed to do that i'm not a parent and i don't know a lot about being a parent but i know that's like a big don't do that isn't that fucking bizarre and then he just left the diaper on her floor when he went home that is the most appalling thing of this entire story oh my god apparently the sex was like unbelievably good though like outside of like that i don't care of it i don't mean either i was like there's no sex that is good enough i can't believe she was like yep okay yeah she was like hold up you owed me a conversation about

this first yeah she didn't see anything wrong with it though like she because that's why i said to her too i was like what didn't this don't you feel like a little violated by this person not like clear i would be really upset if well because like i'm thinking mr liz talked to me first before being like yeah and like i am into bdsm that's what you're supposed to do yes with any kink it's like bringing your kink in public it's that's violating for people around you yeah they didn't consent to be there and be part of your no fantasy no so i don't know if there's i asked her i was like is there some sort of like trauma there that you opened up about or anything she's like i don't know so yeah um that was pretty wild wait so i have a question like i want to know

if he is a baby yeah and he calls her mommy like is he a bottom he must be he must be because yeah it felt like a very he wanted to she he wanted her to be in power in that situation so i'm assuming that's uh because there's daddy dom little girl so this would be like mommy dom little boy yeah yeah or baby i think baby's like more extreme than yeah i mean like having like a whole ass diaper on i just there there's a level where you where you start when you're trying to unpack this and start thinking about it like i have so many questions and a lot of concerns yeah like i don't know me too it's you're like what kind of porn are they watching and is it illegal and is this person dangerous that's such a good point yeah it's i just feel

like it's not that difficult to be like if somebody's like um i'm just on tinder to have sex to be like okay great same i just need to tell you this thing well also yeah yeah and like she's very open-minded like you could just put the acronym in your bio right yeah and there are websites specifically for like kink related dating yep yeah that's what exactly what i said too i'm like it's just tinder might not be your place homie like i think that's i i think him not talking to her about it beforehand is fucked up yeah it's unacceptable but oh my god can you fucking imagine that scenario like getting the picture of the backpack and then the text later of like what was in the backpack was i was in an uber home coming back from the bars with one of

my friends and we were both like looking at these texts like screaming because she was like rapid fire texting and she was like sending pictures of the diaper on the floor wait i want to see it's recording on oh shit you're right i'll show you when we're done recording it's it's a good series what the fuck yeah so um i was so excited to tell you that story when she told me it on friday i was like oh god i have to tell i have to fucking tell i'm so excited but i want to tell her in person yeah i'm still processing bizarre i know i mean me too it's been a few days and i'm still processing have you heard of this website it's um i i got standards bro.com no oh my god i'm so happy i get to be the one to tell you about this so there's this website that is you're just

like dropping bombs on me today i don't know if you can tell but my tuesday it's tuesday and my brain's just kind of like a little offline yeah mine is too i feel really offline today but um i'm happy to be dropping these on you today so it's this calculator that this man created that is a female delusion calculator where you like answer these questions there's like five questions that are not inclusive at all like it's age range that you're willing to date um height race and the options are any race black white and asian or any race or shade is the first option shade okay yeah um and then there's income and then it calculates how delusional you are based on the percentage of men that fit that standard and then it rates you in delusion in bags of cat

litter so like zero bags of cat litter is are you even a woman the um one bag of cat litter is um uh you're like you're easy to please or something and then like five bags of cat litter are like you don't deserve to be on this planet or something crazy like that and they like rate you based on they get their data from the census bureau and some like body mass index like health calculator to get this pool of guys just in the u.s i'm so excited for you to see this okay okay so what it's what are the chances to find the man of my dreams and it used the u.s census which as we know is not accurate um the age i'm willing to date is i'm gonna say 27 to

I don't know 36? I'm 30. I'm 30. Exclude married any race minimum height I don't really care maybe taller than me maybe 5'6

and then there's an option to exclude obese under under height yeah which is like that's width yeah do you even know what math is yeah embarrassing minimum income let's go uh 60k that's very kind of you i said 80k yeah it starts off at 80k um oops find out nice i'm gonna guess you're two bags of cat cat litter delusion score i'm two out of i'm down to earn wow good for you um i date people because of how they make me feel that's exactly what i fucking said i'm just like well because the last guy i dated like is pretty short i think he was

only a couple inches taller than me yeah but yeah i thought he was cute and funny and that's the thing it's not standards it's preferences which everybody has yeah and it's so clearly built by and for incels to like support their belief that it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the woman and when you read the about section on the website like why he made it it's like talking about basically how there's like not a lot of quality men out there and like so like women keep getting passed around by these like high quality men and then they think that it's like an issue with the men and not with like them and it's it's like hold up like this is you are projecting because you're not getting the attention that you think that you deserve

that's it and you have to make an entire fucking calculator from it i saw this tiktok i don't know what it is if it's like a podcast or a talk show or what but this guy is saying like yeah there are so many like good guys like nice guys out there and like they're not getting they're like not being given a chance and then there's a woman who's like i don't mean to interrupt you but i'm assuming you are you think you're a nice guy and he's like yeah and she's like okay so what like this is gonna sound offensive but like what are you doing to like make yourself attractive and like that does sound it sounds like fucked up but um because she was being so blunt about it and it wasn't she wasn't being very nuanced and it is very nuanced it's like

