Goldie Pie on STD's and Avoiding Pregnancy · 5:50am Jan 19th, 2016
This is from a comment on An Equestrian Gentlemare, Stranded Amongst Alien Barbarians, Consoles Herself. Story is M-rated but this comment is T-rated aside from relatively tasteful mention of anatomy by the Golden Midwife Mare herself:
I'm turning the stage over to the Pink One's maternal grandmother, a brilliant and very experienced midwife and healer, Goldie Pie.
GOLDIE: "A sexually-transmitted or "venereal" disease is not a magical curse imposed upon the sinful (though some are indeed magical in their origins or effects). What an STD is, plain and simple, is a disease which can be or is primarily transmitted by sexual contact.
"Sex is a very intimate activity. Yes, in the emotional sense, but I'm more interested here in the physical. You are kissing somepony, rubbing all over them, and exchanging bodily fluids from your genitals (and yes, the mare's vaginal fluids get smeared on various parts of the stallion, even though his fluid contribution is more, eh, dramatic).
"There is sometimes even bloodstream to bloodstream contact. No, I'm not talking about the stuff that goes on in some of the weirder houses in Canterlot's Floating World, though that would do it too. Do you have little cuts in your mouth -- the sort you can get without noticing them from chomping down on an uncooked oat or improperly-prepared flower or overbaked bread? Do either of you have sores or abrasions on your genitals? Are you just a little too physically enthusiastic when having intercourse? Congratulations. Bloodstream contamination is now possible.
"Now, aside from the fact that there are diseases, such as herpes, contagious metritis and viral arteritis, that will happily spread through genital contact, any other disease that can be spread by less intimate contact than sex, can generally also be spread through sex. Skin diseases, respiratory diseases, and bacteria and virus that can live in spittle will have ample opportunities to spread through sexual contact.
"I'm assuming that you want to kiss and caress your lover, right? Otherwise there's not really much point to the whole exercise. And I doubt very much that you go stepping out together wearing diving suits with condom attachments. Though, come to think it, I may have just invented a whole new perversion here. Well, Jordan told you I was brilliant."
You are, Goldie Pie. You are.
In short -- yes, the Ponies have sexually-transmitted diseases. Because Ponies have diseases. That's canonical, btw. There are at least four episodes that mention contagious diseases and the health care system.
Probably no problem with pregnancies either, outside of specific times.
GOLDIE: "If there were no problems with pregnancies, I'd be out of a job.
"Oh. You mean having unplanned pregnancies. Huh.
"I'm guessing you're not a Pony. And definitely not a mare, of whatever weird species you happen to be.
"This is part of my First Talk, so it's easy to explain.
"Part of the Miracle of Life is that you're going to be in estrus for three days out of every twenty-one, on the average, unless you already have a cupcake in the oven. Now, when you're in estrus, your body's going to want to have sex. Yes, even the good little filles and distinguished elderly mares. And crazy old midwives like me. You in the back, stop giggling. This is serious.
"'Body will want to' is the key phrase here. Because, unless you're married and trying to get pregnant, you really do not want to have sex at this time. See, if you have sex on your cycle, you are very likely to get pregnant. Which is probably not a good thing if you're an unmarried mare, let alone some poor innocent little filly who's just overwhelmed by all her shiny new sexuality.
"I know somepony who got caught that way -- and I won't say who, because she's famous and I keep confidentiality. Oh, and I respect the heck out of her, too -- what, did you think that this only happened to "bad" fillies?
"The Age of Wonders had some very good contraceptives, but that was four thousand years ago and they're all past their sell-by date now. What we have is suppressors, which you're also going to use if you want to avoid having every colt and stallion -- yes, even the really icky ones -- staring after you when you walk by -- and all their female kin, loves and friends, glaring at you in a very unfriendly manner.
"Suppressors are better than nothing -- they'll damp down your own desire and your marescent -- but they reduce your fertility, they don't completely block ovulation, as did those ancient Age of Wonders pills. And you're still horny -- just not as much. So you still need to be careful.
"Be glad you aren't limited to maskers. That's all we had until a couple hundred years ago, and those are basially just perfumes to drown out the maresent and soothing oils and creams to reduce the visible inflamation. Ever wonder why society used to be more sexually-segregated, and stallions had less civil rights? Yep.
"So yes, Mr. Alien Guy, there is a 'problem with pregnancies.'
"And the day there isn't, there'll be another sort of problem. Such as: 'Where's the next generation coming from?'"
Very good speech, Goldie. I'll add to this that no contraceptive ever made, not even in the Age of Wonders, could cure heartbreak, which is very likely to happen to anypony, male or female, who goes cruising with the local Fast Set in the assumption that disease and pregnancy is all they have to worry about.
