So, this whole question about STIs and, you know, going solo – masturbating – it’s something that’s come up in chats here and there, and it got me thinking. I’ve been around a bit, heard a lot of things, so I decided to really sit down and process it, just lay it out for myself based on what makes sense, my own practical take on it.
First thing I did was just use some good old common sense. STIs, right? Sexually Transmitted Infections. The key word there is “transmitted.” They don’t just appear out of thin air like dust bunnies. You gotta get them from someone who already has one. That’s the basic starting point I always come back to.
So, I asked myself, if it’s just you, by yourself, with your own hands, doing your own thing, where does the “other person” – the source of a potential infection – come into the picture? It seemed pretty straightforward when I put it like that. If there’s no one else involved, directly, then the risk just isn’t there for an STI.
What I pretty much landed on is this: If you’re masturbating completely alone, using only your hands on your own body, then no, you can’t get an STI. It’s like, you can’t catch a flu from thinking about someone who has the flu. There’s no mechanism for the infection to get to you if you’re the only one in the equation.
But then, of course, my brain went to the ‘what ifs’…
Life’s rarely black and white, you know? So, I started to pick apart the situations where things might get a bit fuzzy. It’s not the masturbation itself, but other stuff that might be happening around it.
- What about sex toys? This was a big one. If it’s your own personal toy, and you’re the only one who ever uses it, then you’re still in that solo zone. No new germs being introduced. But, and this is a big but, if you’re sharing toys with someone else, especially if you don’t clean them like crazy between uses, then yeah, that changes things. If the other person has an STI, that infection could be on the toy. Then it’s not really just “masturbation causing an STI”; it’s “sharing a contaminated object causing an STI.”
- What if there was some other contact? Let’s say, for example, someone touched bodily fluids from an infected person, and then, without washing their hands thoroughly, they touched themselves. The STI wouldn’t be coming from the act of masturbation itself, but from that prior contact with infected fluids. The masturbation part is just what happened afterwards.
- Open cuts or sores? Now, this is more about general hygiene and skin infections, but if you have an open cut or sore, it’s always a good idea to be careful. But again, for an STI, the germs for that STI still have to come from an infected person. Masturbating isn’t going to magically create STI germs on your skin if they weren’t introduced from an outside source.
So, after going through all that in my head, my practical conclusion was pretty clear. The act of masturbating, when it’s truly a solo activity with no sharing of objects that could carry infections from another person, and no recent contact with someone else’s infected fluids, doesn’t cause STIs. It’s really about whether there’s a pathway for germs from an infected person to get to you.
It’s kind of like this: if you use your own clean fork to eat your own food, you won’t get sick from the fork. But if you use a dirty fork that someone else with a stomach bug just used, well, that’s different. The fork isn’t the problem; it’s what was on it.
That’s just how I’ve processed it, my own little practice run of thinking it through. Keep it simple, keep it solo, and you’re generally keeping STIs out of that particular picture. That’s the gist of what I’ve figured out for myself.