yeah and the the bare minimum of just being a person is just being a good person it's just being nice right and polite and approachable whatever those are like that's the lowest bar is being nice yeah um and then like you know everyone is out here trying to do their best like to to attract the kind of people that they want does that make sense yes um like you know when i'm single i like to even even now i like to look nice for my partner i try and like look cute and like wear outfits not necessarily that i know he'll like but like just not wearing pajamas that's also yeah just above the bare minimum it's not wearing pajamas so just like doing things like that and like putting in an effort to show that you do care i think that's more so what she meant

but just like just being nice is not enough no it's not if being nice was enough i would know everyone I would know would be married right you know yeah it has to be nice and nice is like the foundation for everything else that like the not even to me it's like not even nice you could like you could be kind of a dick but if you're a good person and you're a dick that's fine yeah totally yeah nice is like a very blanket term for it I agree I agree but like to her point she was like you can be nice but if you're not doing anything to better yourself as a person if you're not like striving to be better that is that's unattractive like yeah even like the best people if they're not doing things to better themselves it's unattractive and that's just the truth and then like on this i

was reading an article about this calculator about like how they don't take so much shit into consideration when they're thinking about these things like women that have kids or want kids are going to like biologically want to marry somebody that is bringing in a little bit more income than like you know 30k a year yeah because they want to live a comfortable life that they know that their kids are also going to be comfortable it's not like a picky like i only want to date and some people do want to date like really rich people whatever that's a totally different story but like expecting somebody to like be contributing to the the relationship financially in a way that could be comfortable for the family is not like an unfair thing to ask for

and like i've dated a lot of guys that don't aren't making any money that's not to say it's like you know not important to me it's just like not the most important thing so it's like when i'm filling out like my preferences of course i prefer to date somebody that's like making a good amount of money they're not gonna this is so surface level too like yeah these these are people who are just being i think everyone is is worth more than how much they're making their height like those are just just things all of that shit also can go away like how like looks go away yeah right like for everyone yeah you're gonna get old fucking deal with it yeah so um just this idea that people like don't age is fucking annoying yep and um i think you and i are also

approaching this from a perspective of like this is not just about men and i've been thinking more more lately about how this like men and women and dating like all of this is really fucking annoying like why is this like a battle of the sexes i know i don't know i'm over it i don't fucking care i don't either like just can everyone just stop being shitty yeah i mean it really is incel culture is disgusting and scary because it's it like i said it's blaming other people for your own shortcomings because it's easier to do that than admit that you have things that you need to improve about yourself and like a lot of people do there's a difference between incels and guys that just like are sad because they're not getting dates there's a complete difference it's like yeah

totally i like i know plenty of people who like you know both men and women who are amazing people and it's just hard to kind of like get past that point of connecting with someone really well because the types of friendships that they have they've built those over time so you know like i'm their friend so i can see all these beautiful things about them but when like dating is so competitive and it's so it's so complicated now it's just there are so many things that we need to overcome and i don't think everyone's on the same page right it's it's hard it is it's really hard it and dating fucking blows and it makes me sad for the people who i know are like really they would be the best partners yeah but like we all literally everyone

knows someone who you're like why are you single you're so fucking great yeah and i mean if we want to get weird about it you know everyone has a life path that's true but i am thinking about someone i know who was single for a very long time and she really wanted to date someone and she like was getting very frustrated that anytime she had feelings for someone it would just kind of like blow up in a bad way i don't know it just was not working out and now she is just like so in love and so happy because she's with the right person yeah and if the other things had shaked out like shaken out then she wouldn't be with this person and that's kind of how i feel too um yeah it just takes time little girl you're in the middle of the ride everything will be all right

no but uh i was about to keep quoting it but i was like we could go on forever with that um that is the middle by jimmy eat world wow we should change our theme song to be that honestly that song's a bop it really is good karaoke song too i remember i put it as my status on facebook once and it like out of context looked like um that's what she said and i never recovered emotionally from that um but to back to the calculator um there are there's no version for women that date men there should be a male delusion calculator oh you mean men that date women men that date women yeah yeah a male delusional calculator i think that it would be yeah an interesting addition and i don't i'm not saying that there should be one the men that

are gonna gravitate towards that are like they're single for a reason right and men that are like this are gonna stay single see i don't sorry fellas i don't know if this calculator was made as a joke or not but regardless like i was reading a bunch of tweets about it and people were like well now i know like which delusional women to stay away from like the like fucking twitter incels like well what do you think like women are just gonna be like wearing it around their neck or something like this is my right this is my kitty litter rating it's not like an uber driver rating cat litter is expensive so i just bought some it's just fucking crazy it is it's very heavy so we are leading into this because we're uh we like equality here and it's

time to talk about the fem cells you're you're not excluded from our criticism we see you and we don't like you either so uh we need to talk about fem cells and if you don't know what a fem cell is it means like female incel um i also feel so bad for the woman who created the term incel because um it was more so it's it means involuntarily celibate which means you're trying to date and you want to be in a relationship but it dating is complicated yeah and i think um when i was watching the interview with the woman who created this term in this community um a lot of the people who were part of it were on the spectrum so i think that's like something important to consider is just like the people who were originally identifying with this term