Comments welcome.
Well he's a jerk anyway always going to those dressing clubs and flinging his bits (both) around...
one name: Tali'Zorah
anyways, interesting and informative, good job
First I've heard of the Floating World. I'm imagining a house of negotiable affection attached to a gasbag, possibly to sidestep certain ordinances on using Canterlot real estate for such purposes. (Ain't no law against the airspace. Not yet, anyway.)
In any case, I find myself wondering which anatomy Sunset prefers in this regard. Both have their pros and cons. Still, probably best to ask her after that fateful Fall Formal, when she'll be in a state of mind less biased against the techno-barbarian naked apes.
3697536
Term I adapted from Japanese culture. The "Floating World" is the traditional name for the subculture of geisha, prostitutes, and madams -- it refers to their unertain social status. Here I mean the Canterlot red-light district, which is legendary outside Canterlot, and to a well-educated but rural midwife like Goldie would be a byword for "upper-class sexual weirdness."
Sunset Shimmer's dominance is based in part on being seen as above normal Human weaknesses, and she doesn't want to be tempted to do sexual things with Humans, so she finds always-on sexuality very annoying. And then, she falls in love with Flash. In part because she was a driven scholar and in part because she was only 15 when she went through the Mirror Portal, aside from estrus and masturbation she has no experience of sexuality as a Pony.
After her Heel Face Turn, she's no longer trying to be dominant. She's also -- romantically speaking -- completely alone. And not really looking, either -- she's completely beaten down by the awareness of her own defeat, failure and fundamentally-deluded strategy. For a while, she doesn't even think she's worthy of love. And, at no point in her life is Sunset actually promiscuous.
That depression she's in at the start of Rainbow Rocks? She's been like that for months. I go with Scoots2's idea that Sunset retreats into her studies of how magic works in the Human world, basically associates only with the Humane Five and their friends, and only has social contact because the Humane Five periodically check up on her and pressure her to hang out with them.
They may very well have kept her from suicide during that period between the first and second movies.
Sunset recovers a lot after Rainbow Rocks, because she's helped save the Human world and her friends from the Dazzlings. You see her being a lot more forceful and displaying more of her old charisma in Friendship Games. She doesn't have a boyfriend, though, and I don't think she's dating much if at all in the interim -- certainly nothing serious. Of course, she probably mostly scares young Human men, and the older ones would see her as a kid.
My belief, expressed in An Equestrian Gentlemare ... is that she really loved Flash Sentry, and his emotional rejection of her (for very good reasons, let me add lest you think I hate Flash!) in (and especially at the end of) Equestria Girls was one of the things that led to her long depression. She gave up his love for her ambition, and lost both. She still yearns for him, but has given up on ever getting him back.
She's not exactly eager to risk her heart again. Though, being Sunset, she will eventually, with him or someone else. If there's one thing Sunset is, good or evil -- it's passionate. She has a literally "fiery" nature.
It occurs to me how dangerous a fast set would be if an unknown STI were introduced. Consider Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which IIRC has been traced to a tribe of monkeys. Leaving aside the argument on whether the initial infection was due to the consumption of contaminated bushmeat, or *ahem* other fluid contact, HIV was considered to be venereal disease primarily(initially believed to only affect homosexuals) , rather than blood-borne. As a certain xkcd strip jokes about, sometimes the question isn't who Patient Zero was, but how the disease got beyond Patient Zero. Somehow, HIV went from an infection with a known, single point of origin to a global epidemic.
3699740
(*nods*) The example you gave was HIV (AIDS), and the thing about HIV is that it's actually rather difficult to catch -- it requires bloodstream-to-bloodstream contact, which is why it usually spreads either by transfusion, needle-sharing or sex rough enough to actually cause significant abrasions or cuts. Yes, the individual viruses are small, but (as with all contagious diseases) one needs a dosage sufficient to overwhelm the immune system.
The huge AIDS scare of the 1980's-1990's was not about the ease of transmission, but rather the severity of illness (before there were specific antivirals developed, it was close to 100% fatal). The wild fears of AIDS becoming general in the human population were based on assumptions of extremely promiscuous populations, and only materialized where either rape was common (sub-Saharan Africa) or there were very promiscuous subcultures (some Western urban communities).
In Human history, "fast sets" have always been subject to rapid disease transmission of all sorts; we just tend to notice the sexually-transmitted ones more because they imply something naughty's been happening. There's no reason to imagine it would be different for Ponies. If the Ponies in general were implausibly promiscuous, then Equestria in general would be a severe epidemic waiting to happen.