I love bros. This isn’t exactly a secret; my twitter handle is @brosandprose, after all. Why do I love bros? I love their confidence, and their nerve, and their arms. I really love their arms. I also love their near constant negotiation with gender, because if being a bro is about anything, it’s about masculinity. […]
Read MoreIn the midst of what was arguably the most sexist season premiere of The Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise, a magical thing happened. There was a beautiful lesson in sexual harassment and bystander intervention, and I felt for a fleeting few minutes like the world was a better place than it was. Let me rewind. Quirky, edgy Kaitlyn and […]
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I get asked a lot if I have seen a backlash to my herpes activism. The simple answer is no, because it isn’t the backlash people expect. No one is raising ‘whore’ banners against me, and I largely ignore negative comments on social media when the response I’ve met has been so overwhelmingly supportive. There […]
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I’m delighted to be included in this badass collection published by For Books’ Sake, “Tongue In Cheek: The Best New Erotica Written by Women.”
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Can you have sex without condoms if you have genital herpes?
Read MoreIt’s a Saturday afternoon. I am sitting at a table outside of Usdan, Wesleyan’s student center, under a big black umbrella. The sun toasts my exposed shoulders. A student journalist with the school paper asks me questions about my recent, surreal herpes stardom, and strangers at nearby tables peer over at me as I answer because […]
Read MoreA crazy thing happened last week: I became Internet famous. Yeah, I know, that’s a gross thing to say about yourself. But it’s kind of the truth—within 48 hours I went from being a blogger in my relatively quiet corner of the Internet (other than that one time I infuriated the entire Outlander fandom by […]
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Picture this: you’re twenty years old, you’ve just been diagnosed with genital herpes, and you have no idea how long you’ve had it or who might have given it to you. You know you have to do the responsible thing and call everyone you have recently slept with—except eight months ago you had the most epic breakup of your life.
Read MoreI learned quickly after getting diagnosed with genital herpes that no one writes about having an STI. There are no memoirs about herpes. There are no academic studies about the literature of herpetic authors. There is a gigantic gaping hole on the Internet where herpes blogging should be, other than the herpes support community on Tumblr (which, […]
Read MoreI’m sitting in the beautiful Ziegfeld Theater in midtown Manhattan, watching a woman be beaten with a belt. The audience around me is laughing, clapping, and whistling. My plus one winces as he watches the scene through his fingers. I listen to the delighted howls echoing through the theater and wonder if I am missing […]
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Ella Dawson 