are not bad people yeah i know it really sucks that it's like taking on the life that it has yeah um so with the fem cell conversation um i had come across a tiktok where they talked about this subreddit called um female female dating strategy fds and at first glance it doesn't really seem super problematic but honestly it doesn't take long to scroll through and be like this shit sucks yeah um they call like men they think suck scrotes and then they have like tags that are like gross to scrote oh yeah and then they also use the same terms high value man and high value woman which is just a fat red flag um and you know there are some things where i've read and i'm like okay i don't really think that this is problematic but i saved a few things that

are problematic that i think we should discuss oh hell yeah okay i haven't heard any of these this one says it's a discussion and the title of it is how to reconcile with the fact that my brother doesn't support the fds strategies although he is a high value male my older brother 28 male has always been a guy i look up to he has been in a four-year relationship with his current girlfriend and they own a property together he is a high value man with her um and he has a lot of high value male qualities and treats his girlfriend like a queen so naturally i go to him and his girlfriend for advice with men because i see her as a high value woman and him as a high value man i can't she says it so much however every time i tell him things that i learned from

female dating strategy i never tell him it's from fds i just just a way i value myself and have learned to see relationships he gives me crap for it and acts like i'm asking too much from the men i date it confuses me so much because he treats his girlfriend so well and like a queen but it makes me feel bad for having high standards how do i reconcile this so she would like prefer to take advice from strangers on this in this echo chamber than like a real life example from people she trusts who are in a successful and happy relationship you know what really like fucking butters my biscuit about this whole thing what grinds your gears i was gonna say grinds your gears but i didn't want to say it you know what really butters my biscuit yeehaw yeehaw is like

there are these communities and then in these communities there are always people that are there just to stir the pot yeah and just to wreak havoc and so it's like they're popping into these forums and pages just to be like i don't know fuck with these people and then they take it as gospel and that's fucked and well and like i said it's an echo chamber you're gonna you're gonna yeah you're gonna hear what you want to hear um and it's just people with the same perspective um and then here's another one that i found fucked up um fds discusses men's sexual health and the title is are men seriously trying to normalize erectile dysfunction now and it's tagged with male depravity i just opened reddit without being logged in and saw men on their front on the front

page comforting each other about their ed and swearing it's normal um what it's not normal it's something that happens naturally to old men whose sperm is no longer safe to the gene pool but not men in their teens 20s and 30s they're telling each other it's from poor diet and depression and that tweaking their food eat more lean meat bro is the answer it's from porn how is that not obvious it's from horrific abuse to the body and mind instead of coping on reddit and with podcasts i roll why don't they cut the addiction i mean are they seriously going to dissolve disassociate via porn for their entire prime years they are seriously choosing to normalize self-induced premature aging instead of walking away from the pixels oh my god this is such a

an insane stretch this is an insane stretch to be like watching porn ages your brain and your body and causes erectile dysfunction yeah i was like i'm like okay i can kind of see how porn is problematic because it's not realistic so maybe you have like associated getting off to like something that's unrealistic i don't know or you're not like experiencing the connection you need but all that to say that has nothing to do with erectile dysfunction even if if even if porn is unrealistic it has nothing to do with erectile dysfunction and depression is a huge reason like there are so many different things right there that is just and to to know how complex women's genitals are yeah to say that men don't have complexities in there like with their

reproductive organs as well is just like i can't believe they're so close to almost getting it and they fucking don't i just don't there are so many non-sequiturs and how that was written that's my first thought my second thought is i feel like that person that wrote that was just using as many big words as they could in a row to sound smart you know how people are like the the anti disestablishmentarianism of the society it's like shut the fuck up shut up you're saying nothing you're saying a lot of shit without saying anything that was that whole thing because you just summed up that whole paragraph in two seconds yeah that's all that it was saying and it makes no fucking sense it's super strange and like a very weird hill to die on to be like

like it's not depression it's because you're watching porn it's like okay well first of all you're wrong second of all what is this contributing to the conversation that's positive yeah hello like why are you fighting about what's the what's the fucking point well and then to go to the subreddit to just like shit on men who are being open and supportive with each other about their sexual health i think that's like that's something you should support is men being open and discussing their feelings with each other and supporting each other that's fucking beautiful and the thing about fds is it does not treat men like people and that's the same thing with with male incels is they don't see they don't treat women like people so the fds the female

dating strategy i haven't explored it enough but like just looking at a glance of the things that are cycling through it's just like shitting on men and like of course we criticize the behavior of men and uh like specific men um but this is just kind of treating them as a collective and i don't know be better be better what the hell the fuck is going on be better how are we supposed to fight insults if y'all are out here doing this shit i don't think everything in fds is awful there's just there are some deeply problematic things that like they're just the tip of the iceberg and underneath is uh toxic femininity yeah if that's what you would call it but um i saw someone leave a comment

