A Test You Don't Need To Revise For - Sexual Health and Happiness with @lalalaletmeexplain
Illustrations by Kitty Hadley
BAM...nothing like some full frontal nudity to get your attention. If you don't know about SHL yet (Sexual Health London), then I promise that in the next couple of minutes your life is about to change - so keep reading.
As well as keeping this promise I spoke to the lovely sex & relationships advisor behind @lalalaletmeexplain on Instagram (AKA a bit of a marvel). Her sexual health advice account has over 52,000 followers and deals with everything from relationships and self worth to masturbation and sex toys (and everything in between). Her account has provided me and my friends with ever-lasting knowledge, side-achingly honest laughs and joyfully relateable sighs of relief. The impersonal nature of the account mirrors that of a matey group chat but with a huge dollop of professional knowledge and masterful advice mixed in. We discuss how she got into Sex Ed, the history of the account and what vital sex tips she wish she knew when she was a youngster. Keep scrolling to read the full interview.
SHL: Get. To. Know. It.
We are living in an age of immediate gratification and instant answers. We're a generation who waste hours and hours mindlessly scrolling through social media, yet the one thing we can’t bear is waiting. We are so used to everything being with us in a second - next day delivery, rapid text replies, instant Wi-Fi connections. Therefore, the thought of going to a walk-in sexual health clinic and waiting (maybe up to 2 hours) for a STI check-up fills us with dread. “I’ll just go next week” we tell ourselves. Getting tested becomes something that will be dealt with at some point - pretty far down on our list of priorities.
Well, here's the answer: Sexual Health London. Endorsed by the NHS, SHL is a free STI-testing kit which turns the process of getting tested into something that can be dealt with immediately... and it costs absolutely nothing. I found it by accident when I began thinking about having a check-up and had started to search online for nearby clinics. SHL seemed like a brilliant no-brainer to me and therefore was pretty shocked that hardly any of my friends had heard about it.
The website clearly outlines:
“Sexual Health London (SHL) is London’s new sexual health e-service that provides free and easy access to sexual health testing via the internet and local venues .The service is available to people aged 16 and over who are residents in most Boroughs of London.
They ask hardly any questions and filling in the online form to receive a test kit is rapid. They then send the kit to your address in super discrete packaging, so if you are worried about a family member or flat-mate seeing what you have ordered, there’s no need - they will have no idea.
They set out the instructions of how to self-sample really well, leaving very little room for error. Depending on your answers to the questions they will ask you for varying samples such as a vaginal swab, an oral swab, a rectum swab, a urine sample and a finger prick blood sample. Here lies the only small issue with SHL. I found it extremely difficult to get enough blood out of my finger for the sample to be valid and in the end, after much pin-pricking and squeezing, had to give up. In our interview with @lalalaletmeexplain (scroll down to read the full piece), I mentioned this and the hero of the hour came up with a brilliant alternative:
"I feel the exact same way about the SHL blood sample! I love SHL and always recommend them to people but the finger prick was like some weird traumatic experience and I ended up with only one drop of blood... SO, there's this amazing company called Bio Sure, ( @biosureltd ) who have got the easiest HIV test ever. You just give yourself a little prick and then hold the bit of card against the blood and it's immediately done. So I highly recommend them. Obviously you can use SHL every time you have sex, but you wouldn't necessarily need to be using the HIV test every time as you need to wait a couple of months to get an accurate reading. I would recommend Bio Sure alongside SHL."
When your home test is complete, the next step is also super easy. Posting your kit back is free and the address is already on the outside packaging, so all you have to do is find a post box and pop it in. You then will receive a text within a few days with your results. It really is as simple as it sounds.
Once you set up your account re-ordering whenever you want is also a total breeze. Rather than being fearful of returning to the clinic ‘too often’ you can simply log onto your account, click a few buttons and get another test immediately.
Sexual heath is something that needs to be constantly checked - getting tested is not just a 'once in a life time’ experience. SHL removes the idea that further testing is extra effort and an embarrassment. In fact, it’s the impersonal nature of this online system that makes it so great for those of us reluctant to get tested. It removes the idea that it’s a big deal, or an elongated process and instead makes it as simple as ordering a takeaway. So get to it.
An interview with @Lalalaletmeexplain:
You used to work as a sexual health educator in schools, colleges & prisons. How did you initially get into sex ed?
