Did you know that today is World AIDS Day? No?

Well, did you know that there are nearly 33 million people living with HIV on this planet? Or that over 15 million children worldwide have been orphaned by AIDS? Or that AIDS kills 6,000 people every day in Africa?

Yeah, those are some pretty grave statistics.

And it’s not just Africa that is affected by the spread of this horrible disease. There are currently over 1.5 million people living with HIV in the U.S., many of which don’t even know. That means that “usually” practicing safe sex is not enough. Neither is trusting that your partner is clean when he or she tells you they are.

There is only one way to protect yourself against HIV, AIDS and every other STD out there:

Wrap it up.
No glove, no love.
Use a condom. Every time.

We must all do our part to stop the spread of AIDS. You can help by raising money, helping to educate, or simply doing your part and practicing safe sex. Protect yourself.

My first boyfriend was uncircumcised. At the young, inexperienced age of fourteen, I realized this only because one day while chilling on the futon in the den having a post BJ-sesh chat, he informed me that some of the girls he had been with (because as a sixteen-year-old senior, he was far more sexually experienced than my freshman self) were initially freaked out by the au natural state of his Scottish-born ween. Huh, I remember thinking. He’s not circumcised. So THAT’s what that looks like.

It’s not like I was totally ignorant. I had been reading Seventeen and YM since I was nine. I knew all about hymens and G-spots and that you couldn’t get pregnant from a boy shooting his load into the open waters of a hot tub, so I certainly knew that some gents had foreskins and some did not; I just wasn’t really sure what that meant, anatomically.

I didn’t actually fully experience the difference between the two until about ten months later when my boyfriend and I were “on a break” and I hooked up with another boy, birthed in the good old U.S. of A. and fully shorn to prove it. As we sweatily made out on the couch, I jammed my hand in to his shorts, confidently grabbed a hold of his manparts, and…proceeded to give him the rawest handjob in the history of the earth.

For those of you who are lost, allow me to explain. On an uncircumcised boy, one can give some kind of an HJ without any sort of lube at all. Granted, as I have aged I have learned that some lube is certainly preferable to none in any case, but a fluid up and down motion causing some pleasurable sensations is achievable. But on the circumcised penis? Without the pliable sheath of the foreskin acting as a kind of…sleeve or whatever*, all that an unlubed HJ will achieve is some serious chafing and sad faces all around. Aww. Read More »

Q: I gave head to a guy I met when I was studying abroad, and now I’m worried about STDs. We didn’t use a condom, but he didn’t orgasm. Should I still get tested?

A: Don’t get yourself too worked up over it, but yes, you should get tested. Really, you should get tested after every new sexual partner (yes, oral sex counts). I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a doctor–which is especially why you should see one–but I do strongly urge you to go get tested, for your health and more so, your peace of mind.

The greater the quantity of infected semen you’re exposed to, the greater the chances are that you may have something–of course, that’s assuming in the first place that the guy even has an STD. Since he didn’t ejaculate, you were at most, only exposed to pre-cum–so yes, it’s technically possible you caught something if he was infected, but the risk is low.

For something like HIV or hepatitis B, which is passed through the bloodstream, you would have to have had abrasions or cuts in your mouth (from a dental visit or biting your tongue, for example.) The same isn’t true for genital warts or herpes, which can spread through contact with the lesion. Even if you inspected his package with a microscope before going downtown, and you’re sure you didn’t see anything suspicious, remember that it’s still possible (but not super likely) to catch something even if there is no active, visible outbreak. Read More »

We all know the dangers of having sex too early, but could there be a risk to having sex too late?

A new study conducted by Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies claims “Those who lose their virginity at a later age — around 21 to 23 years of age — tend to be more likely to experience sexual dysfunction problems late.”

Even though this new study makes it seem like losing your virginity too late will cause your body to freak out, in actuality, what the numbers really show is that waiting to have sex is sometimes an indicator of preexisting bodily issues.

And to that conclusion, I say, well, of course. Read More »

If you live in Thailand and feel a little embarrassed about buying condoms, just take out a home loan.

Kasikorn Bank recently launched a “condoms for confidence” campaign at around 60 branches in Thailand, hoping free prophylactics will help raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the “generally conservative” country.

An unidentified bank spokesman explained the thinking behind “condoms for confidence” was the revival of a government awareness campaign that has “fizzled out”, leaving many Thai teenagers in the dark about sexual awareness. Read More »

For the two of you still reading past that headline, I’m sorry to say that the disturbing image is in fact a reality—as I unfortunately found out when my grandmother confided details of her sex life that confirmed that everyone is indeed having more sex than me.

Well, it seems that the elderly are having so much sex, that the New York City Health Department has been targeting the older age group for condom giveaways and free HIV testing. The City Council has even budgeted $1 million toward HIV education for older people—money well-spent, considering that a study by the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America projected that within the next decade, the majority of HIV-infected New Yorkers will be over 50. Read More »

If there weren’t already a million and one reasons to use protection, there’s now one more. A recent study by the CDC has shown that many cases of gonorrhea have become resistant to the drug used for treatment.

What’s even scarier about this is between 700,000 and 800,000 people are infected with gonorrhea each year. I don’t know why this is—I imagine it’s because you’re already fighting a virus—but women infected with gonorrhea are more likely to contract HIV. I searched around for a little bit to try and figure out exactly why this is, and didn’t find a clear explanation. So, if someone knows enlighten me.

Reading the statistics about this can be slightly disarming. I didn’t know that women who take birth control are four times more likely to contract an STD. What else… Nearly 50% of sexually active women contract HPV in their lives. That’s a lot! Women are also more succecptable to STDs.

I don’t want to be preachy, but at this point, we should all know better than to not protect ourselves. Sometimes, it can be easy to get carried away and caught up in the moment, but there are so many things out there now that it’s not worth it. Besides—there are an array of fun condoms out there. I kind of want to try this vibrating one…