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Writer's pictureSarah Foley

TSS-007 ~ (un)safe sex and body privilege

Updated: Dec 23, 2023

content warning: sexual assault, abortion, sexual disease, fatphobia.


I first wrote this post in November. I keep coming back to it, abandoning it, re-reading, asking for help, feeling icky, feeling unsure. But I have decided to post it because the point of this blog, is to share my confusion, my growth and my mistakes. I was hoping to post this with answers attached to it- here is how to be a better ally, how to support BIPOC, trans-women and non-binary people who have experienced oppression in accessing sexual health care. But I don’t have an answer. I am learning how to be better and how to step aside and support. I am seeing my privilege everywhere.


If you do have thoughts after reading this post, or if you relate to my thoughts, and would like to share, I would be honoured to hear from you. You can always message me on Instagram (@sarahccfoley) or on the contact form here on the blog. I know this is my work to do however, and I am sorry for asking the people already labouring to labour further for me by guiding me in this area, as I hoped for help finishing this post.





This is a confession post. A dangerous (or just not safe) sex post. An anti-contraception post. Please forgive me for I have sinned. To be honest with you, I don’t know if I could bring myself to suck a condom-covered dick. I’ve never considered using a dental dam. I have bought condoms once in my life and was beside myself with embarrassment. I am not on the Pill nor do I have the IUD or any other form of contraception. I am an awful safe sex advocate. I have had a few near misses with STI’s, but I was somehow never scared off having unsafe sex. From a place of utter privilege, I know I can treat most STI’s and access an abortion if need be. My sexual health laziness is the epitome of the privileging and inherent protection of my white body. I could get treated for an STI with easy and affordable medical access. I could get an abortion at one of the many safe clinics in Melbourne and be supported by my partner/friends. Once again, my whiteness has allowed me ultimate safety in risking my health: a sickening thought, a total symptom of the racist medical industry that I have benefited from.


My aversion to safe sex began as a teenager, obsessed as I was with scandalous, guilty sex. As you’ll know if you’ve read any of my other blog posts, I expected sex to be fraught with danger, pain and secrecy. So it made total sense to me that you run the constant risk of disease for the sake of sexy sex. In becoming an adult, I also had a deep desire to test the limits of my body. How much sex I could physically have before I couldn’t move. How much unsafe, drunk sex I could have with men a lot older than me. I could dominate my self-identity with sex. I would have as much sex as I possibly could.


I also had a very secret, enduring, deep desire to get pregnant. Obsessed with Sixteen and Pregnant, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and anything else involving teen pregnancy, I wanted a baby so badly. I loved the idea that you could create something that would love you implicitly. Something that would force coercive, but, in my mind, genuine loving commitment from a boy. I was an imagination mastermind. I fantasised about falling in love with the coolest boys in school, fucking them in the school toilets during assembly, falling pregnant and having a baby in my childhood room with this boy still obsessed with me and our baby. I had it totally mapped out. I would never be alone if I had a baby. And obviously any boy who co-created this child would be madly in love with me and our child. As I turned seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and finally twenty, I mourned each year that I was further away from the possibility of being a teenager AND a mother. Having unsafe sex was really the perpetual aim while knowing that it was not socially acceptable to want to get pregnant let alone be willing to get and therefore pass on a sexually-transmitted disease. And herein lies ANOTHER example of my privileged whiteness, if I were to have gotten pregnant, and weren’t able to afford the $500ish to pay for it, I could have asked my parents to help pay for an abortion/childcare/whatever I decided I wanted to do, knowing I had access. My unsafe sex was completely, entirely, selfish.


When I had sex for the first time with my first boyfriend, he sensibly suggested that he run to the shops and get condoms when it became obvious we may be venturing into penetration territory (I was much too scared to put my face or hands anywhere near his penis). I was mildly disappointed, as I saw my first foray into sex as the first time I could experience the adultness of risky fucking. Like many many teenage girls, I was immediately prescribed one of the generic name contraceptive pills (Brenda, Estelle, Layla, Yas) when I started having sex. I took it without questions, but I allowed myself to skip days here or there, forgetting to get new boxes for a few days. I wasn’t so much as trying to get pregnant as giving myself every opportunity to ‘accidentally’ get pregnant.


