The Polyamorous Misanthrope

I have heard and done some research on my own but have not found a definitive answer to the following question.

Is HIV transmission possible through cunnilingus?

There isn’t a definitive answer. Sorry!

Please understand that I am not a doctor, so I am answering to the best of my knowledge based on what I know about disease vectors (a little better than the average layman, but not much!)

The best we can come up with is that there are a couple of documented cases that they think are likely to have occurred during cunnilingus, but in terms of statistical risk of life¹ , it’s less risky than you getting into your car and driving to the grocery store. That theoretical risk is a bit higher if it is certain that blood is involved — ferinstance, cunnilingus during menstruation, especially if the person doing it has just brushed his teeth, so has teeny tiny open wounds in the mouth.

But it’s quite true that oral sex is not exactly risk free!

That said, I recommend getting regular testing for STDs in general. AIDS is hardly the only STD out there, and there are some others that will kill you, some that won’t kill you and still completely suck! Make sure you take appropriate precautions. I really recommend Assessing STD Risk Tolerance to learn a bit more about STD risk assessment. She’s remarkably sensible.

The only thing special about STDs are how fragile the little bugs are and how intimate you have to be to get ‘em. We don’t flip out when you get strep throat, and if untreated, that can certainly develop complications that can kill you. I rather dislike the stigma and shame attached because it prevents us from treating them sensibly.

¹For HIV only! There are other STDs for which oral sex is very much a transmission activity!

Anyone over the age of 13 ought to know that sex can have consequences.

We all know you can get pregnant, get a disease, blah, blah, blah, that safe sex isn’t¹ and that contraception is not always perfect.

Do you ever talk about this sort of thing with your partners? If you don’t/haven’t, please do.

Things that it would be helpful to discuss openly with any partner that might be affected in a poly situation:

What do we agree to do if there is an unexpected pregnancy?

Remember this is not necessarily just between two people. If there are other long-term partners, especially legal spouses and/or other children, involved it’s going to affect a lot of lives. The adults in the situation need to sit down and make sure that everyone knows how everyone else feels so that intelligence plans can be made. If none of you are parents, talk to people who are – especially poly parents. Things you think would be big issues when you’re childless might not be, and things you think are trivial aren’t. Talk. Discuss. Get information.

Also, it’s important to take something into account: Sometimes pregnancy can trip some very visceral responses in a woman, especially when it’s her first pregnancy. If you find yourself in this position, please keep in mind that you’re bound by agreements you make. Yes, I am alluding to the fact that if you agree not to have a child in the case of an unexpected pregnancy and then change your mind about it, it’s pretty tacky to demand that the father be involved with time and/or money. Ultimately it’s your choice, but put on your big girl panties about it and let it be your choice.

If you’re a guy and you’re not interested in more children, and want the pregnancy to be terminated in case of an accident, make sure you have on your big boy pants, too, and be diligent about the birth control as well as choosing not to have sex partners where you think they may be unsure. Ideally, get snipped. I’m hoping everyone’s being loving here. It’s not loving not to let partners know how you feel and why, then step up to the plate and take responsibility for those feelings’ consequences. ‘Kay?

Decide on what you consider is intelligent risk management in terms of STDs.

I like this article very much, and really encourage you to check it out. It’s incredibly sensible and doesn’t sugar coat, but isn’t a Chicken Little type STD article either. Check out all the links down the right sidebar, too. Good stuff. This is better than anything I could write, so I’m not going to bother to reinvent the wheel.

If someone does get an STD, how will you handle it? How do you plan to tell everyone who needs to know. (Hint: If you’re having sex with them, you need to tell them. Then they need to tell everyone they’re having sex with and so on… Got it? Not telling someone is being a damn’ asshole. Don’t do that).

If you’re interested in being loving, you need to talk stuff out first. That whole “swept away in the heat of the moment” seems great for a movie. But do you really think your life should be a good movie script?² More to the point, would you wish that on people you love?

¹ There are those who refer to risk management when it comes to sex and disease as “safer sex” as the more accurate term. Nothing’s perfect.
²As a writer of fiction, I sure as hell hope not. Good fiction means torturing your characters!

This week’s column is by guest writer, Jenny Ford.

So you’ve researched the risk profile of all your favorite sexual activities and set your preferred standards for safer sex. Do you think you are now protected from the sexually-transmitted pestilence to which your immoral lifestyle exposes you?

Think again.

This is a true story. Only the names have been changed, to protect the not-so-innocent. The bottom line is – you can never be as safe in an open system as you are in a closed one.

So here we are. Lots of attractive, healthy poly adults practicing various versions of polyamory. Here is A, and his two girlfriends, B and C. They have been together for 8 and 15 years respectively, and long ago did the testing, embraced unprotected sex within the V, and practice condom use with meticulous care in any other sexual relationships. Here is X and Y, married 20 years, who just a few years ago became poly, using condoms with everyone but each other.

C meets X. Things go well. 18 months down the track, A and B begin to wonder if C and X will want to stop using condoms. B realises that her health would then be dependent on the safer sex practices of X and Y, people she has met once or twice at birthday parties. Egad!

But it gets worse.

Y meets J, who is already having unprotected sex with his girlfriend, K, as she does with her girlfriend, L. Things go well with Y and J.

Now, if Y and J want to move to unprotected sex, they need to call a conference of A, B and C, J, K and L, and X and Y, get everyone tested, agree on standards of safer sex behavior and decide how to handle notifications of any possible heightened risks.

Think that’s starting to get a little unwieldy?

Consider this – all that preparation and negotiation is only mitigating risks relating to relatively LOW transmissibility diseases – HIV, Hep C, syphilis, and so on. Granted, they are the ones more likely to kill or do permanent damage, so they are the ones on which we focus our attention. Even working with, say in this case, eight people, it should be possible to ascertain that any given infection is not already in the group, and then make sure the risk of it entering is minimised.

