"Having herpes has made my sex life better" Blogger and herpes activist Ella Dawson on our biggest misconceptions about STDs -- on college campuses and beyond

A few days before her 21st birthday, Ella Dawson, then a junior at Wesleyan, discovered she had herpes. She told DAME that prior to her diagnosis, “I don’t think I ever thought about it much.” Now, two years later, she’s working as a social-media assistant at TED, and has become an activist around the topic, sharing her take on what life as a young woman with herpes is like on her blog—where she’s interviewed her exes about their reaction to her diagnosis—and in a recent Women’s Health essay. Her motivation to go public was to offer a new perspective and counteract some of the tired tropes she’s seen in herpes journalism.

Considering that one in six people ages 14 to 49 has genital herpes, according to the CDC, it’s a topic that deserves more detailed attention that’s informative rather than alarmist. While Dawson isn’t a sex educator, her first-person reports from the front lines are inspiring because she doesn’t gloss over or back away from the reality of a herpes outbreak, and also invites the perspectives of her former partners for the kinds of intimate conversations we rarely see in public, but can all learn from.

More from DAME: "I Chose to Become a Young, Single Mother"

Dawson’s take on herpes is admirable in that’s proactive and empowered, without being Pollyannaish. For instance, she’s admitted, without the shame one might expect, that she’s had condomless sex since her diagnosis. That’s not something you hear every day. And while the quote I’m using in the title may be part of what Dawson calls “clickbait culture,” I chose it because the kinds of talks she’s having with her partners are the kinds it would behoove all of us to have, whatever our sexually transmitted infection (STI) status.

I spoke with Dawson about the gaps in sex education on campus, reducing the stigma still often associated with herpes, and how a famous line from Girls helped her come to terms with having the STI.