Polyamory Survey: The Results, Part One

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polyamory

I collected 498 responses to my polyamory survey. Of these, 19 (3.8%) were deleted for being monogamous, leaving me with 479 respondents. The survey was promoted primarily on my blog, Thing of Things, and Slate Star Codex. For this reason, it is primarily representative of the rationalist community. 81% of respondents identified as rationalists.

Limitations

Due to a miscommunication with Scott Alexander, the polyamory survey as posted on Slate Star Codex failed to clarify that single people who would be nonmonogamous if they were dating anyone should take the survey. This may lead to underrepresentation of single respondents.

Mid-survey, I added some clarifications, which included defining “assigned gender at birth” and informing people who don’t know what a rationalist is

At least one person failed to follow instructions and included platonic primary partners; I do not expect the number of people who both have platonic primary partners and are bad at following directions to be high enough to distort the data. While I attempted to create categories that would encompass many different ways of doing polyamory, some forms may not be accommodated; for example, one participant complained that he slept with dozens of new people every year but, as he does not have many relationships, was recorded in the survey as having no partners. I do not expect people this unusual to distort the results much.

Several people refused to take the survey because they felt uncomfortable classifying their gender, sexual orientation, or romantic orientation within the boxes given. This survey may underrepresent queer people with unusual genders or orientations. Some participants felt that “transgender” is a term which only includes binary-gendered people; thus, nonbinary people may either have been underrepresented or incorrectly included as cisgender.

The definition of “sex” was confusing to several respondents. In particular, some respondents included cybersex as sex, while some did not. Depending on whether you consider cybersex to be sex, my survey may either undercount or overcount how much sex people are having.

Do Cis Straight Poly People Exist?

Before we can determine whether polyamory works well for cisgender heterosexual people, it is first necessary to determine whether cis straight poly people exist at all.

The answer appears to be “yes”. The gender, sexual orientation, and romantic orientation breakdown of respondents is as follows:

7.1% asexual
42.7% bisexual
42.9% heterosexual
7.3% homosexual

1.5% aromantic*
45.5% biromantic
44.7% heteroromantic
8.4% homoromantic

54.4% cisgender male
24.9% cisgender female
7.5% transgender person assigned female at birth
13.2% transgender person assigned male at birth

(There was a high overlap between “heteroromantic” and “heterosexual”, “biromantic” and “bisexual”, etc.)

However, I live in Berkeley, so I am aware that cisgender straight poly people often do things that many monogamous people would not consider to be very heterosexual or cisgender. For this reason, I included two additional questions to test whether someone is paradigmatically cisgender and heterosexual.

I asked heterosexual people whether they had had sex with a person of the same gender, or with any transgender person. (After some consideration, I chose to include all transgender people, on the grounds that cis people seem to consider sex with any of us to be kinda gay.) I clarified that “sex” includes any activity two or more people are doing, at the same time, which is primarily intended to cause sexual arousal or orgasm in one or more participants, and that it still counts if a person of your preferred gender was also involved, you didn’t touch their genitals, one or both of you didn’t get naked, it was BDSM, it was exclusively over the Internet, etc. 40.5% of heterosexual respondents have had sex with a person of the same gender, or with any transgender person.

I asked cisgender people whether they have taken any steps conventionally considered to be part of a gender transition process, such as taking cross-sex hormones; asking people to refer to them with different pronouns or a name not associated with their assigned gender; binding, tucking, or wearing clothing or makeup conventionally associated with the other primary gender on a regular basis; or deliberately altering their presentation to cause people to read them as the gender they weren’t assigned at birth. 13.6% of cisgender respondents have taken a step conventionally considered to be part of a gender transition process.

It is now possible to calculate what percentage of poly people are paradigmatically straight and cisgender. 21.5% of poly people in my sample were paradigmatically cis and straight. Rationalists were more likely to be paradigmatically cis and straight than nonrationalists: 36% of rationalists were paradigmatically cis and straight. 33% of cisgender men were paradigmatically cis and straight, while only 8% of cisgender women were paradigmatically cis and straight. This reflects the common polyamorous wisdom that cisgender, heterosexual poly women are very rare.

*I used a narrow definition of aromantic, in which a person is uninterested in having any relationships described as “girlfriend,” “boyfriend,” or “partner”, rather than a broader definition in which one might have partners that one is not romantically attracted to.

Are Poly People Cucks?

Many people accuse polyamorous people, particularly men, of being cucks: that is, they are sexually aroused by the idea of their partners having sex with other people. Unaccountably, no one has ever collected data on this claim.

At first blush, this generalization seems accurate: 78.7% of respondents reported that they found the prospect of a partner having sex with someone else arousing, even if only a little bit or only in particular situations. However, only 15.2% of respondents found it arousing in a submissive way, as implied by the word “cuck” (e.g. you are aroused by your partner having sex with other people because you find it humiliating). 29.4% found it arousing in a dominant way (e.g. the idea that you might “force” your partner to have sex with someone else). The majority of respondents, 76.8%, found it arousing in a non-kinky fashion (e.g. because it is hot when your partner has orgasms).

Further, this arousal is not a significant driver of people’s interest in polyamory: only 4.8% of respondents reported that this was a major reason for them to be poly.

I will now look at cisgender male respondents specifically, as this is a subject of particular interest. 79.3% of cisgender men found the prospect of a partner having sex with someone else arousing; 15.7% were aroused in a submissive way, 35.7% in a dominant way, and 73.4% in a non-kinky way. 7.2% said that this was a major reason for them to be polyamorous. Cisgender men appear to have approximately the same pattern as everyone else, although they are perhaps slightly more likely to be interested in a dominant fashion and less likely to be interested in a nonkinky fashion; cis men may also be more likely to have this as a primary reason for them to be poly.

Therefore, I have concluded that, while poly men are typically aroused by their partners having sex with other people, poly men are not in fact cucks, nor is this a major reason for them to be poly. I am unclear on whether it is a good idea to raise awareness of these results, however. If you must humiliate someone for their partner having sex with other people, you should at least humiliate the people who get off on it.

Tune in next post for answers to a variety of other exciting questions such as:

• Are poly people satisfied in their relationships?
• How many people are poly people dating?
• Are poly cis men lonelier than poly trans people or poly cis women?
• How much sex are poly people having really?
• Are poly people more attracted to their primaries or their secondaries?
• And more!