Not only did I have a total disregard for my body, I had a total disregard for the bodies of everyone I had sex with. I had reckless sex, then more reckless sex, and didn’t share this with any of my sexual partners. And even if I did want to have an open discussion with these partners, I didn’t get tested frequently enough to give them the possibility of an informed choice. I used the odd sexual health test as if it were prevention. Each time my results were negative, I went back to my unprotected ways, going off and on the Pill as I chose. I didn’t care what happened to my body, or theirs. I have never even really had a pregnancy scare. Instead of feeling fortunate that the disrespect of my body and my partner’s hadn’t had serious repercussions, I took this as evidence that I was infertile and had to try harder to make sure that I COULD accidentally get pregnant. My PCOS and Endometriosis diagnoses make a huge amount of sense in regard to my self-decreed ‘infertility’. I have never gotten pregnant because I most likely will struggle to fall pregnant naturally. Truly ironic.


At 24, I’m a lot more aware and consensually kind to my body and the body of the person I sleep with. Thank god I’ve wised up and realised that I do not want to get an STI because it could have a huge effect on my body’s already compromised chances of conceiving. STI’s also implicitly impact people with vaginas worse than they do men. People with ovaries can be made infertile from diseases that are symptomless in men. I also finally understand that I do not want the reality of getting pregnant, I just committed to a romantic ideal of it. I do not want children for ten (plus?) years and while I still know that I would have an abortion if I were to get pregnant, I am no longer drawn to actually wanting one, now fully aware of how FUCKED and disturbingly privileged a position this came from (hello Lena Dunham- if you know, you know). I don’t entirely blame myself for my perversions though. I fed myself on seemingly endless media that perpetuated the danger of sex, particularly for women, and so I desired this danger in pursuit of anything remotely sexual that my child brain could fathom. From my introduction to sexual touch (albeit via assault), from eight, sex was dangerous and exciting BECAUSE of the danger. The odd feelings in my body that came from sexual touch were associated totally with hurt, secrecy and fear. I wasn’t old enough to understand how to respect my body, nor was I taught that it should be respected during sex. I assumed the dirtiness, sweatiness, bloodiness of sex were inherently sexual, and thus something to be desired.


I have also realised, that my fascination with STI’s and accidental pregnancy as a teenager having sex made/makes me implicit in perpetuating STI stigma. In actively seeking a kind of sex that fit my idea of ‘dirty’, I associated STI’s with ‘dirtiness’ also. I contributed passively and actively to the nasty culture of demonising people with STI’s by associating STI’s with the most dangerous, reckless sort of sex. I slut-shamed myself and other people with an inextricable addiction and attraction to the shaming. Safe sex was boring. I am fortunate that I have not transmitted any diseases, but I would have been okay and no worse a person if I had of contracted one or more of them. I am sorry for any pain I have caused in my ignorance and perpetuating of the damaging stigma of STI’s. My actions in continuing to have unsafe sex with different people endangered the bodies of my partners and represented a bitterness that men didn’t offer to wear contraception either. If they could be lazy, I would be lazy too. I wanted to unleash a self-perceived ‘masculinity’ in my sex that was unapologetic, crude and without consideration of consequences. But my disrespect and carelessness were unkind and symbolic of me submitting to the patriarchal media I consumed that stated over and over that women should be punished for wanting sex. In my uneducated and inexperienced opinion, STI stigma is worse for women than cis-gendered men. Especially white men. From the moment of first penetration, women are dirty and soiled, while men are free to fuck wilfully and joyfully. Women must take the Plan-B pill, women must have abortions, women must lose the potential for financial equality with men the moment they give birth (link to article with further about this financial gap at bottom of page).


In my ignorant and selfish use of my body, I did have some comeuppance. One particular nameless fellow passively refused my continual requests for him to get a sexual health test once we started dating. He disliked condoms. I was too lazy to insist. I was on the Pill at the time so it was assumed that pregnancy protection was all I needed. Once we broke up, he finally decided to sort his shit out and get a sexual health test. The test came back positive for herpes. Herpes had been there the whole time we were together. I was absolutely fuming when he told me. I already struggled with chronic thrush, over-sensitivity, and had had a staph infection in and around my vagina producing even more sensitivity and pain. If I added herpes to that, my relationship with my sexual body would suffer innumerably. But as angry as I was at him for not being tested, I was angrier at myself for not caring about the safety and health of my body, right up until I had the excuse to be angry at someone else for not caring about the safety and health of my body. I was very happy to place the responsibility of my sexual health in the hands of my partner, placing fault on them for not being better when I am the one who SUCKS at protecting my sexual health.


