Damit don't have unprotected sex if you know you have Herpes!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

So I am talking to a friend of mine today (happens to be female, but that is really unimportant) and she makes mention of the fact that she is having a bad outbreak of herpes. I am surprised, as I didn’t know she had herpes. She is a little embarrassed because she thought I knew, but goes on to explain that she caught it 10 years ago when she was in college.

And then suddenly it hits me, she told me a while back that she started taking the pill so she wouldn’t have to worry about condoms anymore. I say to her, did the last 2 guys you were with recently know you had an STD. She says no. I say did they use condoms, she says no they didn’t want to.

At this point I flip the fuck out. I know, I shouldn’t judge, but you know what I don’t care. This is bad wrong horrible and every other adjective you can think of, on so many levels. She says, you don’t know what its like. “You don’t have an STD, you are a man, you are less emotionally fragile, you cant understand. If the guy doesn’t want to wear a condom that is his problem.” And this is around the point where I start questioning if I can actually ever talk to this girl again. She goes on to say, “of all the people I have told only one person hasn’t rejected me, and besides I am on the suppression drugs and am careful about not having sex during an outbreak, I know my body.” And when I say you can still pass on the disease even when you aren’t having an outbreak she says, “well now that’s something I have to live with, not you. And besides none of the guys I have been with recently have caught it or they would have called me by now.” Is it juts me or is this not a decent response. It seems to me that this is indeed everyone’s problem because its dumbshits like her that are causing STDs to be passed around in epidemic proportions.

YOU CAN STILL PASS ON THE FUCKING DISEASE!!!

I am not asking for much, just that if you have an STD, and you know about it, make sure a fucking condom is used! How fucking hard is that? Can’t you say, hey buddy wear a condom or I won’t sleep with you? In a perfect world I would say she should tell every partner too, but that seems unrealistic, but how hard is it to make sure a condom is used every time! If you aren’t going to tell your sex partner it is only fair that you make the sex as safe as humanly possible, am I out of line here?

And now I am told that they are changing the classification from STD to STI (sexually transmitted infection). How does that help anything? Makes it seem not so bad, less stigmatizing? OY. I don’t even know anymore. Its at times like these I think that maybe we all really do deserve the shit we are dealt.

I can’t believe that someone I considered a close friend would be such a totally unmitigated asshole.

fuck

I am going off to seriously reexamine my friendships

2

Condoms don’t protect against herpes.

3

no?

hmm, well then I don’t have sex without letting someone know the risks involved. Why is casual sex a necessity? Yeah it sucks, but especially when you caught the disease because someone didn’t tell you don’t you think it is your responsibility to keep help prevent that from happening again?
Maybe I am wrong and just being reactionary and ignorant.

But her behavior strikes me as needlessly careless, and beyond that she is shifting the responsibility onto her partner. She takes the, if he gets infected its his own fault, stance. To me that just seems counterproductive to world health and unbelievably selfish.

I just keep thinking about what if I were in the position where I was about to sleep with someone, and they hadn’t told me they had an STD, lead me to believe that the sex I would be having was safe, and I wake up with a disease.

I don’t know. I don’t.

Shit

4

http://www.herpes.com/Precautions.shtml
The girl wants to have her cake and eat it too. It’s a rather despicable in this case, however.

5

Or maybe not.

Yeah, and if I point a gun at you and pull the trigger, it’s your own fault if you’re standing in the way of the bullet.

Sounds like this selfish bitch is bitter that someone gave her the disease and now she subconsciously wants to get back at the world. Or she’s just plain dumb. Or selfish. Or bitter, dumb, and selfish.

6

I hate to say this, because I think sex is healthy and casual sex is a good thing in many cases but with the irresponsibility of people just like this it seems more and more like this needs to be considered.

A condom will take care of the intercourse, but that’s not the only touching that’s being done, I’m sure. The risks are really high.

To the OP: perhaps you could ask her how she’s so sure they’re not doing the same thing? In other words, they have some disease but they’re not telling her, because they “know their body” and now are riding bareback?

A truer thing was never said. This is shit.

7

Ask her if she’d feel fine if one of the guys had AIDS and wasn’t telling her.

8

What utter horseshit.

9

What a whore.

10

Herpes is extremely common in the adult population (if you’ve ever gotten a cold sore, you’ve got herpes) and most people who have it don’t even know it. It’s really nothing to get upset about. All you get is an occasional outbreak of sores. It’s more annoying when it’s on the genitals, of course, but the outbreaks subside with time and there aren’t any other symptoms or complications to worry about. It’s not going to kill you or make you go crazy or blind. There’s a very slight chance that it can cause complications in a fetus if the virus is contracted (not if she already had it) during pregnancy, but even that is quite rare. Herpes is really, really nothing. Just because it gets classified as an STD, people freak out about it way more than they need to. If you’re in a committed relationship, there’s really no compelling reason to worry about infection. Comparing it to AIDS is ludicrous.

