Whose Responsibility is it Anyway? The Surprising Politics of Condom Use.
Are we blinded by desire or is it something else?
In a perfect world, getting your partner to use a condom would be easy. They’d wrap it up and get on with it. But condoms have been stigmatized through the media, pop culture, hearsay, gossip. You name it. And sadly, this leads to a wide variety of negative assumptions circulating about why our partners might want to use condoms. And when those assumptions get mixed in with desire, love, relationship potential, and other emotional needs, it can make staying safe harder to navigate than it should be.
This leads to the issue of condom negotiation. Most adults are aware that condom use is one of the best ways to protect against unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and HIV. So, why is condom use still an issue? What stops us from using a condom with a new sexual partner?
Why do we do it?
A new study published in the Journal of Sex Research sheds light on the way preconceived notions, stereotypes, gender dynamics, and relationship potential all play a role in what seems like a simple decision.
The study focused on three main groups: women who have sex with men (WSM), men who have sex with women (MSW), and men who have sex with men (MSM). Because sexual safety practices differ for women who have sex with women, they were not sampled for this particular study.
Participants were presented with a hypothetical new sexual partner and asked a series of questions to gauge their likelihood of using a condom.
The results varied across gender groups and sexual preferences. But, MSM and WSM were more likely to forgo a condom when they felt there might be relationship potential with a new partner.
There are lots of reasons why relationship goals might make some pass on condom use. Several participants reported that it could imply promiscuity on their part, meaning they didn’t want to suggest that they had multiple sexual partners. Others said that they wanted to show their potential partner that they trust them. They were worried that a condom might “distance” them from a prospective partner.
Unfortunately, these reasons seem valid. And that’s the problem. Many people still associate condom-use with negative stereotypes.
If you want to use a seat belt in your car, should we assume you’re a bad driver? No. You’re simply deciding to protect yourself in a potentially dangerous situation. Safety precautions should only imply one thing: safety. A condom should only indicate that you want to protect yourself and your partner from something that could be potentially harmful.
Using a condom should imply that you want to keep your partner safe. It should imply that you care about their well being. Instead, outdated stereotypes are still clouding the perception many people have about condoms. As long as we perpetuate the ideas that condoms imply promiscuity or distance us from our partners, we’ll never get to a point where using a condom only implies the desire to be safe.
Everyone should be able to choose to protect themselves without judgment.
These stereotypes also point to the intricacies of gender dynamics in condom negotiation. The study revealed that heterosexual women (WSM) and homosexual men (MSM) are carrying a burden that heterosexual men (MSW) don’t. WSM and MSM both reported using more “condom insistence strategies” when faced with the scenario of having condomless sex with a new casual partner.
When presented with the same scenario, heterosexual men chose to have sex without a condom over withholding sex or using other persuasive tactics.
So, why don’t straight men see sexual safety as their responsibility?
Sadly, the devastating consequences of HIV and AIDS are more widely known and prepared for in the MSM community than in the heterosexual dating scene. This difference was born out of a terrible necessity and the same urgency did not affect heterosexual couples in the same way.
Straight women carry the burden and possibility of unintended pregnancy, and the study revealed that they were also more vigilant about the spread of STDs and HIV. It takes two to make a baby and to spread venereal diseases, yet straight men seem much less concerned with these possibilities.
The disproportionate share of this burden has wide-ranging consequences. Clearly, heterosexual men feel much less obligated to practice safe-sex. We could make great strides in stopping the spread of HIV and AIDS if MSW felt more responsible for protecting both themselves and their partners.
We need to start instilling straight men with the same sense of sexual responsibility and accountability that MSM and WSM carry. Until this happens, the burden of negotiating for condom use will remain one-sided.
It’s time to change the way that condoms are perceived. If you care about someone, you should want them to stay safe and vice versa. We need to start equalizing the gender politics at play in condom negotiation, and normalizing condoms until using them becomes as routine and judgment-free as wearing a seatbelt. If we start assuming less and talking more, we can take the judgment and gender politics out of condom use, hopefully for good.
