Growing at the Internship

The internship is serving as an eye opening experience, one which seems to be testing my sense of 'tolerance.' Admittedly, this is what tends to happen in community health work. My time at Utah AIDS Foundation was proof of this phenomenom, where I became comfortable discussing the most intimate details of the sex lives of complete strangers (though to contrast this, I still maintain a difficulty discussing these same types of matters of sexual boundaries with my own partners). So it's not like I havent had prior experience or was going in this with my eyes closed or a sense of naivete.

I do have a bit of a judgemental inner core and expectation of sexuality, surrounding expectations. Much of this has come from a narrow view of sexuality formed by Mormon and Puritanical New England ethos. I knew of this growing up, and managed to progress quite far at UAF, embracing the harm reduction model. At UAF we often discussed "kink" sex, but I only got to confront the boundaries of my paradigm in theory only. I never had a client that expressed such preferences. Our questions tended to be generic, focusing on protected vs unprotected (ie types of intercourse) rather than fethish/kink practices. In hindsight, by not inquiring specificly into this, we may have been doing our clients a disservice, many who would respond to direct questions rather than branching out into matters not specifically brought up. This is a demographic we may have missed out on, and an important lesson to learn which will hopefully serve me well in the future, should I continue to work in community health.

Back to the topic at hand. Kink. It seems that Rainbow Project is going to continue my growth in ways I had not imagined. On Wednesday my supervisor put me in charge of revising TRP's Gay Men's Guide to Rough Sex. While I was aware that it would include such kink practices as S&M, fisting, and an assortment of others (both known and unknown to me), I was not prepared for the graphic descriptions I came upon while perusing the last printed edition. In my mind some of the practices are nothing less than sadistic torture. Others are just revolting to me, such as "scat play," while reading I found myself in a battle with my gag reflex, trying hard not to be sick.

While certainly this has been an unexpected test and awareness of where I am on my journey, I see this as something I can grow from and become an even better health worker. Many of the clients that come to our doors are involved in these practices and there is an expectation that they will be respected with no judgement on our parts. Understanding exactly what the health risks (if any) exist in the practices and then offering suggestions to minimizing the risk is what our job is. These are adults capable of coming to their own conclusions and who will at the end of the day make their own decisions. Whether we approve personally or not is irrelevant. What we need to do is ensure these individuals are treated with respect and made comfortable enough to be able to open up to be able to have candid conversations. Morality and social norms are not part of the discussion. Purely health considerations are. And I have much to learn to allow me to be able to reach these individuals who bring up counter transference in me.