that i felt like summed it up perfectly and it says after reading bell hooks which i haven't read fds made a lot of sense to me they're looking to uphold the patriarchy and gender roles and make it look like feminism so i think that's a good way to definitely top it off yeah um this is a before we switch gears that just reminded me um i saw this video i sent it to you i don't know if you ever watched it on tiktok i sent it like really late last night um that guy that was talking about his oh yeah i already liked that you did yeah i had liked it before you sent it to me amazing he likes that how he summed that up but okay so but he was talking about he talked about a lot and i don't want to go into the whole thing because i think it's worth

the conversation for another time but how on reddit forums of women having like a safe space to ask other women questions there's like all of these questions like i'm 16 and my 23 year old manager hit on me how do i deal like really like heavy topics like that and then over on like the men asking men questions forums it's like shaving tips and like yeah they get to like their eye what the things that they get to discuss and grow up learning is so much different than the scary stuff that like i'm underaged and a adult man is saying inappropriate things yeah right fucking scary it is and it's like i wonder how much of that is like sad the reality of society which is like a very very real thing and then also like men not feeling comfortable talking to each other

about like shit that scares them um which we've talked about a lot on here how like men don't really have community like we do growing up to like open up about their feelings and hopefully that's changing now i think it is i was talking to squints he was talking about his like one of his best friends when they met in middle school um he was like i was immediately drawn toward him because he like hugged other guys and he was like i wanted to hug other guys and so like we hugged and then we stayed best friends and he was at his birthday on saturday like he was just like they're not i never questioned i was like hugging everyone like all the time you know what i mean like just like my girlfriends you know hi speaking of which um she always comes in at this

time hey miss thing hi meows but anyway i just thought it was interesting it's like it's like a lot of men are just kind of waiting for an open door to be like vulnerable with their dudes totally you know it's just not as accepted as it is with us dudes check in on your bros dudes hug your bros yeah tuck them in tuck them in give them a little kiss on the cheek sorry we all want that i love you bro right here i recently found out that mr liz uh like will stay up until i'm done with like get it getting ready for bed because he wants me to tuck him in that is the cutest goddamn thing he likes when i because i always adjust the sheets and stuff yeah and he's like um i didn't make the bed because i like when you do that and then i like after i i was like wait

i love that i love that you told me that is the cutest fucking thing because now i'll like get ready for bed faster because i know he's waiting so then i like i have a weighted blanket too so i'll like um i do sheets weighted blanket duvet and i'll like pull up the sheet and tuck them in and the weighted blanket and tuck them in and then the duvet and then he always wants his feet sticking out so i leave a little space for his feet he's like the charlie and the chocolate factory grandparents and then he's just like late you know he's like like six three six four like man like with his feet sticking out the end and he's like he's just like he's so tall it's so funny to picture him being tucked into bed that's such a cute image he loves it oh my god and then

last night i like woke up for a couple minutes i was i think i was just like readjusting or something and then he started like making little noises and then he started like whimpering he was like oh and then I rolled over and I just like put my arm around him and he woke up for a second and I was like were you having a nightmare and he was like yeah and then we were talking about it later he's like I'm glad you woke me up that is so sweet it made me so sad it made me so sad because he sounded like he was gonna cry my little puppy oh my god that's so I was I was like something about me was like something in me was mad that i wasn't in his dream to protect i'm way smaller than him i'll take care of it yeah you could though you'll take anyone down

i will i'll hurt your feelings oh my god yeah i will hurt that ghost's feelings yeah she will verbally take you down uh-huh i black out and i get angry i'm like the hulk okay next topic shall we drop drop into the next topic yeah and i think i think this is also could be a sex fact of the week i think so too because it's kind of a longer discussion yes agreed uh so a listener sent us this email and it says it's titled a story and some learned knowledge about cervixes hpv and abnormal paps hi friends just wanted to start by saying that one this is going to be a little lengthy and two i am not a medical professional so if this gets read on the pod listeners should speak with their physicians love that yeah anyway reminder a couple episodes

ago liz mentioned ordering an hpv hpv test from everly well and i have since done the same because although i know i probably have hpv i want confirmation since my doctor didn't confirm it for me abnormal pap smears and hpv are both very common but when i was told i had an abnormal pap smear for the first time this past spring i spiraled a little bit when you don't feel any pain or have any indication that something is wrong it's extremely jarring to hear that something is abnormal it almost feels like your body is betraying you in secret damn yeah um with some google deep dives if my master's degree did anything for me it made me a better googler because of my ability to scrutinize literature and a conversation with a friend who is in med

school to become an ob-gyn i learned that there are a few ways that a pap test can come back we will often only hear from our doctors if that it's normal or abnormal but there are varying degrees on either side this website is very helpful in explaining these differences and the website that she linked to is um from cancer.gov and it's the national cancer institute uh and it has hpv and pap testing it's like to the hpv and pap testing landing page um when i got the call this past spring and was told my results were abnormal i went on on the patient portal for my doctor's office to look at the results myself the results were lsil cannot rule out hsil which is low-grade squamous intrapithelial lesion holy cannoli those are that's that's why they uh

that's why they get a phd and that's also why they um shorten it that too why it's an acronym cannot rule out high grade in other words the cervical cells were showing mild abnormalities but it was possible that some were more than mild i decided to look at the results from 2019 the last time I had a pap before then out of curiosity despite my doctor having told me they were normal I found these results said ASC-US HPV negative ASC-US is atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance with this result the next step is to test for test the sample for HPV which they did and it came back negative ASC-US plus a negative HPV test is considered normal because of the lack of HPV that indicates atypical cells are presumably caused by something less worrisome.

