Bad Girls and Fallen Women: Chronic STD Diagnoses as Gateways to Tribal Stigma

This article uses women's firsthand experiences as the basis from which to explore how social constructions of sexual disease and feminine morality merge to threaten women's sexual selves during sexually transmitted disease (STD) diagnostic interactions. Constant comparative analysis of interview data reveals how forty‐three women made sense of this stage in their moral careers. Adding to interactionist literature on gender and chronic illness, this article expands discussions of tribal stigma to the intrapersonal realm. The data show how these women learned to view herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV) as symbols of impurity, antithetical to feminine ideals of sexual morality. Socialized to fear a caste system that divides women according to perceptions of moral transgression, the women viewed official medical diagnoses as having the potential to brand them not only as diseased but also as immoral. Tribal stigma provides the theoretical framework for analyzing why and how STD diagnostic interactions may be the catalysts for women to symbolically redefine themselves as bad girls and fallen women.