Cultural Contractions

weeks have been incredibly difficult for me. If you've been listening to the show for a considerable amount of time, you know that I will go through I don't know, waves of emotion, mostly surrounded by rage, but a lot of times what will follow the bouts of rage is exhaustion. And what I find myself exhausted, I find myself falling outside of routines that I put in place in order

to really ground myself. What I'm realizing, however, is how easy it is right as many of us who anybody who's ever tried to diet, anybody who's ever tried to break bad habits or start new ones, is that when things become overwhelming, it is really easy to fall back into old patterns, and I am trying to disrupt my old patterns that have had me once again, put on weight once again, start not sleeping well, using really bad habits as a way to deal with the stress of

this current moment, and how to navigate all of that, all of those things. And you know, the first thing that I will say is that if you find yourself like me in these moments of great overwhelm where you are, you know, habits that you thought that you broke are presenting themselves again, because we are creatures of habit. The first thing to do is to give yourself grace, which is what I have decided to do. My first step

is to give myself grace. I am not beating myself up anymore because frankly, you know, the world beats people that look like me, love like me, exist like me up enough on a daily basis. I do not need to add to those feelings. So I start off by giving myself grace. The next thing is to recognize how am I feeling these days. I had the executive producer over Woke f and over DCP shows reached out to me and said, how are you feeling like? Honestly, like

when nothing else, just like, how are you feeling? How are you doing? And what I will say is that I haven't been feeling great. I have moments of great times and joy and all of these things, but they are moments, and I find that they are fleeting. So I started to think about, well, what were the things that I was doing that I had committed to do over the last two years, new habits that I had developed because, frankly, the world shutting down provided the time

to be able to do that. But now that things have opened back up, and it seems that our country has becoming increasingly by the day, more and more unstable, I'm finding myself ending each day with a cocktail, ending each day recognizing that I had sat in front of the television or on Twitter, in front of my computer for hours, hunched over, no longer going from my walks, no longer taking the breaks that I needed in order

to prevent my own breakdown. I found myself working fifteen hour days again, never turning my phone off, waking up in the morning, and getting back on Twitter as soon as I opened my eyes. All of these things were habits that I had become really conscious of and very intentional about breaking and then over the past you know, six months, I would say six seven, six months plus, all of those habits have started to creep back in. And what has happened as a result of it. I

find myself incredibly exhausted, on edge. My anxiety has been through the roof, not sleeping as well, and eating poorly and drinking too much. All of those are a result of allowing the stress, the frustrations, the anger to begin to consume me from the inside out all over again.

Why am I bringing this up to all of you and airing out my own personal business because I know that if I have allowed myself to fall behind in my self care, if I have not put myself back on my agenda, because I am so preoccupied with how the GOP GQP is beating down this country, with how black people are being hunted, with how queer people have no safe place to go where you know, every headline is about another fucking shooting, whether it's a mass shooting

or an individual and then you know the abortion fight. I mean, it's just it doesn't stop. It is worse than drinking from a firehost. It is worse than feeling like you are drowning. It is all of those things combined. The reality is that it's not going to stop friends, It's actually just going to get worse. And I say that not as a way to just say well, fuck at all you know and give up, but that now, more than ever, as I say this to you all,

I say it to myself out loud. The world is becoming increasingly unstable, which means that we need to figure out the positive and healthy ways to stabilize ourselves, to ground ourselves so that we can deal with this storm that this country has become. The more unstable things feel, the more that we need to double down, the more that we need to look at our calendars each and every day. What is the time that I have put aside for exercise. What is the time that I've put

aside for meditation? What is the time that I've put aside to connecting with friends and family that is outside of work. What is the time that I'm putting aside to say that I'm done with electronics for the day, I'm done with the television for the day, I'm done with all of those things. What is my end time? Because you see, the thing is is that if we're

not instituting our own end times. There will never be a shut off, right because, as I said to the executive producer of this show, is that nothing ever stops. It's not going to stop. And so if I don't pull myself out of Twitter, if I don't pull myself out of the cable news cycle, I'm always going to be anticipating that I'm going to miss something, and the reality is, yeah, I'm going to miss something because there's just so much. There's too much to cover, there's too

much going on, and it doesn't ever stop. So I have to purposefully stop, to give my self permission to take pauses and to take breaks, to take calls out on walks when I can, to institute back in healthy eating, healthy regiments. Not because I'm trying to get somebody's quote unquote summer body, but because I don't want to lose myself at a time when these people are trying to make me afraid to exist in my own body and

skin and community. Again, I can't let them win. And you see, whenever I'm not sleeping, whenever I'm eating shitty, whenever I'm drinking too much, I am letting them win. And that's the thing that I need to remind myself so that I make my self care intentional, because caring for myself is really about caring for you all, caring for the community, caring for our country because I can't give it the energy that it needs when I feel