Autogynephilia Survey

Tags

ozy blog post, speshul snowflake trans

Methods

I have 784 respondents; twenty respondents were deleted for skipping an excessive number of questions, leaving me with 764 respondents. The respondents were mostly taken from my blog, Thing of Things; therefore, they may not be representative of the general population.

To assess autogynephilia, I used a 22-item scale which is commonly used in the literature on autogynephilia. Unlike in previous studies, I did not alter the language for cisgender respondents. To assess autoandrophilia, I genderswapped the items on the scale. Certain items were easily genderswapped: for example, “fantasies in which I have a vagina/vulva” became “fantasies in which I have a penis”. Others required more of a judgment call, as when I decided that erections and ejaculation are physical male functions analogous to pregnancy. As my autoandrophilia scale has never been validated, the results are unreliable and should be considered preliminary. Further, this scale would not capture any ways that autoandrophilia manifests differently than autogynephilia. (For example, one might expect autogynephiles to be more interested in wearing women’s clothing, as there is more sexy clothing which is only for women than sexy clothing which is only for men.)

To assess gender, I presented two questions. The first asked people to identify as cisgender or transgender. The second asked people to identify as transgender, definitely cisgender, or uncertain whether the terms “cisgender” or “transgender” best describes them.

To assess sexual orientation, I asked whether a person was attracted to both men and women, men but not women, women but not men, exclusively nonbinary people, or no one at all.

Demographics

A gender and sexuality breakdown follows. Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.

53% cisgender men
19% cisgender women
10% transgender people assigned female at birth
18% transgender people assigned male at birth

24% definitely cisgender men
9% definitely cisgender women
8% AFAB transgender
16% AMAB transgender
14% neither cisgender nor transgender AFAB
30% neither cisgender nor transgender AMAB

18% bisexual cisgender men
32% heterosexual cisgender men
2% homosexual cisgender men
1% asexual cisgender women
12% bisexual cisgender women
4% heterosexual cisgender women
1% homosexual cisgender women
2% asexual AFAB trans people
6% bisexual AFAB trans people
2% homosexual AFAB trans people
2% asexual AMAB trans people
8% bisexual AMAB trans people
1% heterosexual AMAB trans people
6% homosexual AMAB trans people
1% miscellaneous

Autogynephilia and Autoandrophilia Scores

(For these numbers, a score of zero indicates that none of the fantasies are arousing, while a score of 88 indicates that all of the fantasies are very arousing. Please behold the quarter-assed bar charts.)

Autogynephilia

Cisgender man: 44
Cisgender woman: 22
AFAB trans: 13
AMAB trans: 35

 

Definitely cisgender man: 36
Definitely cisgender woman: 25
AFAB trans: 11
AMAB trans: 40
Neither cisgender nor transgender, AFAB: 22
Neither cisgender nor transgender, AMAB: 48

Asexual cisgender man: 41
Bisexual cisgender man: 52
Straight cisgender man: 40
Gay cisgender man: 40

Asexual cisgender woman: 6
Bisexual cisgender woman: 36
Straight cisgender woman: 17
Gay cisgender woman: 21

Asexual AFAB trans: 2
Bisexual AFAB trans: 17
Straight AFAB trans: 15
Gay AFAB trans: 7

Asexual AMAB trans: 31
Bisexual AMAB trans: 39
Straight AMAB trans: 17
Gay AMAB trans: 36

[Note that sample sizes for asexual cisgender men and heterosexual AFAB trans people are particularly small.]

Autoandrophilia

Cisgender man: 20
Cisgender woman: 25
AFAB trans: 30
AMAB trans: 6

Definitely cisgender man: 23
Definitely cisgender woman: 18
AFAB trans: 30
AMAB trans: 7
Neither cisgender nor transgender, AFAB: 29
Neither cisgender nor transgender, AMAB: 17

Asexual cisgender man: 18
Bisexual cisgender man: 23
Straight cisgender man: 18
Gay cisgender man: 26

Asexual cisgender woman: 8
Bisexual cisgender woman: 28
Straight cisgender woman: 23
Gay cisgender woman: 24

Asexual AFAB trans: 19
Bisexual AFAB trans: 33
Straight AFAB trans: 19
Gay AFAB trans: 34

Asexual AMAB trans: 7
Bisexual AMAB trans: 8
Straight AMAB trans: 3
Gay AMAB trans: 2

[Note that sample sizes for asexual cisgender men and heterosexual AFAB trans people are particularly small.]

Discussion

Confusingly, cis men are the group most likely to experience autogynephilia, and cis women are also more likely than average to experience autoandrophilia. However, when broken out into more specific categories, we discover that this is mostly driven by people who identify as neither cisgender nor transgender– that is, the potentially gender dysphoric.

People are much less likely to experience autoandrophilia than autogynephilia. It is unclear why this might be. It is possible that my measure failed to capture autoandrophiliac sexuality; I suggest performing qualitative research on transgender men to construct an appropriate measure. It is also possible that autoandrophilia is legitimately less common than autogynephilia for some reason: for example, perhaps because female bodies are hypersexualized in the media while male bodies are not, or because people with testosterone-dominant systems have kinkier sexual fantasies.

It has been occasionally claimed that women do not experience autogynephilia. My study suggests that this is false. While cisgender women do not experience autogynephiliac fantasies as commonly as AMAB transgender people do, they do seem to sometimes experience autogynephilia. However, it is also occasionally claimed that autogynephilia is ordinary female sexuality. It does not appear that my survey supports this hypothesis; cis women are far less likely than trans women to be autogynephiles. Autogynephilia seems more characteristic of definitely cis male sexuality than definitely cis female.

Some trans advocates argue that trans women overreport autogynephilia, because if one has a penis it is marked and unusual to have sexual fantasies in which you have a vagina, while if one has a vagina it is not at all marked or unusual to have sexual fantasies in which you have a vagina. It is unclear how this hypothesis can be tested; as such, my survey does not provide evidence for or against it.

It has been occasionally claimed that trans men do not experience autoandrophilia. My survey suggests that this is false; trans men have a notably higher rate of autoandrophilia than other groups. The alternate construct of “autohomoeroticism” is not supported: autoandrophilia is detected in a survey which does not ask about any specifically homosexual male behaviors, but merely about sexual arousal when imagining having a physically male body and adopting a male social role.

