Sex Love Romance ( www.sell-out.trade )

Whenever the topic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) comes up, I secretly get excited and panicked at the same time. I get excited because, as a person with herpes, and specifically as a writer with herpes, I spend a lot of time considering the complexities of what it means to live in a shared body with a virus, particularly one on which society has imposed a code of silence and shame. When it comes to meaningful discourse, herpes is practically uncharted territory. I enjoy the process of navigating new ideas, of building a narrative for myself that defies hand-me-down STD clichés. I panic because, more often than not, these conversations do not welcome someone like me. In casual social settings and in media, STIs are repeatedly used as punchlines . It is not uncommon for health campaigns to invoke fear and disgust in order to encourage testing or barrier use among their target audience. Even in sex-positive circles, prevention is often centralized to the point of demonizi...

This article originally appeared on Everyday Feminism under the title “These 25 Examples of Male Privilege from a Trans Guy’s Perspective Really Prove the Point” and is reprinted by permission. Quite a bit changed for me over the first couple of years I started testosterone. My health and mental well-being improved, my “happy button” grew over an inch in length, my natural musk became so fragrant that now I gross even myself out if I don’t shower pretty much every day (no deodorant can contain this beast). So many awesome, big-deal body changes and mind improvements flourished. Then there were the smaller, odder things: I finally gained an appreciation for peanut butter and chocolate, my favorite color went from blue to green, my most hated school subject suddenly became a favored pastime. All sorts of things, from the big to the small, altered themselves. I was indeed exactly the same person as I’d always been, just the 2.0 version. In the long run, I don’t always know which t...

As 2012 rolled into 2013, the following three things happened in the span of one and a half months: The girl I thought I’d one day marry very suddenly told me she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I went on anti-anxiety meds, which made me feel like I had the flu, and when I tried to go off them, I ended up in the emergency room. My mother’s breast cancer came back after ten years of remission. As I write this, I realize that it’s the first time I’ve identified that those three things all happened very closely together. It didn’t just feel as though my world had ended. It literally had. I came home from work one day to meet my girlfriend for dinner. I was in love and excited to see her. We had been dating for ten months and had talked about moving in together. I walked up my block, and there she was, sitting on the steps. She kissed me hello. We walked inside. I put down my bag and started to ask her what she felt like eating, but when I turned around, I saw the tears streaming...