Polyamory on Purpose Archive

Category: STIs

  • Protecting Against STD/STIs: Abstinence/Closed Relationships

    Edited for typos, grammar oopsies and stigmatizing language. April 12, 2018. As should be obvious by now, I am not in any way advocating for any specific relationship style — neither abstinence nor closed relationships would be a comfortable fit for me. There is certainly nothing wrong with open relationships or lots and lots of…

  • Preventing STIs: Be a Smart Slut – Open Relationships, Promiscuity and STIs

    I’m always happy when I only need to make minimal updates to a post. It means I did it right the first time around. Only real change is that the at-home HIV tests are now “available” instead of “coming soon”. Let’s get a big cheer for that! Updated and reposted April 12, 2018 The past…

  • Preventing STIs: Testing Agreements

    This is one of the few posts so far to need significant updates. I removed a lot of stuff that reinforced stigma against STIs. Facts are the same, presentation is different. Updated March 29, 2018. Just going to skim this one, cause I’ll be delving into STI testing in some depth later. But since regular…

  • Protecting Against STIs: Barrier Method

    Updates today include: updated information based on new research/resources, adding information about dental dams, and changing terms for condoms to the inclusive “external” and “internal” condoms. updated March 7, 2018.   Person stuff: I want to say thanks again to everyone who donated to help me fund my visit with my kids and to those…

  • STIs Protection (Introduction)

    Minimal changes here. Mostly just changed STD/STI to STI. The biggest change is the last sentence of the post, which wasn’t there in any form in the original. I intend to spend a bit more time directly addressing STI stigma this time around, starting with a new post inserted into the series next week. The…

  • What are STIs?

    Expanded the “what are STIs” bit to make it clearer that there are infections which aren’t considered STIs that you can still get from sex, because language is weird that way. Other than that mostly cleaned up typos and grammar. Updated October 20, 2017 If I’m going to spend the next couple months discussing STIs,…

  • STIs

    Biggest change here is removing references to “safer sex” where ever possible. As I discussed Sunday, I’ve recently come to the realization that by equating “protecting against STIs” with “safer sex” we’re missing a big part of the safer sex discussion. So I am no long referring to discussing STIs as discussing safer sex, etc…

  • Safe Sex and STIs Wrap Up

    Okay folks, that’s about it for the very lengthy Safe Sex and STIs blog series. If you have any questions I haven’t answered, contact me or leave a comment. We may have a guest post next week. If not, I’ll be picking up Polyamory and Mental Illness.

  • Defining Safe Sex

    Last week I said safe sex means different things to different people. On a personal level, that means each of us needs to define safe sex for ourselves. Today we’re going to walk through defining safe sex. What is means to you, and how you can take steps to keep yourself safe while enjoying the…

  • Zika Virus: A New STI?

    Over the past several months, new reports in the US have focused on a “new” threat: the zika virus. Until recently, zika was believed to be transmitted only by mosquitoes, but there is now new evidence for sexual transmission. Some History The zika virus has been around at least since the 1950s. It was originally…