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Woo-hoo Responsible Adulthood! I just made an appointment with Planned Parenthood for an STI test (you can usually get same-day or next-day appointments for STI tests at Planned Parenthood, check here to see if there are any health center locations near you!), which reminded me that you have to ask for a Herpes test specifically along with all your other tests or you won’t get tested for it, which reminded me that I have not yet investigated/written about any STIs yet! Herpes is an excellent place to start: it’s one of those STIs that people make lots of jokes about, which is something that totally puts a bee in my bonnet because SO MANY PEOPLE are infected with Herpes (1 in 6 American adults, even though many don’t know it– more on that in a bit) that if you make a joke about herpes in a group of people or in a movie or T.V. show or in your stand-up or whatever, you are likely to be making someone feel crappy about themselves unnecessarily and you are giving others permission to make similar jokes and thus do the same.
Some people might argue that it’s O.K. to shame people with STIs because they “brought it on themselves”; because they should be ashamed. There are so many problems with this “should-be-ashamed” argument, and this College Candy article makes a lot of the points in a couple of sentences:
“The excessive stigma attached to STDs is rooted in our society’s rigid attitudes toward sex, and our collective tendency to police other people’s behavior through social control. But if we remove some of the humiliation associated with possibly getting an STD, it’s more likely that the rate of STD infection will go down, as people would be more open to getting tested more often and communicating more about STDs with their sexual partners. “
I use “STIs” instead of “STDs” for the same reason: the world ‘infection’ carries less stigma than the word ‘disease’, and it’s usually a more accurate description of what’s going on in your genitals.
Herpes, though. You may have heard that there are two types of Herpes: HSV-1 and HSV-2. This article, “The Truth About HSV-1 and HSV-2“, is a thorough and helpful guide to the differences between the two– please check it out! I don’t want to just paraphrase that entire article, and it really has a ton of information. Some interesting things, though: contrary to what you may have heard, the article says, both HSV-1 and HSV-2 infections are usually mild for most people, not crazy raging blister-fests. HSV-1, more associated with oral herpes, can also be passed through oral sex on the genitals, but HSV-2 is usually on just the genitals– harder to pass to the mouth. 22% of the adult population of the U.S. has HSV-2, but 2/3 of those infected don’t know they have it– which speaks to why Herpes scares so many people, because you can be infected and give it to others without knowing, but also speaks to why the Herpes diagnosis is not the End of Everything that it’s made out to be. Also, the article says, most people get one or two flare-ups in the genitals region and then don’t really have outbreaks after that.
In terms of Herpes transmission, there are definitely things to be cautious about/aware of because there is a small chance that an infected person can transmit HSV-1 or HSV-2 when no outbreak is present on the skin. This is called “viral shedding”, and an infected person might be asymptomatic but still be able to transmit the Herpes virus 3-10 days out of the year. During an outbreak, of course, there should be no sexual contact.
Herpes infections look like little blisters:
blisters like this, on these areas! I don’t know what SuperH is.
Oww oww oww
Herpes blisters on a penis shaft, where they are most likely to be on a penis-owner.
Razor burn and Herpes look similar, which definitely freaks some people out:
Razor burn, not herpes!
If you read the two articles I linked to above, you’ll get a ton more information and facts about the transmission of and prevention of Herpes. In terms of what to do when you already have Herpes, there was piece on The Hairpin not too long ago that Planned Parenthood has even endorsed: It’s a lovely essay written by a woman who got HSV-1 genitally from oral sex while she was in college, and how she’s actually had a great fulfilling sex and dating life since then in part because of the virus: she finds that she takes better care of herself since her diagnosis, and the people she does have sex with (and she does!) are the type of people who like her enough that the small risk of getting Herpes from her outweighs the benefits of having sex with her.
Nobody likes to think of getting an unexpected positive on an STI test, but if you are having sex, it could happen. Even with protection, Herpes can be spread through skin-to-skin contact: a condom doesn’t cover anything but the shaft and head of the penis, after all. The thing is that even though sex isn’t a “you will get pregnant and DIE” scenario, that doesn’t mean that it’s the safest thing in the world: sometimes I feel like we ignore that sex has ANY risks as a backlash to all of the unlikely scenarios we were told would happen if we had sex in high school and then didn’t happen. College Candy says: “We should be treating STDs like any other semi-preventable risks, with the understanding that while we can lower our risk of contracting them, they are a normal and natural risk in life“. The best choice you could make right now to minimize your risk of infection/transmitting to someone else is to schedule an STI test and be secure in your status, whatever that is! Whee! Get tested with me!
References:
http://www.healthscout.com/ency/1/000606.html
http://www.herpes-coldsores.com/herpes_simplex_1_and_2.htm
http://thehairpin.com/2012/04/the-perks-of-herpes
http://plannedparenthood.tumblr.com/post/25250211854/the-perks-of-herpes
The Enlightened Sexpot 