With the epic cliffhanger of Lee and Lynn from my last article on how to respond when someone discloses a positive status to you, we left off with an exchange that ended positively. What was missing is a key element to a sexual health conversation, which is testing. When we ideally want to bring it up is when conversations go from being about sex to being about sex with the person you’re talking to. Now before, we used a herpes disclosure as the baseline because it’s unevenly the responsibility of the person with a positive status to disclose that, whereas many sexual encounters don’t begin with that talk as it can “kill the mood.”
Please know, we can make it a sexy conversation. It’s not just, “Do you have anything?” met with a yes or no. Nor is it just, “Do you have a condom?” met with a yes or no.
My experience in sex-positive spaces has shown me that outside of those, we live in something that’s quite the opposite. A sex-negative society isn’t an accurate statement as people continue to have sex, it’s just lacking in transparent communication. Sex-positive spaces encourage and even educate people giving them the tools and support resources to navigate negotiations and conversations about not just sexual desires, but also emotional and physical needs. These spaces prioritize taking responsibility for one’s own needs and communicating them effectively.
The counter to that again isn’t a sex-negative society, but a sex-avoidant society. The examples above prioritize condom use and “knowing” your status, but how much more is it to condom use and knowledge of one’s own status that just goes undiscussed? The kink and BDSM communities do this thing very well where they discuss so much about relating to one another when sharing presence that really ought to be taken into consideration for minimizing risks of STI transmission. “Do you have a condom?” while indicating awareness of safe sex practices like the CDC’s STD Prevention recommendations, but it also leads to harm being done for instance when there’s no penis present to put a condom on. There can be an assumption that the absence of a penis means a false sense of safety or needless use for barriers.
So, what can we learn from Kink/BDSM/Sex-Positive communities to deviate from this sex-avoidant society’s norms of just wearing a condom? We teach people to manage their relationships. We teach people to identify their own needs and encourage the use of a wide range of communication tools that could best work for their style of communicating with others. We offer practice asking for what we need as well as hearing and being okay with the word “no.” We need to familiarize ourselves with navigating rejection. On both the receiving and giving end of rejection, we have uncomfortable feelings, and regulating those is a necessity for having healthy relationships. On top of that, a verbal, “yes” doesn’t always mean that. I think the pandemic gave us 2 years of not having the kind of practice necessary to read nonverbal cues and body language of a person, conditioning us to digital communication cues. This set us BACK, and there’s so much miscommunication I see and discomfort in people interacting out in the wild, seeking comfort in their mobile devices and not being able to be present with one another.
We address the sexual health communication by directly tackling the communication-communication. The more practice and education we get with this, the more easily it translates to specific encounters. Initiating a conversation about STI testing and sexual health doesn’t feel like whoever initiates it must have something to share, or that they’re paranoid. It’s just a natural progression to connecting sexually to a new partner. Assuming communication leading up to this point is there, it’s an easy transition.
The only thing hotter than someone who knows what they want is someone who can communicate what they want. Just above that, we have someone enthusiastic about giving it to you. Initiating the conversation is a challenge, but one easily worked through. Practice asking people about the last time they had an experience and then listening to them when they share. Share the experiences you have on the topic and make it a point to read their eye contact, body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. The more comfortable you are holding space for that conversation, the more comfortable it’ll be to ask, “so how often do you test for STIs? I typically go 2 times a year,” and then make it a smooth-flowing conversation that continues from talking about sex, or that initiates a talk about sex, if you see it going that way.