This is Pillow Talk brought to you by Killer and a Sweet Thing.

I'm Eileen Kelly and I'm Jacob Safarian.

On this podcast we normalize sexual experiences by allowing the people who live them to speak for themselves.

On today's episode, we're joined by activist Emily DePasse.

Emily was only 22 years old when she was diagnosed with General Herpies.

She's currently studying human sexuality with plans to become a therapist. Emily also has a blog

and writes for other outlets to dismantle STI stigma.

Emily DePoss, welcome to Pillow Talk.

Thank you for having me, Eileen.

So I guess to start off, our listeners would you mind defining what herpes is?

So herpes is a skin to skin infection, it's a sexually transmitted infection and my favorite thing in talking about herpes

biologically is that it is in the same family as chickenpox and shingles which a lot of people

don't know. Wow I didn't know that. So fun fact.

If you don't mind telling us what strain you have

and then the difference between the two

for our listeners who aren't familiar with it.

So I have herpes simplex virus HSV 2 and that's usually strictly general

herpes. There are some rare cases when people have HSV 2 orally. The other

strain is HSV1 which is more recognized as oral herpes, more like cold

sores, but recently it has been making the rounds as genital H.S. V. one because

partners are going down on one another with cold source.

Oh wow so you can get the cold source that we would think about on your mouth on your genitals.

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