Encouraging Young People to Test Their Own Genitals Might Not Be a Great Idea

​

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

If you've ever called someone up to tell them you think you might have an STI you can vouch for the fact that there really is no other silence quite like it.

In the space between the revelation and the, "Um, hello? You've gone quiet," break in conversation, you can cut the tension with a surgical saw. No one wants to find out they've got a disease. Least of all one involving their genitals.

But making that call—despite the consequences—is one of the coolest things you can do, because it's the right thing to do. You think you might have a disease and you're telling someone that they might have it, too. The alternative is keeping silent and hoping the symptoms don't manifest in the other person. This is a shitty, shitty thing to do.

Last week, I got a press release about a new STI campaign from Randox Laboratories with a link to  ​a mockumentary called Sniffers promoting their home-testing kit, ​Confidante. The campaign features a "K-9 Detection Unit"—a group of specially-trained dogs that are able to detect sexually transmitted infections in members of the public. It's a joke, obviously, and kind of funny. But the campaign—aimed at 25-34 year olds—plays very much on a sense of social awkwardness and shame.

According to the press release, Confidante "should work well to prompt 25-34 year olds to think about their sexual health and get tested." I'm in that age bracket (just), though, and it didn't prompt me to test myself at home. It made me want to feel less embarrassed about going to the clinic because, well, it's stupid and unhelpful to be embarrassed. Surely  encouraging a shame-free culture of testing and normalizing those clandestine trips to the GUM clinics would be more advantageous than campaigns aimed at keeping it all behind closed doors, in fear of public shaming?

"Home-testing kits are a choice available to people, and the more choices there are, the better," says Natika Hall, Director of Health and Wellbeing at the sexual health charity FPA. "If the choice is take an STI test at home or don't get tested at all, then clearly it is better to take the test at home."

It's certainly a fair point. However, Halil did offer the following caveat: "We are perhaps still a bit squeamish about STIs and many people aren't that open about when it comes to talking about them and getting tested. Unfortunately, not talking about STIs can just exacerbate lack of knowledge and awareness around what the risks are."

Would we, if we had the choice, all test our genitals for disease in the privacy of our own bedrooms and then get treated, if required, without ever saying a word? Maybe. But the world doesn't work like that.

I first visited a sexual health clinic when I was 18. As I walked in, a girl who worked in the same office as me walked out. We did the awkward nod thing—the kind of nod you share with an ex-girlfriend when she walks past you arm in arm with her new boyfriend—and that was that. But I couldn't help but feel ashamed. What if she told someone? What if people in the office thought I was a disease-riddled tramp? There was no fucking way Lizzy on reception was going to go out with me now.

It might be the guilt surrounding STIs, rather than shame, that we should hang onto, though. In fact, Professor Paul Raymond Gilbert is a British clinical psychologist and the founder of ​Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) believes that, when it comes to getting tested for sex diseases, we should be motivated by it.

"The reason people would prefer not to go to clinics is partly to do with the issue of external shame. What will other people think about me? How will I exist in the minds of others? How will I be treated? Shame is this recognition that you have become an undesirable object in the eyes of others [whereas] guilt is a desire to be non-harmful," he says. "The emotions that go with guilt are sadness, sorrow and remorse. The emotions that go with shame are anger, anxiety and avoidance.'

So Confidante's campaign, even though it's pretty funny, may be playing too much on the shame thing—the embarrassment of being what Gilbert calls an outgroup member, rather than an ingroup member. I can't help but that that, for these campaigns to encourage people of my generation to get tested, they should be drawing attention to getting tested full stop. Not just at home, sitting on the edge of your bed, staring nervously at your flaccid penis flopped in the palm of your hand while you gear up to sticking a swab down it.

"Shame is big issue in the cultural values of sexuality. So how, then, as we're beginning to understand the nature of sexually transmitted diseases, do we help people become open and aware of them and take responsibility for safe sex and getting help when they need it?" asks Gilbert. "Ideally what you want to get across, in both sexuality and sexual behavior, is being safe and not being a transmitting agent—to create in people a real interest in the wellbeing of others."

There's a line in Frankly, Mr Shankly by The Smiths that goes: "I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of," but it's guilt you want, Morrissey, mate. Not shame.

Follow Gareth May on ​Twitter.