Autogynephiliac fantasies tend to be about having a woman’s body, wearing women’s clothing, or being admired or having sex while a woman. Very few people were interested in more outré forms of sexuality, such as menstruation, urinating while sitting down, sitting in a feminine way, or being seen as a woman by strangers. Trans women are more likely than cis women to be aroused by these unusual fantasies: cis women’s average is typically between 0 and 0.5 on a scale where 0 means not at all arousing, and trans women’s is typically around 1. However, most trans women have no interest in these fantasies; attempts to depict them as typical of trans female sexuality are inaccurate. 

Similarly, autoandrophiliac fantasies tend to be about having a man’s body (particularly a penis) or being admired or having sex while a man, and not about adopting a male-typical social role outside of a sexual context. 

Bisexual cis women experience a rate of autogynephilia comparable to transgender women’s. I believe this is problematic for claims that no real woman would experience autogynephilia; it implies that either bisexual cis women are not real women or that they are lying about their sexual fantasies in a far less socially desirable direction. It is possible that something unusual about bisexual cis women causes them to fetishize womanhood. It is also possible that autogynephilia is associated with same-gender attraction; certainly, it seems like being attracted to breasts might cause you to be attracted to your own breasts. However, if that is the case, it is unclear why lesbians show such low rates of autogynephilia. My sample size of lesbians was quite small and it is possible this is just noise. I suggest interested people study autogynephilia specifically in a queer cisgender female population.

Gay and bisexual men show elevated rates of autoandrophilia compared to heterosexual men. However, their rates are not comparable to trans men’s. It is possible that while autogynephilia similar to trans women’s is typical of (bisexual) female sexuality, autoandrophilia similar to trans men’s is not typical of any sort of male sexuality. It may also reflect the inadequacy of my measure of autoandrophilia.

Definitely cisgender men are both more autogynephiliac and more autoandrophiliac than definitely cisgender women. This may be due to social desirability bias, poor awareness of one’s sexual fantasies, lower sex drives due to estrogen-dominant hormone systems, or a legitimate difference in sexual interests between definitely cisgender men and definitely cisgender women.

Traditional Sexual Ethics Are Impossible In The Modern Day

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ozy blog post, sex positivity

The recent and thought-provoking Slate Star Codex sequence on cultural evolution has led me to think about traditional sexual ethics, and the fact that it is literally impossible to do them in the modern day.

There are three large changes that have occurred in the past few hundred years, which affect sexual ethics. The first and most obvious is the invention of birth control, which permits people to separate (penis-in-vagina) sex and babies.

It is easy to overstate the importance of birth control. Many effective methods of birth control, such as homosexuality and outercourse, were known since the Paleolithic. The Oneida Community reportedly had a typical use pregnancy rate of 0.5%, more effective than modern birth control pills, with male continence; this is a method known since Biblical times. (Of course, the Oneida Community may have had particularly motivated users, and widespread use may have been less effective.)

Nevertheless, giving people more birth control methods with fewer side effects and no chance of not using them in the heat of the moment likely changes many things about sexual ethics.

Second, children are now a net financial drain on their families. In the developed world, children are always a financial cost for 18 years, and often for longer than twenty; they rarely pay their parents back. However, historically and in the developing world, children often began making a financial contribution as young as seven. It is difficult to estimate how many children are/were involved in child labor and how large their contributions to the household were. However, even today, in large families, teenagers who are not sent to school can often pay for themselves through chores and taking care of younger siblings; there is no reason to believe this was not true in the past. (I am interested in more detailed data and am happy to edit this section with more.)

Finally, and most importantly, child mortality.

Our World In Data provides some interesting graphics about child mortality in the past two hundred years. In summary: in 1800, while there is little data, the best estimates suggest that about 40% of children died before age five. In 2019, in rich countries, less than one percent of children die before age five.

Forty percent is a lot of children. Consider a fairly ordinary traditional Catholic family of five children: in 1800, they would only have had three. A family of ten would, in 1800, only have six children. Even the Duggars’ nineteen children would only have been eleven.

But high child mortality rates affect more than family size. That forty percent isn’t evenly distributed among families; some may bury seventy percent of their children, perhaps because of a series of epidemics or a bad crop year. If all you care about is one of your children surviving to take care of you in your old age, and the mortality rate is less than one percent, you have one child. However, if the mortality rate is forty percent and unevenly distributed, you may have to have many more than two kids to have a chance one of them survives to adulthood.

(The evidence is suggestive that decreasing child mortality tends to decrease fertility, in part for this reason.)

What this means is that practicing truly traditional sexual ethics is literally impossible.

You could stop using birth control, and people do. (Catholics use natural family planning, but natural family planning is itself a fairly recent invention. You could, fortunately, do extended breastfeeding for a break in between pregnancies.) In theory, it is required that you educate your children. In practice, you can homestead in a state that doesn’t check up on homeschoolers much and put your children to work farming or watching their younger siblings as soon as they’re able. It wouldn’t be doing right by your kids– it turns out some knowledge of writing and math and history and science is useful for being alive in the 21st century– but you could do it.

But child mortality is a bitch. “Not using birth control” is unpopular, and “educationally neglect your children in order to live on a homestead” is unpopular, but “forty percent of your children die” is more unpopular than either of those. There exist some religions that don’t use modern medicine, but you’re never going to get particularly widespread uptake.

But even if you are a Christian Scientist homeschooler who doesn’t use birth control, you’re still not going to get to the environment that traditional sexual ethics evolved for. Many of that forty percent died in epidemics, and most of the diseases they died of have been eradicated in the United States due to vaccines. You are never, ever going to have three of your children die of smallpox in a single month.

These changes are generally agreed upon to be good things among both sexual liberals and sexual conservatives. No one wants forty percent of their children to die. Child labor is generally unpopular. While some social conservatives disapprove of birth control, most social conservatives do not.

But it means that you can’t make the argument “the sexual ethics of 1800 are good because they are traditional and worked for hundreds of years.” Our situation is very very different from the situation in 1800. Children are financial drains instead of investments; children are almost certainly not going to die; it is possible to separate PIV from reproduction with a good deal of reliability.

This is not, of course, to say that the traditional sexual ethics of 1800 are incorrect for modern humans. It may well be that we would all be happiest if divorce and sodomy were illegal, no one used birth control, having sex before marriage if you’re a woman made you a fallen woman, and men are technically not supposed to have sex outside marriage but in practice seeing a prostitute is a common vice among urbanites. But this proposition– in the current situation– has at best a few decades of track record. It cannot take advantage of the argument from tradition, any more than can the proposition that we would all be happiest if gay marriage were legal, divorce were unstigmatized, many people were poly, and birth control is the default.

