Here's the deal: I guess I identify as mixed race. My dad is second generation Japanese American (born in America) and my mom is American born of German ancestry. Even though growing up a lot of adults repeatedly told me I looked just like my mom (who had blonde hair and blue eyes), the kids I grew up with told me I looked very Asian. I was reminded about this a lot and it was almost always done in a way that was intended to hurt me or make me feel bad about myself. 

When I was growing up models like Paulina Porizkova, Christie Brinkley, Farrah Fawcett, Cheryl Tiegs, Jerry Hall, and Kim Alexis were super popular.

So, what's a non white girl who grew up in the 70's and 80's to do when looking for a role model who is 1/2 Asian? I guess the short answer is not much.

It's not a huge surprise that there were few famous people or role models I could look to and say "hey, that person actually kind of looks like me..that's cool." 

I'm happy to report that a bit of progress has been made in Hollywood! 

Here are a few of my favorite female Hollywood actors/personalities who are 1/2 Asian:

(above: Meg Tily)

(above: Jennifer Tily...yes, they are sisters)

(above: Shannyn Sossamon)

(above: Alexa Chung)

(above: Olivia Munn)

(above: China Chow--we both graduated from Scripps College)

(above: Charlotte Lewis--technically not Asian, but she looks it, so I included her)

(above: Phoebe Cates)

I know who my favorites are--Shannyn Sossamon (she looks a lot like a young Lisa Bonet) and Phoebe Cates. For anyone under 30, Phoebe Cates was basically the star of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (she had an iconic bikini scene), Gremlins, and Drop Dead Fred. She left the Hollywood scene in the 90's to raise a family with her husband, Kevin Kline. 

It would be lovely to see more people of color entering the field of sexuality. Almost all the well known people in sexuality are Caucasian. This fact hadn't even occurred to me until it was brought up in a presentation, and now I can't get it out of my head. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, it's merely an observation that many people make. It's also one of the reasons why I am so passionate about promoting the work of other people who don't fit into the status quo. This is a shout out to Becca Brewer and Sandra Daugherty!

I'm not even kidding when I say reading the book "The Good News About the Bad News" by Terri Warren has blown my mind. I might even go as far as saying that this is probably the only book you need on herpes if you are a sex educator, are interested in sexual health, or have a herpes diagnosis. Not only is it funny (you can tell she has been on the front lines of sexual health because of her sense of humor), but it is filled with great and actionable advice. 

I've previously written about herpes and how the the two main players are Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 (HSV 1) and Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 (HSV 2). I've come to find out that there is so much more to herpes than I, most people (and even clinicians) know. 

Most people believe that cold sores (sores on the outside of your mouth, chin, and nose) are HSV 1 and genital herpes (herpes around your genital area) are HSV 2. In other words, sores about the waist are HSV 1 and sores below the waist are HSV 2. 

HSV 1 cause the majority of recurrent cold sores that appear on your chin, lips, nose, and other places on your face. Many people believe that in order to have HSV 1, there must be some noticeable blister that forms a crust, heals, and goes away. Like with many STI's, the majority of the HSV 1 oral infections are asymptomatic (or even go unrecognized). This means that there are A LOT of people who honestly don't know they have HSV 1. This wouldn't be so bad if HSV 1 weren't so infectious to others. 

A term you will hear time and time again when it comes to the herpes virus is "shedding". This basically means that a person is literally giving off the virus...kinda like our skin is always shedding but we don't really think about it or notice it unless our skin is really dry or we have a peeling sunburn. During the past 10 years (give or take) there has been a really interesting shift when it comes to herpes and STI transmission. The old school of thought is that you are only infectious to others when you are currently exhibiting visible or noticeable symptoms. What we now know is that the herpes virus is being shed even when there are no obvious symptoms. This is a pretty significant finding.

Besides HSV 1 causing cold sores, it is also responsible for the majority of herpes in the eye. This can happen when you touch your cold sore and then touch your eye without washing it first. It can also happen when the virus travels along the same nerves that provide sensation between the mouth and the eye. HSV 1 of the eye is treatable and something best left to an ophthalmologist and not an optometrist.

The big news about HSV 1 is that is can cause genital herpes. Studies show that about 40% of new genital herpes cases in the United States are caused by HSV 1. Also it is thought that the popularity of oral sex is why there are more HSV 1 cases than HSV 2 cases in teens and college students. 

