Talking about sexually transmitted infections can be tricky. Most of the time, sex educators focus on how to have the conversation before you have sex. Reid Mihalko’s safer sex elevator pitch is a really good format for that: Reid’s Safer Sex Elevator Speech Write down your answers for each and then try it out on […]

I’m always intrigued by the ways that language shapes how we think about sex. Even seemingly small shifts in how we talk about sex can affect how we behave and feel about it. ABCNews.com posted an article yesterday with the title Money Seems to Matter for Teen Girls, Condoms. And if you look at the […]

This post first appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. I don’t recall when I first heard about AIDS.I was 11 when the first cases were documented by the CDC in 1981, but it took a while before the news percolated down to me. I remember being 12 or 13 and the panic that hit everywhere. […]

As a sex educator, I’ve been advocating for both risk reduction and harm reduction. In risk reduction, the goal is to lessen the chances that something unpleasant or dangerous might happen. When it comes to driving, for example, anti-lock brakes are risk reduction because they make it less likely that you’ll get into an accident. […]

This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. For years, safer sex advocates have been saying that self-esteem has a huge effect on how much people engage in risk-reduction and harm-reduction behaviors. That’s why many of the most effective intervention programs & organizations, whether online like Scarleteen.com or in-person like the StopAIDS Project, offer […]

There’s a great piece on HuffPo about our continuing reluctance to deal with preventing sexually transmitted infections. Here’s the opening: Among the many vital health issues not addressed by healthcare reform is the state of our sexual health. There are 19 million new sexually transmitted disease (STD) infections in the United States each year according […]

Via Erosblog.com Back in 1976, everybody’s favorite webslinger (well, everyone but J. Jonah Jameson, the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Kingpin and other baddies), teamed up with Planned Parenthood to offer some safer sex advice to the kiddies. While some of the info is out of date (like “A doctor can cure [VD] with a […]