We knocked over the Chesterton’s Fence, because Chesterton’s Fence was driven through the heart of millions of children and subjected them to a horrible painful death. Now we have to figure out sexual ethics in a fencefree world. Chesterton’s Fence does not apply.

The DSM-IV Believed Women Didn’t Have Paraphilias

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ozy blog post, sex positivity

An interesting fact literally no one believes me about is that until relatively recently it was sexological consensus that women don’t have paraphilias.

When I say this, people are like “okay, Ozy means some weird, fringe sexologist who believes bizarre things that no one else agrees with, obviously they can’t actually mean that within our lifetimes sexologists believed women don’t have kinks.” But, no, really. Here is a quote from page 524 of the DSM-IV, published in 1994 and updated in 2000:

Except for Sexual Masochism, where the sex ratio is estimated to be 20 males for each female, the other Paraphilias are almost never diagnosed in females, although some cases have been reported.

To be clear, “paraphilia” is a term which includes most of what we’d consider to be kinks; there is no requirement that a paraphilia be obligatory for sexual arousal, and in fact it is explicitly mentioned that some paraphiliacs are aroused by sex where their paraphilia is not included. Paraphilias defined in the DSM-IV include:

• Sexual Masochism: “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving the act (real, not simulated) of being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer”
• Sexual Sadism: “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving acts (real, not simulated) in which the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim is sexually exciting to the person.”
• Fetishism: “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving the use of nonliving objects (e.g., female undergarments).”

Special shoutout to transvestic fetishism which literally could not be diagnosed in a woman or a queer man.

The DSM-IV defined ‘paraphilia’ as a diagnosis by inclusion: paraphilias were a set of specific sexual interests, examples given above. The DSM-5 defines ‘paraphilia’ as follows (pg. 685):

The term paraphilia denotes any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners.

(“Phenotypically normal” is intended to exclude visibly physically disabled and transgender people, as well as perhaps members of some other groups. Please note that “paraphilia” and “paraphiliac disorder” are distinguished; a paraphiliac disorder causes mental distress or is a threat to the psychological or physical wellbeing of others. It is possible that what the DSM-5 intends is that, for example, female crossdressers are all unusually well-adjusted.)

This is what the DSM-5 has to say about the prevalence of paraphilias:

• “The highest possible lifetime prevalence for voyeuristic disorder is approximately 12% in males and 4% in females.”
• “The prevalence of exhibitionistic disorder in females is even more uncertain but is generally believed to be much lower than in males.”
• “It has been estimated that 2.2% of males and 1.3% of females had been involved in bondage and discipline, sadomasochism, or dominance and submission in the past 12 months” [about masochistic disorder]
• “Fetishistic disorder has not been systematically reported to occur in females. In clinical samples, fetishistic disorder is nearly exclusively reported in males.”
• “Transvestic disorder is rare in males and extremely rare in females.”
• Silence about the prevalence of sexual sadism in women.

This is definitely an improvement on the insistence that women essentially never have paraphilias other than masochism, which has twenty men for every woman (!); still, there is an insistence that the paraphilias are extraordinarily rare in women.

—

Why was this a sexological consensus? I present a few hypotheses.

First, most research on paraphilias is conducted on a sex-offender population. For various reasons, women are less likely to be sex offenders. Sexual crimes by women may be underreported and underprosecuted; women may also be legitimately less likely to engage in many sex offenses.

Second, the definition of ‘paraphilia’ is androcentric. Consider omegaverse. “I get off on a man going into heat and then getting knocked up by another man with a dog dick” is certainly a sexual interest in something other than genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners. However, it does not fit in any of the current paraphilias. Conversely, there are paraphilias for sexual interests that are more typically male, such as an interest in jerking off into a shoe. This is likely to be a self-perpetuating problem; since paraphilias are defined androcentrically, paraphilias are underdiagnosed in women, and there is no way for psychiatrists to discover that they should correct the definitions.

Third, there is a lot of stigma on women admitting their sexuality, and many women would feel reluctant admitting their sexual interests to a psychiatrist or even on an anonymous survey. (As a very obvious example, studies consistently report heterosexual men having a higher mean number of sexual partners than heterosexual women.)

Fourth and most importantly, women are less likely than men to be aware of what their kinks are, especially before the present day. There are both biological and cultural reasons for this. Biologically, if one has a penis, arousal is more obvious and the mechanics of masturbation are more intuitive. Having a male-typical level of testosterone also usually gives you more interest in sex than having a female-typical level of testosterone does. Culturally, women’s sexuality tends to be shamed and stigmatized as “slutty.” Female sexual exploration and curiosity tends not to be encouraged as much as male sexual exploration and curiosity, particularly historically.

Among all age groups, women are both less likely to have ever masturbated and less likely to have masturbated in the past year. It is likely that many women who have never masturbated or who masturbate rarely also don’t sexually fantasize or fantasize rarely. They may have completely failed to notice what their kinks are.

The self-hating man with a paraphilia might go to a psychiatrist for help fixing himself. The self-hating female woman with a paraphilia might very well never realize she has a paraphilia and instead conclude that she just doesn’t like sex that much.

How did this change? Why, in the past thirty years, have we gone from “women don’t have paraphilias” to “don’t be ridiculous, Ozy, of course it wasn’t sexological consensus that women don’t have paraphilias”?

I believe the answer is our friend the Internet.

Perhaps due to sexual stigma, women seem particularly averse to buying porn. In 1970, if a woman wished to purchase erotic literature, she would have to go to a literal physical store and buy it from an actual shop clerk and then maybe display it on her actual shelves where people could see it and judge her. Today, all she has to do is search on Amazon and download The Devil: Devil’s Playground Duet #1 to her Kindle and literally no one will have any idea.

We’ve seen an explosion in the past twenty years of art, erotica and porn aimed at women. I talk about fandom a lot, but I think it’s equally obvious in the romance novel world: since the development of the Kindle, there have been a lot more erotic romance novels with more and filthier sex that caters more directly to common female interests. This is a self-perpetuating cycle. If you have porn that’s catering to you– porn with sexy men in it rather than sexy women, for example– you’re more likely to notice the sorts of things you get off on.

Cards on the table: I suspect that, while men might be more likely to have certain paraphilias and women might be more likely to have certain other paraphilias, women and men are equally likely to have intense, persistent interests in sexual activities other than genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners. I believe, in the next few decades as the number of people who had access to porn as teenagers increases, we will see more and more women with paraphilias, and this fact will become obvious.