HSV 1 is transmitted via mouth/genital contact and it can occur even in the absence of cold sores. The good news is that about 50% of people with genital HSV 1 have zero recurrences. 

An oral HSV 1 outbreak can be triggered by anything from too much sunlight to trauma, and I don't mean that in a "Fight Club" kind of way. Trauma can be anything from a new lip piercing, oral surgery, or even lip injections (now I know why my dermy asked me if I were prone to cold sores when I tried Restylane on my lips). Remember that shedding happens even with out obvious symptoms.

Another thing to remember when it comes to HSV 1 is "who is infected". Studies show that more than 50% of people in the United States who are over the age of 14 have HSV 1 infection. Unfortunately, there is no delineation between the number of oral and genital infections.  

HSV 1 can be diagnosed a number of different ways:

• Visual diagnosis only (error rate of 20%) **not advised & in 2002 the CDC began recommending a lab test for confirmation.

• Viral swab tests **they are ONLY effective when having visible symptoms and the testing culture must be done correctly with vigorous swabbing. Out of several choices, only the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) swab testing gives a clinician the opportunity to tell if you have HSV 1 or HSV 2. It's important to know what type of swab test is being performed. 

• Blood tests. Just like with HIV tests, blood tests for HSV look for the antibody or the protein that your body makes in response to an infection. Blood tests are preferable when it comes to herpes because they can be type-specific to tell you if you have HSV 1 or HSV 2. When it comes to herpes blood testing, there are many options (and some are more effective than others) so it's important to figure out what type of testing is being offered. 

So what are the big take aways from the above information?

1. Knowing that HSV 1 can cause genital herpes is huge! This can even come as a surprise to clinicians and I know it did for me.
2. Knowing that people shed the virus and are infectious to others even when there are no visible symptoms is also a fairly recent finding. 
3. Testing is complex and some test for the virus, but they don't specify if you have HSV 1 or HSV 2.
4. "The Good News About the Bad News" by Terri Warren is a great book!
   
5. HSV 1 & HSV 2 can be managed quite well with a variety of treatment therapies! This is really, really good news. Because it is a virus, there is no cure, but the treatment options have much improved in the past 30 years. 
6. A huge percentage of people who have HSV 1 & HSV 2 are completely unaware and it can lay dormant for years and years before an outbreak ever happens. This is why I always advocate for COMPREHENSIVE HIV/STI testing for all sexually active people. 

Let me be clear that I believe abstinence has a place in sex education--when it is part of a comprehensive sex education program. Being part of a larger conversation about sex and sexuality makes a lot of sense to me. It is the abstinence "only" part that drives me a little nutso.

I'm not a professional wordsmith, but I have enough knowledge to know that the word "withholding" is synonymous with "abstinence", which makes almost no sense to me. Seriously, think about it for a minute.

Communication is truly one of the most important tools anyone uses in their life. However, most people are never taught how to effectively communicate with...really..anyone. Peers, bosses, kids, family, and the list goes on and on. 

Using an abstinence only model (with virginity pledges) is really only getting youth to agree to something they don't consent to (as well as depriving youth from learning how to communicate around the topics of sex and sexuality.) Consent is difficult to reach if you are purposely leaving important information out. Maybe I'm a bit dense, but what is the harm with giving youth accurate information about sex education?

Learning to make good decisions is part of getting older, isn't it? Giving youth comprehensive information on sex education allows them to know what the risks are for pregnancy or HIV/STI transmission and how they can prevent it. I, for one, would be incredibly happy to never hear about a new season of "16 and pregnant" or "Teen Moms".  

I've worked with a lot of youth in my undergraduate (interning at a juvenile prison & interning with a juvenile probation office) and professional life. My post college work with youth has been as a case manager at a half-way house (in other words, youth who were released directly from prison), as a probation office (and an active participant in a "teen court" program), and working with both HIV positive and HIV negative youth in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In short, I have had a lot of experience with youth--everyone from LGBTQIQ youth who are marginally housed and homeless to students who attend some of the finest (ie expensive & progressive) private college preparatory schools. When it comes to college age youth, I've provided sex education to people attending community colleges as well as premiere universities like Stanford. 

