I was included in this story that was originally published in The Kit by Briony Smith, July, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY POONAM CHAUHAN “I’m a 27-year-old woman living with genital herpes, and I’ve mostly been single since contracting it five years ago. I find navigating the dating scene to be humiliating and exhausting: Each time I get rejected because of it, it makes me less likely to try again. How can I feel less discouraged about trying to date with herpes? And how do I tell someone I want to be intimate with?” —Wendy, North Vancouver How did we become so insensitive about sexually transmitted infections? (Like, stop it with the herpes jokes, guys.) Well, for one thing, sex education fails to
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