GOLDEN HOUR by Billie Gold

Girl Talk

As a woman whose only sexual partners are women - except the odd one that slips through the net if I’m feeling fancy - and having had a recent chat with a friend about having multiple partners and safe sex, I decided to do a little digging around statistics regarding how often people who identify as lesbian are actually getting checked - do we think of ourselves as at risk?

Having lived a straight life for many years, I have been no stranger to a sexual health clinic, getting checked for STIs, having my birth control changed and regular check ups. Sexual health was commonplace, even with a monogamous (I think) relationship, so why when I came out and had same-sex partners did I no longer have the “I should get checked” thought after a new partner that I used to?

Granted, the main reason for getting checked while in a heterosexual relationship was HIV, syphilis and pregnancy. While it is very rare to contact HIV in a same-sex relationship with a woman, it still happens, along with all the other usual suspects such as chlamydia and herpes, however I have never once slept with a woman who used a condom on a sex toy, or a dental dam, surely this is the girl version of barebacking?

Our community is fairly good with spreading the message about safe sex, protection is usually somewhere in a bar to simply pick up, but there’s practically nothing for safe sex between two girls, and while researching this I had to think, had I been a little jaded and assumed I was immune?

I’ve been through a little phase of having lots of partners, I’d not asked any of them if they had been checked recently, nor had I disclosed how recently I had been. As a cis woman, most of my trips to the GUM clinic have been purely for smear tests, which are of course a delight, or to discuss my birth control, which wasn’t without its preconceptions. One nurse told me to simply come off it since I identify as gay, without a thought that it may not be to prevent pregnancy and might actually be for my own comfort.

Why when I came out and had samesex partners did I no longer have the “I should get checked” thought after a new partner that I used to?

If I had not given much thought for my sexual safety since being ‘out’, it stands to reason that not many of my partners had either.

I’ve found very few statistics on who goes to the clinic more, but I did find one troubling one. Of gay women that went to the sexual health clinic, 40% received a diagnosis compared to 18% of straight women, which says to me that gay women are waiting until they see actual symptoms being going to get checked, rather than making it part of their regular health check up - enlightening, right? With the notion that we aren’t getting checked until we notice something wrong, perhaps us girls that like girls should be thinking more carefully about our sexual health.