Like you can have an abnormal pap smear if you had sex within the last 48 hours. So there are a lot of like little things that can cause an abnormal pap. However, these details were never communicated to me. I reached out to my doctor's office and asked if my current sample had been tested for HPV and they said no because HPV is just assumed if you have an LSIL result. Part of me wanted to demand an hpv screening because there was a weird layer of shame that came with just being assumed to have hpv but my future ob-gyn friend assured me that literally almost everyone gets hpv at some point and may never know but i bought an everly well test so now that i can learn for myself however proceeding with caution because i've had weird results from other everly well

tests that's good to know that is good to know um also nine out of ten people get or have hpv so that's a huge number i think a big piece of that is that there's no test for people with penises yeah exactly spreading it willy-nilly so to speak um this was extremely frustrating to me for a few reasons first if i had known that my 2019 results were anything but 100 normal i would have requested follow-up pap smear a year later this is exactly this is actually pretty typical for the results i had so i'm confused why that was skipped over in 2020 i can't help but spiral into what if my ASCUS results from 2019 progressed to my LSIL result in 2021 and the lack of follow up in 2020 led it to not being caught sooner. Although the likelihood of this is low and my

results are most likely independent of one another, I'm angry that I couldn't advocate for myself because I didn't have the details of all my results in 2019. Secondly, I was frustrated because HPV was just assumed to be the cause. Shame aside, although HPV is very commonly the cause for abnormal pap results it's not always the reason i don't want the reason for a cellular abnormality in my body to just be assumed because of statistical likeliness i want to be treated like an individual patient who is scared and curious i suppose my message here is get more details about your results advocate for yourself as a patient and don't be afraid to ask questions about your own body i do i have run into situations where i felt like my doctor was being gatekeepy

about the information of my own body especially in nevada they made me like go in to hear a result so i had to pay for that that's really fucked up yes so luckily they have the patient portal they could just send you a message anyways fucking blows the follow-up of my for my lsil cannot rule out hsil result was a colposcopy which is a procedure to take a closer look at the cervix applying an acid to get a better visual of the abnormal cells and potentially taking biopsies. I asked the nurse who scheduled the appointment for me what to expect and she made it sound like it's nothing to worry about. I have an IUD and asked how it might feel in comparison and she said oh not nearly as bad. Although not typical for most my IUD insertion

experience was relatively painless so I thought this would be a piece of cake. It was not a piece of cake. The colposcopy itself wasn't much more uncomfortable than a routine exam speculum cranked open for a longer period of time and the doctor looking very closely at your cervix with a big microscope essentially but the biopsies sucked these were uh punch biopsies where they essentially hole punch your cervix in a few places i had four taken i felt so horrific it felt so horrifically slow as the doctor seemed to be working with a nurse in training asking her to hand her things and instructing her to do this and that i didn't have anyone at my appointment with me so i only took half a valium not offered or provided by the doctor since i had to drive

so my anxiety was climbing i really wish i'd taken more my knees were shaking and god it was just so uncomfortable tears started streaming down my face which turned into full-on sobs as the doctor patched the biopsy sites with her silver nitrate with silver nitrate to stop any bleeding i remember getting home and continuing to cry it wasn't that i was in terrible pain just some cramping but it all just felt so scary my results came back consistent with precancerous cells for which the next steps are another pap smear in a year these are favorable results but the idea of waiting a whole year to see if the cells progress or my body clears is unnerving but here we are I realize that this probably sounds dramatic for something that kept being communicated to me as

extremely common but I never heard anyone talk about it so I was scared that's why I wanted to write this in, in case you decided to read it or talk about it on the pod. January was Cervical Health Awareness Month, so I missed that by just a couple weeks, but it's never a bad idea to express the importance of regular screenings for people with cervixes. The medical guidelines seem to keep making it so that pap smears are further spaced apart, but if you are concerned, please advocate for yourself and don't be afraid to ask for pain meds or something to calm your nerves if you're having a procedure this experience has made me more aware of my cervix than ever before and i hope others choose to become more aware as well i don't want people to get scared away

because of their fear of an uncomfortable procedure because i can assure you cervical cancer is probably a lot more painful than a biopsy that's a good point so um she said anyways i'm not going to apologize for the length of this email because of what you said on last week's episode lol so thank you for reading this far if you did i love you both and thank you for talking about important things first of all we fucking love you thank you so much for taking the time to write that this is um really helpful being able to feel not everybody feels comfortable opening up about this kind of thing um so any any time that anybody opens up about anything like this I think that it's hard to remember just how many people

it's probably helping because this is one of those things that not very many people open up about yeah so I wanted to talk about my experience that I actually went through last week and I like mentioned that I had some health stuff going on um I've had abnormal pap smears since I was 23 or 24 and um typically you're not tested for hpv until you're 30 which is also fucked up because you up until recently and most insurance companies don't or still might not cover getting the hpv vaccine after age 30 i don't know so i'm pretty sure that they're also saying you can't you can't get it anyway until after like once you turn 26 you're past the age that you can get the shot yeah yeah now they've extended it to the the i think it is the cdc

