Get Fit, Get Healthy, Get Tested!
It’s advisable that all sexually active people get tested before becoming intimate with a new partner, regardless of whether or not symptoms are present. So, if you fall into either one of the following categories, it’s time to get tested: 1) You have symptoms of an STI. Common symptoms include burning, itching, discharge from the penis or vagina, sores, abnormal bleeding, or pelvic pain. 2) You have had sex with another person and did not use a condom or dental dam. A person can have an STI for several months or years without knowing he or she is infected. So pick up the phone, call your doctor, or drop by a local Planned Parenthood facility to set up an appointment.
Please Note: As I mentioned earlier, many people, especially women, do not experience any symptoms at all when infected with an STI. Untreated bacterial STIs such as chlamydia or gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility.
What if you and your partner are ready to “get serious”? In other words, you are ready to be in a committed, exclusive relationship and want to say bye-bye to the barriers? The best thing to do is to use condoms for at least six months and then get a complete workup of STI tests. If the tests are negative, you can say goodbye to the barriers as long as you remain exclusive. If there was a positive STI result, it’s important for you and/or your partner to get treated first and speak with your doctor about potentially infecting your partner with your particular STI.
A Touchy Subject: Masturbation
While safer sex is not 100-percent guaranteed to keep you from contracting a STI, there is something that can: masturbation. It’s one of the safest ways you can engage in getting (or giving) pleasure with minimal risk of contracting an infection or unintended pregnancy. While masturbation may be debated and/or prohibited according to Jewish law, from a medical perspective it’s a relatively safe and enjoyable way to explore your body as well as your partner’s body.
The Risk of Unprotected Sex
So, with all this talk about safer sex, what is it that you are protecting yourself from exactly? Here’s a quick overview.
Bacterial STIs
Common bacterial STIs include chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and vaginal infections. These infections are typically transmitted through fluid-based contact, with the exception of syphilis, which can also be transmitted via contact with infected sores on the skin. Chlamydia and gonorrhea are two of the most common bacterial STIs found in young people today with 3 million new cases each year! STIs caused by bacteria can be treated and cured with antibiotics.
Common Viral STIs
Viral STIs are known as the 4 Hs: HIV, Herpes, Hepatitis, and HPV. Herpes and HPV can be spread through skin-to-skin contact. As I mentioned earlier, one of the challenges with these viruses is that it can be spread even when there are no visible sores on the skin. STIs caused by viruses cannot be cured with medication, but they can be treated with medication, which can reduce and/or alleviate the symptoms of the infection.
Transmission of STIs
STIs are typically transmitted through oral, anal, and vaginal sex. If you have unprotected vaginal or anal intercourse, you are at risk for:
Trichomoniasis
Gonorrhea
Chlamydia
Syphilis
Chancroid
Human papilloma virus (HPV)-also known as genital warts; some strains of the virus cause genital warts; others are associated with cervical cancer
Herpes simplex virus (HSV), which can cause genital herpes
Hepatitis B
Pubic lice
Scabies
HIV, which can lead to AIDS
If you have unprotected oral sex, you are at risk for:
Gonorrhea
Syphilis
Chancroid
Herpes simplex virus
Hepatitis B virus
If you engage in sexual touching, also known as sexual stimulation (some slang terms include making out, hooking up, or fondling) without sexual intercourse, you are at risk for:
Herpes simplex virus
Pubic lice
Scabies
Conclusion
STIs are a reality, and they can happen to you. While there are no documented cases of anyone contracting an STI from a toilet seat, the women I see in the ladies room certainly take every precaution to avoid one! So why not take the same level of precaution when having sex? Do you? I hope so. If not, I hope this post has given you a starting point for practicing safer sex. If we took as much care with our safer-sex practices as we do with our hands-free acrobatics in the restroom, maybe the statistics of sexually transmitted infections would be less staggering. Let’s make it happen!
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
I attended and participated in last month’s Jewrotica event. The engaging performers and Ayo, our inviting host, inspired the audience to feel like one big community. What a great way to inspire our community to embrace sex as a beautiful thing that can be fun, exciting, sacred, sensual, ridiculous, scary and everything in between!
While many people fear the “sex talk,” Jewrotica offers an opportunity for writers and audiences to speak about sexuality in a open and safe space. When I attended a Jewrotica reading, I heard stories that reminded me that love takes many forms, and that expressing it is a vital part of who we are as a people.
At Jewrotica’s Evening of Bedside Readings, students declaimed monologues on sexual encounters that had a Jewish twist. At Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the speakers pushed their own boundaries by performing a range of explicit narratives that challenged how the audience thought of the relationship to Judaism and sex. During the speakers’ preparation, the arguments about which narratives would be appropriate forced students to take a stand and voice their opinion on their own beliefs about Judaism an… Read more
I stepped out of my comfort zone to be a part of this. I was glad to open up the topic of sexuality in my community. We are trying to build a safe space to talk about sex. The result I am most happy about coming from this event is that hopefully now my friends know they can come and talk to me, that I can be their ‘safe space’.
Jewrotica is something that the community has needed for a long time so that people can actually learn, express and share and have good relationships without having to stumble through life. Check out the site and learn something. Have fun!
What an incredible night Jewrotica was!!!! There was this fantastic moment, in a sea of Jews of all sexualities, ages, backgrounds and denominations, that I realized we were all in this together! I hope that there are many more events coming to Austin soon!
I’m Heshy Fried from Frum Satire and I am very, very frum. And I completely support Jewrotica – it’s doing a service to the frum community. We need some sort of kosher sexual education. Jewrotica even has a system that allows frum filters to filter out certain things to make it PG for us. It’s mamish Torah. It’s like The Little Midrash Says for sex.
I’m so glad that Jewrotica is represented here at Jewlicious! It’s bringing voices that need to be heard in the Jewish discussion and Jewish climate environment.
Learning about sex and what’s right and wrong when it comes to sex from a Biblical standpoint was an eye opening experience. I completely enjoyed it and think something like this could be a very cool thing to bring to even high school aged Jewish youth groups.
Bedside Reading with Jewrotica was funny, sexy, and hot all at once. The readings were honest about all kinds of sexuality, but the highlight of the evening was definitely the confessions, written by audience participants. Nobody knew who wrote them, and most were tell-alls that would make your bubbe blush. Unless your bubbe was very, very cool. Then maybe she’d make YOU blush!
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