Very good advice from Professor Foxy of Feministing, for a sexually active young queer woman who was diagnosed with herpes she associates (perhaps correctly) with a particular one-night stand.
What comes through in your letter is how much you blame yourself, how dirty you think you are, and how sad you feel. Such strong language putting yourself down “you’re the one people need protecting from.” They don’t need protection from you, they need protection from the disease you have. This disease does not define you, it does not change who you are. And somehow you need to get to a place where you can believe that.
It is really hard to sustain being a sex-positive queer. Everything around you tells you that you should be ashamed and when something happens – someone calling you a slut (when you are not owning the word), a sex partner saying something mean, catching an STD- that throws you off your self-confidence and all those judgments that you have successfully shucked off come rushing back in.
You are not a bad person. STDs are overwhelming the luck of the draw and you could have slept with just one person and gotten it. In all of this, keep in mind you are not [alone], herpes is one of the most common STDs, the stats go from 1 in 4 people having herpes [to] 1 in 6. As cheesy as it sounds, you are not alone.
It’s wonderful advice. And not because illnesses like herpes are “major” or “minor” but because (as one of the excellent commentors on the thread put it) absent the sexual stigma it’s just another communicable skin disease.
Imagine the furor if chicken pox, another member of the herpes family, had sexual connotation. Imagine further the opposition to research into vaccines. Imagine further still how preachers and pundits would fulminate on shingles (a very serious and almost always excruciatingly painful later-in-life re-eruption of chicken pox) as the “wages of sin and youthful folly.”
Herpes is a disease alright. And because it’s painful and unsightly, and because it can lead to secondary infection, it’s very worth making the effort to avoid and even more worth the responsibility not to pass along. But any more than “you’re the flu” when you’ve got the flu, or “you’re cancer” should you have cancer, neither are you herpes if you happen to have it or get it.
And finally, yes, really, you don’t have to be promiscuous to get it. In fact, because it’s transmitted through skin-to-skin contact you don’t have to be sexual at all.
well, that’d certainly cast a
Submitted by nekobawt (not verified) on Wed, 2010-03-24 02:45.well, that’d certainly cast a new light on “chicken pox parties”—or eradicate them entirely.
Excellent post, figleaf. I
Submitted by Kaija (not verified) on Wed, 2010-03-24 04:34.Excellent post, figleaf. I saw that piece on Feministing and had some similar thoughts, but your apt analogy to chicken pox and correctly calling out the sexual stigma frames it eloquently.
So, what is the status of a
Submitted by fiveofnine (not verified) on Wed, 2010-03-24 05:42.So, what is the status of a Herpes vaccine?
Something like 90% of the
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Wed, 2010-03-24 14:32.Something like 90% of the U.S. population has antibodies to herpes simplex I, which means we carry it whether knowingly or not. I’ve never had a cold sore in my life but I test positive for it anyway. The numbers aren’t as high for HSV II, but I wonder if making people aware of the ubiquity of HSV I could help reduce the stigma for both variants?
The thing about the various
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Wed, 2010-03-24 18:10.The thing about the various strains of herpes and closely related viruses is that there will probably never be a cure – once infected, they hide inside the cells of the body, and then outbreak again every few months to every few years – with usually no symptoms other than mild unexplained tiredness or cold sores or something else easily dismissed as nothing. One is capable of infecting others during these outbreaks, though usually not as easily as during the initial infection. Adding to the complication is that many viruses in this family are capable of being passed from mother to child before birth.
Of course, the big bogeyman of this family, HSV II, is no more dangerous than chicken pox for most of the people who get it, and in some cases even less so (there are people who never develop obvious symptoms). The only reason why it sort of deserves its bogeyman status is because a small but significant portion of those who are infected develop additional and usually permanent complications, and it’s one of the more easily avoidable kinds, so it’s a good idea to try to avoid it just in case.