A group of researchers were interested in finding out how much the people you have sex with affect the likelihood that you’ll get a sexually transmitted disease. Explaining the premise of the research, the lead investigator said in a prepared statement:
"The theory is simple: You need to have sex with someone who has an STD to get an STD.”
When I first read this I said to myself, ah yes, they’re getting back to the basics, reminding us what it’s really all about. But then I took a second to think about what I just read (often I talk to myself before I think, resulting in some awkward moments alone, let me tell you). In thinking about it I realized that this is one of those quotes that only sounds obvious, but isn’t really. After all, what exactly do they mean by sex? There are all kinds of sex you can have with someone who has an STD without ever getting one or even putting yourself at significant risk for one.
In the context of the study what they’re highlighting is that any group of people who don’t have STDs can have any kind of sex they want and won’t get an STD. But if one partner has an STD you’re more likely to get one.
So they set out to look at what they call “partner characteristics” and what effect these have on STD risk. The characteristics they considered were whether or not the partner had a “problem” with marijuana or alcohol, whether they were more than five years older or younger than the research subject, whether they had been in jail, and sexual partner history and STD history.
What they found was that subjects whose partners were categorized as high-risk, half were diagnosed with an STD. By comparison, about 40 percent of the young adults whose own behaviors were labeled as high-risk were diagnosed with an STD.
The researchers propose that introducing the topic of partner risk could be helpful in STD/HIV interventions for youth. I agree with them that everyone (youth included) need support in understanding that having a great sex life and reducing your risk of getting STDs involves thinking a bit about the kinds of sex your partner is having and sure, even the kinds of health decisions they make in their own lives. But there’s much about this research that makes me uncomfortable.
For starters, it’s not hard to find correlations between things. One of my favorite examples of this was a headline I saw last year in my local newspaper pointing out that short men were more likely to be pedophiles. I don’t doubt that a researcher was able to document this. But so what? Does this mean we should watch our kids extra close around short guys? And if short men are more likely to be pedophiles, how come are and some aren’t? And why are there so many tall skinny guys playing pedophiles in the movies? What I fear is that some people will read that headline and they will think twice when they are around short guys with their kids. Just as I imagine a study like this one gives all of us another reason to mistrust people who have been in prison (by the way, there’s no mention of them asking why the partner had been in jail, as if “been in jail” was somehow a specific or useful description).
This research also seems supremely out to lunch in terms of the way we actually negotiate and have sex. People don’t disclose every aspect of their behaviors and interests prior to having sex. The idea that knowing whether a partner is five years older than me, has been in prison, and drinks or smokes too much dope tells me something about the likelihood that they have an STD is maybe of interest to me, but it doesn’t HELP me. And if you’re the person sitting in an office with me offering me counseling, and you start judging my current or potential sexual partners for having been in prison or for being too old or too young for your statistics, I can promise you I’m less likely to hop on board the sexual health counselor train.
In the end, STD/HIV prevention efforts have to be aimed at individuals. If you’re trying to support someone in changing a behavior or a way of thinking you have to actually interact with that someone as an individual. You have to believe that having been in prison or being a pothead or having had sex with others in the past year doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be able to advocate for myself and keep myself safe.
There’s also something a little too STD-profiler about the point of the study. So they found six things that make a person more likely to have an STD. Does that mean everyone with those six things is more likely to have one? Does it mean I shouldn’t have sex with people with those six checked boxes? And are people with those profiles less likely to change their own behavior if they are offered counseling and education? It’s not something we’ll probably know, since we tend to only research people like this in the context of them doing things that are unhealthy, not healthy.
Read more – Partner behavior better predicts STD risks
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (subscription required) - Sexual Partner Characteristics and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Adolescents and Young Adults