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Met a cute girl. She gave me her STI results and said she was “clean”.
I hate that phrase so fucking hard.
I have family with various medical conditions and it doesn’t make them dirty. I’ve also had partners with STIs and you just have to be tested often, use protection and be a little creative. I am negative for STIs and I keep copies of my paperwork but I didn’t even tell her that cuz her response pissed me off so bad.
Now she stopped talking to me. I guess, I’m dirty too? The fuck?
The language you use matters.
Your status is either negative or positive.
THANK YOU.
Related rant: I’ve had people flip out at me because I say STI status isn’t an instant dealbreaker as long as we can have an honest conversation about it and what precautions need to be taken. Like, not only is there the shame on people who have them (hence the “dirty” language), but if you don’t immediately reject and ostracize anyone you know who has or had ever had one, you’re a bad person too for not beating up on them? What the hell.
I had a long-term relationship with somebody with HSV2 and when I went to get specialized testing after we broke up, the doctor grilled me on our safer sex practices and then told me that honestly he’d do the tests but he already knew I didn’t have it (and I didn’t). I’ve had several conversations with my sexual health providers related to this - that “just never get within breathing distance of somebody who isn’t ‘clean’” is fallacious and shameful.
Meanwhile, I guarantee you that people are walking around with STIs that are undiagnosed or that they don’t tell people about because of the stigma. My most recent ex-boyfriend lied to me for like 2+ years about an unprotected one-night stand he had with some random person while heavily intoxicated because he was so invested in the image of himself as a person who would ~never do that~ until it turned out there was a very real possibility that he might have something incurable as a result. It turned out to be a false positive, but I got slapped with the emotional labor of coddling him through his shame because he was too self-centered to admit he’d done something to put me at risk.
Hell, when I found out my first girlfriend ever was sleeping with other people and lying to me about it, her defense was that it was cool that she didn’t want to talk to me about it because “lesbians don’t get STDs anyway.”
My ex, who gave me chlamydia years ago (which incidentally my doc referred to as “the strep throat of STIs”), was so insulted that I asked him to get tested before we slept together. His exact words were “the girls I’ve been with aren’t the type to get STDs.” I lit him up, because wtf does that even mean, and he got tested, and by that I mean he FAKED HIS TEST RESULTS because that was easier and less shameful somehow than going to the doctor.
It’s not about STIs. It’s about consent and respecting people enough to be honest with them.
I never even knew the word “clean” could be perceived like that. Damn.
I’m reblogging this because I recently had a partner send me fake STI results and it feels like complete bullshit. Because of this, I got checked out at Planned Parenthood last week. I’m negative for STIs yet I feel lied to. If people could/would openly talk about health concerns then this wouldn’t happen. Please have real conversations about safer sex with your partners.
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