My name is Dr. Lindsey Doe. I'm a clinical sexologist and host of this sex-curious show, Sexplanations. 

[whip crack and throat clearing sounds]

Since the beginning of COVID, I've been thinking about how there's a lot I've learned about sexuality that applies to the pandemic. Starting with: scare tactics are harmful; show puppies instead. Oh [delighted laughing]. 

A very powerful study from the 1950s found that fear-arousing communication used to change behavior can actually backfire. Anxiety from it distracts listeners from what's being said, listeners end up engaging in other, sometimes worse, risk behaviors in order to cope, and it can cause the listener to feel aggressive toward the one using fear to motivate them. Eh-ewww! In short, people tune out, act out, and get mad. 

Likewise, abstinence-only programming is not effective. For sex, abstinence is saying no to sexual activity. With COVID, it's expecting everyone to physically isolate. Not everyone is going to wait until marriage, not everyone is going to stay home.

This is why I love that the New York City Health Department addressed harm reduction for both, encouraging masturbation and kinky sex to avoid COVID, and discouraging kissing and rimming, at least with your outside close contacts, because saliva and feces can transmit the virus. That's comprehensive! Giving people choices!

A few years ago, I interviewed adult performers about a law mandating them to use condoms in porn. The performers explained long periods of thrusting with latex actually puts them at a higher risk of abrasions and STIs. As in what works for many of us doesn't work for all of us. This reminds me of masks. Similarly to condoms, there are people who don't wear masks because "it feels better without one." Some people resist protection without even trying it. In these instances, I like to educate, show them how to properly wear them, display the variations, then explain statistics. Ultimately, each of us make a personal decision based on our own bodies and needs.

Okay, if this is consensual. Stealthing isn't. What is stealthing? Stealthing is having sex with a condom, taking it off without the other person's consent, and then continuing to have sex. In COVID, that's wearing a mask to get into a business and then dropping it below the nose or to the neck. Not okay!

"But COVID doesn't affect people under 50," one might say — the sex version of "you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex." Just because this is what you were told doesn't mean it's true. Sex is such a great comparison for how disinformation and misinformation is out there, making a mess of things. 

On Twitter, Keith told me that his so-called sex ed teacher said that fellating a penis is called a blowjob because breath from one person inflates the scrotum of the other. This is the equivalent to "COVID is a political scandal, not a health concern." Let's try this instead. Blowjobs are like making out with a penis, and they don't have to involve any blowing. The scrotum is a sack that holds the testicles, or balls. Pushing air into the urethra of the penis would not fill the scrotum with air. COVID is a disease caused by the coronavirus. We are still learning about it, but what we know is that it is spread mainly through respiratory air droplets and can have very life-threatening symptoms for some people. 

Last month I felt like I had allergies. I kept sneezing a light spray of clear fluid while I was walking in the fresh rain. I had been wearing flip flops. It was chilly. Maybe my face was runny from the weather. The people in my close contact group suggested, "There's a little cold going around. It's probably just that. Don't worry about COVID."

My head bounced around the possibilities until I remembered: get tested, know your status. This was a slogan for an HIV prevention campaign I worked on in grad school. It was built around the reality that when people don't have obvious symptoms, they default to thinking they're negative. They don't have whatever it is, HIV, herpes, warts, COVID. Of course we want to rationalize and repress the discomfort and responsibility of being infectious. Which means if I don't get tested, I will likely think and act like I'm not infected.

So I promptly called the clinic and scheduled an appointment for the following morning. I also reached out to the people I was in close contact with and told them my plan. Even if they didn't want to get tested themselves, hopefully they'd take extra precautions while waiting for my results. I learned this COVID-applicable sex ed from the BDSM community. They taught me about scene negotiation, how play partners communicate who, what, and how before acting out a kink scene so that everyone involved knows what they're consenting to. 

My contacts held off on getting tested themselves, because they believed that I could gauge for them if they had it: if I had it, they had it too. But I knew, again from sex, that transmission doesn't happen 100% of the time. You can have sex with someone who has chlamydia, have it, not get it, have it, not get it, not get it, not get it, and then, bam, get infected. Same for COVID. They might not have it, so I should not give up on protecting them.

The next morning, I drove 45 minutes to the nearest testing site to get a swab swirled way up in my nasal cavity. January 9th, I received a message I was positive for COVID. I had just logged in to an all-day Zoom conference and I had to dismiss myself. There was the shock of my test results to deal with, yes. More importantly, I needed in place test and trace protocol. We are disease vectors. We can pass pathogens through our body fluids, mucous membranes, and skin to skin through dry humping. 

When an infection is detected for particular diseases, it's incredibly helpful to track how the person got it and who they may have passed it to. This was not pleasant and it was the right, loving thing to do. I got on the phone, I owned my status. The four people I was in close contact with all got tested. Their results came back negative. Two of them got retested just to make sure. Negative again. My symptoms passed after two days, but I'm still not sure what long-term effects will be. What I do know is that it's important for me to tell you, to alleviate the shame of having it, so that more people are willing to accept it as a pandemic, get tested, and protect others. That's why I talk about sex too: to remove the shame, inspire people to make decisions for themselves based in creativity, not fear, and to stay curious.

It's been a month since I had COVID and I feel well. I appreciate those of you on Patreon who encouraged me to make this episode, and for all of the support of this channel. I love being able to create videos for you, and your partnership makes this possible. If you'd like to be a Sexplanaut and part of producing this show, you can go to patreon.com/sexplanations.

[outro music]

Why are you so cute? [laughing] Oh you're such a chewer! You're finding your teeth. 

Let's try this instead: blowjobs are like making out with a penis and do not [puppy yips]