Even though I am a non-breeder, I truly love being around teens and young adults. I hear so many parents complain about how they can't relate to their children and that they have no idea what they might or might not be doing sexually. The thing is, with me, I have the exact opposite effect with youth. Basically they tell me in intimate details who, where, and when they have hooked up with sexually. Some have even drawn me flow-charts...I'm not even kidding about this.

Maybe it's because I don't have my own kids that I am able to relate so well (and in such a meaningful way) to youth. Maybe it's because I am super awesome sex educator, or maybe it's because I am perpetually curious and am genuinely interested in speaking with them. Also, I may look younger than I am, but many of the high school youth I had daily contact with were young enough to be my children. So why is it that, in general, youth are so open to talking about sex and sexuality with me?

Here are a few of my thoughts on why youth are so willing to talk openly about sex with me. 

I relate to them on their level. Ok, so maybe this makes me a bit un-sophisticated and immature, but I can talk to most youth about almost anything. It usually starts out with me asking something like:

    "Whats going on at school?"

    "Are you interested in anyone in particular?"

    "What's the newest update with you, give me the 411",

    "Hey, are you thinking about college yet?",

    "What do you do for fun?"

    or even

    "So, have you been getting any penetration lately?"

Being that I am a super curious person, all I have to do is open the door with a few open-ended questions and the proverbial flood gates open up. I also come from a place that I recognize youth are sexual beings, which is something really difficult for a parent to conceive of.

I've figured out that there is an art to asking the correct questions. For example, If they say they have, indeed, had penetration, I will ask what kind, did they enjoy it, how do they feel about it now, is it with someone serious, do they need condoms and lube, etc. 

It's been my experience that youth are way smarter and intuitive than they are given credit for. The youth I have known are really open to confiding intimate details about their life because they see me as a trusted adult and/or ally. 

I don't want to give the impression that I'm advocating parents to go out and become their children's best friend. I mean, look at how well that has turned out for Lindsay Lohan and her mom. There needs to be some sort of rules or parameters, and those should be set by the parent.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't want people to think youth gravitate towards me because they see me as their pal and, therefore, a push over because 1) If you know anything about me and my past work experience (see above), you know I am anything but a push over, and 2) I have never had a problem calling a youth out on their shit. My process looks something like this--we have a private conversation, we discuss whatever the issue is and I then communicate what type of behavior is expected from them moving forward, and then I drop it and move on. I've lost count the number of times youth were obviously squeamish to be around me after our little private conversation. They are usually blown away that I am still around for them after they have messed up. I think it is these type of instances where I have left the biggest mark on emerging youth. There have been many times when I (along with other youth service providers) have been the first healthy relationship a youth has had with an adult, and it is something I take very seriously. Being an active person in a teens life can have dramatic results, even if that time is limited to only a few months. 

I know that this might seem like a radical way of interacting with youth. Open and honest communication...how novel!  

I get that not everyone is going to have the capacity to do this. In that case, the best I can hope for is that those youth have some adult in their life who they feel comfortable discussing this stuff with.

Or, you can always send them my way. 

**Scarleteen, Sexetc.org, & Go Ask Alice are all wonderful sexuality resources!

In the past few months, I've seen headlines about tampons being recalled due to bacterial contamination, high schoolers soaking tampons in vodka to get drunk, and using tampons as flaming weapons. Seriously, I can not even make this shit up!

While I am not a fan of tampons, many vagina owners use them on a monthly basis. My personal reasons for not using them is twofold; they cause me to have wicked cramps and I know someone who almost DIED because of Toxic Shock Syndrome. I am much more partial to using Diva Cups and the Instead Soft Cup. 

Tampons, it seems, are a hot topic. 

FYI, I get the whole soaking tampons in alcohol thing. It is no different from when people take a nostril inhaler, dump out the contents, put in alcohol, and then squirt it into their rectum. Mucous membranes are an efficient way of getting substances into the blood stream. However, it generally is not something that is recommended. Vaginal and rectal tissue is really, really sensitive and introducing alcohol into either of them is dangerous. 

Becca Brewer, who I've written about before (remember she is the fabulous creator of the FREE download of the WWWcharts), posted a blog article about how a vagina owner (and fans of) can save the world by ditching pads and tampons. She has graciously allowed me to re-run her blog post that was originally posted on April 26, 2010. 

Connect with Becca via her website, on facebook (don't forget to "like" her), and on twitter.