recommended extent or like they've extended it to 45 is the age they recommend it through so i think it's like um you can get the vaccine anywhere between age 11 and age 45 okay so they should be testing it much younger and Gardasil protects against nine different types of HPV and then um the two two of the strains it protects against are 16 and 18 so anyways I um my I went in for a pap and my test results came back for positive for high risk HPV um and high risk HPV 16 and 18 are the ones that can cause cervical cancer and i have high risk hpv type 16 so after that i'm i mean like i wasn't totally surprised um i also had similar results as this listener wrote in previously of lsil but a lot of doctors take this wait and see approach because you

typically if you test positive for HPV you typically clear it within um I think the range is two to five years so for most people they're gonna they will either never know they had it they don't know they carry it they clear it so it's most people do not get cervical cancer and mine has progressed past that stage I have HSIL and that's like I think it's called CIN3 which just means I think CIN I can't remember what it stands for but it's like the type of cell anyways there are three stages that it can progress to one two and three and then four is cancer so I'm at stage three and um I had to get a colposcopy and um I've gotten a colposcopy before and um I am just like the results were so scary and my doctor scared the fuck out of me when

she like replied in my little message thing I like screenshot it and sent it to all my friends I was hysterically crying because this is like my second cancer scare this year like I've gotten to the other one was skin cancer over the summer and then um this one is now cervical cancer and luckily it came back negative for cervical cancer but I still have to I feel like I'm all over the place trying to describe this no you're not you're really not so uh I was freaking out when my doctor messaged me back of like this is what you need to do and I scheduled um a colposcopy immediately after I got the results and I was like can you like prescribe me something because I am afraid I'm gonna have a panic attack because I'm really really nervous and like upset and she was like

totally so she prescribed me a single Ativan and you know I'm not like interested in uh drugs so I was just like yeah I was just like that's fine with me um I mean like maybe one more as a treat no no but she only prescribed me one and um I took that and two extra strength Tylenol because I know that ibuprofen like increases blood flow so I took Tylenol yeah and um it started hitting like right as it was happening my doctor like the the doctor who did the biopsy is fucking amazing and she's just like takes no shit she told me everything I needed to hear answered all my questions is a total badass which is so reassuring and like even on the phone everyone was like oh yeah that doctor is amazing and I was just like they're like we're gonna take such good care of

you it made me feel like so much better I've never heard like people in the medical field have never talked to me like that before so it was just like very reassuring to know that like my feelings are being considered i'm fucking scared yeah especially so i like on monday when the email came in um like oh your health chart results are up like i was like oh my god i like blacked out yeah and i checked them and i like sent them to you and my mom and both of you were like i'm crying yeah i sent liz a selfie of me crying i i burst into i was so fucking relieved because it's just like there there was so much unknown it's very possible for someone in their 30s to get cervical cancer and that's what i was afraid of you know um so the next steps for me is i will either have

to have a leap procedure or unfortunately a cone biopsy because um if you don't know your cervix is shaped like a donut it's like a tiny little cone and then there's a hole and um typically when you're getting a colposcopy they like put on a fluid that lights up where the cells are and that's where they they scrape or do a punch biopsy um and the first time I got a colposcopy it was painful and the discharge I had was so fucking weird like like it was like sheets were coming out of me I don't know if they left gauze up there or what but oh maybe i i don't know it was so weird and disgusting and then um some of the solutions sometimes it can like look like coffee grounds so it's just like the grossest shit was coming

out of me and i was like what the fuck is this anyways so this time it was not nearly as bad and i think it's because i expressed how bad it was the time before yeah uh but the next steps um will be one of those two procedures because the outside and the canal of my cervix both are infected with high-risk HPV and they're confused about the canal because typically only your canal is infected when it's HPV 18 and I don't have that strain so they don't really know like why it's there how i know and like the fact that it's because she was explaining the canal kind of dictates what they decide and the rest of the the circumstances around it so the way she described a leap procedure to me is it's an electrical loop

and they basically cauterize off the infected cells and she described it to me as a potato peeler you want to keep the potato but you just want to peel off the skin um but a cone biopsy this made me like this made my butthole clench she she explained it like an apple corer so you take out the center and that outside and i will be unconscious if i have to get that one which unfortunately it's starting to look like that's gonna be the one i have to have really i didn't know that yeah because my cervical canal is infected right that makes sense but i didn't yeah like it was kind of like a i don't need more toward that i don't think there's a way that they could use the leap tool there um but i'm scared and i'm upset uh mr liz has been really supportive

but i think something that the author of that email explains really well is like you can know it's super common but it doesn't make you feel less bad like i feel gross and sad and um i'm happy I don't have to have a hysterectomy before age 30 and just like the things that make me upset thinking about it is just like you know of course I'm worried if I would be able to like hold a pregnancy or get pregnant but also knowing that if I'm unable to and like you know if Mr. Liz and I breakup one day it's that's going to be a quality that subconsciously makes me more undesirable which you know I don't necessarily agree that that's okay but it doesn't mean it's not a reality that I have to face which fucking sucks and another thing that was really that I was I