Further Objections To Three Sentences In An Interview With Ray Blanchard (They’re A Really Bad Three Sentences)

Tags

csa tw, ozy blog post, rape tw, ray blanchard callout post, speshul snowflake trans

On Monday, I wrote a post about my most important objection to this answer of Ray Blanchard’s in an interview from 2013:

[Interviewer:] Do you think autoandrophilia, where a woman is aroused by the thought of herself as a man, is a real paraphilia?

[Blanchard:] No, I proposed it simply in order not to be accused of sexism, because there are all these women who want to say, “women can rape too, women can be pedophiles too, women can be exhibitionists too.” It’s a perverse expression of feminism, and so, I thought, let me jump the gun on this. I don’t think the phenomenon even exists.

I wanted to stick to the most important issue in the first post. However, I could not in good conscience refrain from objecting to everything else objectionable about those three sentences.

First: autoandrophilia obviously exists. Autoandrophilia obviously existed in 2013. Archive of Our Own had existed for four years at the time. AO3 hosts an enormous quantity of porn written by women about men having sex with each other; many (although of course not all) of the readers insert themselves as one of the characters in the pairing. The phenomenon of women imagining themselves as men in slash fanfiction dates back to 1966, when the TV show Star Trek began and women began shipping Kirk/Spock. There is honestly no excuse for a person who considers himself a world expert in sexuality related to gender deviance to be unaware that autoandrophiles exist.

As I said in the previous post, Blanchard has recently admitted to the existence of autohomoeroticism, a sexual fetish in which people assigned female at birth are sexually attracted to the idea of being a gay man. He considers this to be extraordinarily rare. (Out of curiosity, I did a small survey on a fandom Discord I frequent and found that 60% of the respondents assigned female at birth were autoandrophiles, although I suppose it is possible that every autohomoerotic person in the world frequents this particular Discord.) It is unclear to me how the hell autohomoeroticism is supposed to be different from autoandrophilia, except that it would be embarrassing to Blanchard to admit he’s wrong because of something as minor as “the facts.”

Second: Blanchard implicitly equates pedophiles, rapists, and exhibitionists with autoandrophiles. Pedophiles and rapists either perform nonconsensual sex acts or are tempted to do so; while people who have sex in front of consenting people are also considered exhibitionists, presumably Blanchard is referring to people who want to show their genitals to or have sex in front of nonconsenting people. Cisgender autoandrophiles might strap on a dildo and get a blowjob from another consenting adult, but they don’t do anything nonconsensual nor are they tempted to do so.

I am glossing over the complicated issue of transgender autoandrophiles, in part due to the disagreement about whether they exist. I have met the occasional self-identified non-dysphoric autoandrophile who has transitioned. In general, they have tried to be indistinguishable from dysphoric trans people and to pass as their preferred gender. This is very unlike rape, pedophilia, or nonconsensual exhibitionism, where the victims know they’re involved in a sex act. It seems rather more like a person getting off on the reactions they get when they wear sexy clothes, or on secretly wearing sexy underwear, or on receiving a hair massage, or whatever: perfectly fine as long as it is not obvious to other people what they’re doing. Whatever you may think of the wisdom of their transitions, it does not seem to be a nonconsensual sex act. Blanchard’s inability to distinguish between consensual and nonconsensual sex acts is appalling.

Third: Blanchard has an openly contemptuous attitude towards the idea that women commit sexual violence. However, women uncontroversially commit sexual violence. In a study conducted in 2010, it was found that 4.8% of men had been, over the course of their lives, forced to penetrate someone through violence, threat of violence, or use of drugs/alcohol, and 6% were coerced into sex. 79.2% of male forced-to-penetrate victims had only female perpetrators, while 83.6% of male sexual coercion victims had only female perpetrators. By comparison, 98.1% of female rape victims had only male perpetrators, and 92.5% of female sexual coercion victims had only male perpetrators, and women are more likely to experience both rape and sexual coercion than men are.

Female child molesters are understudied. However, victimization surveys suggest that somewhere between 14% and 26% of children molested are molested by a woman. Official crime statistics suggest that as few as 1% of children molested are molested by a woman; it is probable that female child molesters are undercounted.

It’s true that men are more likely than women to commit sexual violence. However, a significant minority of victims of sexual violence have female perpetrators. The idea that pointing this out is laughable is rape apologism and morally wrong.

Fourth: Blanchard appears to believe the only reason one would write paragraphs like the above is some sort of bizarre “women can do anything men can do” ethos. It does not seem to occur to him that people would care about supporting the victims of female rapists. I have drafted several sentences in response to this and had an extraordinary difficulty ending them with anything other than “fuck off.”

People– men, women, and nonbinary– are sometimes raped by women. I’ve gotten anguished emails from victims of rape by women thanking me because I am the only blogger they’ve found who will even say they exist. I’ve listened to people– blog readers and friends– talk about bracing themselves when they say the gender of their rapist, because people will laugh at them, or tell them they wanted it, or question them to see if there was some sort of horrible misunderstanding, or immediately derail the conversation to talk about how Men Commit Most Rapes Though, or assume they’re anti-feminist men’s rights activists and call them misogynists, or ask intrusive details about how it could happen mechanically, or assume that they’re the perpetrator and their rapist was the victim. Our society is awful to rape victims of all stripes, but there are unique ways in which it is awful to victims of female perpetrators, and it needs to stop. Pointing out that female rapists and child molesters exist is the first step.

Het-Partnered Bisexual People Can Experience Homophobia

Tags

gay stuff, ozy blog post

[content warning for slurs]

I have sometimes seen arguments that imply that bisexual people partnered to heterosexual people do not experience homophobia.

It makes sense that people might think this is the case. There are a lot of concrete ways that being in a heterosexual relationship makes your life easier. Het-partnered bisexual people can walk down the street holding hands with their partner without having someone yell slurs at them. They can get married in every country. Their parents are unlikely to reject their partner purely because of their gender. I certainly don’t mean this post to erase these advantages or to imply that het-partnered bisexual people who consider themselves to not experience homophobia are wrong.

When a lot of bisexuals talk about our experiences of oppression, the word that comes up a lot is invisibility. This can seem like, well, a pretty privileged complaint. “People think I’m straight” is often not a problem that the visibly queer have much sympathy for. And while that’s invalidating of your experiences, it can be hard to think what material harm being taken as straight causes.

But I think het-partnered bisexual people do have a very particular experience of homophobia, and I hope I can explain the material harm it causes in a way that makes sense.

