Monday, November 20, 2006
tagged: “single nyc female graphicdesigner bottom brunette nsa hiv- hpv+”
filed under: Design for Sex by Melissa Gira
Regina Lynn’s Wired piece on the future of sexually transmitted infections, stigma, and the technology of notification systems…
SxCheck, which launched this month, is the latest contender in the movement to change how we think about STIs. It’s a joint project between Stanford graduate student Doug Wightman, 23, and the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, or AIM, offering the general public an STI testing service based on one the adult industry has developed over a decade.
Doug believes that by making STI testing routine, and the results easy to show to potential partners, SxCheck will have a profound impact on social behavior.
…points to the possibility of reducing shame by way of… tagging (?)…
Doug envisions us embedding HTML in our online dating profiles to share test results and the date of our last screening, and he’s already working on making results accessible (securely) by mobile phone. That makes information available when you need it, without the social awkwardness of carrying a lab slip folded up in your back pocket “just in case.”
…which opens up a lovely Pandora’s box of privacy and ethics quandries.
There’s already a few pilot notification projects in place around reporting results back anonymously to one’s partners (programs have been active in San Francisco and New York since the early part of this decade), which allow for public health to take precedence over fear, stigma, and shame, allowing us better disclosure through technology. This all seems like a sane, compassionate step towards the future of sex.
An alternate approach would be the sort of proactive, profile-based tagging system. Seeking our partners for adventure and then some online already forces us to articulate our desires with the tools available, to put our wishes into an interface we don’t really have a role in determining. To out yourself as a leather top on Alt.com, for example, takes far less initiative — just check the box — than on Consumating, where one has to own one’s tags for what they say.
Where there’s little room for sexual secrets in a mating game ruled by database queries, and there’s also a high potential for abuse in a system where anyone can tag anyone anything, applying one’s health and safety concerns to any IA is going to have emotionally significant drawbacks. The reality is, sexual health is more dynamic than who puts what where covered with what, and who was tested for what and how and how long ago.
So for the moment, I’ll just tag myself “nosexissafe.” Flexible, an opener for conversation, and yet still conveys the point.
Think of something better? Or want to join me? Comment with where you’re deploying your sex tags, and how, and who you get.
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