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 have never wanted to be flawless. It took a long time to understand that about myself. I don’t mean flawless in the “***flawless” Beyoncé sense; I mean perfect, undamaged, smooth—what young women are supposed to strive to be. My edges have always been jagged, and I’m a provocative person despite how much I loathe […]
Read More1. As soon as you hit publish, you start crying. You can’t explain why—it’s a strange moment of bodily supremacy where your brain has been thinking about this decision for months but your lungs decide this is a big deal and you are no longer in control. You can’t explain this feeling when you have […]
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I, as a real life person, have herpes. According to stigma, no sex I ever have will be safe.
Read MoreWe need to talk about herpes jokes. In particular, we need to talk about herpes jokes and Wesleyan, my dear flawed alma mater. As my younger friends moved into their new dorms in Middletown this weekend, I searched tumblr for posts about STIs. I’m involved in tumblr’s sprawling sexual health support community and track the tags for […]
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Ella Dawson 