I came across this article tonight on Facebook, published by the ever-liberal BuzzFeed. The post talks about a 23-year-old woman who was diagnosed with genital herpes at age 21. The post cites an article that appeared at womenshealthmag.com entitled "Why I Love Telling People I Have Herpes."
Um...oh. Okay. Ah. Herm. Let's see what she has to say, then. I'm not sure that I'd like telling people such information, but maybe she has a point.
Okay. Now I've read her essay. I understand her wanting to "put a face to herpes," since so many people suffer the disease. I also support her telling other people, especially her potential sexual partners, that she has the virus. Smart move. People who have STDs (and who know about them) should tell their partners.
After some fuming, calming, and careful consideration, I've decided that I find issue with a few ideas present in her essay. This is not to say that I necessarily find fault with her particular words or opinions. Rather, I realized I see a common theme in this essay as well as in many sexual health, dating, and relationship articles I read (not to mention the general, current societal view on sex and dating).
We've come to accept casual sex as a norm. It's supposed to be no big deal if a man or woman wants to sleep with however many people they can. We're supposed to act like that's not wrong in any way, or that there aren't consequences to having multiple sex partners, even across the span of a lifetime.
Well, there are consequences. Many. One could argue that the most obvious and "biggest" consequences of sex include unwanted/unplanned pregnancy and STD/STI transmission. "Oh, but we have birth control and condoms now!" Right. And neither of those is 100% effective at preventing pregnancy or STD/I transmission. While this is "better than nothing," there's also the phenomenon of risk compensation to consider.
Risk compensation is the theory that people will be more careful if they perceive a greater risk in doing/not doing an activity but less careful if they feel they're somehow protected. Take, for example, condoms and birth control. True, engaging in protected sex reduces your risk of contracting an STD/I or getting pregnant. Woo hoo! This must mean we can have ALL THE SEX with ALL THE PEOPLE and NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN!!!! Right?
Not quite. Condoms and birth control reduce your risk. They don't eliminate it. Even if you use a condom, the more you have sex with different partners, the more likely you are to contract an STD/I. While you are, yes, using a condom, the risk still increases the more you choose to have sex with different people. It's like compound interest, except instead of earning more money, we're just getting better at spreading diseases.
The woman who wrote the essay I cited above states "This didn’t make sense, as I’d never had unprotected sex in my life" when she learns that she has herpes at age 21. She later talks about a sexual encounter with a man and describes it as "the best sex of [her] life." This woman was 23 at the time she wrote this piece. So, in her 23 years, she's had enough sex (with presumably, from the tone of her essay, enough partners) to be able to determine one encounter as "the best." This is where that pesky risk compensation theory comes in. She didn't understand how she could contract an incurable STD, given that she's never had unprotected sex, yet she's had a number of partners already.
She does say, later, that she "lost a lottery that's easy to lose." This statement is not a reflection of her realizing the increased risk of STD/I contraction with condom use and multiple partners. I think this statement is more her acknowledgement that 1 in 6 people in the United States has herpes. This statistic makes it okay to talk about herpes and not okay to joke about it. How about we also talk about how billions of healthcare dollars are spent each year treating STDs/Is? And these ailments are 100% preventable! (That's another blog topic, though.)
No, she's not alone in her experience of having this disease, and she should be able to access a network of social support. But if we ever hope to decrease the number of new STD/I cases, we have to change our attitudes and behaviors regarding sexual relationships. Sex has consequences, and, really, if and when you face those consequences, they should not come as a surprise.
