You've Got Mail

On a daily basis there are a handful of news headlines that make my eyes bug out of my head. Today's highlight of leading news was the following:

"STD Postcards: You've Got Mail - And More"

Apparently you can now send a former, um, partner, the news that you might have shared a little more than just a romantic tete a tete. How cheerful. And how pathetic that someone you had a VERY intimate experience with is only deserving of an e-card to tell them you might have given them a life-threatening STD. "Just thought you'd like to know I'm HIV positive. You might want to get checked out too. Ciao!"

In the last four years, 49,500 of these rays-of-sunshine have been sent. I can't tell you how much this disturbs me. I mean, it's always been disturbing (and revolting) to me that people can meet someone, climb into bed with them, and move on the next day without so much as a slight there's-something-wrong-with-this nudge from their dulled conscience. But an STD e-card? Are you kidding me?

The irony of the casual-sex generation is that the same women (and men) who have participated in one night stands are the ones frantically rubbing their hands with sanitizer as they disembark the metro, sticking to an organic, pesticide free diet, and refusing to sit down on a public toilet seat for fear of contracting some icky disease. But hey, a roll in the sack with some drunk hottie they met in a bar? Okay. People are more concerned about buying bruised produce than they are about exchanging bodily fluids with a complete stranger.

I recognize that not all STDs are the result of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, but if the purveyor of disease is a former boyfriend or significant other, I would hope that they would have the courtesy of informing their partner of a possible infection in person. But I guess if sex is nothing more than a "casual" exchange, why should informing someone of the bad consequences be any more formal?

Somehow chastity has never made more sense.