By now we know consent can involve a whole lot of talking about sex with your partners
and we’ve addressed some ways to make some of those conversations a little bit easier, but what
about the condom talk?
Hi everyone! My name is Sarah, and welcome back to Everyday Consent!
Most of us are used to hearing that we should be using protection when we have sex to help
prevent STIs and unplanned pregnancy. And talking about protection methods is an important
part of informed consent. The safer sex methods that you decide to use can affect how willing a
partner is to participate in a given sexual act. For example, consenting to vaginal sex
with a condom is not the same as consenting to vaginal sex without a condom.
So this discussion is super important to have with your partners. But it can also be pretty
difficult to have, for a number of reasons. If you try to have this conversation while
you’re already in the middle of hooking up, arousal can make it difficult to speak
or think clearly. Condoms and other safer sex methods are rarely seen or talked about
in porn and movies so it might not be part of how we imagine sex is supposed
to go. That and general awkwardness might make it difficult to come up with the words
to talk about protection and still keep the mood feeling sexy. And even if you figure
out the words, you might worry that your partner will be insulted by you wanting to use protection
in the first place. Maybe they’ll think you’re silly for worrying so much. Or maybe
they’ll think you don’t trust them and are accusing them of being irresponsible in
past encounters or unfaithful.
There is a lot that could be said about all of these challenges. But today I want to focus
on some of those potential objections from a partner and how to reframe the conversation
in a hopefully more productive way.
Having sex with someone can be a pretty vulnerable thing. You’re exposing your body and maybe
other parts of your identity to someone. And so when someone says they don’t want
to touch parts of your body without a barrier in place it can sometimes be hard not to
take that personally. This can be especially true with less common or less well-known methods
of protection. For example, thinking of using a condom for vaginal or anal sex might
be pretty common. But depending on the community that you’re a part of, using condoms or
dental dams for oral sex or gloves for manual sex might be less familiar. Even someone
who is fine with using a condom for vaginal or anal sex might be surprised or even insulted
if asked to use a condom for oral sex. If someone has never used barriers for oral sex
before they might think the suggestion to do so might mean that their partner thinks their genitals
are disgusting or dirty.
This is not an easy thing to combat, but I think a good thing to do is to try to reframe
the situation. Because, let’s be really clear here: sex is risky. There is no such
thing as completely “safe sex”, only “safer sex”. Depending on the situation there might
be emotional or social risks, and there are always physical risks, namely STIs and unplanned
pregnancy.
Let’s talk about STIs first. STIs are extremely common, with tens of millions of new infections
each year in the US alone. Even asymptomatic cases can cause serious or even life-threatening
complications if not treated. And the majority of cases have no noticeable symptoms. Which
makes it near impossible for someone to be sure of their status without getting tested.
And even getting tested has its limitations. Many STIs have incubation periods or other
concerns that mean it might take a while before they’ll show up on a test. Depending on
the specific infection and test, that could be a long time. For example, at best a negative
HIV test only means that you didn’t have HIV three months ago. What all this means
is that even if someone is well meaning and honestly believes they are not putting their
partner at risk, in the vast majority of cases there is still at least some small possibility
that they're wrong about that.
And that’s just STIs. When it comes to unplanned pregnancy, though there is a wide variety
of contraceptive options and many of them are quite effective, any method besides abstinence
can fail. And if you watch Jane the Virgin, you know that in our modern world of artificial
insemination and ridiculous telenovela-inspired mishaps, even that might fail!
Speaking of different protection methods, there are a bunch out there. Today I’m not
going into much detail about all the different options, how to use them, or how to decide
among them. But I’ve left a plethora of such resources in the description. Furthermore,
while there are lots of contraceptive options that might be invisible to a partner, such
as the birth control pill or IUDs, today I’m talking about methods that are visible to
a partner, primarily barrier-type methods such as condoms, internal condoms, dental
dams, and gloves.
Anyway. All of these barrier methods exist to reduce those physical risks associated
with sex that we just discussed, namely STIs and unplanned pregnancy. Sex with a properly-used
barrier method is much less risky than sex without, but that risk is still not zero.
Similarly, there are other factors that can reduce the risk, such as having fewer partners
and you and your partners having been tested recently but those also do not reduce the
risk to zero.
Informed, consensual sex must always, to some degree, involve a bit of a cost-benefit analysis
of possible risks. Each person must decide for themselves how much risk they are okay
with taking on. If you tell a partner that you want to use protection and they resist,
they are effectively saying one of two things. One, they think you assessed the possible
risks incorrectly. Or two, they think you should be willing to take on more risk than
you’ve just said you are. In the first case, sure, it’s possible you have assessed the
risks incorrectly and it might be worth a discussion. Maybe they’ve had fewer recent
partners than you thought, or have gotten tested more recently. But remember that the
risk is still not necessarily zero. And in the second case, it is not okay for someone
to decide for you how much risk to take on. Your body, your rules, end of story.
Basically, this isn’t about trusting your partner, this is about having bodily autonomy.
Granted, trust can be a factor but ultimately this is about having control over your own
body and what you do with it. And your partner needs to respect that. If you can’t come
to an agreement about protection options for a particular act, maybe suggest sticking to
other activities that you can agree on. Or maybe find a new partner.
Let me down in the comments if today’s video was helpful or if you’d like to hear more
about anything I mentioned. If you liked this video, press that “like” button and if
you want to see more from me, don’t forget to subscribe.
Happy consenting folks, I’ll see you next week!