Something Positive for Positive People

Tori, freshly 29 years old (she/her) shares her experience with revisiting planned parenthood 4 times to receive a herpes diagnosis. She brings up a good point about grief, and we tie the lessons she learned through grieving her old self can be integrated into this sex avoidant society we live in. The barrier to the sexual health convo coming from people who DO NOT have an STI is simply them receiving our experiences and lessons post-diagnosis. This communication is a critical part of prevention efforts and is far under-utilized as a sex positive approach falling to the prioritization of a sex avoidant approach such as “use a condom” exclusively to reduce risk of STIs.

Ashley (She/Her) shares her experience testing positive for chlamydia, HPV, and HSV1 and 2. What developed from this conversation is that sex positivity is pleasure positivity. She shares how being sex positive is essentially an acceptance for the lifestyles and decisions of others in relation to their on sexualities, but what was missing from my perspective was how in sex positive spaces, the emphasis is on one’s own needs and how accepting they are of themselves. This was my third recording today and interestingly enough, the conversation about institutions needing to be involved with the folks who are out here educating large audiences and who engage on social media need to be considered for partnership to improve efficiency of messaging. Ashley was on top of her providers, but she shouldn’t have to have been. After researching online about her own diagnosis and becoming more educated, you hear her share how she essentially became the educator of her providers about HSV.

Elle (she/her) is a 27 year old sex positive Oregonian. She’s heterosexual and monogamous and ironically our talk led to this statement of mutual non monogamy which you’ll hear more about here. Diagnosed with HSV-1 genitally just a few months ago, I was really shocked at how cool she was with talking about it so soon. We talk about how her self education led her to discovering the most useful information she received was learning how others navigate discussions about HSV, disclose and just overall talk about it. It’s odd that health organizations don’t want to work with those of us who are being sought out for sexual health information at all. My resistance was that I’m not credible because I’m a dude with a podcast. Now, as a non profit, I’m still just unable to get connected to anyone at the CDC for what’s a no brainer collaboration to minimize new STI transmissions. We’ll get there soon though, with or without the support of major institutions.

Zia is 22 and tested positive for genital herpes last year during the pandemic and in college. Her experience with the health care providers was neutral and she saw Planned Parenthood. Our discussion brought up this idea that what she learned through sex positivity could’ve been more useful to her if integrated in sex education. Her education was a group project where groups presented what they found on Google about different STIs and the message was “if you have symptoms, get tested”. Nothing on communication, frequency of testing, the fact that condoms on penises aren’t the only thing to discuss with sex and how sex and intercourse are so locked together when we discuss the two. We’re beginning to see a need to separate intercourse from sex, sex from sexuality, and pleasure from sex so that we can best offer transparent, consistent, accurate information to guide youth into their experiences with sex when they get there. An interesting note was that the sex ed she received potentially doing more harm than having any impact at all. She said it made no difference, but we’ll explore this in future interviews. Link to Thesis on herpes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRyqQ0klBlgMA80nmlYRit5kyopGtN5cpZTBxPnYnIhaexnk4gN1RjLLLlATXLVZHGe4BL4-RUPvoGw/pub

Dr. Evelin Molina Dacker joins us to validate and affirm our findings so far throughout this series, which is that the aspects of sex education that people don’t get from their health care providers appear to stem from providers’ discomfort with speaking about sex. We dissect the connection of sex to intercourse and sexuality and pleasure as a way of finding a common ground reference point that allows both the patient and clinician to co-create as a way of allowing the patient to disclose relevant information that can while potentially making the provider uncomfortable, also allow for top notch treatment to happen as a result. In learning to take a sexual history, we cut through a lot of the unneccessary obstacles a patient will go on to navigate when faced with an STI or a partner with an STI. It isn’t just sex-positive health care we are needing to advocate for, it’s pleasure positive. Instagram: @sexmeddoc Website: Maketimeforthetalk.com

Erin is a 32 year old cis-gendered heterosexual female who uses she/her pronouns and is sex positive and new to the space of kink.She shares how her experience with HSV-2 diagnosis led her down the path of seeking sex-positive communication resources that weren’t given to her at the doctor’s office (Planned Parenthood). It took for her not only to look for the information herself, but to apply it through trial and error as well. What we learn most from this episode is that sex-positivity is more than interactions sexually with the people in our relationships, its about our relationships to ourselves. This kind of communication with ourselves is actively an anti-stigmatized approach to navigating relationships with others. A transition into sex-positivity rather than herpes support communities & dating to learn the lessons that many of us learn through trial and error. A resource is to be created in collaboration with sex positive world to bring folks with STIs into this space to learn to communicate with folks.