First, and most obviously, being het-partnered now does not erase the homophobia you experienced in the past. Familial rejection, job discrimination, and inadequate health care — to name just three examples– can have effects that last a long time after your same-sex relationship ends.

Second, many (perhaps most) het-partnered bisexual people are partnered to straight people. And straight people are very often homophobic. Thus, het-partnered bisexual people are often in a position of being in a committed relationship with someone who hates a fundamental aspect of their identity. This particularly affects younger or more vulnerable bisexuals, who may not have a lot of options or may not know how to filter for kinds of homophobia more subtle than waving around a GOD HATES FAGS sign.

The effects of heterosexual partners’ homophobia can be very severe. 61% of bisexual women and 37% of bisexual men have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking from an intimate partner, compared to 44% of lesbians, 35% of straight women, 26% of gay men, and 29% of straight men. 90% of bisexual female survivors report only male perpetrators; 79% of bisexual male survivors report only female perpetrators. The stark conclusion here is that, for queer people, being in an intimate relationship with a straight person is dangerous. The danger, I believe, is directly tied to the homophobia of many straight people.

Even bisexuals who are not abused can face harm from their partners’ homophobia. (I am mostly familiar with female bisexual experiences; I appreciate input from male bisexuals.) Some bisexuals are closeted to their partners, which means they have to self-monitor to avoid giving any sign that they might not be straight, even in their closest and most intimate relationship. Other bisexual women face extreme jealousy from their partners, who believe that they are “slutty” or will inevitably cheat because they’re bi. I myself have dated several men who treated my interest in women, not as if it were an important part of my sexuality, but as if it were a performance for them, a trivial thing that only mattered because they got off on it. They were confused when I discussed my bisexuality in a context other than dirty talk.

Third, the closet itself is a deeply traumatizing experience. As an excellent article about gay men’s experiences of the closet puts it:

“The trauma for gay men is the prolonged nature of it,” says William Elder, a sexual trauma researcher and psychologist. “If you experience one traumatic event, you have the kind of PTSD that can be resolved in four to six months of therapy. But if you experience years and years of small stressors—little things where you think, Was that because of my sexuality?—that can be even worse.”

Or, as Elder puts it, being in the closet is like someone having someone punch you lightly on the arm, over and over. At first, it’s annoying. After a while, it’s infuriating. Eventually, it’s all you can think about.

Closeted bisexual people have some advantages over closeted gay people: they can form relationships with people they love and have them socially recognized. These advantages can make it easier to be closeted. Het-partnered bisexual people can also find themselves de facto forced into the closet, particularly if they have an unsympathetic partner; being out as bisexual can feel like it’s oversharing or bringing up private information, even if mentioning your heterosexuality in the same context would be fine.

But many of the ways the closet can be traumatizing are the same. You hear what straight people really think about faggots and dykes when they don’t think any of us are around; in some contexts, that can be pretty horrifying. (My dad used to explain that he was fine with gay people as long as they didn’t flaunt it “like this,” that last accompanied by a mincing limp-wristed high-voiced caricature of a gay man.) You may have to self-monitor: avoid overly gay dress or body language, don’t look too long at someone you find attractive, hide your crushes, don’t mention people you find attractive when it comes up. While the studies are methodologically limited, research suggests that LGB people have higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse, and that concealing one’s LGB identity makes the psychological distress associated with being LGB worse.

Of course, the closet is different for different people. Some people find it easy to hide their LGB identity; they can either shrug off homophobic comments from straight people or don’t experience it. But I think a strong “het-partnered bisexual people don’t face homophobia” position requires you to believe that the closet is a privilege. We recognize that a twelve-year-old gay kid who can’t come out to his parents because they’ll reject him is facing homophobia, even if he’s not ready to date; the same can be true of the monogamously and heterosexually married thirty-year-old bisexual man.

Sexual Attraction and Tide Pods

Tags

asexuality, ozy blog post

Sometimes people define “sexual attraction” as “wanting to have sex with someone.” This can be really confusing when we talk about the asexuality spectrum. If we define “demisexual” as “only wants to have sex in a committed and emotionally intimate relationship,” it’s extraordinarily common, perhaps normal. A huge number of people– perhaps most women– are demisexual.

But I think it’s important to distinguish two kinds of wanting.

Think about tide pods. (Or fake fruit, or dice, or those really fancy cakes that are actually made out of cardboard.) Every time I do laundry, some part of my brain insists that the tide pod is CANDY and would make a DELICIOUS SNACK and I have the impulse to eat one.

I don’t actually want to eat a tide pod. If you put some tide pods in front of me for dinner, I would not experience the slightest internal conflict. I am perfectly aware that tide pods are gross and would make me feel disgusting if I chewed one.

But there’s still that part of me that says “tide pods are a snack.”

Sexual attraction is similar. I don’t want to have sex with that hot person I see in the coffeeshop. I would have to talk to them first. We might not be sexually compatible. I am somewhat frightened of strangers. If you presented Hot Coffeeshop Person to me naked and were like “okay, have sex now” I would not experience the slightest temptation to have sex with them.

But some part of my brain is like “probably appropriate to have sex with?” the same way some part of my brain is like “probably a snack?”

It is normal for allosexual people to have very few people– often, less than a dozen or only one person– in their I Would Experience Any Temptation At All To Have Sex With This Person If They Tried To Have Sex With Me category. It is not normal for allosexual people to have that few people in their Part Of My Brain Thinks Sex With This Person Is Appetizing The Same Way Tide Pods Would Make A Good Snack category. People who have very few people in their Want To Have Sex With The Same Way I Want To Eat A Tide Pod category may be graysexual or demisexual.

Graysexuality

Tags

asexuality, ozy blog post

[This is a prompted Patreon post from Jared.]

Graysexuality is fascinating because we get to watch the process of a new orientation being constructed in real time.