In the many bouts of casual sex in my young adult life, I have used a condom on a first sexual encounter with only one man. Who is now my partner. He didn’t ask if I wanted to wear one, he just put one on when I communicated that penetrative sex was on the cards. I was SO aroused by his sexual responsibility (and a billion other things) taking that I started dated that boy.


In my journey with respecting and becoming knowledgeable in my body, I have also become incredibly passionate about creating informed consent around taking the Pill, and actually avoiding wherever possible. I came off the Pill around July 2019 after being off and on it from 17. Five and a half years, enough to cause years of (expensive and extensive) damage to work through in my sensitive body. But, herein lies my inextricable privilege again. I can AFFORD to experiment with other, more expensive forms of contraception if I want; I can AFFORD to see a gynaecologist to explain my options thoroughly; I can AFFORD access to Plan-B (the morning after pill) if I am truly worried. I can (just) AFFORD to see a naturopath for eight straight months and spend thousands of dollars on rebalancing and renourishing my hormones post-Pill. I can AFFORD to get and access an abortion if I were to fall pregnant now while using my cycle-indicators as the only kind of contraception. As usual, my whiteness allows me access to the best medical treatment, the most options and the most information about what I put in my body. My body is deemed important by medicine, less so than white men, but more than perhaps every other body. And so now, as a white woman, I must acknowledge this privilege and actively work towards giving this to POC, trans-women and gender-non-conforming (GNC) people. I see my work here as the advocating for and financially contributing to the bodily autonomy and protection of POC, trans-women and GNC people.


One side note here: if you’re not already aware, it is crucial to know that the Plan-B Pill only works in SMALL-bodied women. Unsurprisingly, disgustingly, fat-bodied women are exponentially less supported by the medical industry. This was touched on brilliantly in Aidy Bryant’s Shrill, when her character takes the Plan-B Pill and still becomes pregnant. She goes back to the pharmacy that sold her the drug and they carelessly explain that the Plan-B Pill only works if you are under 170ish pounds. WHAT. Some doctors say the Plan-B Pill won’t work if you’re over 150 pounds!!!! 150 pounds is SMALLER than the average weight of women in Australia. If you are over 170 pounds and take the Plan-B Pill, it is as effective as taking NO contraception, sitting at around a 6% chance of pregnancy (link to research at bottom of page). This is blatant discrimination of fat bodies.


This isn’t a moral story of realising I must wear a condom or use barrier form or contraception. I have no clue what I would do if I were to start having casual sex again now. I am so safe with James in our sex. We both had sexual health tests done when we began dating and have only slept with each other since then. We use cycle awareness as contraception, which we only feel safe doing truly because we know I most likely will struggle to become pregnant, even if I want to start trying for a baby down the line. Even writing that seems naïve and still ignorant. But I’ve realised that my own body has the skills to be a resource for learning to avoid pregnancy. In doing this I feel safe and in charge of my body. We don’t use any barrier protection, which is the risk we choose to take knowing that neither of us have an STI.


I wrote this piece after a revelatory period of realising and confronting the ease of my relationship with the medical industry, particularly regarding my reproductive organs. I feel guilty and embarrassed that I have been so reckless and selfish with my health. I think, though, that part of me always knew this. Part of the dirtiness and secrecy and pain that I envisioned as sexual, involved making decisions that defied my morality and represented a break from being a ‘good’ person, as really, ‘good’ people didn’t want sex as much as I did. In risking my health and the health of my sexual partners, I let myself have delightfully, hedonistic sex. The issue all along, was really my own concept of sexuality and desire. And so, it is from here that I go forward with consideration, care and love. Untangling the guilt and anger slowly, so slowly. Adding a touch of gentleness, earnestness, genuine sensation. I hope to continue my journey of sexual consciousness within my own body, while also working to dismantle the stigma and discrimination faced by marginalised bodies wherever and whenever I can.


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More info regarding the inadequacies of the Plan-B pill:

warning- fatphobic language used in these articles



More info regarding the financial gap that immediately occurs if womxn become mothers:

(also important here is that this is a purely western phenomenon where womxn are often able to meet many of the same financial benefits and education opportunities)



Image above sourced from Shutterstock.

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