so depleted. And so again, friends, the first point is to give ourselves grace and understand that healing is not linear, that it vacillates, and you know, sometimes we take steps back in order to recognize how we continue to move forward. So I offered that to all of you because you know that yesterday's show didn't not go up because at

the end of last week I was exhausted. I did not do Woke Wednesday because frankly, I have had burst into tears multiple times with regard to the Buffalo shooting and just in general, everything feels so fucking heavy and there are times when I need to give myself a break and say I just can't do it, and that

be okay. So you know I want us and I will try, and I hope that you all will hold me accountable to being more mindful and intentional about how I am taking care of myself so that I can deliver you guys, the best content that you need at this time so that you can feel connected and involved and engaged. So let's redouble our efforts in being in community and healthy community and healthy communion with ourselves and one another. Coming up next, friends, a conversation with Elizabeth Finley.

And Elizabeth Finley is the director of Communications for the National Coalition of STD Directors. And what we are going to talk about is how the impending reversal of Robi Wade is going to erode and threaten to disrupt and undermine all of what it means to have a healthy

reproductive systems. What does it mean when all of the smaller facilities that provide regular screening STD screening testing, all of these things are shut down because they're too closely associated with abortion, and now people are too afraid to

go and receive the type of care that they need. Well, as Elizabeth will tell us, we have an STD crisis on the hand on our hands to add to everything else, and how that came about, at how things had deterred at the beginning of COVID and then those numbers of gonorrhea and chlamydia and all of these things skyrocketed, and what we can do about that moving forward and what we need to be paying attention to during this incredible,

incredibly crazy fucking time that we are living in. But I think that this is a really important conversation because Elizabeth opened my mind to so many things that I did not think about that are connected to the overturning of Rob Wade, and of course what the GQP couldn't give a fuck to think about, but that Democrats are not using as they build up some type of campaign let's hope to fight back against the Republicans come midterms. So coming up now, my conversation with Elizabeth Finlay. Hey,

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so you never miss a new episode. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to okay F for the very first time, Elizabeth Finley, who is the director of Communications for the National Coalition of STDs. Elizabeth, there is an alarming, alarming trend that has been happening that we don't hear

about on the news. I've seen a couple of articles about the rise and STDs and the rise and STIs and the fact that there are cases of syphilis that are being reported, and I could have sworn that we eradicated syphilis in this country and that has been making a comeback. All of this kind of had a catastrophic intertwining or explosion during the pandemic, when in fact I

thought that we were all locked at home. So what has can you tell us when this trend, this surge began, and how we got to the moment that we're in and why folks need to be paying attention. Sure, so we've seen a rise in some of the most common sexually transmitted infections over about the last twenty years we've

seen so those are things like gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis. The one that's really alarming to folks is congenital syphilis, so syphilis in babies when the mother has syphilis and it's not treated in pregnancy and so the baby's born with syphilis. That's a public health issue that had been completely eradicated ten years ago and in the past five years has

grown by more than two hundred and thirty percent. So those rates are skyrocketing they were before the pandemic, and we just got the latest data from the CDC about a month ago, and it showed that those rates continued to climb in the pandemic. Oh my god, a two hundred and thirty some odd increase in cases in women.

And what I read and so you clarify for me, is that oftentimes, particularly around syphilis, you don't necessarily have symptoms, right, so you may not then know that you have contracted this. Now you're pregnant, you have a baby, and now recognize that this has happened. Why are we seeing this surge? And has something happened with our screening, you know, with regular O, B, G, Y N check ins and particularly

for women, why we are seeing this rise? Right? So you're absolutely right that the screening that happens during obstetric care during pregnancy is the way that we catch this. And what the folks I work would say is anytime you see a clime in adult syphilis, you see this clime in congenital syphilis. And what really happened during the pandemic is women women were doing more telehealth, They weren't

going in quite as frequently for in person care. You know, states screen for congenital syphilis or syphilis, and pregnant women in the first trimester, and some states screen in the third trimester, and so if women missed those first trimester appointments in the pandemic or just did a telehealth appointment instead, they weren't getting those screenings and same deal in the third trimester. I think we also see with syphilis, especially

it intersects with some other health and political issues. So syphilis spreads really easily among people who use drugs, and we see in places where drug use, especially in pregnancy, is heavily criminalized. You know, if if you're afraid that you're going to be incarcerated or arrested or have your baby taken away, like that's a pretty good reason not to go seek obstetric care, and so then you don't

get screened and you don't get treated. We also saw big rises in syphilis among you know, women who are categorized as Hispanic in the government data. And we know from from lots and lots of places in sexual healthcare and reproductive healthcare that if you're afraid of talking about your documentation status in healthcare or you know, you're less likely to go in and so so it's just this