was just kind of getting upset about it over the weekend is like my mom was like how is this gonna affect your if you'll be able to get pregnant and then I was just like can we focus on just me not having cancer first yeah can that be the first part of this instead of like and i already don't know if i want kids so like for that to be the focus like it's just easy to advocate for the unborn like i i don't know if i want to have kids i'm not in a place where i can or want to and like that should not be the focus of my health this is about me yeah and it just was really upsetting to me like I know she cares and she loves me and I'm sure she thinks like I'm gonna be like yeah I do want to have kids but the truth is like I don't know and I she did I know

she doesn't want to hear that it's just frustrating to like yeah like let's focus on the fact that I don't have cancer but also it's like hold on like can I get through the surgery first yeah why are we like future seeking so so much right now like we'll cross that bridge when we come to it because if you think about in any situation if you think about like every possible thing that could result from this you're going to drive yourself nuts i know that's the reality is what was true i had several panic attacks in the the week and a half leading up to having my colposcopy so it was just like it's really frustrating when that's the first thing people ask is like oh well are you going to be able to have kids and it's like i don't want to fucking talk

about that do i want i want to worry about right now if i have cancer like if i can't have kids that fucking sucks because i want it to be my choice if i don't have kids i want to have chosen that does that make sense and i was explaining that to my therapist too and i was just like when i was trying to talk to mr liz about it i fucking love him he's amazing but he was trying to problem solve right then instead of just listening to me freaking out and that's what i needed i needed someone to like listen to me spiral out and be like i'm gonna love you no matter what so he like sent me like a support subreddit for women who have had hysterectomies and i was like i don't want that i don't want to think about if i actually have to have one yeah

and then i i did tell him that i was like i love you so much please don't say i need i don't want that I need you to like understand why I'm freaking out and like validate that it's okay for me to be upset right now that's where I'm at yeah dudes are such problem solvers I'm like that's great but not right now yeah yeah so um and he's like it doesn't matter to me like I've never wanted kids it's it so that's okay and I'm like listen and when I was thinking about it I know I explained this to you but I also explained this to my therapist like there is this certain like mind-body connection that we have to have with our reproductive organs because you know we have to touch them so much and think about them all the time like we are the ones who are

able to carry pregnancies we're the ones who bleed every month like we are constantly in contact and have this awareness of our genitals and our reproductive organs that i you know i can't speak for people with penises i don't know if they experience that same feeling but there's just like like i have pregnancy dreams all the time i had one right the night before my pap smear like i like i don't know like men don't have pregnancy i asked mr liz i was like do you ever pregnant do you ever have pregnancy dreams and he's like no and i'm like i mean that makes sense but like it's it's strange that that's just kind of like an instinct yeah like i was having pregnancy dreams when i was a teenager yeah yeah oh my god me too so it's just interesting and strange that

there's just like this level of connection and feeling like your body has betrayed you i've noticed it made me feel a little reckless which um like i i've like the fact my therapist was like the fact that you notice that that is a big deal so I didn't do anything impulsive but I know that is like a part of me that I have yeah it's being impulsive it's good to know about yourself yeah so I've just I'm trying to keep an eye on myself and how I'm feeling so I don't do anything irrational I'll keep you in check too I I have been spending a lot of money oh I do that all the time though no i can't afford to spend a lot of money like a bad person to try to help you out there but i will keep you in check in other ways but um it's always frustrating to

recognize how quickly your body can turn against you it's amazing that our body that things go right as often as they do because there's so much that can go wrong but my mom her yoga teacher when i was growing up was like the healthiest woman ever she like lived she was like all green she like had a nutritionist she was like really active and then she got bit by a tick and got lyme disease and it's just like that's what the fuck and it's one of those one thing it just makes you so grateful for your health when you have it because it's like okay things are like bad in my personal life right now but i always hear my parents say like at least we have our health like they always say that and now that i'm getting older i'm like that's so fucking real like that's

so real yeah like that is and it makes sense when i say this because like you feeling reckless it's like of course you do because it's just like well fuck i know a lot of people with autoimmune diseases feel the same way um not to say i even compare to that but i can understand now uh-huh um or sympathize it just like i don't like talking about this but i also realize the benefits of sharing my experience because I don't want other people to feel like me I don't want other people to feel alone or feel sad or gross or betrayed I've also been trying to shift my mindset a little bit of like inevitably like I am gonna have to have some sort of procedure done so I'm trying to like make it almost kind of like a spiritual connection of like this is going to

be something that is removing these um like these abnormal cells and also like any baggage i'm still carrying that is no longer serving me damn i love that like it maybe it sounds corny but like i don't think so it's it's helpful it's helpful to put it in that perspective of like i'm getting rid of things that don't serve me or my health and um i'm really happy i trusted my gut to both to go to the dermatologist and the ob-gyn when i did and like trusted my instinct of like i feel like something is wrong because the the scary thing about high-risk hpv is like there's no symptoms i don't have any symptoms and i'm a very healthy person like i regularly work out very hard yeah i eat super well like i don't eat very many processed foods like i just am doing a lot to take