~~

How Ditching Pads and Tampons Can Save The World

Most people are familiar with the harm reduction concept because it is used in reference to alcohol and drug use. For example, needle exchange programs are, in essence, the perfect harm reduction model and here is why--people who work with needle exchange acknowledge that people are IV drug users (notice, there is no judgement here), and provide them with clean needles in order to decrease the transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C. Some needle exchange programs even distribute literature on how a person can shoot up in a way that is going to do the least harm. 

As someone who worked in the HIV positive community, I usually identify myself as someone who uses a harm reduction method when talking about sex education.

Ok, but what does that mean?

In a nutshell, it basically means that I acknowledge that most people engage in some type of sexual activity. Once I find out what type of sex they are having, I can talk about ways of minimizing personal risk or risk to others if that is something they are interested in.

In my case, the majority of the youth I worked with were either HIV positive or had an AIDS diagnosis, and sexual activity was the main mode of HIV transmission. The trend I noticed that at first surprised me was just how little HIV positive youth new about safer sex, much less about the HIV virus. This was one of those cases where people required basic sex education as well as specific sex education in relation to them being HIV positive (this is called "prevention with positives"). 

When working with HIV positive youth, harm reduction can be as simple as showing someone how to properly use a condom. It can also be incredibly complex and it can mean that you literally break down the level of risk involved in any sexual activity they participate in.

Many of the HIV positive people I worked with had their own harm reduction model--only they were not aware of it being a prevention strategy.

Hooking up online is really popular, and unless you met through a HIV poz website, you will most likely not know the HIV status of your newest partner. What I heard time and time again is because the HIV poz person didn't know their partners HIV status, they were more willing to "bottom" bareback. This works as a harm reduction method because 1) they already have HIV and 2) there is less risk of HIV transmission if you are "topping" bareback.

A lot of people take issue with this scenario because there is no HIV disclosure. However, believe it or not, this is harm reduction in action.

Engaging in barrier free receptive anal penetration is the most risky of all sexual activities when it comes to HIV infection. Offering up your ass constitutes harm reduction because it puts your partner at much less risk for HIV infection. 

There are A LOT of people who find harm reduction troubling. They may hold certain religious, medical, political, or personal beliefs that are incongruent with harm reduction. The best I could do was hope like hell that these people were not providing any type of HIV treatment, care, or advocacy for my clients. I would have never referred an HIV positive person to someone who doesn't subscribe to the harm reduction model. I'm also someone who tends to be super protective, so it was common for me to accompany my clients to their medical appointments. Because my dad is a practicing physician and my mom was a former nurse, I never had the weird or uncomfortable feelings many have towards medical treatment providers. In fact, I learned that growing up with parents in the medical field was a huge asset when it came to medical advocacy for others. 

I've mentioned this before, but it is my experience that disclosing that you are HIV positive is not always commonplace amongst some communities. Many people assume that if your partner doesn't say anything, then they are HIV negative. Also, many people never ASK about the STI/HIV/AIDS status of their partner.

For the record, I strongly believe that YOU need to be an active participant in your sexual health. This means getting tested regularly for all STIs. It also means talking with your partner (even if it is a one time hook up) about their sexual health history. Alternatively, you can use a barrier and stick to sexual activities that are less risky if you don't know your partners HIV/STI/AIDS status.

Let's face it, it is really difficult to make an empowered and informed decision about sexual risk if you don't know what parameters you are working with. Not talking about it doesn't mean that everyone involved is HIV/STI/AIDS negative.  

Most people who are not in the sexuality community find bringing up the topics of sex and sexuality to be really, really uncomfortable. I get it. It's not like anyone really teaches us this skill. However, I believe that the majority of your partners will be thankful for you broaching the subject. Incidentally, it is also one of those things that gets easier the more often you do it. 

Harm reduction, it's a really good thing!

I think it has to do with my newest project, CatherinesSexGlossary. Somehow I've managed to post **210 definitions in only a few weeks. Crazy stuff, right? If you check it out my new blog and like it, please do me a solid and 'Digg' it (if you happen to have an account).

I'll be back in a few days. 

If there is a particular topic you would like to see me tackle here, feel free to leave me a blog comment or shoot me an email (catherine@catherinecoaches.com).

Smooches

**If you see something inaccurate or a term that could be worded better, please let me know.**