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network defines graysexuality as the following:

Sexuality is not black and white; some people identify in the gray (spelled “grey” in some countries) area between asexual and sexual. People who identify as gray-A can include, but are not limited to those who:

• • do not normally experience sexual attraction, but do experience it sometimes

  • experience sexual attraction, but a low sex drive

  • experience sexual attraction and drive, but not strongly enough to want to act on them

  • people who can enjoy and desire sex, but only under very limited and specific circumstances

Graysexuality can be a very broad term, and it’s easy to misinterpret what people mean about it from a definition. Here are some examples of graysexual experiences people I’ve talked to have had:

• Never experiencing sexual attraction or the desire to have sex, but suspecting they would be sexually attracted to someone in the context of a committed lifelong relationship.
• Two or three brief experiences of sexual attraction over the course of their entire lives.
• Attraction to fictional characters, but no attraction to real-life people.
• An interest in masturbation, but a sense of disgust and repulsion about sex with other people.
• A desire for sex about once or twice a year.
• An interest in sex, but only if it involves a specific complicated fetish that is impractical to do particularly often.
• Thinking they were asexual for decades and then experiencing sexual attraction for the first time in their thirties and being like “…what.”
• Confusion about whether or not they experience sexual attraction.

A common critique of graysexual identity is that graysexual people are “just normal.” In one sense, this is inaccurate: graysexual experiences are not very common. Most people want sex reasonably often and are attracted to a number of people you couldn’t count on one hand with fingers left over. Graysexual experiences are legitimately far from the norm.

But in another sense this is an accurate criticism. Graysexual experiences, outside certain communities relatively recently, are viewed as part of the spectrum of normal sexual behavior. They aren’t distinguished from ordinary heterosexuals, gay people, or bisexuals. A person who has graysexual experiences may characterize himself as “low libido” or “just not that interested in sex”, but he’s unlikely to consider it an aspect of his identity.

Indeed, we can see this with people whose experiences are equally far from the norm on the other side. A person with hundreds of sexual partners who’s had anonymous sex and who prefers to have sex two or three times a day might call himself “horny” or “slutty” or say he really enjoys sex; he will not characterize himself as having a sexual orientation related to being really really into sex.

Of course, this is very similar to the experience of gender-based attraction before the invention of heterosexuality. An ancient Roman man who is exclusively attracted to men might call himself a boy lover or say he doesn’t like women; he will not call himself “gay” and consider himself to be part of a group with all other gay men, opposed to all heterosexuals.

What we’re observing here is the process of a sexual orientation being constructed.

Humans are, in many ways, different from chairs. One way in which humans and chairs are different is that chairs do not respond to how you categorize them. If you categorize a chair as “an armchair” or “upholstered” or “environmentally friendly,” the chair does not change its behavior, because chairs do not speak English and do not have any concept of categorization. If a person is categorized as a Communist or an introvert or a bisexual, in many cases, the person may change their behavior. They might get defensive of other communists; they might feel justified in their decision not to go to parties; they might go to the Bisexual March to hang out with other bisexuals; they might create a niche meme page for memes relevant to people in the intersection of the three groups.

This means that, among humans, defining a category can create the category. People who are attracted to solely people of the same gender exist no matter whether a word for them exists or not. But rainbow flags and pride marches, gay undercuts and Grindr, coming out and familial rejection, the movies and books and music that make up the canon of gay culture, gay history and gay humor and specialty sex shops– these things exist because we have the category “gay” and that we decided it was a socially important category, one that matters for how we classify people.

Graysexuality is, in some sense, borrowing importance and salience from the more popular sexual orientations. Classifying it as a sexual orientation implies that it is an important category, something that matters a lot for understanding yourself and other people.

I think most of the effects of creating this category are positive. People– both graysexual and not graysexual– can find compatible romantic partners more easily. Graysexuals are less likely to feel broken or alone. They are less likely to have sex they don’t particularly want or find interesting, because everyone enjoys sex, don’t they? Their experiences feel valid. They can find other people who are similar to them and form a culture.

But I think there are negative consequences to forming the category as well. The way we construct sexual orientation in general makes claims about what is important to people’s experiences of their sexuality, but to many people in what ways their attraction is gendered is not actually a very important aspect of sexuality. (This seems like less of an issue for graysexuality– not particularly liking or wanting sex seems like it would be very relevant to nearly everyone’s experiences of sexuality.)

Labels can create a pressure to put your experiences in a box, sanding off the rough edges and the weirdnesses that make up every human experience of sexuality, instead of allowing things to be complicated. The pressure to know whether you are Really X can create a lot of angst and anxiety. People can stick with an identity that no longer serves them or describes their experiences, because they have a lot of their understanding of who they are as a person bound up with it.

Some experiences on the graysexual spectrum can be caused by medications, trauma, dissociation or simply not knowing what your sexual interests are. “I don’t need to be fixed, this is my orientation, it’s just the way I am, I can’t change” can be a double-edged sword. It frees some graysexuals from the futile search to fix a natural part of their sexuality, and allows others to explain what’s going on with their sexuality without giving a medical history or explaining trauma they’d like to keep private. But for some people sexuality is an important part of their flourishing, and a medication adjustment or a process of sexual exploration would improve their lives. (Fortunately, in my experience, graysexual communities are very friendly to people who switch to new identities.)

Certainly, however, the social construction of the graysexual identity is sociologically interesting, even as an outsider. Some person who studies the sociology of sexuality should consider writing a book on it; it’s an interesting case study in something we don’t get to see very often, the formation of a new sexual orientation.

Five Kinds of Relationship Problems

Tags

ozy blog post, sex positivity

In my opinion, there are approximately five kinds of persistent relationship problems. I’m going to be using the word “partner”, but none of this is limited to romantic relationships.

First, there are stupid problems. A stupid problem is a problem with some sort of no-shit obvious fix that, for some reason, neither you nor your partner seem to have come up with. Every relationship can be expected to have some quantity of stupid problems in it, because no one is perfect at relationships and everyone is missing some relationship skills.

Here are some examples of fixes to stupid problems:

• When you and your partner are having a fight over nothing for no reason, notice this and stop doing that.
• When you are angry, go someplace else to calm down until you can talk about it like adults.
• Talk about what you want instead of trying to send your needs to your partner telepathically.
• Think about what’s really important to you and what you can compromise on.
• Ask whether your partner wants support or problem-solving.
• Ask your partner questions about how their day went.
• Schedule regular time together.
• Try out things your partner likes instead of dismissing them out of hand.
• Say ‘thank you’ when your partner does something you like.
• Do things that make your partner feel loved instead of things that make you feel loved.

Second, there are basic incompatibilities. A basic incompatibility is when one person has a need, desire, preference, or want, and the other person is for whatever reason basically incapable of fulfilling it. One of you is monogamous, the other one is polyamorous. One of you wants sex all the time, the other one never wants sex. One of you needs a tidy house, the other one has ADHD and can never put things back in the same place. One of you has expensive tastes, the other one wants to save money. One of you wants kids, the other one doesn’t. One of you wants to live in a big city, the other one wants to live in a small town. One of you loves movies, the other one doesn’t. One of you craves adventure, the other one is a homebody.

