Multiple partners & STI Transmission

If you have ever Googled an STI or looked up the causes of genital irritation or infection, your search results are likely to offer a combination of the same four phrases:

"Multiple sex partners"

"Drug Use"

"Paid sex" or "engaging with sex workers"

"Anal sex" or "high risk among homosexual men"

How accurate is it to list these as potential causes of an STI? Let's find out.

MULTIPLE SEX PARTNERS (MSP)

What do doctors really mean when they list MSP as a potential cause of STI transmission? 

Do they mean the act of having multiple partners at a time, or over the course of a lifetime?

Unfortunately, there's no concrete answer. 

While epidemiologists and WHO use MSP as an indicator to examine the spread of STIs in communities (along with indicators like age, location, signs/symptoms, etc.), the nuances of this indicator is lost when medical journals and blogs attempt to publish clickbait.

So how does having multiple sex partners actually impact our risk of exposure to STIs?

It's a game of probability.

The more often you step out and try to cross a street, the higher the risk of you getting hit by a car, right? Not because you did something wrong, but because you had to repeat an event that came with associated risks.

Another reason why MSP increases the risk of infection, is the bacteria that naturally occurs on our bodies. Even with protected forms of sex, it's natural for a certain level of bacteria to be exchanged between bodies. 

When new bacteria is introduced to your body, especially your genital region, it throws off the natural bacterial balance that protects your body and reduces your body's resistance to larger infections and irritation.

But you can catch STIs from monogamous partners too.

Let's not forget that.

DRUG USE

Consumption of drugs and alcohol does not directly cause STIs. But sharing needles does put you at risk.

Sharing drug equipment that may come in contact with other people's body fluids increases the risk of transmission.

Additionally, if you are likely to engage in sexual acts under the influence of substance, doctors worry about you forgetting to use proper protection when drunk or otherwise inebriated. That's all it is. 

Drugs do not equate to STIs. Alcohol does not equate to STIs.

But lowered inhibitions leading to low protection during sex and higher chances of body-fluid exchanges? That's the issue.

PAID SEX, ENGAGING WITH SEX WORKERS

One of the reasons why sex workers are listed as a risk of STIs is because their clients may pay, bully, harass or coerce them into engaging in unprotected sexual acts. 

When your source of livelihood comes from a form of physical labour, you are much more likely to take care of your body and regularly have it tested.

While the media tends to vilify sex workers and portray them as irresponsible, in reality, they are far more likely to make the most of legal and healthcare services when made accessible to them.

Your problem does not lie with the sex work community, it lies with the disrespectful and abusive clients, and a flawed system that does not offer legal protection and accessible healthcare services to sex workers.

ANAL SEX AND ANAL PLAY

Bacteria does not care for your sexual orientation.Viruses do not care for your sexual orientation.

More importantly, anal play and anal sex are not acts limited to the gay community.

Anyone who enjoys anal stimulation may indulge in anal sex and we are all at equal risk of infection, regardless or gender, sex or sexual orientation.

Why? Because the anus is not only rich in bacteria that protects the skin from external irritants, it is also composed of a thin lining of skin.

This layer of skin is a little more prone to microcuts than the skin on our external genitalia and is susceptible to having external irritants or bacteria introduced into the bloodstream through those microcuts.

But if it’s true that these factors do impact the spread of infection in some way, why get tedious about the language used to build awareness? 

Because it promotes monogamy, abstinence, & celibacy until marriage, and discourages all forms of sexual curiosity and liberation.

It vilifies people who may use drugs and alcohol recreationally and responsibly, and further ostracises people who may be struggling with addictions.

It vilifies sex workers and the people who responsibly engage with them, and erases the validity of sex work as a form of labour.

It vilifies the LGBTQ+ community and forces them to take blame for issues that are fueled by poor sex education and abysmal healthcare services.

So why does this mentality towards sexually transmitted infections still exist?

Because the world of science and academia was, and still is, dominated by white, cis groups with eurocentric standards for sex and sexuality.

Studies that are being published today are still citing problematic papers from 10-20 years ago and those papers were probably built on problematic, racist, sexist, casteist, homophobic and transphobic papers from 40 years ago.

There's no such thing as perfectly unbiased research. The influence of colonial practices of celibacy, abstinence and monogamy had a huge impact on how we perceive non-white sexuality and how we studied it.

If the author of a paper believes that monogamy and abstinence are indicators of civilised behaviour or superior relationships, he is more likely to study non-monogamous individuals and communities as inferior. 

This type of bias is rampant in the field of social sciences.

THE TAKE-AWAY

Question everything you read. Question everything you hear.

Even the content you see on Sangya.

Bias is everywhere and we all have our blind spots. The purpose of this page and our content was never for one-way facilitation, but to help you with some of your research on certain subjects and to encourage curiosity.

Our main objective is to build material for sexuality education as a community, not to turn ourselves into singular sources of information on any subject.

So the next time you read an academic paper or an article, take a step back. Ask yourself what biases the authors may carry when they tell you how to live your life and examine how much truth lies in every word they publish.

It's within your right to do so.