Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [46]
Avoiding High-Risk Behaviors
Another risk reduction strategy is simply to eliminate some forms of sexual expression from your repertoire. Many people have chosen to forgo forms of sex that involve putting mouths or penises into or near assholes, feeling that the particularly high risks of this form of play are not worth its reward. Others have decided not to engage in any form of penetration with an organic penis. We have never heard of a dildo or a butt plug coming down with an infection.
If all this winds up sounding like no sex at all, please consult a good book about sex—there are hundreds of ways to share really hot sex that don’t involve somebody squirting inside somebody else.
Every decision you make requires that you balance your own desires against your assessment of the risks. Remember when you’re making your decisions that desire is powerful and important and that there’s no point in making rules you can’t live with. One friend of ours points out that safer sex can be like dieting—“I can be really good during the week, but then I binge on the weekends.” On the positive side, expanding your range of hot sexual expression by learning new and exciting ways to have sex can leave you both safe and satisfied.
Finger-Crossing
Simply hoping for the best, or denying that you’re at risk, or pretending that diseases and unwanted pregnancies only happen to other people is not an acceptable strategy. If you don’t have the honesty and courage to face the genuine risks of your sexual behaviors, you certainly don’t have what it takes to be an ethical slut, and we question whether you should be having sex at all.
We are shocked and worried by the levels of denial we see among some sexual communities, who would like to believe that because new treatments have slowed down the progress of HIV that the cure has been found. People are still dying. If your lifestyle seems to make you unlikely to get exposed to HIV, you are still at risk for herpes, hepatitis, HPV, and a host of other diseases. Kinsey’s statistics from back in the 1940s indicated that slightly more than half of relationships that are theoretically monogamous in fact involve sexual contact with outside partners. Get educated, friend, and take care of yourself.
Testing and Prevention
We think it’s essential for ethical sluts to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases on a regular schedule. How frequently depends on the risk factors in your life. Ask your doctor, clinic, or Planned Parenthood office, and follow their advice.
While most STDs are preventable only with barriers and care, recently developed vaccinations can protect you against several potentially deadly forms of hepatitis and, if you aren’t already infected, human papilloma virus. If you engage in nonmonogamous anal or vaginal play, these are a very good idea; they are expensive, but cheaper than getting sick. You’ll still need barriers against all the rest of the microscopic nasties.
Birth Control
Mother Nature is called that for a reason—sometimes it seems like she wants everybody to be a parent. Even when you utterly know that you don’t want to get pregnant this time, some deeper urge can easily lead you to forget a pill or count the days wrong. Birth control involves tricking the busy little eggs and sperm into not doing their jobs and tricking your own instincts into letting you do the trick right.
Birth control technology