Sexist Comments of the Week: When Dudes Won’t Wear Condoms Edition
Yesterday's post on a guy named “Dirty Jersey” who refused to strap one on sparked a more general discussion about guys who refuse to wear condoms. Then, commenter Shinobi chimed in with an area for further inquiry: "Hilarious reasons guys can’t wear a condom."
Shinobi kicks it off:
Can I get a WTF on college aged guys who bitch about wearing condoms? Not that I took a represenatative sample or anything……. but it happened a LOT. (Actually, after college too… again, not a representative sample.)
I think what college papers actually need is a column about how men who want to get laid need to have the testicular fortitude to wear a fucking condom, and in fact, provide said condom, and show a little fucking consideration for the girl and not make her practicly beg you to put it on.
Also, don’t take it off in the middle, because that’s fucked up and means you are a scumbag.
I think I needed to use the f word more in this comment.
Liss chimes in:
Super extra fail to the guy who told me that he “couldn’t” wear condoms because he was JUST TOO BIG for them! (Even though bigger guys than him had worn the exact same type of condom and gotten off just fine with them.)
So: Have you heard a hilarious reason why a guy won't wear a condom? Even better: Are you a guy with a hilarious justification for why you won't strap one on? Best: Are you a lady or guy with a hilarious justification for why you don't want your sex partner to condom up? Even bestest: Do you totally object to the idea that your reasons for not wearing a condom are, in fact, hilarious? File it in the comments.
Photo by Darrow Montgomery
12:02 pm
"I was going to pull out."
Nice try, dude. Definitely wasn't born yesterday. Hilarious.
12:21 pm
Actually, I have a legitimate reason for hating condoms. I have vaginismus, and using condoms can make sex very painful for me. Of course, using only a different form of birth control is more appropriate for relationship sex, or some situation where you are familiar with your partner's history/you're not at risk for STDs.
But when pain disorders are not a factor, I think it's pretty ridiculous when someone refuses to wear a condom, citing silly reasons that basically amount to perceived emasculation.
12:25 pm
This is kind of a tangent, but maybe in a future post it would be good to have a discussion about who pays for birth control pills in the context of a relationship. My impression is that in a couple, it's totally normal to share condom costs ("I'll pick up this pack, honey, you can get the next pack"). But I've only rarely heard of a boyfriend splitting birth control pill costs with his girlfriend.
Seems like a perverse incentive. If (safe, monogamous) condomless sex is a goal, particularly for the gentleman, the costs of going on the pill shouldn't all fall on the lady. On the other hand, if she was already on birth control before the relationship started, I can see how it would be awkward to ask the new boyfriend to start defraying the costs. More arguments for the man-pill, I suppose?
12:37 pm
Every time I remember that you have to pay for birth control pills in the US, it shocks me. It's simply not an issue in the UK, as the NHS provides contraception free of charge (although most people buy their condoms from the chemist rather than get them free from the GP).
I have always been a bit ferocious about the importance of wearing condoms, so haven't heard many stupid reasons. "I'll pull out in time, I swear!" is the stupidest one I've experienced myself, and he got short shrift for that.
12:54 pm
Since people are talking about oral contraceptives, I would love to see some discussion about the environmental impact of our contraceptive choices. There was an article on HuffPo about this a while back, but now I can't find the link. Anyway, in the run down it seems like oral contraceptives are the worst (because they poison the water supply) and latex condoms were the best (because they do biodegrade, unlike polyurethane condoms).
However, I suspect that this actually adds to the canon of bullshit excuses a guy could draw from. "Come on honey! It's better for the environment if we go bareback!"
1:03 pm
Being allergic to latex, I get the bitching about how expensive latex-free can be (though I'm totally willing to split the cost). But my SO has been kickass about not complaining, because I can't exactly help my allergy.
My thought about guys who complain about condoms was always, you want to get laid, don't you? Because if you do, it makes sense to shut up and wear one.
1:12 pm
My boyfriend refused to wear a condom from the first time we were together. He pulled out and he seemed like a nice guy, i didnt think he would put me at risk. In fact he told me he was clean. 3months later he told me that he had had herpes for five years. asshole.