But it’s a completely different problem when you consider something which is more easily transmissible (albeit an irritation, not a life-threatening disease) – something like thrush (candida albicans).¹

Thrush can live in digestive tracts, mouths, noses, and so on. It can be transmitted via objects such as clothing and towels, via the hands from genitals to mouth, and even, although less often, during relatively safer sexual practices such as tongue-kissing.

Even if every one of the eight people took the once-only tablet which pounds your liver but kills the candida everywhere, unless they all stopped tongue-kissing outside the group, eventually, someone would get re-infected, and it would be back to Square 1.

Whereas in a monogamous pairing, once the thrush is gone it’s gone, period. Even a polyfi group could keep themselves free of it. It’s that damn free love that comes back to bite us on the ass (or in this case, somewhere close to that vicinity).

Now I am not advocating monogamy, or even polyfidelity, as a solution to this problem. For me, dealing with regular re-infections of something irritating but not life-threatening is preferable to shutting down all my kissing friends and swearing off any external sexual partners. That’s my choice, but I’m making it with my eyes open.

I don’t kid myself that by waving the magic condom-wand over my life I make it as germ-free as a staid monogamous paired life would be.

The reason I am writing this article now is that in the above fable it would be very easy for the couple X and C, or the couple Y and J, to think about the risks and make the decisions about their fluid bonding behaviors /without even realising how many other people will be affected/ by those choices. In addition, when it comes to things which get around condoms, it’s often the case that people never even stop to think in the first place. How many people start using dental dams during oral sex when they have a cold sore, for example?

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me being in the position of Y and having thrush /come back/ post the nuclear holocaust tablet before I actually went through the “how can I prevent this from happening again” thought process – and realised I couldn’t. Not without giving up sex (or even tongue-kissing) with anyone who won’t be thoroughly fidelitous.

And I’m a reasonably intelligent, well-educated, risk-averse, rational thinker. If I had never thought this through, I’m guessing lots of other people haven’t either.

So I am saying – think it through. Not just about HIV and Hepatitis C. Find out about herpes, thrush, genital warts, and everything else. I’m not telling you what to do with the information. I’m just saying, make sure you understand what your current practices will and won’t do to protect you, and be sure you are willing to take the consequences.

In my case, possibly because I don’t know enough about my liver, I figure I’ll just keep taking the liver-blasting tablets as required. Ask me in 20 years whether I think I made the right choice …

¹Note from the Goddess of Java: We Americans call this a yeast infection colloquially.

Jenny Ford has an Honours degree in Psychology and works as a business consultant and executive coach …. by day. In her other life, she is a polyamorous, bisexual community-builder and relationships coach. She has husband, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, three children (though the teenager could count as three all on her own), and two cats. She lives in Sydney, Australia with a subset of the above family members and is currently researching how to bend space and time so she can live with ll the people she loves in all the places they want to live without leaving Sydney. Expressions of appreciation for Jenny should take the form of Lindt chocolate balls. Bonus points if they are the black 60% cocoa ones.

What They Don’t Tell You About STDs and Non-Monogamy

© 2007, Jenny Ford

Used by permission, all rights reserved

Originally published at

http://www.polyfamilies.com/misanthrope20041127.html

“Honey, I’ve just been tested and I found out I have a curable STD. You should go to the doctor’s office and get yourself checked out.”

Quick, what’s your reaction?

If it is not something along the lines of, “Auugggh cooties, leprosy, howcouldyouDOthistome!?!”, you’re in the minority.

There’s a stigma attached to someone having an STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) and I find it a little illogical. I didn’t used to. I mean, my God did I share it! Then I did some research.

Back about a year ago, I had strep throat. I thought it was just a sore throat. It wasn’t until I broke out in hives (meaning that yes, this had progressed to scarlet fever), that I got the throat culture done. Complications from untreated strep aren’t pleasant, and can even kill you. The disease is contagious with intimate and even not so intimate contact. Even so, the disease can be treated well into the stages where complications arise. Ten days of penicillin and I was good to go.

When I told my wife, “Honey, I’ve got strep, and since you’ve had a cold and a sore throat, it would be a good idea if you went to the doctor to get a throat culture.”, her reaction was not “Auugggh cooties, leprosy, howcouldyouDOthistome!?!”

Nope, she didn’t really like going to the doctor or taking antibiotics or any of that, but there was no heavy emotive response. And this was with a disease that has an analogous risk to many STDs and is more life threatening than many.

I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of STDs here, and I am certainly not trying to say that you shouldn’t protect yourself and your partners. Quite the opposite. There really are diseases out there that can kill you or play havoc with your sex life. The thing is, most are treatable, especially if caught in time.

My own recommendation is to have some sort of routine STD testing schedule — once every few months (3-6 is usual), or when you add a new partner. There are several ways to do this. You can go to your GP if you like. Some people don’t feel entirely comfortable doing this, and it’s understandable. Another option is to go to Planned Parenthood. The link provided is a link to a search engine where you can enter your zip code and find the closest PP to you. I’ve had good experiences with PP, myself. They charge on a sliding scale and often take insurance. They’re very careful about confidentiality. Other organizations offer testing, and you can find one local to you by looking it up in the yellow pages. Some are free or offer testing on a sliding scale, other are not.

I do strongly encourage safer sex practices. The link is to a Planned Parenthood article that discusses the subject pretty well, and does an excellent job of discussing a range of sexual activities that can increase both pleasure and safety.

But, let’s all drop the cootie response, ‘kay? Many STDs, while certainly serious, do not deserve a stigma. After all a stigma is a good way to discourage treatment, and none of us want that!