sort of massive convergence of issues. The lack of access to care in general, which we've seen clime for years, and especially during the pandemic. The intersection, especially with the opioid epidemic, issues around population and immigration, all of these things kind of come together, and public health really thinks of congenital syphilis as this bellweather issue, right Like, in an ideal situation, we're testing for sexually transmitted infections regularly

and maybe it gets caught that way. And separately, folks who work on maternal health need to get people in for those prenatal visits, you know. So folks in public health are thinking about this congenital syphilis issue as just a real collapse, right because it means that our sexually transmitted infection screening protocols are falling apart. It means that prenatal care is falling apart, and those were both heavily

exacerbated by the pandemic. What does this look like, this trend that we are seeing that is happening in the wrong direction. How does the overturning, rescinding, erasing of Roe v. Wade play into this rise in STDs and STIs what happens next? Can you paint that picture for us? Right? So, we're interested in talking about this issue because obviously the most immediate concern is access to abortion and abortion care,

and we don't want to minimize that at all. But we think as people are talking about this, they're missing how this is going to cascade into other areas of healthcare. And when we think about how people get tested and treated for sexually transmitted infections and really like that that's the core of prevention. People like really quickly think, oh, you wear a condom and you don't get a sexually transmitted infection. But really the most important part of this

puzzle is testing and treatment. And when we think about what testing and treatment looks like, access is a huge issue and stigma is a huge issue. And so with the fall of Row, we worry about the number of clinics they're going to be available. The folks who provide sexual and reproductive healthcare are so important in the work to address sexually transmitted infections. They're comfortable talking about sex. You're going into a clinic knowing that that's what you're

going to talk about. We still see a lot of hesitancy from primary care providers. You know, if you're just going in for your annual physical you know, how comfortable is that person talking about sex? How comfortable are you talking about sex with that person? And so these sexual healthcare providers that also provide family planning services, abortion services,

they're just a really important piece of our puzzle. And so we worry about what happens when those providers go away, both as centers where people can get healthcare and also just as advocates in their community. Is safe spaces in their community where folks know that they can go, you know, And then there's this stigma piece, right, There's always been stigma around sexual health. We know that it exists. We work with our members and our networks to try to

reduce that stigma. But in this time when they are all of these forces talking about criminalizing and reproductive healthcare, you know, and just more broader in a cultural sense, the attacks on transfolks that don't say gay bill. It's just this moment of cultural contraption. And what does that do in terms of allowing people to go get the

sexual and reproductive healthcare they need? And are we entering this sort of darker period where people can't do that safely or even worse, are we going to see more of these court precedents fall that allow people to have privacy, which is really the bedrock of all sexual and reproductive healthcare.

You know, I'm thinking and follow me for a minute while you're speaking, and I'm thinking to myself, we have states right now that have criminalized abortion, criminalized abortion care, have put together, like Texas and other copycat red states, vigilante laws that are in place to prosecute women and any people with uteruses and anyone that seeks to aid them.

I'm wondering, if congenial syphilis is on the rise, is this something that could then become potentially a criminal issue on you know, on those that oppose abortion care, Like, are we looking at other ways in which people with uterus is and who are having children can be prosecuted? And it all comes back to lack of education, lack of care, lack of services, all of these. But then but then the bad outcomes then become the problem of

that of that pregnant person. Absolutely, absolutely, we already see states where where people are criminalized for drug use in pregnancy. That's part of why they don't seek care and don't get treatment for that syphilis. Um, it's a it's a big problem. We need folks to feel safe when they go get healthcare, and when we listen to legal analysts talk about what's next, you know, what laws do folks challenge.

We have come to take for granted that we get to make decisions about our own bodies beyond abortion, right like how do we protect ourselves from pregnancy? How do we protect ourselves from HIV? With things like prep, how do we protect ourselves from sexually transmitted infections? And beyond that? You know, one of the cases that legal analysts talk about is lawrence, So what kinds of sex are we allowed to have? Who are we allowed to have sex with?

You know, if you can't go into your doctor and talk in your sexual health screening about what it is you're doing and with whom and what kind of care you need, then then providers have no way of protecting you from a pregnancy that you don't want, HIV that you don't want, a sexually transmitted infection that you don't want. I mean, I just think of about how terrifying of a climate that we are creating right now, that we are allowing to happen and not really thinking about the

cascading effects. Like you said with regard to what it looks like when people are not able to comfortably and openly speak about what has happened, whether that be a miscarriage, whether that be an infection, to be able to get

to the core of the needs that they have. If you feel like then the provider that you're speaking to, by virtue of your state law, can pick up the phone and call the authorities like what I mean, can you talk about, like how do we battle stigma in a climate that has become increasingly hostile to everyone gets it gets really hard. I think one wonderful thing that reproductive health and rights organizations are doing right now is just reminding people the reality that abortion is still available.