1:18 pm
This whole article bugs me for the simple idea that it's employing what I call "condom shaming," which is a variation of a more general form of anti-male shaming tactics. Hilarity will motivate the wayward male to change his ways (or so goes the reasoning), because after all, no one wants to be made to feel embarrassed about their choices!
Here's a tip: why not point out to men how it is in their personal interest to use a condom, and ditch the mocking attitude?
* Avoiding STDs
* Avoiding child support
* Avoiding unintended parenthood
* Avoiding the possibility of speading an STD (that is, if you have an interest in your partner's health, or if you just have an interest in being a decent human being)
If, after pointing out all this, a man still refuses to wear a condom for whatever reason, the responsibility falls to the woman. If the man refuses -- before sex -- to wear a condom, then take responsibility for your sexual choices, honey, and pick someone else. And leave your stupid mocking humor at the door, thank you very much.
1:21 pm
Awww John! I think you're under the false impression that this post is for men who think it's okay to insist on not wearing a condom! I think in actuality it's here to help women cope with their existence. And to help men who are not assholes cope with their peers who make them look bad.
1:22 pm
In this day and age with ALL the STD's there is no reason what so ever for those having casual sex to not have protection. It's also the responsibility of the partner to insist on protection. The main problem in DC is DRUGS = BEING STUPID = SEX = AIDS.
1:57 pm
Chanda (#9) wrote:
Now isn't that just like a woman. Emote about the problem, and call it a day.
2:02 pm
Let's see. There was the guy who, it became apparent, did not intend to use a condom until I was all "hold on there, buccaroo." And then he couldn't keep it up, so I went home, feeling like I'd avoided some permanently disfiguring accident. Better was when I told a guy, um, no, I'm not on birth control, where are your condoms, responded with, "You know, if you're going to be doing this kind of thing, you should be on birth control," as if condoms have no other purpose than preventing pregnancy.
On a positive note, there was the British pilot who was here for a few days of military training. He helped me with my bicycle, had no issues at all with a condom and was gone when I woke up. That's how you do a one-night stand, boys.
2:14 pm
John,
I'm really confused by your comments.
You seem to pretty solidly agree with the idea that sex without a condom is stupid. And that individuals should make their partners wear condoms.
And you also agree that holding up people who refuse to protect themselves during sex to riducule may be an effective strategy to discourage that behavior.
But somehow what we are doing here is wrong? Even though it is effectively deterring a behavior that is bad? Instead people should wait until the heat of an impassioned moment to try to convince an unwilling (and potentially physically threatening ) partner to protect themselves? And never talk about it outside of the bedroom?
I don't really understand your reasoning for opposing this post. I think people who engage in behaviors that are harmful to themselves and others should be shamed for it. (Note, this is not the same as shaming people for just being a little different. Refusing to wear a condom is a choice and it can be a harmful one.)
Also I think your "emoting" comment was ill concieved and completely out of line. Perhaps you should try being more substantive with your arguments if you want to be taken seriously.
2:49 pm
Shinobi wrote (#13):
Your gender-non-specific premise is now established. Onward...
If a woman is too threatened to walk away from a horny man because she might motivate him to attack her if she insists on him wearing a condom, it seems to me what you're saying is that he should adapt to her wishes even though she thinks that she in in jeopardy in his presence. The entitlement of such a woman is striking; she's coercing the man to wear a condom and is considering him to be a threat for non-compliance. Either he is a threat or he is not; why then does she not take responsibility for her safety if she anticipates such a brazen and violent reaction to her demands?
I definitely think that this post assumes that it will be an effective strategy. Either that, or it's just encouraging women to emote about how disappointed they are in their partner (as if that accomplishes anything).
3:30 pm
People are seriously mentioning the costs of birth control in the comments? And who pays for it? Honestly, who fucking cares? Sex is fun; live a little, and skip a goddamn latte once or twice a week if you're such a cheap jackass.
[Slaps forehead] Only in Washington.
