No, they didn’t. That’s the point.
If by now, they don’t know that unprotected sex with anyone (besides your long term monagamous partner) is dangerous, they are idiots.
Dicktit? Dicktit? Are you secretly a nine-year-old who just delights in using naughty words whenever possible, even when they don’t know how?
Oh, dear - I think my head might explode. I took your statement literally, and I’m to be condemned for that? Let me just pretend that I’m still taking you seriously at this point. There was nothing in it that indicated sarcasm, or even hyperbole, nor can I think of any rhetorical value to be found in using hyperbole - especially in your first message in the thread, where a more level-headed person might have laid out their actual position with reason and argument. You never took the time to tell us how you felt until it was teased out of you, gradually, during the thread. There was no subtext that I could discern, and I still can’t find one. Either you meant it, or you decided not to share your actual views and get pissed anyway when we couldn’t read your mind. Hey, when you say something wrong - how about actually making it clear by retracting your earlier comment? Otherwise, frankly, it looks to me a lot like backpedaling. Given that you are prone to do that, I still think it’s the most likely possibility. If you were honest, you would have honestly stated that you’d misrepresented your views.
Did anyone say she’s the equivalent of someone who passes on AIDS? Or that she’s the equivalent of someone who stabbed babies? Nope. So what’s your purpose in pointing that out? Just practicing your swordsmanship against strawmen?
Coming into the thread late, but for what it’s worth.
While I don’t think Herpes is the equivalent of aids, I don’t understand why this woman doesn’t inform her partners, casual or otherwise.
Knowing someone had this condition wouldn’t put me off, I’d appreciate their honesty. If she can’t tell her partner, she shouldn’t be fucking. Even in my most casual encounters, I am careful to ask the necessary questions.
Unromantic, maybe. Safe? More important.
You oughta be informing all your partners. Even using condoms, the risk of transmission for herpes still exists, and I’d want to know about that risk before deciding whether or not I really wanted to have sex with a particular person.
If I’m sleeping with someone, I want to know if they have any STDs, no matter how ‘minor’ they may think they are. I get checked out, and I don’t have any. If I did, I’d consider it my responsibility to tell anyone who I was about to have sex with that I had an STD and let them decide if they want to risk catching it.
I think I’ve agreed with you more in this thread than in like the last two hundred combined. Maybe we should both check our temperatures. 
There are times Dio that you and I have disagreed over politics and I was still able to respect your point of view. Dunno if you took some CranioRectal pills before this thread, but your posts and ardent refusal to simply admit that you screwed the pooch, bigtime, is disappointing. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
If the woman admitted that she occasionally stole people’s paychecks from their mailbox, Dio, would you be defending her as ardently, and pointing out that stealing paychecks isn’t as bad as being Hitler?
Which would you rather: have someone steal your paycheck, or have a lover give you herpes?
Me, I’d go for the paycheck theft. That’s easy to recover from, and I won’t have to spend the rest of my life explaining the incident’s effect to future employers.
Either behavior is incredibly obnoxious. No, withholding STD information from a lover isn’t equal to killing babies; but it’s incredibly obnoxious.
Daniel
How embarassing for him.
Given the difference between “likely” and “extremely unlikely”, he is spectacularly ill-informed.
Clearly you haven’t been reading my posts.
I quoted one of many. Do your own search.
Scientists do not like to say “never” when there is a theoretical possibility. In actual day-to-day existence, this mode of transmission is not a practical consideration.
From another post that you missed: "“Even if you’re asymptomatic, you can transmit the virus,” says Stanka Kukich, M.D., a medical team leader in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. In fact, studies have shown that most people get HSV from sexual contact during times of asymptomatic viral shedding." (bolded and sized up for purposes of PAY ATTENTION, DrDeth)
And if the herpesviruses are leaping off the equipment and infecting the unwary, I don’t want to know it. 
Someone should quarantine this thread. It is dangerous. One could contract a severe case of ignorance from it.
She was called a “sociopath” by at least two people.
I haven’t defended her, I’ve just said her offense is not the atrocity that some have made it out to be.
[quote]
Either behavior is incredibly obnoxious. No, withholding STD information from a lover isn’t equal to killing babies; but it’s incredibly obnoxious.
[quote]
Obnoxious, yes. “Sociopathic.” No. And let’s not make martyrs out of the guys either.
What I said was “Subjecting others to the risk of contracting a painful and incurable disease amounts to sociopathic behavior” (bolded for the purpose of PAY ATTENTION, Diogenes).
A person can exhibit one or more behavior patterns characteristic of a syndrome defined in the DSM-III without qualifying for the diagnosis.* As has been pointed out previously, among the behaviors the woman described in the OP has exhibited are “reckless disregard for safety of self or others”, and “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.”
