I am having thinky thoughts tonight, and they are about genitals.
More importantly, what happens when your genitals get sick.
You see, today, I did something that I've been needing to do for well over a year now.
[cut for slight personal info]I finally went to the doctor to things checked out *ahem* down there, since I've known that I've had some sort of infection for about that long. Money issues and all prevented me from going and getting it treated. Unfortunately, due to the weekend and the price of tests, I couldn't get a full std screening done, but the nurse practitioner did an exam and decided to go ahead and treat me for a long term case of gonorrhea and chlamydia.
Which, I knew I had something, already accepted it - in fact, I've purposely been celibate because of it.
Anyways, though, I do what I normally do anytime the doc says that they think I have something and then they leave the room - bust the phone out and google that ish. I already knew that it was really common for you to have both (vs just one at a time, there's a 46% concurrent infection rate of chlamydia when you have gonorrhea).
I didn't realize that chlamydia was referred to as being 'silent', that one in 15 women have it. Not have had it, but currently have. 1 in 4 guys have it and have no clue.
Alright, hold that thought. I'll come back to it in a bit.
Last weekend, mskatej had an excellent post on condom usage in fanfic - you can find it here, and I'd highly recommend you check it out. One of the things that was touched on was condom usage during a blowjob; to this day, I can't seem to remember any fic outside Needs Must where a condom was used during a blowjob. In contrast, people warn for barebacking and add disclaimers about safe sex during fics that contain those things. Yet, you're still running those risks with a blowjob. To make things even more fun, it's common for people to not have symptoms while they're infected.
Let's be real, how often do you read (or write) lines that are along the following in fic?
I mean, I've used condoms for blowjobs before, but never in a personal context, only business. In my case, I've got a pretty strong gut feeling about when it was, and if that's the case, well... that was from receiving unprotected oral.
It's a bacterial infection. It can be cured. A fuckton of people have it, have had it, will have it. Bacterial infections of all sorts attack our immune systems every day, and sometimes we get sick, sometimes that illness is focused in an area of our body like our lungs, or our sinuses, or our mouths, or even *gasp* our crotches.
You never read about it, though. We whump, we shoot, we torture, we emotionally destroy our characters and put them back together, but if we give them STD's, it's always a bad thing, like Mike being enslaved and having a cruel owner, or it creates friction and one half of your otp ends up demanding to know why the other half cheated.
Where's the nurturing, the h/c? Couples work through shit like this all the time, and yeah, it's fucking embarassing as hell to tell a sexual partner that they were exposed to something you didn't know you had, but guess what - you can get through it. People aren't always going to hold it against you, because it's a lot more common than you'd think. I mean, hell - I read somewhere that one in 6 people have HSV2 (genital herpes) now? Yes, STD's cause problems. Yes, some of them don't go away ever, and can kill you. Guess what, they're not the only things that are that way. We're big on promoting safe sex, but it's idealistic - you don't always have a condom, you don't always want to say no when you don't have a condom or even when you do have one, you don't always wanna use it. They're a pain in the ass, but a necessary one in this day and age.
Are we naive, idealistic, or is it that STD's aren't 'insert adjective here' enough unless it's something dramatic and life threatening? I understand that there's a huge amount of escapism in fanfic, but there's often a huge amount of realism as well. I've seen so many ugly topics handled with such grace in fic, and yet stuff like this? It's incredibly rare.
Thoughts?
You see, today, I did something that I've been needing to do for well over a year now.
[cut for slight personal info]I finally went to the doctor to things checked out *ahem* down there, since I've known that I've had some sort of infection for about that long. Money issues and all prevented me from going and getting it treated. Unfortunately, due to the weekend and the price of tests, I couldn't get a full std screening done, but the nurse practitioner did an exam and decided to go ahead and treat me for a long term case of gonorrhea and chlamydia.
Which, I knew I had something, already accepted it - in fact, I've purposely been celibate because of it.
Anyways, though, I do what I normally do anytime the doc says that they think I have something and then they leave the room - bust the phone out and google that ish. I already knew that it was really common for you to have both (vs just one at a time, there's a 46% concurrent infection rate of chlamydia when you have gonorrhea).
I didn't realize that chlamydia was referred to as being 'silent', that one in 15 women have it. Not have had it, but currently have. 1 in 4 guys have it and have no clue.
Alright, hold that thought. I'll come back to it in a bit.
Last weekend, mskatej had an excellent post on condom usage in fanfic - you can find it here, and I'd highly recommend you check it out. One of the things that was touched on was condom usage during a blowjob; to this day, I can't seem to remember any fic outside Needs Must where a condom was used during a blowjob. In contrast, people warn for barebacking and add disclaimers about safe sex during fics that contain those things. Yet, you're still running those risks with a blowjob. To make things even more fun, it's common for people to not have symptoms while they're infected.
Let's be real, how often do you read (or write) lines that are along the following in fic?
- I trust you
- I know I'm clean
- I've always used a condom so I know I'm clean
- I'll get tested sometime this week after you fuck my brains out 1354875 more times
I mean, I've used condoms for blowjobs before, but never in a personal context, only business. In my case, I've got a pretty strong gut feeling about when it was, and if that's the case, well... that was from receiving unprotected oral.
It's a bacterial infection. It can be cured. A fuckton of people have it, have had it, will have it. Bacterial infections of all sorts attack our immune systems every day, and sometimes we get sick, sometimes that illness is focused in an area of our body like our lungs, or our sinuses, or our mouths, or even *gasp* our crotches.
You never read about it, though. We whump, we shoot, we torture, we emotionally destroy our characters and put them back together, but if we give them STD's, it's always a bad thing, like Mike being enslaved and having a cruel owner, or it creates friction and one half of your otp ends up demanding to know why the other half cheated.
Where's the nurturing, the h/c? Couples work through shit like this all the time, and yeah, it's fucking embarassing as hell to tell a sexual partner that they were exposed to something you didn't know you had, but guess what - you can get through it. People aren't always going to hold it against you, because it's a lot more common than you'd think. I mean, hell - I read somewhere that one in 6 people have HSV2 (genital herpes) now? Yes, STD's cause problems. Yes, some of them don't go away ever, and can kill you. Guess what, they're not the only things that are that way. We're big on promoting safe sex, but it's idealistic - you don't always have a condom, you don't always want to say no when you don't have a condom or even when you do have one, you don't always wanna use it. They're a pain in the ass, but a necessary one in this day and age.
Are we naive, idealistic, or is it that STD's aren't 'insert adjective here' enough unless it's something dramatic and life threatening? I understand that there's a huge amount of escapism in fanfic, but there's often a huge amount of realism as well. I've seen so many ugly topics handled with such grace in fic, and yet stuff like this? It's incredibly rare.
Thoughts?