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’m into Jewrotica. I went in for my second circumcision.
You may not tell your mom that you’re going to a live Jewrotica reading (or whatever clever name you will dub these events) but you will tell your friends. However, both would be jealous if they find out that they missed it. I think it will only be a matter of time before Jewrotica helps us reclaim the term “Dirty Jew” the way rap music has done for “The ‘N’ Word.” I know I am now proud to be a Dirty Jew!
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.
Such an amazing experience! The Sarah Lawrence Jewrotica workshop was more than I could have ever expected – a comfortable, safe, sultry environment where participants clearly felt good about sharing or listening to each other’s intimate experiences and relating them to sexy stories from the Torah. From the moment the workshop began, Ayo had a sweet presence that was kinetic and spread around the room; her storytelling abilities had everyone enraptured and made the conversation topics relata… Read more
The Jewrotica event “Evening of Jewrotica: Bedside Reading” was awesome. As Master of Confessions, I got to read the deepest, darkest secrets of people in the room out loud… It was scintillating, titillating, and – yes – even educational!
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 love the inclusiveness – there is something for everyone, in and out of the Jewish community.
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!
Jewrotica was everything I had dreamed of and more: sexy attendees, tantalizing confessions, and well-written literature to boot! More importantly, it empowers us Jews to reach inside and own our sexy selves and heritage!
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.
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