3:33 pm
I read this post as a post inviting people to share their experiences with this subject, but there are some who just want to argue EVERYTHING.
In just about every post the same people are way over defensive and trying to pick a fight whether it be about the misuse of words, or stats or a woman saying something that can be conceived as too womanly.
My personal experience with this subject: I had a girlfriend who didn't like the feel of condoms, and didn't want me to wear them. I didn't mind of course. Niether of us slept around and didn't have stds. But she wasn't on birth control and she didn't like me pulling out either. She didn't like compromising her own enjoyment. And good on her for knowing what she wants, but that made me so nervous, I wasn't ready to be a dad. So she went on the pill finally, and I'm a lot less nervous about having sex with her now.
3:53 pm
Okay John, you've veered off into complete incoherence. In your first post, you laid out a very thorough list on the possible consequences of unprotected sex, and opined that it was better to be clear about this than to joke or cajole them about condom use. May I humbly inquire what man raised in our beloved United States could *possibly* be so naive and un-educated as to not be aware that not wearing a condom can, and will, result in pregnancy and STIs? You don't think any man (or woman) would find such admonishments to be incredibly condescending, to say the least?
And then you complain about how a woman who insists on condom use is somehow "coercing" her partner? As I recall, you've had some vocabulary difficulties with this word before, but insisting on safe sex or no sex is *not* coercion; it is a clear definition of choices and their consequences. And a man who doesn't wear a condom *is* a threat to his partner. As another person already noted, a man can convincingly state that he is clean of STIs and be lying, or just not know. Most men don't exhibit symptoms of common STIs, such as herpes, and would never know if a partner did not exhibit symptoms.
And I completely agree with Shinobi, this is a conversation that should take place long before the bedroom. To toss out a common stereotype, humans, especially men, when sexually aroused, have a marked difficulty in thinking logically about consequences. If the conditions of a sexual encounter are clearly understood before hand, it's much safer, for both partners. And its much easier to walk away from someone who won't use condoms if they are not already naked in your bedroom.
4:09 pm
A woman is responsible for what she decides to put into her vagina. If she gets an STD or becomes pregnant, it is a direct consequence of her decision. Don't blame the man for not wearing a condom if you can't handle the freedoms that were granted to you in Griswold v. Connecticut or Roe v. Wade. Condoms are a man's prerogative, but are a woman's responsibility.
4:25 pm
the man should be equally responsible of what he does. ofcourse the woman is responsible too, and probably pays the price more so with pregnancy and disease.
But a guy who doesn't want to use a condom and then gets an std is equally responsible for this outcome as a girl getting pregnant from the same circumstance.
4:55 pm
fish wrote (#19):
That's why I wrote in my initial comment (#8) that it is just fine to appeal to a man's sense of intellect and point out how it is in his interest to wear a condom. But this post is not about appealing to a man's intellect or his sense of self interest; this post is promoting sexism against men because it utilizes shame and mockery to cajole men into complying with a woman's wishes. In previous eras, when an unmarried woman got pregnant or was infected with an STD, it was considered a sign that she was sexually "loose" and therefore a legitimate target for "slut shaming." Feminists called this sexism and defended a woman's right to exercise "sexual agency," the right to make her own choices and take her sexuality into her own hands. Along those lines feminists also supported the outcome of the Supreme Court decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, because now women could purchase contraception and also legally obtain abortions, both of which shielded women from slut shaming.
This post attempts to do to men what feminist once called sexist, that is, it attempts to shame men. You can argue that shaming is an effective way to influence behavior, but I would counter that shaming men is dubiously effective at best, and sexist at worst.
5:07 pm
John Dias, all we're doing is saying that both parties should consider themselves equally responsible for birth control, since both contribute equally to the risk of pregnancy. Furthermore, condoms are the best available protection against STDs, which is a major public health issue. A man who does not acknowledge that responsibility is in fact being LESS mature than the woman, and should be taken to task for that.
