Guys i know you will be wondering how to save yourselves from contracting sexually transmitted disease. Yes it is possible to have it raw and you will be free.
First any time you have sex without protection quickly go and urinate.
Ricardus touched on avoiding STDs a little in “Dodging the Dangers of Sex (and Dating)”, though his focus there was more on some of the other dangers that can arise; and I have a post on the forums that covers a good chunk of what we’ll talk about in this article here: “Re: The Dangers of Sex.” However, I wanted to clean that information up and put it in a more presentable (and scannable) way – hence, this post.
When you’re relatively inexperienced with women, it’s easy to get freaked out about STDs. Typically, the more sexually experienced you get, the less of a “big deal” these seem like… and, generally, the more likely you are to run into them.
Yet, if you’re smart, and you do your homework, it is possible to avoid STDs almost entirely, even while having lots of sex with lots of partners… BUT, you must do your homework, and you must be on top of the ball at all times, because if you’re trusting your own sexual health will be looked out for by that pretty stranger you just met (after all, she seems so innocent…), you’ve got another thing coming.
avoid STDs
The mainstream media is a stunningly poor place to learn how to avoid STDs from, for the same reasons that the mainstream media is a stunningly poor place to learn ANYTHING of much import from – media feeds off of scaring people into reading or watching with the most frightening, alarming, controversial stories it can possibly run – not off of educating people.
Newscasters are not there to inform. They’re there to entertain – to suck you into a vortex of emotional highs and lows and keep you there glued to the screen taking in advertisements on commercial breaks.
So, it’s disheartening to realize that most of what people know – or think they know – about sexually transmitted diseases comes from popular media.
Well, I’ve got news for you: many of the things you hear the drums beating so loudly about aren’t that big of a concern… while there are other things you should be more worried about, that I’d bet you weren’t even aware of.
HOW DANGEROUS IS HIV FOR STRAIGHT MEN?
Here’s the HIV risk checklist:
Do you take injection drugs with used needles ever?
Do you allow other men to ejaculate semen into your rectum ever?
Do you have unprotected sex with open cuts or sores on your penis ever?
If the answer to all three of those questions is “no”, then your risk of infection with the late 20th century’s dread disease is almost zero.
Heresy, you say?
The risk of acquiring HIV is 1 out of 2,000 per exposure to an infected source for penetrative vaginal sex for men. That is to say, if a man has sex with an HIV-infected woman 2,000 times, on average, one of those times he is going to become infected with HIV.
That still seems scary high – but it says nothing about whether there is a difference between the 1 man who becomes infected and the 1,999 who do not. Might there be a difference?
In fact, there is:
“Antibodies to cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and herpes simplex viruses types 1 and 2 (HSV-1, HSV-2) in three sequential serum samples from 62 men who did and 61 men who did not develop human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection at the time of the final (third) serum specimen were studied. Antibody titers to CMV, EBV, and HSV-1 did not significantly rise in or differ between men who did or did not get HIV infection. However, we found that 32 (68%) of 47 HIV seroconverters had antibodies to HSV-2 at the time the third specimen was drawn, whereas only 26 (46%) of 57 men who remained HIV seronegative had HSV-2 antibody positivity. Seroconversion to HSV-2 between any two serum specimens was found in 11 (42%) of the 26 HIV seroconverters but in only five (14%) of 35 men who remained HIV seronegative. The association between HSV-2 seropositivity (or seroconversion) and subsequent or concurrent HIV seroconversion remained when we controlled for factors known to influence HIV infection, including age, number of sexual partners, and percentage of sexual acts involving receptive anal intercourse. These serologic studies do not support the role of CMV, EBV, or HSV-1 in HIV infection but do suggest that HSV-2 infection is a risk factor for subsequent or concurrent HIV infection.”
That’s from “Prior Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 Infection as a Risk Factor for HIV Infection”, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association all the way back in 1988. The researchers here found that 68% of men in the study who came down with HIV also had genital herpes (and further that HIV did not correlate with any other of the tested viruses, including HSV-1, the other common strain of herpes – so this isn’t just a “those who have a lot of partners will get both HIV and HSV-2” deal).
The men tested had genital herpes before they picked up HIV… and genital herpes appears to be a big risk factor for acquiring it.
Why does a disease that leads to open sores on the genitals increase one’s risk factor for acquiring a fluid-based virus like HIV? Mainly because the virus simply apparently does not really have any inroads to a man’s body other than through open wounds… of the sorts that you get through:
Injection with needles
The tears in anal tissue that occur during receptive anal sex
Open sores caused by herpes simplex 2 (genital herpes)
Is there some risk to a straight man who doesn’t do drugs, doesn’t receive anal sex, and doesn’t have genital herpes (or refrains from sex during any outbreaks of it if he has it) or sleep with women when he has a cut or injured penis, of picking up HIV from sex without these things?
There might be… maybe. But if so, it’s almost certainly vanishingly smaller than the CDC’s 1 out of 2,000 number, which includes all manner of men with open cuts and sores on their members that predispose them to infection with HIV.
So far as I can tell, the risk of infection from this disease – that is the single most focused-upon STD by far in the media – is almost (or completely) zero for a completely straight man who doesn’t do drugs or have sex when his member is wounded… whether he’s wearing a condom or not.
(of course, if you’re a woman, I’d still be worried – you can never tell for sure if that handsome new beau you’ve just met likes to play bottom to a top some of the time, or has a sore-producing STD he hasn’t told you about that might predispose him to this and just isn’t flaring up at the moment – no free pass for girls, I’m afraid)
