Talk Hard!

 Planned Parenthood is currently running a campaign encouraging people to get yourself tested for STDs (GYT09).  They put together a video with a few different people talking about the experience of getting tested for the first time and why it’s important.

I think it’s very important to get tested, but I also think the third speaker on this video implies a belief about things that I want to counter.  She speaks of testing as something that lets you know if you’re in the clear or not, and then, as you get into a relationship, if you need to have a conversation, she says, you can have it.

What I want to say is that whether or not you have tested ‘clean’ for STDs, you always need to have a conversation about them with a prospective new partner.  Partly because not everyone knows all that they should know about STDs, and how they are transmitted, what the risks are, and what STDs can and cannot be tested for. Also, different people have different levels of risk acceptance, so behavior you think is risky your prospective partner may think is safe, and if she thinks it was safe, she might not tell you about it.  Is contact between the hands and the genitals safe for instance? Well, hands can have cuts on them and you can catch diseases that way though the odds are low: to be on the safe side, some people use gloves or condoms. Other people just accept that risk, because they’re okay with it.  How about kissing?  Well, a lot of people don’t know cold sores are caused by a strain of herpes so they might not watch out for that risk. Going down on someone?  A lot of people will have oral sex with no protection and think little of it, despite the fact that that is actually risky behavior.

I once started to get involved with a guy, and when he came to my bedroom for the first time he thought he knew what-all we could do that was safe. When I said we had to have a conversation he told me what he knew and how he was clean, and he was ready to go. I had to say “hold up, we need to talk.  I have herpes.” And then I told him all about herpes, because he didn’t know very much about it, like how you can have it without symptoms, and transmit it from mouth to genitals or mouth to mouth, and then we slowed way down.

Herpes is something you can get tested for these days, but the tests are not completely reliable.  Plus most standard test suites do not include a test for herpes. Other tests are more reliable, and very important, but a number of STDs take time to show up in the body, so if you’ve gotten tested but had sexual contact with someone new shortly before getting tested, they could have given you something that doesn’t show up on the tests.

So: Get yourself tested, definitely! To be rigorous about it, wait until you have gone 6 months without contact with a new disease vector - meaning you’ve been without a partner or you and your partner have not had any other new partners for 6 months. Then get tested. (If this really doesn’t fit your lifestyle don’t let that stop you though - do get tested! - just understand that while a positive result is a concern, a negative result may not guarantee a clean bill of health.)

Continue to get tested throughout your life, before and after sexual contact with new partners. Also, educate yourself about STDs, spend some time thinking about your own comfort levels with risk, and talk about it with every partner you have.  For their safety, and for yours.  Talk hard.

Tags: GYT09, risk, STDs, testing

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.