You yourself are participating in slut shaming for saying "if you can't handle the freedoms that were granted to you in Griswold v. Connecticut or Roe v. Wade." When, quite frankly, it's been 10,000+ years and some men (like you) still can't handle the freedoms that were granted to you by biology. We are not avoiding responsibility, we are looking out for birth control and asking men to be an equal partner in that.
We are not shaming all men, only those who are too immature to play an EQUAL role in equal responsibilities.
5:10 pm
These quotes from the post on which we now comment are, in my opinion, blatant sexism:
Get it? Hilarious! Those silly men, when are they going to smarten up??
5:11 pm
John,
I think you are drawing a false equivalence here between shaming someone for engaging in sex outside of marriage, and shaming someone for refusing to cooperate with their partner for both their own and their partner's benefit.
It would be very wrong to shame men for having sex with lots of women outside of marriage, but that is not what we are doing. We are shaming people who refuse to take a simple rational action for both their own and their partner's benefit.
Y'know, we don't HAVE to disagree all the time just because I am a feminist. I want to make sure men are treated fairly too.
And I think we can both agree that condoms are good for men and women, and that men should wear them. And that neither men nor women should try to coerce a partner into having unprotected sex. So I don't understand why it's so wrong for us to shame people who insist on doing so.
5:14 pm
LeftSidePositive wrote (#21):
Is it really a request, in an inquest? And what if the man chooses to exercise his prerogative to refuse? A woman is still empowered; she merely needs to put aside her ego and find another sexual partner who WILL wear a condom. This would be called taking responsibility; such maturity would be the opposite of displacing one's responsibility onto someone else (which is what this post clearly advocates).
5:33 pm
John, this post clearly advocates women choosing not to sleep with men who are irresponsible and/or selfish. I think it serves a valuable purpose in encouraging women to point out that these men are not acceptable mates. That is not displacing responsibility--the best method for presenting STIs currently involves the man wearing a condom. This advocates women being vigilant about insisting on condom use (so that they, the women, are being conscientious), and advocates men being (almost) equally responsible.
6:07 pm
LeftSidePositive wrote (#21):
Biology does offer men some natural advantages, namely the inability of men to get pregnant. But what advantages may once have been conferred upon men by their biology has now been mitigated by the fact that men who sire children are held accountable to financially support them, despite the fact that mothers are perfectly capable of obtaining employment and doing this themselves. So when a woman unintentionally becomes pregnant, she is privileged relative to a man because with abortion, legally she can circumvent the consequences of her biology. A man is now burdened by his biology; a condom that doesn't work affords him no further options. So you can can your talk about how men are 10,000 years privileged; when it comes to reproductivity, women are privileged and men are absolutely not. Women can opt out of pregnancy, or have the baby and force the father to pay child support, or have the baby and share the costs of raising it with the father, or have the baby and financially support it with her own labor, and so on.
Is it in a man's interest to use a condom? Yes, specifically because unlike women, he has absolutely no other viable options.
6:10 pm
John, you said:
she merely needs to put aside her ego and find another sexual partner who WILL wear a condom. This would be called taking responsibility; such maturity would be the opposite of displacing one’s responsibility onto someone else (which is what this post clearly advocates).
When, in fact, the original post does advocate exactly that:
From Amanda's post: "Feminist bonus: She ditched a guy who clearly didn’t give a shit about what she wanted in the bedroom."
So what exactly is your point?
6:13 pm
A bit off topic but as a male reader, I am put off by the term "dude". Its just as sexist as the term "chick" in my opnion. As grown adults can we refer to each other as men and women in dialogue? Also, doesnt the message of this blog entry disempower women? Its point seems to be shaming the guys who refuse to wear a condom, but how about sending an empowering message to women, "No condom=no sex".
6:13 pm
John, you're really twisting something that's very simple.
