True safe sex

Usually we sexual health folks say safer sex, because it ain’t truly safe unless it’s abstinence, but this here is as safe as it gets. From a classic movie, The Naked Gun, that I haven’t seen since I was a little boy. This is the kind of scene that got me excited in my pre-pubescent days, and excites me now for very different reasons.

Female condoms on the move

Good to see Washington DC taking the lead on some dicey issues: sexual health types like myself get excited when a big city officially goes gay marriage and female condom on you at the same time. I’ve heard rumblings that the campaign to distribute female condoms – which in more politically correct circles go by a gender-neutral name (such as receptive condom) because they can be used anally by men – is not adequately targeting the gay community, and also that it misrepresents itself as the first city to put forth such an effort. And both those gripes probably have some validity. But no matter. It’s pretty bad ass for an American city to make such a bold move.

Condoms aren’t the only answer

I respect Serra Sippel and CHANGE, the organization she heads up, and I’m particularly grateful for their bringing me to a wonderful training in DC last year focused on increasing sexual health lobbying efforts. And they do wonderful work around female condoms and promoting them around the world. But let’s not oversimplify the end to the AIDS epidemic: condoms alone won’t solve our problems. A few days with teenagers in the work I do now, or a few days with the (mostly) men I worked with last year in Philly makes it pretty clear that simple condom availability is not the panacea we’ve long been seeking. There’s a whole lot of HIV happening to men and women who have access to free condoms. She briefly mentions stigma — though curiously does not elaborate — and certainly various forms of stigma lead to unsafe sex: asking to use a condom can lead to men accusing their female partners of promiscuity or lack of trust; the stigma and homophobia towards gay men leads to far too much secretive, anonymous, drug-fueled sex — to give two examples. But more than anything, people don’t like to use condoms much because it doesn’t feel good. Also, there is a lot of ignorance about the ill effects of not just HIV and AIDS, but the long-term effects of chlamydia and gonorrhea, for example; we don’t see the devastation it causes until it’s personal, and so we don’t take the precautionary steps we know exist. And then there are just far too many myths to count that lead to people the world over not believing HIV — or even pregnancy, for that matter — can happen to them.

Yes, let’s push for more political support for condoms. But contrary to what Ms. Sippel says, that’s not “it.” It is far more complex than that.

The Situation uses condoms

Who ever said Jersey Shore had nothing valuable to offer society? Nothing but safer sex messages – and amazingly, they’re better advocates than The View’s Sherri Shepherd, who perpetuates the myth that hot water from a hot tub will kill sperm. (Unless her misinformation is quickly corrected  in a later part of the video not shown here.)

I think this is real…

But yet this advice on how to pick out a condom brand kept reminding me of my man Smoove B from The Onion — which means I was laughing hysterically. The internet can be brilliant, life-saving, hilarious, and completely asinine.

The right size search carries on…

Our Swiss friends have found that pre-teens are doing it and doing it and doing it unsafely because their wee-wees are too small for normal size condoms. So it looks like they’re producing an extra-small condom. And if it works out, I imagine there’s a market for older men with smaller penises — assuming we find a way not to emasculate them too much in marketing and selling these things.

Condom scientists keep stepping up their game

There’s no questions a good chunk of change goes into developing new, eye-catching, genital-tingling condoms and that variety has seriously increased since the early part of the century. Now we’ve got Trojan Fire and Ice, made to warm the penis and tingle the vagina. I keep coming back to Icy Hot or Ben Gay and any male athlete who’s ever let those hot-cold creams near their balls knows it’s in some ways worse than blunt force to the nuts. I imagine these condoms do not induce pain, but I wonder if other guys will make that same association. On second thought, it makes me think of American Gladiators, but I digress.

NYC Condom Contest

Vote for your favorite design in the New York City Dept of Public Health’s condom contest. It’s good to see a city government willing to pour money into an ongoing campaign to make condoms cool.