*at one time or another, I think everyone on this board has demonstrated least one of the diagnostic criteria for a given mental disorder. I’m going to quit for tonight before I start accumulating too many of them. :dubious:
I am sorry, you do claim to be an MD- and I am not doubting you. Hmm, I have never seen an MD that claims he knows more about someone they have never met,* and *hasn’t examined- that their personal Physician, who has given them a complete physical, knows their medical history, and has examined and tested the area. IF you had examined me, knew my personal medical history, examined the area, and did the tests- then perhaps you could say that my MD is wrong. But you haven’t done any of these things, and it seems to me it is a breach of professional ethics to say you know better than he does, given the circumstances. In fact, all the MD’s I know here always say just the opposite “I am NOT your Physican and have not examined you, so…”
Taking a word out of context “Most”. And during “asymptomatic viral shedding” are you not still having an outbreak, even though you may not notice the symptoms? Is the virus contagious when it is dormant?
Still, let us assume that you can commonly infect someone with herpes without having an outbreak. Ok, is it not true you can also pass Herpes on without actualy having sexual intercourse? Even by “heavy petting”? How about kissing? Wrestling? Then, if so, do you say that everyone that has ever had one outbreak in their entire lives go around with a plague bell and a sign around their neck? Unclean! UNCLEAN! :eek:
I mean- we don’t ask that of someone with the Flu, and the Flu kills thousands of dudes a year does it not?- far more lethal than Herpes, in any case.
We agree more often than you think, DtC. If you would just state more things as: "it appears’ or “in my opinion” or “I think”, we’d likely agree 90%.
Diogenes, you know that using an analogy to another behavior to prove a point is not the same as equating them. In fact, I’m fairly sure I’ve seen you pissed off when people twisted your words and claimed you were declaring two things to be equivalent when you were merely drawing attention to a point of similarity to illustrate something. Come on, don’t do that. You’re smarter than that.
Excalibre:
Not sure why you singled out straight people there. An awful lot of gay men apparently don’t use condoms either, considering the current syphilis epidemic raging in that population.
To all of you who claim you “do not have herpes,” have you had a blood test to see if you have Herpes Type I (oral) or Herpes Type II (genital)? If you haven’t, you can’t know if you have herpes or not. The majority of people infected do not know they have it and can still spread it to others.
Well, I’m not saying that it’s not like gay people don’t need to improve in that area as well. In fact, things have been getting worse these last few years - there’s evidence that people are developing a safe sex fatigue. Nevertheless, my suspicion at least is that the rise in syphilis rates is within a particular population among gay men. Because it’s become the cultural norm in the gay community, as far as I can tell, to always use condoms when having anal sex (oral sex being a very low risk for transmission of HIV.) It’s not something you think to question or consider. Barebacking has basically become a sort of fetish enjoyed by a subgroup.
That’s only my perception. I’m not sure where to go to find quantitative data. But I really think that it’s essentially the norm among gay men to use condoms, and this is not the case as far as I can tell among straight people.
Excalibre, there are quantitative data out there finding that unprotected sex between gay men is much more mainstream than your experience would suggest. I’m glad it’s the social norm in your community, but it clearly is not in many gay communities. I conducted several hundred interviews with people living with HIV and found that a higher percentage than I wanted to believe still have unprotected insertive anal sex and some of them don’t tell their partners their status. These are often good-looking, intelligent, educated guys who seem, otherwise, to have a conscience. It’s scary what’s going on in LA and NYC, etc. with the upswing in HIV infections and syphilis among gay men. Health behavior - and especially sex behavior - is very complicated and difficult to change. It’s not a matter of simply “knowing better.”
I didn’t know you personally worked in that area. I’m glad to hear about the actual facts, although I’m certainly not happy about them. Thank you.
Yes, and I don’t.
But it’s sort of irrelevant to the OP. She KNOWS she has it, and it knowingly exposing others to it without their knowledge or consent. In what universe is this not wrong?
If someone doesn’t know they have it, and I catch it from them, well, that sucks. Life goes on, I have another awkward talk with every single person I’ll have sex or near-sex with ('cause yes, heavy petting can spread herpes) for the rest of my life. I’ll have to take anti-viral medication with very real side effects for the rest of my life. I’ll have to deal with painful lesions, as well as potential flare-ups of my Epstein-Barr and shingles periodically for the rest of my life (one active herpes virus tends to reactivate other dormant herpes viruses). Not fun. But I can’t hold someone morally responsible for something they didn’t know about.
I would certainly hold him responsible and be really pissed off if, after I told him to get checked, he didn’t, or if found a carrier, he didn’t inform future partners. (Assuming I could figure out where I got it from. Given my scarcity of sexual partners, it wouldn’t be hard to call them all.)