Peyton is 27 years old, a monogamous female, who’s involved in kink/BDSM and sex-positivity and has had experiences with chlamydia at age 19 with an abusive partner, and then HSV-2 and trich from a one night stand. What’s interesting here is disclosure. Health care providers can offer information to support a patient disclosing to their recent partner OR new partners. It’s important to ask if they want resources to disclose to their partner who may have exposed them because of potential assault and abuse (this is a note not in the podcast). Peyton’s episode speaks to how if her sex ed also included non-sexual aspects of relationhips like navigating abuse, boundaries and talking about sex rather than just having it, this could’ve changed the trajectory of her relationships altogether. Sex-positivity and its community absolutely plays a major role in antistigmatizing sex, allowing for more receptive potential partners who are also more experienced in conversations about sex. How can our identity as a monogamous person be challenged by stigma given only promiscuous people get STIs because they’re reckless, right? Sex-positive communities are inclusive and welcoming to folks with STIs due to risk awareness and minimization tactics.

Marc is a 31 year old heterosexual male who’s a beginner in the Kink/BDSM community and identifies as sex positive. He joins us to share his journey of having been diagnosed with HSV-1 orally and genitally after a one night stand that consisted of receiving oral sex in another country. We discuss the road to sex-positivity through various support groups, trial and error disclosure scenarios, and learning the non-sexual components of sexual communication that we unfortunately learn out here in these sheets when we should’ve learned them before we were in these streets. Link to resource discussed in Episode: https://youtu.be/y18AwEnYdP0

Beginning this project, I had a hypothesis that people who tested positive for an STI would not find the resources they obtained from health care providers useful if they’ve been given any resources at all. Only one response was yes to the information being useful, but with the caveat that it was very basic. Another consistency with the SPFPP 2021 herpes survey results was that people who test positive for an STI are more likely to not test positive for a second one. My reasoning behind that is because of the communication skills they develop through their own self-education about STIs leads them to vetting partners differently than they have in the past about sexual health. What you’ll find over these podcast episodes is that the most useful resources in navigating sex after their diagnosis is that they didn’t come from their health care provider at all. Whether trich, herpes, chlamydia, or HPV, the resources they received from their health care provider wasn’t useful for them. In these podcasts you’ll hear many of the guests share that their journeys led them to online resources and social media accounts talking about this very thing. This begs the question “What is it that these people who’ve tested positive for an STI are learning that makes 70% of them go on NOT to test positive for a second STI?”. How do we integrate their lessons into the existing CDC recommended STD Prevention efforts? I further hypothesize that while use of condoms is presented as the “best” protection against STDs, it is worth noting that my guests speak about using condoms with partners, yet still tested positive. A major difference is that they learned to communicate in their relationships about their needs and set expectations with partners intentionally rather than under assumptions. This means that they were initiating conversations about sexual health, PROPER barrier use, and STI testing routines.The CDC says to get tested and know your status, but it also says to remain abstinent and practice mutual monogamy. Many of the prevention efforts as they exist are assumed norms in sex around intercourse. Part of the communication people have expressed learning is that there needs to be an uncoupling of intercourse and sex, and then separate sex from pleasure. That last part I predict can be done in sex education. Our podcast guests from this series speak to how kink and BDSM negotiations for play between partners has nothing to do with sex most of the time. What happens in these negotiations is that language is being co-created for consent, people are identifying and asking for their needs to be met while determining if their play partner is capable of meeting their needs for the play being negotiated. Boundaries are set during these negotiations, and an established STOP or safe word is determined. During this vetting process, we identify potential red flags for abuse or green flags for a healthy interaction. Through the practice of these negotiations, people are able to move forward and have set expectations for an interaction and know that if anything goes wrong or is off, that’s been pre-negotiated and they know where to go for support. Equipping people with this communication foundation could not only minimize STIs, but also rape, violence/harm, negative mental health impacts, abuse, and self-suffering in silence due to not knowing where to go for support. This podcast series has brought to the surface these needs here in Oregon which reflect much of the podcast’s experiences that have been shared on SPFPP since 2017. Thank you to the team at the Oregon Health Authority for allowing me to explore these findings with the funding to put time into it and get these findings to back up the work being done through SPFPP. This sets us up to explore the need for integrating these experiences into prevention efforts.

Sean Carter in the song "Bam" said a quote that speaks to this podcast episode; "My advice is just don't be too nice to n(eighbors). Just set the price on n(eighbors) and live your life my n(eighbor)". These bars serve as a mantra for me as I navigate the tough transition of how I run SPFPP as a business with boundaries now. For inquiries, email me directly at Courtney@spfpp.org. I realize the disrespect I've enabled and I'm actively working to untangle the knots I created by taking my own advice and disengaging from all that is disrespectful. That said, my social media interactions are going to be leaning more toward responding to messages. I didn't realize how social media was impacting me until I went from seeing women talk down about men until a transition occurred on my feed due to the almighty algorithm that showed me women being supportive of men, and men as well in a way that resonated but I hadn't experienced. I liked the feeling in my body seeing/reading this positive messaging to and for men. With that new baseline, what I was experiencing was disrespect to a crucial part of my identity as a Man. If you remember the identity series, I was challenging my masculinity, Blackness, and straightness. This caused by my social media intake and since decreasing my intake, I've been able to connect with my own natural energy. I like how I feel when present in the world so I want more of that. I'm still here for ya'll but understand there's changes occurring within me that reflect in the SPFPP space as well. Thanks for understanding. I love ya'll.