A different and more personal post for #WorldsAidsDay this year.
I was too shy and nervous to be sexually active much before I met my now-wife, and we were monogamous for most of the 25 years we’ve been together. As such, it wasn’t until we opened up that I’d ever done an STI test.
I grew up in the AIDS crisis, and I lived through Section 28. Regardless of my sexuality, it was a time when sex felt impossibly risky, even dirty. (I use that word very carefully, knowing its legacy.)
And that’s not just something that affected mlm sex either. We were drilled so hard on the dangers of teenage pregnancy that our struggle to conceive a decade ago felt like a pointed fuck-you. You mean a boy DOESN’T just have to look at a girl and she gets knocked up?
The whole culture was one of repression and censure — sometimes for good reason, but often for bad.
The first time I did an STI test felt not like a worry, but a liberation. Not liberation from responsibility or from a duty of care. I have far MORE to lose now, incalculably more, and I won’t risk my health (because of its effect on my family) for any pleasure.
But rather, a liberation from that puritanical, homophobic, pervasive and hideous othering that happened during the AIDS crisis.
Today, I take one of these little tablets every day, and so I can’t contract HIV. (People living with HIV also can’t pass it on if they’re on appropriate medication; search ‘U=U’ to find out more.) I also do a full STI panel every three months.
This is not permission to have risky, hedonistic sex. And even if other STIs I’m not protected against can be treated with antibiotics, we should be minimising their use to keep antibiotics effective for as long as possible.
Christopher Phin