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This post first appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
I don’t recall when I first heard about AIDS.I was 11 when the first cases were documented by the CDC in 1981, but it took a while before the news percolated down to me. I remember being 12 or 13 and the panic that hit everywhere. Suddenly, there was a sexually transmitted disease (as they were called then) that was killing people and nobody really knew how it spread. The complacency around STIs that penicillin gave us for a few decades suddenly evaporated and freaked out doesn’t even begin to cover it.
There were people who refused to shake hands or even be in the same room as people with AIDS. There were people who …
Continue reading World AIDS Day: Looking Back
As a sex educator, I’ve been advocating for both risk reduction and harm reduction. In risk reduction, the goal is to lessen the chances that something unpleasant or dangerous might happen. When it comes to driving, for example, anti-lock brakes are risk reduction because they make it less likely that you’ll get into an accident. Condoms are also a form of risk reduction since they lower the odds of passing a sexually transmitted infection along.
By comparison, harm reduction is when you take steps to lessen the harm of whatever you’re going to do. Seatbelts reduce the harm of being in a car accident, for example. And getting regular STI tests makes it possible to get treatment sooner, which can reduce or avoid the harm …
Continue reading The Pope’s “Sin Reduction” Model
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
For years, safer sex advocates have been saying that self-esteem has a huge effect on how much people engage in risk-reduction and harm-reduction behaviors. That’s why many of the most effective intervention programs & organizations, whether online like Scarleteen.com or in-person like the StopAIDS Project, offer counseling and support, in addition to information.
So I was really interested to read this post on ScienceDaily.com about research showing that among the 1,000 HIV-positive and negative gay and bisexual men surveyed:
Almost 10 percent of the participants reported that they had been victims of childhood sexual abuse and nearly 30 percent had experienced gay-related victimization between the ages of 12 and 14, including verbal insults, bullying,
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Continue reading Shame as a Public Health Issue
There’s a great piece on HuffPo about our continuing reluctance to deal with preventing sexually transmitted infections. Here’s the opening:
Among the many vital health issues not addressed by healthcare reform is the state of our sexual health. There are 19 million new sexually transmitted disease (STD) infections in the United States each year according to the Centers for Disease Control. What does our government spend to prevent this pandemic? One hundred and fifty-one million dollars. That is less than 50 cents per person.
Some of you may already be thinking this doesn’t affect me. Think again. Half of all STDs are among young people ages 15 – 24. They are your child, grandchild, sister, brother, cousin or friend. (And by the way, STDs cost
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Continue reading Are We Too Afraid to Deal With STIs?
Via Erosblog.com
Back in 1976, everybody’s favorite webslinger (well, everyone but J. Jonah Jameson, the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Kingpin and other baddies), teamed up with Planned Parenthood to offer some safer sex advice to the kiddies. While some of the info is out of date (like “A doctor can cure [VD] with a few shots”), much of it is just as true today as it was back then.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone had the chutzpah to do the same thing with a cartoon character today? After all, to quote Spidey, “With great power comes great responsibility.”…
Continue reading Spiderman Offers Sex Advice (back in 1976)
The Vancouver Sun has an article today about the potential impact of the mainstream media on safer sex practices in which they quote an editorial by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
The media is influencing their normative beliefs about sex: whether or not they think everyone around them is having sex, kids like them are having sex,” Bleakley says. “Risk and responsibility accounts for a very small proportion of the sexual content that’s out there, whether it’s teens being portrayed or shows that teens watch. Using a condom, having someone get pregnant and have to make those decisions, transmission of an STI — those things just don’t really come up.
There’s some evidence …
Continue reading What Responsibility Does the Media Have Around Safer Sex?
via the Salt Lake Tribune
The Utah Senate committee unanimously passed SB155, a law which will allow third-degree felony charges to be brought against sex workers who have tested positive for HIV. Usually, sex work is prosecuted as a misdemeanor in Utah, but there is a mechanism to amp it up to a felony if the defendant is HIV-positive and “knowingly sells or solicits sex acts.” The process for doing that was so difficult that it rarely happened, so they came up with this new law to make it easier.
I fully understand the desire to slow the spread of HIV. And at the same time, I can easily imagine this law having the exact opposite result because it creates a disincentive for sex workers …
Continue reading When Politicians Create Disincentives for HIV Testing & Safer Sex Among Sex Workers
There’s been lots more buzz lately about the porn HIV case. Fortunately, there are some places where a more reasonable and informed conversation is taking place. Rather than reiterate it all, here’s a few pointers.
Ernest Greene’s blog, with lots of great comments & discussion: here, here & here. That third link has pointers to some blogs by people who are actually performers in the mainstream het porn world, which gives them much more credibility in my eyes that, say, MSNBC on the topic.
Tony Comstock’s blog, with some very thoughtful input: here & here.
I also recommend pornochromatic, with two very insightful posts here & here. The second one proposes some ways to make the industry safer that seems to …
Continue reading it’s not an outbreak, dammit!
I’ve written before about how abstinence-only sex miseducation doesn’t work, as have lots of other people. Here’s another piece of evidence.
According to the report to Changing Behavior Risk for Pregnancy Among High School Students in the United States, 1991–2007, which the Guttmacher Institute released, teen pregnancy rates are clearly linked to contraceptive use. It’s a surprise!
Here’s a section from the press release:
Our previous research has shown that contraceptive use was a key factor in reducing teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s, despite little significant change in teen sexual activity. The authors suggest that the recent decline in teen contraceptive use since 2003 could be the result of faltering HIV prevention efforts among youth, or of more than a decade
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Continue reading more proof that abstinence only = FAIL
Given that the Obama administration has stopped funding abstinence-only sex misinformation, I’m sure that lots of schools are scrambling to figure out what to do. Fortunately, Planned Parenthood just launched an amazing site which is full of resources, information and support. If you work with kids, or if you have kids, or if you know someone with kids, pass the link along. I’ve embedded it above, but here is is, so you can cut & paste it:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/resources/index.htm
A big thanks to Planned Parenthood! (again)…
Continue reading Planned Parenthood has sex ed tools for you
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