There are basically three approaches for dealing with basic incompatibilities. First, one of you sucks it up. You accept that you’re just going to live in a messy house forever or do an unfair share of the chores. Second, you manage the problem. For example, you might hire a house cleaner. Third, you break up. Next time, you know that this is important to you and you will find someone who will keep the house in the state that you prefer.

Every relationship has certain basic incompatibilities, because no two people ever mesh perfectly together. You’re never going to find anyone who satisfies every single desire you have in a relationship. So you have to figure out what’s most important to you and what you’re willing to compromise on.

Third, there are problems that are actually a different kind of problem. Your cat died. You’re stressed at work. You’re sleep-deprived. You have a newborn baby. You have depression. You have cancer. Any of these things is instead true of your partner. In any of these situations, you can wind up persistently unhappy in your relationship. This has nothing to do with your relationship, it has to do with the rest of your life circumstances.

To fix this sort of problem, you can fix the underlying issue– such as by getting enough sleep. You can also try to both be aware and understanding of the situation and approach it as a team. A reframe from “I’m sleep-deprived and also my relationship is a mess” to “I’m sleep-deprived and that’s stressful, but my partner and I are approaching it together” can help.

Fourth, there are horrifying soul-sucking messes. A problem of one of the previous three types was badly managed, perhaps for years. Now, every time you have a minor argument, you bring in everything wrong that happened for your entire relationship. You don’t feel like you can trust your partner. All the quirks you used to find charming drive you up the wall. You hate even your partner’s most innocuous actions. You avoid every topic that leads to a fight, and rapidly find that you can’t discuss anything except Marvel movies and the weather. You’re defensive whenever your partner says anything that sounds like even a minor criticism. You’re sarcastic and you call them names. Somehow, when you remember good things about the past– the time you saw Hamilton together or your birthday present or being the best man at their wedding– all you can remember is the long lines at intermission, the poor wrapping job, and their incredibly rude drunk aunt. If asked to name a good trait of theirs, you draw a blank, but you can go on for hours about their flaws.

I guess it might be in theory possible to fix a horrifying soul-sucking mess with a lot of hard work, but to be honest every time I’ve seen a person in one of those relationships they were a lot better and happier and stronger as people as soon as they ended it.

Fifth, there are terrible people. One or both of you just sucks. This category includes abuse, but it certainly isn’t limited to it. This is the category from which advice columnists get all their pageviews: we love viewing a train wreck. Your partner has had a suicidal crisis every night at 3am for the last month, and you’re up all night comforting them, and they refuse to find anyone else to talk to or ride out their suicidal crisis on their own. Your partner cheats on you constantly. Your baby is eighteen months old and your partner has never changed a single diaper. Your partner has demanded that you keep your relationship secret from everyone. You asked your partner to clean up dog poo from the floor, and it is three days later, and the dog poo is still there.

If you have found yourself in a committed relationship with a terrible person, you should DUMP THEM. If you regularly are in committed relationships with terrible people, you should think about why you do that, and do appropriate countermeasures (such as talking to a wise friend). If your relationship is one where you can scale back the relationship until the terribleness stops affecting you, you can decide whether to do that or to dump them, depending on your values. (Setting boundaries will be an important skill, if you try this.)

If you are concerned that you yourself might be a terrible person, the solution is probably a long and difficult and painful process of personal growth.

PSA: HIV PrEP

Tags

ozy blog post, sex positivity

Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a way of preventing HIV. If you’re HIV-negative, you can take certain HIV medications before coming into contact with HIV, and it reduces the likelihood that you will contract HIV.

PrEP is very very effective. If you take 7 pills a week, your risk of contracting HIV goes down by 99%. That is, if you receive unprotected anal sex from an HIV-positive partner, you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting HIV. If you are on PrEP, you instead have a 1 in 10000 chance of getting HIV. If you use condoms, you have a 1 in 50000 chance of getting HIV. [ETA: numbers fixed; thank you Keller.]

Even if you miss a pill sometimes, PrEP can be very effective. If you take four pills a week, your risk goes down by 96%, and if you take only two pills a week, your risk goes down by 76%.

You have to take PrEP for a week for it to start working for anal sex, and three weeks for it to start working for vaginal sex. When you stop taking PrEP, you should continue taking it for at least four weeks after your last possible exposure to HIV.

PrEP has very few side effects and is considerably safer than, for example, the birth control pill. Some people report gastrointestinal issues in the first month of taking it (I personally experienced nausea for one day), but these side effects will go away after the first month. If you take PrEP, you may experience a small increase in serum creatinine, which is filtered by the kidneys. While PrEP has not been linked to loss of kidney function, your doctor will monitor your kidney function, and it might not be a good idea to take it if you have kidney issues. If you’re on PrEP, you will have to go to the doctor more often for blood tests. People have taken PrEP for up to five years without long-term health consequences.

PrEP is usually covered by insurance, and there are medication assistance programs to help high-risk people pay for it.

PrEP only protects against HIV, not other STIs or pregnancy.

You should consider being on PrEP if you have sex that puts you at a high risk of contracting HIV. Here are some people who should consider being on PrEP:

• People who have sex for money, drugs, housing, etc. and their partners.
• People who inject drugs and share needles.
• People who have unprotected sex with people who are HIV-positive or whose status they are not sure of. (“I met him that night and he said he was clean” does not count as “sure of.”)
• People who drink heavily or use drugs in a context where they might wind up having unprotected sex.
• People who have recently contracted an STI.
• People who have anonymous sex with men or trans people who have sex with men or trans people.

It can be easy to overestimate your risk of HIV. For example, if you are polyamorous, have sex within your extended polycule, use condoms reliably, have a gossipy enough polycule that you know the HIV status and condom use habits of random acquaintances*, and know that everyone you’re sleeping with uses condoms reliably and gets tested regularly and doesn’t have HIV, you’re pretty safe from HIV. I don’t think people should rush out and get PrEP without considering how likely it is that they will get HIV.

However, even if you aren’t at high risk of HIV, you may want to consider taking PrEP for peace of mind. If you regularly feel anxious about contracting HIV or are avoiding casual sex that would make you happy and fulfilled because of fear of HIV, PrEP might be a good decision for you even if you’re objectively at fairly low risk.

*This may be redundant with ‘is a polycule.’