I remember being stunned about the degree, and irrationality, of the hostility to it when it first came out. It took years to get it made routine, and it felt like all the objections (which were passionated) wholly ignored the issue of lots of terrible and painful deaths of female people. As if the objectors were more concerned about something else.

I'm one of the parents who responded with skepticism and objections when the HPV vaccine was first rolled out in the USA, and my memory of what happened and why is very different to yours. I think the questions and wariness that many of us had at the time were reasonable. Sure, maybe some people acted out of "irrationality" and "hostility" because deep down they were "more concerned about something else" like you claim. But I don't think it's fair to characterize all the objections and doubts that everyone had in that way.

As I recall it, the questions and objections that many of us had about the HPV vaccines when they were first introduced as products that girls as young as 9 should take arose out of an appropriate sense of adult/parental responsibility, legitimate concern for kids'/girls' longterm health, and what I believe was - and to this day remains - a levelheaded, healthy attitude of chariness towards new Big Pharma products, especially when it comes to kids. Along with a particular reluctance to use girls as guinea pigs for a new Big Pharma product whose longterm safety and efficacy were totally unknown at the time.

It's also definitely not true that "all the objections (which were passionated) wholly ignored the issue of lots of terrible and painful deaths of female people."

On the contrary, a main reason many parents objected is that we thought the way Big Pharma, public health authorities and the medical establishment in general originally pitched the HPV vaccine as something that preteen and teen girls and young women should be pressured to take - but not as something that it would be suitable for boys and young men to take - was extremely sexist. We thought it smacked of misogyny and reflected an exttremely careless attitude towards girls and women's longterm health. Some of us thought putting all the onus on girls and young women would end up being harmful to boys and men's health in the long run too.

As I'm sure you recall, when the first HPV vaccine - Gardisil 6 - was approved by the FDA in 2006, it was specifically approved solely for girls and young women. Government officials, the manufacturer, the medical establishment and the media made it clear that Gardisil 6 (and the other HPV vax Cervarix that came out the next year) were medical interventions they all agreed should be targeted at females only:

Quadrivalent HPV vaccine (HPV4; Gardasil, Merck & Co, Inc.) was licensed in 2006 for use in females aged 9 through 26 years, and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended routine HPV4 vaccination of females aged 11 or 12 years, and catch-up vaccination for females aged 13 through 26 years (1).

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5920a4.htm

the recommended age for vaccination of females is 11--12 years. Vaccine can be administered as young as age 9 years. Catch-up vaccination is recommended for females aged 13--26 years who have not been previously vaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5602a1.htm

To some people, the fact that all the onus and pressure for taking the new HPV vaccine was initially placed on young females - and none was placed on their male peers - smacked of a glaring and galling double standard.

Many of us suspected two strands of misogyny were at play. Along with one strand of misandry.

First, the medical establishment seemed to be displaying the same sort of cavalier attitude about the possible longterm consequences to female health that they'd displayed seen before in the case of other Big Pharma products peddled to women that ended up causing huge amounts of harm like DES, the original formulations of "the pill," the Dalkon shield, vaginal mesh, Essure, Alosetron and GnRHa drugs.

Second, by originally insisting that girls should take the HPV vaccine but not boys, the medical establishment seemed to be placing all the moral responsibility for reducing the rates of an commonplace STI that's found in both sexes - but which is more common in males than females - solely on the shoulders of young females. What's more, the burden of stamping out HPV was being placed on girls starting at age 9-12, when most girls are still so young they've not engaged in any consensual sex acts yet.

Third, some of us feared that by originally insisting that girls should take the HPV vaccine but not boys, the medical establishment was putting the longterm health of males at needless risk too. Because at the time that Gardisil was first approved by the FDA and marketed to girls in 2006, most people who were paying attention had already twigged to the fact that oral and throat cancers in men were rising - and there was already ample evidence that many of those cancers were linked to/caused by HPV, and specifically the same strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer.

I have more info on this topic written up in a file somwhere. I'll come back and post it later. But in the meantime, please don't be so quick to write off everyone who voiced objections to the new HPV vaccines being pushed on girls when they were first rolled out some years back as just a bunch of silly, idiotic, ill-informed nitwits who were all acting out of irrationality, hostility, denial and the kind of Victorian prudishness and weird homophobia you've ascribed to us. It's fine to disagree with the reasons people had for objecting. But it's not cool to misrepresent our reasons for objecting, or to suggest that we didn't really have any reasons at all.