SPFPP 262: OHA Series - Sports and Sex

Elle (She/They) 35 year old Mother, Sex Worker and Educator who’s had experience with chlamydia, HPV and oral HSV shares a powerful perspective with us on how bias shows up from health care providers when sitting across from someone who IS comfortable talking about sex. The greatest analogy here was from how prepared we are for sports, but not really and how we are prepared for sex . . . but not really. The similarities are described in this podcast episode. If we all knew the risks of playing football for example, would we sign up for it just because it’s fun? We aren’t nearly as well prepared for sex, but we do it anyway and deal with the outcomes of it. What does preparation look like? For football, we don’t explore every potential injury and then consent to participation, it’s just wear a helmet. For sex, we don’t explore every potential injury/infection, it’s just wear a condom. Elle speaks very well through points of our ongoing SPFPP messaging of “Sexual health is mental health” given we want health care providers to see patients as whole humans rather than a consequence of an action that may not align with that provider’s on values. As we wrap up this series for the Oregon Health Authority, we again see that patients need better resources to navigate STIs in and out of the doctor’s office, and that it often takes a diagnosis for someone to begin to learn the things they wish they learned from their doctor.