What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
5.05.2009 | Blog, Sexual Health
- 19 million new Sexually Transmitted Infections will occur this year
- STI’s cost the health care industry $15 Billion annually
- More than half of all of us will get one at some time in our lives
- Two-thirds of new cases are in people under 25 years of age
On Monday, I gave a three-hour workshop entitled, “The Local Impact of STI’s” (Sexually Transmitted Infections) for area counselors, social workers, school nurses and public health professionals. My three objectives were that participants would learn more about the most common STI’s, understand the emotional impact of a diagnosis, and see the importance of connecting patients/clients to resources for education and support.
Note: STI’s and STD’s are the same thing. “STD” is still the most widely used term, but there is a shift to using “Infection” instead of “Disease.” The term “disease” implies that a person is sick, but most people with STI’s don’t know that they are infected and/or don’t experience noticeable symptoms.
- 20% of Americans have Genital Herpes
- 90% of the people with Herpes don’t know they have it
Since I had several school nurses in attendance, we spent some time talking about the sex ed that kids receive in schools. We discussed reasons why the STI rate among American teens is so much higher than in other countries.
- The U.S. teen Chlamydia rate is 20 times higher than in France
- The U.S. teen Gonorrhea rate is 74 times higher than in France
Although the age at which young people begin sexual activity is about the same, American teens have a higher pregnancy rate, higher abortion rate, and higher birth rate than most industrialized nations. But why?
A big factor is condom usage. True, condoms don’t offer 100% protection against STI’s, but a condom or dental dam is far better than using nothing. Yet, Abstinence-Only Sex Education stresses the failure rate of condoms, and teachers cannot instruct teens on how to use one properly.
Theoretically, abstinence would be 100% reliable protection against Sexually Transmitted Infections, but…
- In one study, “virgins” had the same rate of STI’s as sexually active teens
- In communities with a large number of teens pledging abstinence, there’s a higher rate of STI’s (9% vs 5.5%)
So, what accounts for the large numbers of Americans, especially teenagers, who contract a Sexually Transmitted Infection each year? I think one important factor is the love/hate relationship our society has with sex. On one hand, we produce billions of dollars worth of porn and export it all over the world, and on the other hand we’re still pitching a fit about Janet Jackson’s breast exposed for 2 seconds.
We need to become more comfortable thinking and talking about sex. The obsession/repulsion reaction to sex has many damaging implications, including the the very real problem of Sexually Transmitted Infections. Not only do STI’s cause physical pain, but they cause emotional pain as well.
- In men, STI’s increased the overall risk of depression by 50%
- In women, STI’s increased the risk of depression by 80%
What you don’t know can hurt you.
5.06.2009
Nice information about Condoms. You doing very well job! Keep it up.
5.06.2009
I’m curious if you think/believe/know that pornography is more relevant to discussions about our attraction/repulsion as a culture with sex than, say, advertising and pop media (television, movies, music, music videos) which are completely saturated with sexuality? Britney Spears started her career at age 15 or 16 singing pop songs dripping with sexual content and sexual imagery in the music videos. There was practically a count down clock in Times Square until the instant she was “legal” and it didn’t stop us from drooling all over here until that moment arrived. But as soon as she got married and decided to have children, not only did we get bored, we got repulsed. This seems a lot more dysfunctional to me than pornography. Is this a subjective area or is there data which supports a claim that something specific, like pornography, is the correlative measure of our love/hate relationship to sex rather than popular media?
5.06.2009
I used the porn example because there was a recent news item that showed how the more “red” or conservative states were the ones who consumed the most pornography. (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html).
I totally agree that popular media is the same way. I started to list other examples in my post, but deleted them because I didn’t want to go on too much of a bunny trail.
Whether we’re talking about porn stars or Disney pop starlets, the issue is the same for me. It’s that Americans apparently loves sex (ie. Victoria’s Secret lingerie models are minor celebrities), but they can’t talk about it in a holistic and thoughtful way. I think a lot of that tension is the result of a “sex=bad/sin/shame” mentality. We will watch it on TV, view it on the internet, read about it in magazines, gossip about it with our co-workers — but most people don’t know how to have honest and open communication about sex with the people they’re actually having sex with.
I should clarify that obviously not every American “loves sex.” In fact, I work with a lot of women who don’t like sex at all. Yet, the cultural love/hate attitude towards sex has a lot to do with that as well. The media, etc spends a lot of time telling women what to wear, what to say, and how to “blow his mind” in bed — but they do very little to educate women about their bodies, about what real sex is like, about the importance of sensuality, about eroticism, etc.
5.06.2009
I think many women who “don’t like sex at all” are, as you said, a direct result of the love/hate attitude with sex. Men love sex, and women are supposed to be sexy, but having sex makes you a slut (thank you, abstinence-only education!) Therefore, if we women like sex, or admit to liking sex, we must be sluts.
Thanks for writing this post — excellent info!
5.06.2009
Great change paradigm to STI –something you can treat or even cure, vs STD, something that seems lasting. If you can treat/cure, then talking about it makes a difference!