I was doing a counselling certificate at college with the idea of going on and doing a counselling diploma, but whilst I was there, there was a peer mentor who told me about a new role going at the NHS for people who wanted to offer sexual health advice to young people. He recommended me and so I applied and got it and yeah, it was excellent. We were taught it in 4 sessions. The first being self-esteem, as that's the foundation for positive healthy safe sex. The second session was relationships, (what a healthy/toxic relationship looked like and how you negotiate in a relationship), then the third session was STI's and learning how to put condoms on. Finally the fourth session was all about contraception and pregnancy.
What was your sex education like at school?
I left school 22 years ago, so I don't actually remember too much about my sex ed lessons but I'm guessing it must have been pretty fucking shit because I had no clue about anything. I had a basic understanding of condoms, HIV-I was terrified of HIV-pregnancy and all of that, but never understood the foundations. The really important things like how to say no, how somebody treats you in the bedroom and what's alright and not alright... I never had that self esteem grounding. From my memory it was very scientific, very medical and most probably taught by a science teacher.
Why did you decide to start up the insta page and when did you start to notice it picking up momentum?
I started the Instagram page in 2017. There was no intention of it becoming anything at all, I literally started it because I had just come out of another shit relationship. The good thing is that in that relationship my partner had got me into writing again. I'd always loved writing and at school wanted to be a journalist but just gave up on that and took another career path. After that relationship ended I wrote down everything that had happened and sent it to my friend who was like, "Fucking hell, you can really write! You should put this out to help other women" so I decided to make a little blog and link it with an Instagram account, with the sole purpose of directing people to the blog, but there was never any plan. I actually don't know how it gained the traction that it did. I think the blog just managed to speak to women in a way in which there wasn't anything out there like that before... I've never done any promotions or shout-outs, it was honestly just word of mouth. I started in February 2017 and by June had around 5,000 followers and that just kept growing. Then from there I started doing a podcast, Insta live sessions, advice sessions... I then managed to leave my career which I had been involved in for over 11 years and focus mainly on this.
Up until recently I avoided speaking about personal experiences/working in Sexual Health or being a social worker because I was still involved with it all and because of my anonymity I didn't want people to be able to link me to those things. However over the last few months, since leaving my job, I've been a bit more open about my professional background and I think people have started to take the account more seriously because they know that I am backing up what I say with professional knowledge.
What other key accounts that deal with sexual health would you recommend following?
I wish I knew of more accounts that would be really helpful for people, but the key ones are:
- @thesexdoctor - She's brilliant. Posts a lot of great stuff about sexual pleasure.
- @salmaelwardany - She's a poet and feminist writer and writes a lot about giving yourself up for men and only feeling valued for your body and not your mind. I think she writes in a really powerful way.
- @my_boyfriend_has_herpes - LOADS of people have herpes and loads of people are really fucking stigmatised for it and feel shit about it so this is a really great, helpful account.
What few nuggets of advice would you give your younger self about sex?
Anything?!...Well for me it would be about pleasure. I faked orgasms pretty much throughout all of my life because I was so scared of harming the fucking fragile male ego. I never understood that the sex that was happening to me was just porn sex that they had learnt it all from watching online and that they really had very limited understanding about what to do to my body and what would feel good. You know when you get into bed with a twenty one year old man... obviously when I was twenty one... and you like kiss a bit and then they start rolling on a condom? I would just go with it, even though I know that I'm not one of those 20% of people that can come from penetrative sex and need more stimulation. I'd let them be in charge and then on top of that allow them to believe that they were giving me the BEST sex of my life because I wanted them to finish that experience thinking I was great in bed, but it was never about me, ever. I also wish that I would've known how to negotiate things better. Like when you ask a man to put on a condom and they come with all that "I'm clean babe" or start getting offended... there are so many times that I didn't use a condom when I should have just because I was too shy or embarrassed to push for it. I wish I'd understood the whole fuck-boy thing and understood what red flags were. I wish I knew that my value was way more than what men thought of me. I completely believed that if no man was showing me interest at any time that I was not worthy and ugly... so yeah, sadly there are quite a few things.
LAST BUS' LAST WORD:
What do you listen to on your Last Bus home?
I never get the last bus home! I'm always the last woman standing at the party.
Okay okay well then the theoretical 'last bus' home... What's on the aux in the uber back?
Follow @lalalaletmeexplain on Instagram and find her blog and podcast here.
Written by Alice Beddows & Lily Carr-Gomm