Cathy: So, I’ve done a video with Elizabeth Wood and Dan Powers about cougar if someone had to ask about wanting to date older women.

Reid: Cougaring?

Cathy: Cougaring.

Reid: Is that what’s called?

Cathy: Yes

Reid: That’s awesome. Cougaring. My Cougars out there. [Inaudible 00:00:17]

Cathy: Someone replies said that cougar mantra

Reid: Cougar mantra?

Cathy: Well he was not being very nice about it.

Reid: Okay

Cathy: He said that means time for gonorrhea, aids, herpes, warts, crabs, scabies, HIV, syphilis, chlamydia herpes 1,2

Reid: Oh this is a comment?

Cathy: Yes

Reid: Oh someone left a comment. This is Cathy Vartuli from http://TheIntimacyDojo.com/.

Cathy: Yes, his comment was not very nice.

Reid: I’m Reid Mihalko from http://ReidAboutSex.com/. Did we introduce ourselves, we haven’t.

Cathy: We did.

Reid: Okay, you were setting this up. I thought Dan and Elizabeth said this.

Cathy: No, sorry.

Reid: Okay so we’re good, we’re good. Now we’re all in the same page.

Cathy: No.

Reid: And we know who we are.

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: So let’s go back to this cougar.

Cathy: Dan and Elizabeth were all for cougaring.

Reid: They’re all for cougaring and then this person left – it’s seems like a nasty comment or concern comment.

Cathy: Yeah. Basically say that coug- if you’re dating cougars or older women, you’re absolutely gonna get some kind of STD or STI and he said that all of these, he lists a bunch of STIs.

Reid: Okay.

Cathy: He said all of these are active and increasing and you’re just asking for that if you dated older women….

Reid: Okay

Cathy: And I wanted to talk about that.

Reid: Sure, sure. So whoever this is, we do. We appreciate all the comments, some of them we delete because haters are gonna hate

Cathy: Especially if they attack if somebody commented…

Reid: Taters are gonna tate, so if you leave a nasty comment me sometimes I’ll leave it cause I think that’s good I don’t wanna be surrounding myself with just all the positive stuff and I want you to feel like you can share your feelings,

Cathy: Especially thoughtful ones

Reid: Yeah, thoughtful ones. The ones are just all in caps and have words like not seeing them or you know something they look weird, just weird. I’ll often delete those. But if you leave a really nasty comment to one of the people who leaves a really thoughtful comment, sometimes we delete those too and I’m just giving you a heads up. That being said, cougaring, STIs, STDs all that stuff, what do you want to say?

Cathy: I wanna say one that the actual number of STIs and STDs is not age related. It depends lot on how much safe if you are having safer sex, people like get tested even if you’re exposed to something, you can be treated for many of these things so it’s more about the savviness of someone rather than their age.

Reid: Yeah well and also just as a nerd, you know kind of how am I gonna talk about that stuff. As skiing and snowboarding became more popular, there was an incident in a ray, a spike in skiing and snowboarding related injuries. So I’m just gonna say that in a world not where a lot of people are practicing non-monogamy and having maybe more partners on a  lifetime which is more sex in general because sexual more range are changing people are experimenting more with things asking for what they want, if people are having more sex there might be a spike in certain STIs and STDs because basically safer sex practices aren’t you know, super, super savvy in this country yet or in other parts of the world so if we use a proper forms of education on how to have safer sex, how to be better skiers better snowboarders, we might together be able to build a world where people can ski and snowboard freely to their heart’s content and have less injuries, do things more safely.

Cathy: Yes.

Reid: And if you don’t want to snowboard if you don’t want to ski, good for you.

Cathy: So there’s certainly more car accidents now than the 1700s.

Reid: A lot more.

Cathy: Yes, so being sav-

Reid: You just. You did what I did but in one sentence. See? She’s brilliant!

Cathy: So, it’s not about the age at the age of a person and I’ve had partners that are older than me, younger than me and my same age, It’s kind of fun to have someone if they have more experience but that can also be someone who has less years on the planet that just invest more time in that. So, for someone to put down sleeping with an older person because you’ll get STDs or STIs

Reid: Or a more experience person for those same reasons..

Cathy: Sadly that’s similar to.. There’s a lot of cultures where the younger women are favored because they haven’t had sex yet so they are safe but that’s safe in terms of STDs or STIs. That’s not really allowing you to have a connected relationship with someone you’re just looking for more of a safe hold to put things and I think we are much involved than that.

Reid: Yeah, yeah. So we’re interested in your thoughts on this obviously. I think we’ve made our positioning clear and you know as somebody who’s very, very slutty and very promiscuous who practices pretty decent safer sex protocols, they.. Tea’s ready. The big thing I’m just gonna like point at here is we’re all allowed to have our concerns, right? So you maybe somebody who doesn’t want to expose themselves to gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis or HIV or any of that stuff. You wanna keep your risk of exposure to STIs and STDs at a minimum.

Cathy: Which is fine.

Reid: Which is great and there are ways for you to have conversations with people.

Cathy: The safer sex elevator speech.

Reid: Safer sex elevator speech – http://reidaboutsex.com/reids-safer-sex-elevator-speech/, check it out, where you can figure out how to make yourself feel physically safe and emotionally safe and understand that when you look at STIs and STDs kind of like, you know, the potential of breaking your leg skiing, what can you do to not make it wrong, we’re not gonna ski shame somebody for getting into an accident, how dare you, you reckless skier – is what can we do to teach people how to play, how to have fun, how to be recreational and ways that are safer where they’re not harming themselves and they’re not harming each other and then when an accident happens it’s just an accident and sometimes accidents happen. How can we help everyone to heal if an accident occurs and not have to demonize snowboarding and skiing? Remember skiing and snowboarding is a choice, it’s not a crime. Same thing with STIs and STDs. Leave your comments.

Cathy: Yup. Thank you. Thanks, we’d love to hear what you think.