Category: Old Stuff

I’m always happy when I only need to make minimal updates to a post. It means I did it right the first time around. Only real change is that the at-home HIV tests are now “available” instead of “coming soon”. Let’s get a big cheer for that! Updated and reposted April 12, 2018

The past few weeks, talking about ways to prevent STIs, one thing that came up repeatedly was the fewer people you have sex with, and the more closed your sexual circle, the less likely you are to be infected with an STI. Which does not mean you should restrict yourself to just a few sex partners or that closed relationships are in some mystical way ‘better’ than open ones. This is about risk assessment.

The more often you cross a street, the more likely you are to get hit by a car. The more often you have sex, the more chances your birth control will fail. The more you eat, the greater your risk of getting food poisoning. If anyone suggests you restrict yourself to a starvation diet to reduce your risk of getting food poisoning I hope you tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. Seriously.

But the same way you know not to eat food that smells off, if you are going to have a large number of sex partners, and frequently enough that STI testing is becoming increasingly fallible as a method of self protection, then be a smart slut. Learn the signs and symptoms of those STIs that have obvious signs and symptoms. Check with your local health department about what STIs are common in your area, and which barrier method provides the best protection. Invest in a few of the over-the-counter HIV test kits.

If you want to have an open relationship, be a slut, pick up one night stands, whatever makes you happy, there is nothing wrong with that. But do it knowing your risks. Only you can choose the level of risk you are comfortable with. So educate yourself, make your choice for you, and don’t let any of the sex-negative slut shaming idiots tell you otherwise.

Did you learn something? Please support my work.

This post is part of the Safer Sex Blog Series.

Minimal changes here. Mostly just changed STD/STI to STI. The biggest change is the last sentence of the post, which wasn’t there in any form in the original. I intend to spend a bit more time directly addressing STI stigma this time around, starting with a new post inserted into the series next week.

The bit at the end about a trip is from when this post was first written. I’m leaving it there bc it’s part of the history of the blog and why the hell not? updated 11/16/17

Protection against STIs

STD or STI?

STD stands for sexually transmitted disease. STI for sexually transmitted infection. STD is an old term, that many doctors no longer consider accurate. Basically, in medico-speak, a disease is something that causes symptoms which affect your health and well being. If you get hit with a virus, bacteria or fungus that doesn’t cause any symptoms, it’s an infection, not a disease. A lot of sexually transmitted stuff doesn’t cause symptoms, so many doctors now use STI instead.

Since this kind of change in medical terminology doesn’t make the headlines, non-medical websites, books and pamphlets that discuss sexually transmitted infections sometimes use STD, sometimes use STI and sometimes use both.

When I first write this blog series I used the slashy version ‘STD/STI’ on this blog, so that people who come into the series in the middle and might not have come across ‘STI’ would still know what I was talking about. Now that ‘STI’ has become more familiar, I’ll be changing the series to use just ‘STI’.

What Are STIs? And Why Do We Care?

STIs are pretty much just what the name says: infections that are transmitted sexually. Some viruses and bacteria really like the genitals. They are moist and warm and perfect breeding grounds for bacteria. They have mucus membranes, making them good places for viruses to invade cells.

And unlike the inside of the nose, other warm, moist mucusy areas come into contact with our genitals, making it possible for infections to jump from one person the another.

An infection whose primary means of moving from person to person is genital contact is caused an STI. That means there are many infections (mononucleosis, for instance) which you can get from sex but are not considered STIs, becuase usually people are infected some other way. And there are some STIs that have other means of jumping from person-to-person.

It is a basic fact: a person who never lets anyone else touch their genitals will probably not get an STI. Similarly, if people (of what ever number) who have no STIs are sexually exclusive for their entire lives, it is unlikely that any of them will ever get an STI.

Please note ‘probably’ and ‘unlikely’. As mentioned above, there are several STIs that can infect a person through other avenues. Blood borne STIs are the classic example of this.

It is, however, a reality of non-monogamy that having multiple sex partners makes STI infection easier. Thankfully, openly non-monogamous folks are pretty good at taking precautions against STIs.

Next week I’ll be taking a look at ways you can protect yourself and your partners against STD/STI infection.

Biggest change here is removing references to “safer sex” where ever possible. As I discussed Sunday, I’ve recently come to the realization that by equating “protecting against STIs” with “safer sex” we’re missing a big part of the safer sex discussion. So I am no long referring to discussing STIs as discussing safer sex, etc etc. Probably when I’m done with the Finances blog series I’ll start writing about the wider aspects of the safer sex discussion that are usually forgotten or ignored. YOu may notice that I’ve also stopped doing “STD/STI”. When I started this blog series “STI” was a relatively new and unknown term and I felt I needed to use both to be everyone understood. These days STI is well known and the most used term in the polyam communities I am part of. So I can stop using STD and just go with STI, which is the term I prefer. I’ll note here that the medical community is not in agreement about which term to use and both terms are perfectly acceptable. Updated oct 20, 2018.

If you’ve been involved in polyamory for any length of time, participated on any forums, read any blogs or books, eventually you will have come across topic of STIs. It is a medical fact that by having more than one sexual partner, you increase your risk of getting a sexually transmitted infection. If by some chance you haven’t already run across a good discussion of the hows and whys of discussing STIs, I suggest you take a brief detour to More Than Two’s Negotiating Safe Sex. It’s on the short side, but hits the basics of discussing STIs very well. You might also find some other good info there on dealing with jealousy and other relationship-related polyam stuff (as opposed to practical-type stuff I try to focus on here).

Still, even most polyam folk who know and follow standard s and staying healthy. Just as a for instance, I had a first meeting with a potential partner once, who when we discussed safer sex said he had no objection to getting regular STI testing if I could pay for it – since it cost over $100 a person. What he didn’t know, and I turned up in a 5 minute web search, is that the local health department offers STI testing for $10 a person.

I’ve also run across a frightful amount of misinformation over the years on polyam forums about STIs, how they are prevented, how common they are, and, oh, lots of stuff.

So, next week I’m beginning a new series on STIs. I’ll be covering what STIs are, finding places to get tested in your area, and brief introduction to the various STIs, how they are treated, and just how much of a concern they are. Along with some other semi-random stuff.

In the meantime, if you want to do some research of your own, the American Sexual Health Association is a decent place to start.