Although men face consequences for not wearing a condom, women tend to face greater consequences. Therefore, condom use is very important to many women. If a man encounters one of these women and wants to sleep with her without a condom, then he should be prepared for the possibility that he's not going to have sex--at least not with her. There is nothing coercive or wrong about women setting up boundaries of "I do it with a condom, or I don't do it at all." And it shows a massive sense of entitlement in some (not all, but some) men, that they refuse to wear a condom and still expect to get laid. That's what we're making fun of here. We're not denying men agency; those same men are free to attempt to find someone who's happy with the idea of going bareback. But when a man feels so very entitled to unprotected sex that he'll resort to nagging, lying, and other deceptive or otherwise ridiculous behavior in order to get what he thinks he deserves? That's just not cool. That's just not good behavior on a basic human level.
6:26 pm
John:
1) Yes, women are perfectly capable of obtaining employment. Let's ignore the costs of childcare, providing your child the health benefits of breastfeeding, necessity of flexible work scheduling, etc., etc.
2) Abortion is a surgical procedure, and like all medical interventions, carries some risks (early on, they're small, but it's still more risk than men medically have to deal with). It is still a burden on women to have to deal with unintended pregnancy, and having your body and your health held captive to your reproductive organs is a serious issue. It can also be difficult to obtain for some women, depending on demographics.
3) Strategies that women are expected to undertake to prevent pregnancy, especially the most effective hormonal methods, do have side effects and are not well tolerated by some women. There are significant biological burdens on women to prevent pregnancy at our end, so placing financial incentives on men to prevent pregnancy doesn't even level the playing field, but it is a step in the right direction. Not to mention the biological upheaval of carrying a pregnancy to term.
4) Many women who get unexpectedly pregnant cannot find the father or compel them to pay child support, when man can quite simply disappear.
5) Being legally obligated to provide financially for something is totally different from enduring personal and physical risks. After all, if you drive a car you have to have insurance! So, men, think of the risk of paying child support as analogous to being financially liable to other types of damage you may be held to in the real world.
6) Women pay for something like 90% of the birth control costs in this country, so please don't carry on about the burden of paying child support. Without the legal obligation to pay child support, men would have absolutely no necessity to be conscientious about reproductive health, whereas women face serious biological and social risks.
6:53 pm
"These quotes from the post on which we now comment are, in my opinion, blatant sexism:
[...]
Get it? Hilarious! Those silly men, when are they going to smarten up??"
Umm... Where exactly is this "blatant sexism" you are complaining about? After all, the extract of the post you quoted explicitly says that women who don't want the men they sleep with to wear a condom for a hilarious reason should be mentioned as well ("Are you a lady or guy with a hilarious justification for why you don’t want your sex partner to condom up?")...
6:55 pm
@LeftSidePositive: Being able to opt out of something that is risky is an advantageous position for anyone to be in. The fact that choice is involved mitigates the health and social risks -- and women have choices in spades, whereas men do not.
Melissa wrote (#29):
There is something coercive in a woman demanding both sex and a condom from a man who is perfectly willing to forgo both, and then ridiculing him for his decision to sexually reject her.
7:08 pm
@JohnDias,
What you fail to realize is that for a woman, all choices carry significant downsides (Birth control? here's your increased risk of blood clots, weight gain, imperfect reliability, etc. Abortion? have surgery that you may or may not find morally acceptable, find money for it, face intense social hostility and condemnation. Adoption? go through the very public and emotionally & physically draining ordeal of pregnancy and then deal with the separation from your child. Parenthood? time, money, responsibility, and infinitely more). When all of someone's options are burdensome in some way, it's really rude (to say the least!) to say, but you have options! Compare that to the fairly minor risk of a man having to cut a check once a month? You've got to be kidding me!
You also fail to account for the fact that many incidences of child support needing to be paid come about when the couple breaks up after the birth (or at least well after the 1st trimester) when abortion is no longer an option.
Where in this post are you getting that the woman is "demanding" sex from the man? It seems like all these describe situations where, at best, both parties are equally interested in sex, and at worst, the man is "demanding" unprotected sex.
Where are you getting the idea that the man is "perfectly willing" to forgo sex? Furthermore, it seems like these scenarios involve the woman sexually rejecting the man.
7:17 pm
If the woman is sexually rejecting the man, or placing conditions upon sex, then why the need to ridicule him into compliance?
