Nope, its not 7th grade. Its 28th grade. Yet I still giggle if someone says herpes. (ha ha)
But something that's not funny is HPV and how most guys have no idea what it is or what it means. Or that all girls who didn't get married to the first guy they slept with have it. And that boys have it too, they just don't check for it because it doesn't cause any problems. Unless you have a cervix.
HPV causes cervical cancer. So they say. I suspect that "they" in this scenario is the drug company that is pushing to get 12 year olds vaccinated against it. I'll bet moms and dads all over the world are pretty psyched to take their pre-teen in for a series of three vaccinations for a sexually transmitted disease. Especially since most parents believe that their daughters will wait until they are 53 and married to have sex.
But here's the deal. Every girl that I know that has been checked for it has it. Including my mother (ew, gross. I know. There is nothing worse than having that conversation with your mother). Including me. I must admit, when my ob-gyn told me that I had this thing, I was grossed out, and pissed off, and confused. I think at that point in my life I had slept with 2, maybe 3, guys. It might have only been one. And there were few encounters that didn't involve a condom. But condoms are useless against HPV, and there are some strains that aren't sexually transmitted. Point is, you aren't a dirty whore just because you have HPV and you could actually have one of those strains that infects you when you touch leaf mold (disclaimer: I think that leaf mold probably doesn't actually have HPV). Of 140 different types of HPV, less than 40 are sexually transmitted. Most cause no symptoms, but some can cause abnormal cells to form on your cervix that your ob-gyn will want to track and do painful procedures on. Luckily, after several years, my abnormal "Pre-cancerous" cells have finally gone away and she has stopped threatening me with biopsies and scraping and something that involves freezing (then not having sex for six weeks).
But boys have no idea what this critter does to girls, how its transmitted, why its transmitted or that they have it anyway. Recently, one of my friends had a little conversation about it with a boy she was dating and he nearly jumped out of the car and dove into the nearest sewer grate to get away (there is probably HPV down there). In fact, when I had the v.d. conversation with Dr. BB he freaked out about my HPV status. A guy with a medical degree had to go verify the information that I was telling him, and still remained skeptical about it! In typical male fashion, both seemed more concerned about whether they could be infected than what it could possibly do to us (cancer!).
So, the question is, when we are having the v.d. chat with a boy that we might sleep with, do we discuss the HPV? Is it necessary to reveal the fact that we have the same thing that 99.9% of other girls have? Something that can't really be stopped with condom use? Something they probably already have? Something that will never have any symptoms? Or do we put on our big girl pants and have an awkward, uncomfortable conversation that likely isn't going to change anything?