care of myself i take vitamins every day like um and i've had blood work done there's just so many things that like i have precautions i've done to take care of myself the thing that tipped me off that maybe this would be a thing that is concerning is when i thought i had a tapeworm and they did some blood tests and they were like my um overall blood cell count was high and they were like this is usually like indicative of your body trying to fight something off and i was like well i didn't have an abnormal pap like a few years ago i wonder if that's gotten worse so this like pseudo tapeworm was a blessing it mostly made me scared and then two of our friends uh bullied me into going to the doctor because they're like you need to get this shit figured out now one of them texted me after

you left her house and she was she was like we have to do this again sometime because i wasn't able to go because i'd gotten my gum graft and the next text was and liz has to go in and get pap smear and i was like did you tell her that what do you want me what do you want me to do one of my friends is experiencing basically the same thing as i am which is really nice like she's gone through each step a little bit before me so we've been like supporting each other which has been i love that it's just nice to have someone like going through the same thing who can relate to like feeling disappointed in your body and stuff like that so um but she was like i'm gonna fight you if you don't go to the doctor soon because because she's like if you have cancer

gonna be so mad she just kind of doesn't take any shit which I really needed I was putting it off because I was afraid yeah of course of course but now you know makes sense but now you know and that's that's really it's a huge weight off and you like getting the procedure done too is going to be like a metaphorical and a like a literal weight off yeah your body and your shoulders and your conscience being so afraid of that like this is a high possibility that i would have had cancer like it is the stage right before it becomes cancer if i waited a few more years i'd probably have cervical cancer so um just being that afraid of having cancer at such a young age like knowing just knowing that i don't and i can do something is already a huge weight

lifted huge like once you're at this point you're like okay i'll fucking do anything i will do anything to not have cancer so if i can't have kids this is it's this is my life this is the life i have yeah not a future kid who doesn't exist yet it's life it's mine so also don't be afraid if you have an abnormal pap spear if you have cin one or two like if you're any of those levels like it is so likely you're gonna be totally fine yeah it's so likely that it'll go away if you have the hpv vaccine like um you'll probably only have it for like a year and it'll just go away so um i definitely recommend like just don't freak out because you are more likely the the positive statistic than I am like um you know I don't know like maybe I have an autoimmune

disease I don't know about or something in my body just wasn't able to fight it off I'm just one of those people who wasn't able to fight it off so um it's more likely that you are because nine out of ten people get it and I think eight out of like those nine um don't have any it just goes away so yeah just keep that in mind and then um also do research on what vitamins you should up if you do have it and if you are in the circumstance that i'm in um you should still get the hpv vaccine my doctor was talking to me about it and saying that women who even if they have cervical cancer they're like well why should i even get the vaccine now like i'm already fucked um it actually lowers their chances of getting hpv again because just because you get rid of like

so just because i um i'm gonna have these cells removed doesn't mean that i won't have hpv so that's why getting the vaccine is still important it protects against the most dangerous types of hpv and there's more and more every year this is like i did a small episode about this like this is a preventable type of cancer which is amazing um it's a huge scientific discovery so and it everyone can get the the gardasil shots everyone can get literally and you should you should yeah stop the spread yeah if you have a penis please get it yeah and it's really not marketed toward until recently i hadn't seen any commercials for gardasil that wasn't centered toward women yeah and more recently they're saying everyone everyone should get it well because men also can

be impacted by um high risk hpv as well and even low risk hpv low risk hpv is genital warts high risk hpv is has no symptoms but can give you cancer yeah yeah right so and low risk hpv also goes away so even if you have warts it just will go away it's not like herpes that yeah sticks around yeah exactly well thank you for opening up about that because it's like not a not an easy topic to talk about b i know that i've heard from you that you're feeling a type of way about it yeah so for those two reasons it's like it's even more important and great that you share it because like you were saying before we recorded like the reason that you wanted to and the reason that it's good that you did is because like i'm certain that there is

at least one person that is listening to this and feeling really alone in it because it's people don't want to talk about it i'm sure there are people listening who have already had a leap and i read horror stories of leaps or of people getting leaps and like don't read those if you have a good experience please let us know because i i would totally rather promote something like that over like doing what i did and spiraling out reading all of these horror stories yeah because you talked to your talk to your doctor about it and she was like i don't know i've never heard that before yeah that doesn't mean it doesn't exist right but it's like the investigation professional yeah the investigation of women's sexual health is like non-existent yeah essentially

like people don't care about women's sexual arousal it's so fucking true and i wish there were more things made to treat women who already have hpv instead of like well you get the vaccine and if you get hpv you just have to undergo one of these dangerous things instead of just like okay how can we get rid of it if you already have it right versus like well i guess we'll have to wait to see if it gets worse yeah yeah does that make sense yes and i know there's experimental treatments but it just should be further along than it is exactly infuriating so hopefully it will be though hopefully it will be but i think that's a good uh oh wow camera just turned off just decided it's time for us to wrap yeah it's

a good end cap um sad sad way to end my gynecologist retired oh i loved him so much well he didn't even say bye him and i knew each other so well well he knew me really well yeah thank you for listening we love you our children we kind of slayed that episode 74 we move aside ryan seacrest warm up your microphone we're we're coming to american idol okay bye Thank you.