You know, we are talking about some real, real potential for a dystopian future, and we're not there quite yet, you know. So it is important for folks to understand the care that they can get right now and that and some of that varies by who you are and by state, um, but I think it's important for people to know that we're not quite there yet, and we

need to push back on what this looks like. One thing that's really interesting when we look at the data on sexually transmitted infections is that more than half of sexually transmitted infections right now are in young people, and so those are people who already have a higher level

of fear around privacy. And before coming to NCSD, I worked on young people's sexual health, and so what we saw over and Regan is young people who were afraid to seek care because they didn't understand the privacy protections that already exist in the same way an adult might, you know, like maybe they've heard of hip hop, but they look at a clinic, especially for people who live in smaller towns, in rural areas, they're like, all right,

this person at the front desk checking me into my appointment, goes to church with my grandma, or like as a person that my mom sees the supermarket, you know, like are they going to go tell that I'm here or what I'm here for? So this gives us a window to see what it looks like when people aren't sure that they can get safe and private healthcare. And we see that in these rates of sexually transmitted infections in young people that are far higher than they are in adults.

Can you provide some just a picture of where are you seeing the rise? Are there particular states, particular regions where we should be paying attention and using them, using those particular areas and states as like a testing ground for what we need to do in preparation for this dystopian future. But how you can help people right now? Is it just read states? Is it low income states? What does it What does it look like in terms

of where we're seeing these surges? You know, it really does vary, and this is a nationwide problem, and it frankly varies by infection, you know. So so some of the states we see that have higher syphilis rates are not necessarily the same states that um that we see have the higher Gunner rearrates for example. Uh, you know, so what this means for us is that we need a better nationwide network for dealing with this. The nation has a federally funded family planning program, but there's not

an equivalent for sexually transmitted infections. We're really relying on those family planning clinics or um or primary care providers to step up and do that testing. And we really do have this need for a national response and a national network of clinics. You know, for us working at the national level, it's not as cut and dry as something like maternal mortality. You know where we look at the South and we see like, these are the parts

of the country. These are the states where women and especially women of color, are dying at much higher rates from pregnancy related causes. And so when those states automatically ban abortion, that's going to get much worse. It's it's not as clear picture with STDs, and so what you're going to see happen is is those gaps between how healthy people are in states where abortion is banned is going to get worse and and they're going to in some cases maybe have to go seek care in other

states or just just for go care altogether. One thing that we know about sexually transmitted infections is a lot of them are asymptomatic. And so part of the reason you saw the big rise during the pandemic is you know, people were going to get care if they had symptoms of a sexually transmitted infection, but they weren't going in for like the routine visit where somebody's going to say, like, okay, while you're here, will do a chlamydius screening. Like that's

that's where we really missed a lot of cases. And so like if nobody's screening you for that asymptomatic infection in your red state where your clinic has closed, Like, it's just not going to get caught, right, and it's

not going to get treated. And we know that for some of these sexually transmitted infections, one of the long term impacts is a higher rate of ectopic pregnancies, you know, So it becomes it's going to become this cycle, right, Women in some states won't get treated for their sexually transmitted infections because they're not going to get tested, and then they're going to have health challenges in the long term, including pregnancy complications, and then they can't get treated for those.

Last question for you, Elizabeth, is this, when we are all as patients going in, whether it is for an obg I end check up or our regular physicals, should we be asking and how do we ask for this type of screening that I'm assuming is covered under many people's insurances, but I'm sure that depends on what kind of insurance and what state you live in, on the all of those things. But how should we as patients be advocating for ourselves in our care right now? Yeah? Absolutely,

ask for those tests from from your provider. Ideally what would happen is your provider would ask about about what you need and what you're doing and what kind of sex u you know, sexual health needs, sexual health practices you have, and then offer up screening based on that. It is okay to say and I want to be screened for STIs, you know, just like ask upfront and they will most likely like run the tests while you're there.

And that's a great thing to do every year or more frequently if you're sexually active and have different sex partners. That's just a good a good health practice. So definitely ask for those tests and ideally your provider will will

bring it up for you do. Elizabeth, thank you so much for the work that you are doing for coming on Woke app and essentially raising the alarm on an issue that we have not talked about on the show before and is inextricably tied to the conversations that we are having on the attacks against abortion and repro health in general. So we appreciate you and your time. Thank you so much. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Beyond the Scenes, an original

podcast from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast, New episodes every Tuesday.

That is it for Me today, Dear friends, on this Woke a f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fun. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests

and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast, new episodes every Tuesday.