Show Your Pride by Practicing Safe Sex
The last few months have been hard for everyone. COVID-19 has brought about the need for social distancing to decrease risk of spreading the disease, and we are witnessing the largest push in our nation’s history for police accountability. For those of us who already feel isolated because of our gender identity or sexuality, the stay-at-home orders can heighten the feelings of anxiety about being LGBTQ. For LGBTQ people of color, anxieties about violence are being exacerbated by recent protests regarding instances of police brutality.
STD Awareness: COVID-19 and Your Sexual Health
The world has found itself in the clutches of a pandemic, and every day we’re learning about the ripple effects this new virus is having in everyone’s lives, not just the lives of those who cross its path. These devastating consequences include millions of people losing their jobs and hospitals stretched so far past capacity that they can’t adequately treat all their patients.
STD Awareness: Can I Get Gonorrhea from Kissing?
Some pretty depressing news hit a couple of months ago, when headlines proclaimed kissing could allow gonorrhea to jump from one person to another.
STD Awareness: Can I Use Plastic Wrap as a Dental Dam During Oral Sex?
If you read this blog — or any sexual health website, really — you’ll probably see dental dams getting a lot of props. A dental dam (not to be confused with a female condom) is a square piece of latex that can cover the vaginal opening or the anus. Anyone wishing to avoid the oral transmission of STDs like herpes, gonorrhea, HPV, syphilis, chlamydia, and intestinal parasites, dental-dam advocates say, should use a latex barrier. Most people, however, have probably never even seen a dental dam, and they are not widely used. Perhaps their unpopularity is related to myths about oral sex being safe sex (it’s not!); perhaps it’s due to dental dams being expensive or difficult to find.
STD Awareness: Is Bacterial Vaginosis a Sexually Transmitted Disease?
Bacterial vaginosis, or BV, is the most common vaginal infection among people 15 to 44 years of age. It’s caused by an overgrowth of harmful bacteria, such as Gardnerella vaginalis. A healthy vagina hosts thriving populations of Lactobacillus bacteria species, but when these “good” bacteria are crowded out by certain types of “bad” bacteria, the vaginal ecosystem can be shifted, causing BV.
STD Awareness: Asymptomatic Shedding of Herpes
Q: Can I catch herpes if my partner isn’t having an outbreak?
A: Yes, your partner can transmit the virus even if he or she isn’t experiencing symptoms. In fact, most genital herpes infections are transmitted in the absence of symptoms.
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