I realize that my view is not that of the majority, but that's fine with me.
I think that STD's are over-hyped and rubbed in teenagers' faces as a scare tactic. (Please don't mistake my opinion as one that thinks STD's are a good thing, or not something to consider, or anything along those lines.)
I'm mostly referring to the diseases that are more easily cured as opposed to those such as HPV, HSV II, and HIV (which I fully believe does NOT cause AIDS. Yes, I can back this up with lots of proof.) Anyhoo, I digress...
Truly, I would rather catch chlamydia than have the common cold or flu. (again, many will probably misread this and question weather or not I am aware of the possible long term side effects of chlamydia, and yes, I am very much aware and educated on pretty much all possible STD's.) I can say this with confidence because I get checked quite often. At least every 3 months, if not more. I feel that it is my responsibility to be aware and conscious of my own body and dealing with unfortunate things that may happen to it if I choose to put it into a risky situation. I know a lot of people who have unprotected sex with multiple partners and haven't been checked in years. I find this pretty irresponsible. It's like having a bad case of mononucleosis (very contagious, and a serious pain in the ass I may add) and going to work and not washing your hands and coughing all over the place. Same thing.
There are those diseases that are the gifts that keep on giving, like herpes and HPV. I really think that these are made out to be worse than they are. Like you should be wearing a star of david on your shoulder or something if you have herpes, like a branded mad cow...(please do excuse my terrible analogies, and I have nothing against the jewish folk). I have had a few (respectable) partners who were honest and had the balls to tell me before we had sex that they had herpes. They explained to me that they have had it for a very long time, haven't had an outbreak in many years, and that's great. I dated a man who had herpes and we had unprotected sex hundreds of times throughout the period we dated, and I never got it. And I was fully willing to risk it, I knew that it was a possibility, and it wasn't that I didn't care, it's that I know if it happened, I would be a mature adult about it and do the research and take the medicines if necessary and use harm reduction to eliminate the possibility of passing it to someone else.
If Americans weren't so damn uptight about sexuality, this 'epidemic' of std's would certainly be less of an issue than it is now. We are taught that sex is naughty, and nono, taboo, and shouldn't be talked about - associate a disease with that, and you've got a bunch of people fucking each other, but not talking about it. I think what people should be doing, is being HONEST with each other. Sit down, say hey, let's go get checked and get it out of the way, if something's wrong, we can work it out, life goes on, shit isn't the end of the world, let's go. Prevention and early detection are the easiest and best ways to prevent the spread of disease.
