Usher proves shame, silence spread STDs
Celebrities: they’re just like us. They pick up their dogs’ feces. They take out the trash. They contract sexually transmitted diseases and pass them on to their sexual partners.
News emerged this month that R&B singer Usher, whose steamy slow dance ballads probably helped spread cold sores and mono at every North American high school in the early 2000s, is alleged to have engaged in sexual activity with multiple partners without informing them that he has herpes.
According to leaked documents published by gossip website RadarOnline, Usher paid out more than $1 million in 2012 to a woman who alleged he knowingly exposed her to genital herpes while they were intimate.
Now the “U Got it Bad” singer is embroiled in another lawsuit; two women and one man claim Usher knowingly exposed them to the disease during sex and are suing the star as a result. One of Usher’s alleged sexual partners, 21-year-old Quantasia Sharpton, went public with her account this month. Sharpton claims she had sex with Usher when she was 19, after attending one of his concerts.
Sharpton tested negative for herpes but decided to proceed with the lawsuit against the singer anyway because she said if she had known about his alleged herpes diagnosis, she “would never have consented” to going to bed with him.
According to Usher, however, the two didn’t go to bed together at all. Tabloids are reporting that while Usher admits he may have interacted with Sharpton at one of his shows, he denies having slept with her because she is not his “type.” (Right, because nobody ever sleeps with anyone who isn’t their type. Melania Trump gave her husband a child and she doesn’t even appear to like standing next to the guy.)
So why am I writing about a tawdry celebrity sex story in a national newspaper?
Well, besides the fact that it’s fun, there’s an important issue at the heart of this steamy scandal. And that issue is that Usher isn’t alone. Whether we admit it or not, we are a continent teeming with herpes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga., “In the United States, about one out of every six people aged 14 to 49 years have genital herpes.”
In Canada, things aren’t much better. According to a Statistics Canada study from 2013, as many as one in seven Canadians may have Herpes Simplex 2 and more than 90 per cent of them may be unaware that they are infected.
One in six and one in seven: that is a hell of a lot of infected people. That’s roughly one person in every friend group, every Game of Thrones office pool, and at least one player on the ice in any given NHL game. And yet, despite the overwhelming commonality of herpes, we malign those who have it or those who are suspected of having it.
The disease doesn’t just produce physical symptoms — it can be psychologically devastating, too, if word gets out that you’re infected, and even if it doesn’t (dating with an STD is a notoriously lonely existence).
So while there is no excuse for giving somebody herpes when you know you have it yourself, the legal requirement that those who are infected must disclose is a very tall order when society treats something so incredibly common like an incredibly rare plague.
Of course, Usher does not deserve our sympathy if he did knowingly expose his partners to a disease. But the laughingstock the singer has become in recent weeks in light of the news that he is possibly infected speaks to a bigger problem. The more we malign those who have STDs, the less likely they are to disclose their status to their partners, and the cycle continues: infect somebody, stay silent, infect somebody.
Perhaps in order to fight the stig- ma and end the cycle of silent infection, a Bell-Let’s-Talk-style campaign is in order for people with sexually transmitted diseases, or anybody who has come close to contracting one.
We could call it the “I Got it Bad” campaign, in reference to Usher — and it can begin with happily married people who have nothing to lose in the dating world. Here, I’ll start. I had a cold sore once in Grade 12, which was technically Herpes Simplex 1. I don’t know where or who I got it from, but I was lucky enough to develop the thing just a few days before my senior prom. It cleared up nearly 10 years ago and hasn’t returned since, but it will live on forever in a series of high-resolution photographs on the mantel of my parents’ fireplace.
#IGotitBad.