September 16, 2010. My first known and diagnosed STI. I’m rereading an old Livejournal entry about it. Yeah, somehow I still have a Livejournal, but it gives me a really good window into college-era Avery thinking. Some parts are validating, like how my queer and genderfucky identities have evolved, the best friends I have had and sustained since childhood, the LJ communities I was a big part of, the slow progressions of my ongoing body modification. Some parts are really tough to read, losing my best friend to suicide, the documentation of my PTSD from Patrick, failed attempts at polyamory, putting pets to sleep, disordered eating rants… It reminds me that yes, I’m constantly battling with the fear of being a horrible, unlovable person, but I’ve come a LONG, long way over the last ten years.
The entry about my genital wart is pure, unbridled hypocrisy. I was already teaching sex education with Masakhane for 3 years by this point, emphasizing the importance of destigmatizing STI’s, reimagining the mythos of terms like “normal” and “healthy” with regards to the body and sexuality, and yet here I was, flipping my shit outside the Montclair Planned Parenthood for a fucking wart.
I was desperate to blame someone other than myself, as if this had been a consequence, a curse, a shameful punishment. I stopped counting the number of my sexual partners by my senior year of high school. To this day, I know it’s probably somewhere in the hundreds and it’s pointless to think about since the very definition of “sex” is so fluid anyway. If “virginity” is a bullshit means of normalizing cishetero-penetrative sex, a notion I defied so well as a queer nonbinary teenager, then why was I still drinking the “slut-shame punch?” Why was I so embarrassed to talk about it? Why was I treating my genital wart as though it was a measure of my humanity, existence, morality, whatever?
What became such a source for my own ignorance eventually turned into a badge of pride, an opportunity for discussion, a flicker of personal and political education, but it didn’t happen overnight. Bit by bit, talking about HPV with partners, with family, with friends, with learners, classmates, anyone I could…I learned what I still now consider to be a world’s-ahead wealth of information regarding HPV.
I had been vaccinated with Gardasil at 18, but by then I had so many sexual partners it was pretty fucking pointless, even if it did offer protection against cancer-causing strains. I was a warty kid my whole life: plantar warts on my heels, knuckle warts, and even to this day, I still get a wart on my elbow every now and then. They come and go like a cold except they don’t hurt or cause discomfort, and yet I still grew up learning that they needed to be removed, cut out, burned off of me. They were considered ugly, undesirable flaws and I can’t even begin to tell you how many dermatology appointments I went to as a kid.
I grew up having HPV and never understanding it, so I can’t say I’m really surprised that I asked for my genital wart to be burned off with trichloroacetic acid. There I was, spread apart at the gyno, holding a cotton ball to my taint to prevent acid dripping to my asshole while the gyno applied it to the tiny wart near my fourchette. Logically, I feel like one of us should have realized that a cotton ball will just absorb and suck the acid down further, not block it. I felt nothing on the wart, but the chemical burn to my perineum and sphincter was so brutal I couldn’t walk for a week. I had to tilt forward when urinating to avoid the sting of piss trailing over the wound. It was after this experience I decided I’d never have another wart removed from my body unless it caused me pain or discomfort.
My regular STI testing is still a really shitty process where I end up providing education to my gynecologists rather than getting adequate, competent care. Yes I have a vulva. No it doesn’t make me female. Yes I want the full panel including bloodwork for Herpes and HIV. No, I haven’t had sex with more than one partner since the last test, but I still want the works. Yes I understand barriers are important, but YOU need to understand they aren’t a fucking guarantee. Yes I brought my own lube for the exam because your shit is loaded with glycerin and other crap that shouldn’t be in my body. No, I don’t enjoy getting needles in my arms just because I’m covered in tattoos.
These shouldn’t be things I need to teach medical professionals about, but here we are. I shouldn’t have had to educate my cohorts in a SEX EDUCATION program that HPV doesn’t always have to be “sexually” transmitted to be transmitted. That strep throat could be a fucking STI just as much as chlamydia. The dialogue needs to change. It starts with us. Me, you, the people reading this blog, the people doing the work.
I don’t even know if I have HPV right now. And honestly, I don’t fucking care. Okay, you have oral herpes but no current outbreak? I’ll still totally make out with you, I don’t give a fuck, we’re all probably going to get it at some point or another. I’d be glad enough if someone chose to disclose their status so I can get and give informed consent. STI’s aren’t the end of the world and the negativity surrounding them needs to change.
Get tested like you get your teeth cleaned. It’s maintenance. It’s not preventing the “baddies,” it’s getting to know your body better. Let’s make these discussions more intellectually, emotionally, physically, and financially accessible, let’s make this entire process more accessible. Shit, you can do it online now with companies like STDCheck.com (yes, they asked me to write a semi-sponsored post, but I really should have written about this a long time ago anyway). Transparently speaking, STDCheck actually offered me a full free 10-test panel and a $200 donation to the organization of my choice. Fuck yeah being compensated for speaking about an important issue on my terms. For a company to even reach out, encouraging me to write freely about my thoughts on sexual health, that’s a pretty sweet deal. So yeah. STI’s aren’t all sunshine and rainbows, but they’re not worth the “doom and gloom” slant either. I’m grateful to have this perspective and I sincerely hope more people can approach sexually transmitted infections with more sex-positive attitudes in the future.