And if a guy “doesn’t want to use a condom” during an episode of casual sex, he is assuming a risk and has only himself to blame for anything he gets.

11

Naw, baby, I’m not contagious. Yeah, I got HIV, but c’mon, I know my body. I won’t give it to you. And I’m sterile, so we don’t need a condom. Come on, you’re not stuck up, are you, baby?

12

Although IIRC herpes is a far more durable virus than HIV and can be transmitted through other body fluid contacts like kissing and such that a condom will not protect against.

13

That’s a little simplistic, isn’t it? I agree that it’s ridiculous that straight people apparently still go around not using condoms during casual sex, but people can and should evaluate risks and benefits. It’s one thing if you decide to have unprotected sex because your partner doesn’t think they have a disease, and assume the risk that they may in fact be unknowingly infected. It’s a very different matter if your partner decides to conceal knowledge they have. It’s irresponsible to go around giving diseases to people who don’t sign on for the risk. She has more responsibility than he does in the matter - and I think if you looked at it honestly with the genders reversed, it’d be clearer to you.

It’s true that people make an unnecessarily big thing out of herpes, and it’s pretty common in urban areas among young people, as far as I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not wrong to knowingly pass it on without warning your partners. Come on, that’s ridiculous.

14

Now that is utter horseshit.

15

Dio-
I tend to agree with you on most issues, but on this one, i think you’re dead wrong. Yes, everyone should do their best to protect themselves. However, that does not let this woman off the hook. No, herpes is not AIDS…but that doesn’t make it a non-issue. I also get the feeling that you’d be sining a different tune if it were a guy withholding this info and having sex.

I remember a while back we had a thread on what makes someone a slut…one of the definitions was that a slut had sex without any thought to consequences for themselves or their partners. This woman falls right in there.

16

I;m not sure I’d consider it a commited elationship if I was too “emotionally fragile” to tell the person I had an illness that most people find frightening.

Agreed.** If, and only if, she informed him ahead of time that she was a herpes carrier and he made an informed choice not to use the condom. **(And also assuming he told her everything he has been exposed to and she made the same informed decision.) My step-mom has oral herpes. She and my dad avoid contact during outbreaks, but don’t use condoms otherwise. But that’s an informed choice that he made, with full knowledge that he’s very likely to get it one of these days.

That’s not what happened here.

A disagree that she’s a “whore,” because her having sex (for money or otherwise) isn’t what I disagree with. What I condemn is first not telling, and second not wearing a condom. Have all the sex you like with consenting, informed partners. But don’t endanger people you care about even if you only care a little bit.

17

Shoot, I’m typing with a sleeping baby on my shoulder. Please ignore the pustulotic typo outbreak in that post.

18

[Sam Kinison]
If you don’t trust the pussy, then why are you fucking the pussy?
[/SK]

I agree that if a guy refuses to wear a condom when engaging in casual sex, then he deserves whatever he gets. But it’s still really, really, really fucked up of her to have such an easily transmitted STD and not tell the people she’s sleeping with. That’s very selfish of her.

19

I don’t know about durability, but herpes is far more contagious than HIV. In a general way, STDs can be sorted into two groups: those transmitted by fluids (HIV, gonorrhea) and those transmitted by skin contact (herpes, syphilis). The skin transmission diseases are not always prevented by condoms; it depends on where the lesions are. If they are somewhere that’s covered by a condom, then you’re good. If they are elsewhere (labia majora, upper thighs, scrotum, etc. etc.), then your risk of transmission is as high as if you didn’t use a condom.

As for the OP, she should have told her partners. Maybe you should ask her to think about how she’s going to feel when someone that she really cares about contracts the virus and she has to fess up to keeping him in the dark about his risk?

Agreed.

20

Yes, she should tell them she has herpes, but I also think Lord Ashtar’s quote from Sam Kinnison is applicable here. Guys are responsible for protecting their own dorks. If the guys wore condoms regardless, it wouldn’t matter what the woman did or didn’t tell them. These guys are stupid to take their own protection out of their own hands.

Incidentally, it’s my understanding that HSV is really only transmitted during outbreaks anyway. Does anyone know if that’s true?

Anyway, she should tell the guys about it but people are human. It’s an embarrassing thing to have to confess, and guys who are having unprotected sex should know that. They shouldn’t even be taking a woman’s word about the pill, for that matter.

She’s being rude and inappropriate by not telling them, but it’s not like she’s giving them a deadly disease like AIDS, she’s giving them an occasional outbreak of fever blisters. If these guys are in the habit of having unprotected sex with people they don’t know, the chances are pretty good that they already had it…or will get…anyway.