Monday, January 5th, 2009
I recently introduced a female partner to dental dams. She was completely unfamiliar with them, but luckily she had some microwave safe plastic wrap on hand for us to use. She’s an intelligent profession woman, older than me, and says that she doesn’t sleep around, but I was sort of surprised that she never heard of dental dams. I shouldn’t be surprised considering how much difficultly I’ve personally had in getting information about lesbian sexual health.
Most safe sex education is very condom-centric. Condoms are certainly important since at least half the population is male or having heterosexual sex. However, heterosexual sex includes more than just penetration, and a woman’s anatomy is more than just a hole. AIDS and pregnancy are not the only things that happen. I’m no expert in STDs or STIs, but I know they can be transmitted by all different types of sex acts and sexual contact. People are willing to put their mouth on another person’s genitals with no barrier methods, but won’t touch penis to vulva without a condom? Even things like yeast infections and bacterial infections can be transmitted sexually. They won’t kill you, but they certainly aren’t fun.
In 1999 in my college health department the nurse told me that if I’m only having sex with women that the risk of STDs was greatly reduced. End of story. She didn’t mention safe sex methods at all. I am not out to any of my current health care providers. At my last trip to the gynecologist I asked for STD testing and got the stink eye. This was in Berkeley too. It makes me wonder what would happen if I had come out to them. I have a new gynecologist now, by the way.
I learned about safe sex methods primarily from porn, which is unfortunately the main source of sex education for many people. I was lucky to be involved with Cyber-Dyke.net where it’s ok to use gloves and dams on camera. I’ve had a hard time working with other adult film producers because they refuse to have condoms, gloves or dams in the film. I’ve made it my own little personal crusade to show safe sex in the films I create.
I just registered for the National Lesbian Health Summit. I’m interested in what other lesbian health issues I might unfamiliar with and how I can help support access and information to health topics for all people.
