Image via Ella Dawson.
Genital herpes. It’s normally something you’d throw into a sentence when you first meet someone. And it’s not normally something you’d broadcast to the world.
Yet one woman is doing exactly that. Refreshing, no? Meet Ella Dawson. After writing a blog post called Why I Love Telling People I Have Herpes, Ella’s story went viral.
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“There is a gigantic gaping hole on the Internet where herpes blogging should be, other than the herpes support community on Tumblr (which, let’s be honest, most people doesn’t know exists),” Ella, 22, wrote.
“No one is writing about the everyday, practical experience of having herpes. And there are definitely no articles about dating with herpes that don’t position the herpes+ as wounded, terrified, unlovable freaks.”
She’s right, and has been challenging the damaging stigma of herpes by talking about it. Openly. With anyone she meets.
Diagnosed a few days shy of her 21st birthday, Dawson woke up to discover a cluster of painful red sores on her labia.
Google-searching her symptoms pointed to one, very specific cause: a STI.
"It didn't make sense, as I'd never had unprotected sex in my life," she wrote.
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"Plus I wasn't the sort of person STDs happened to. I was a Planned Parenthood volunteer, a sexuality studies major, and everyone's go-to friend when they had questions about losing their virginity. How could I have caught something when I had always been so careful?"
She was shocked when the doctor took just a few seconds to confirm her self-diagnosis.
"To say I was shocked would be an understatement - a tidal wave of shame unlike anything I had ever experienced hit me over and over again," she said.
Despite discovering that one in six people had genital herpes, Dawson had yet to meet anyone else and struggled internally with the stigma.
"On a logical level I knew that getting herpes had nothing to do with my actions and didn't say anything about my character; it was simply luck of the draw. But this was easier to know than to actually believe," she wrote.
Then six months after being diagnosed were like "learning to walk again" even though the first outbreak was gone after about a week and a half thanks to medication.
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When she told men she was seeing, there were mixed reactions. One had just recovered from chlamydia and said "he wasn't in a rush to gamble with his sexual health again", while another said it didn't bother him, but each time they got close left Dawson thinking it would be the time he would walk away.
After six months, Dawson decided enough was enough.
"I don't know what made me decide enough was enough. I didn’t feel like the woman that my friends knew me to be —a bold and outspoken campus badass—but I was sick of making myself small because I had herpes," she wrote
"I started dropping the “herpes bomb” into conversations casually. My logic was that every time I told someone, “I have herpes,” the words would get easier to say."
Surprisingly, Dawson never got a negative reaction to her "bold over-sharing".
"Most listeners were surprised, curious and oddly excited to hear someone's experience with a disease about which they knew nothing," she wrote.
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Unsurprisingly, she's one of very few women openly talking about living with an STI and fighting the stigma that goes with it.
We love her for it - and so does The Positive Institute clinical psychologist Dr Suzy Green.
"What an amazing example of character strengths such as bravery, honest and authenticity," she says. (Post continues after gallery.)
The on-screen orgasms that got us talking.
"She has taken ownership of her 'reality' and has obviously made a conscious decision to not think ways that create shame for herself. She should be proud of herself."
"Given the prevalence of herpes and its associated stigma, we need people like this brave woman who are willing to put themselves out there and help the rest of us to be brave about aspects of ourselves - good or otherwise," she says.
And Dawson is proof that genital herpes doesn't have to be a death sentence for your love life, as is often assumed.
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"Every time I tell someone that I have genital herpes, I run the risk of it being the only thing they remember about me. But when I tell them on my terms, with confidence and cleverness instead of shaking hands and shame, I am immediately positioned to get a better response," she says.
"Fighting the cultural stigma surrounding STDs is a battle I actually enjoy fighting. I'm not afraid of letting herpes define me if it helps someone newly diagnosed feel less alone. But to my partners—and more importantly, to myself—I’m always going to be me, not just someone with herpes."
Hear, hear.
Genital herpes: the facts
- One in eight Australians over the age of 25 has genital herpes.
- Symptoms can vary from relatively mild to non-existent, which means it's easy to unknowingly pass on.
- There is currently no cure, but it can be effectively treated and managed
- It doesn't have to spell the end of sex - ongoing antiviral therapy and condoms are effective ways of protecting your partner from contracting the virus, but do not offer 100% protection.
Do you or anyone you know suffer from genital herpes? What's the thing about the stigma you hate most?