7:26 pm
@John Dias--I doubt the ridicule here will change many men's minds--I think the important point here is to encourage more women to feel empowered to reject men who display a callous and immature attitude. Most importantly, this will make the women who take this route safer, but hopefully in the long run the lack of tolerance for these irresponsible men will alter the normative behavior such that women no longer feel like they're being unreasonable in insisting on protection.
7:29 pm
@LeftSidePositive: That "fairly minor risk" of having 40-60% of your income impounded for child support and/or alimony on threat of incarceration is absolutely more arduous for men, especially for those men who are ordered to pay for kids that aren't theirs. I know, I know, that's just another reason why it's in men's interest to use a condom, but of course, a woman worshiper like you would never think to acknowledge such a risk even if you ever cut out the sexist shaming and actually made an honest effort to appeal to his intellect.
7:37 pm
Poor John. It hurts his feelings when women laugh at his request to go bareback. I can only imagine the mental and emotional anguish you must go thru on a daily (weekly? monthly?) basis as you try to find the perfect lay who will let you "stick things into her vagina" without wrapping them in latex first. Oh cruel world! When will John's suffering come to an end?!
(MAYBE he could find a nice, traditional lady to marry and have all the unprotected sex he wants. Oh, wait, that's a feminist trap! Coercing men into marriage in order to have unprotected (or any) sex! Or wait, that's how it used to be before the feminists fucked everything up, and now you can sleep with anyone, but you really ought to wear a condom, but if someone won't sleep with you because you don't then you are being coerced into exercising your right to better judgment and not sleep with that person... unless you bought them some drinks, in which case they *owe* you, and really, if some silly slut gets pregnant she has no one but herself to blame. Certainly not the penis which impregnated her. Hang on, I'm confused. What, exactly, is your argument again?)
7:48 pm
K wrote:
I was going to ask you exactly that same question, K.
8:07 pm
My argument is that condoms prevent transmission of STIs and pregnancy, and should be worn unless one wishes to get an STI/pregnant. Also, it is a medical fact that many STIs present minimal or no symptoms in men, and so even a man who honestly believes he is "clean" is very likely to have an STI unless he has been thoroughly tested (or is a virgin.) Since neither party can be 100% sure of their partner's sexual history, especially the first time, using a condom is healthy and responsible. And if a guy gets made fun of for coming up with a ridiculous (or any) reason not to use one, better his feelings get hurt than he or his partner acquire a new infection, or even better, an infant.
My question stands: What is your problem with this?
8:56 pm
@John Dias,
40-60% of your income? Compare that to the risk of DYING in childbirth, or from pre-eclampsia, placenta previa, etc. (Not to mention the woman's share in paying for the needs of the child...)
Again, it is not "sexist" shaming to criticize men who refuse to take a very serious public health measure--for STIs as well as pregnancy. It is criticizing a risky behavior (that, unlike the fundamental drive to mate, is highly modifiable), not a biological characteristic. Furthermore, we are here specifically criticizing those who insist on this behavior in a particularly absurd/dishonest/immature way.
[As an aside, I do think that family law should catch up to the modern DNA era, and adjust the obligations of child support in cases where paternity has been disproved (provided there is a mechanism to ensure the child, who is not itself at fault, has adequate resources). Many states are in fact doing this.]
9:44 pm
@ #3 Gradually Greener
On the man-pill. Call me a really suspicious cynic, but I wouldn't trust a man who said he was on the pill unless we were living together and I saw him take it every day.
9:52 pm
Reasons men have given me for not wanting to use condoms, and my replies:
1) I don't have any
Oh, well it's a good thing I have some here in my purse!
2) I'm too big for a condom
No, you're not. Here, watch this video made by a few friends of mine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RMV7pAOmHI
3) I can't feel anything
You can't feel anything when you're not having sex with me. Which is your option if you don't wear a condom
4) But you're on birth control!
What if I have an STD? I've had an STD scare before...
5) I'm allergic to latex
Okay. Let me grab my polyurethane ones then
11:01 pm
John: Get a life. It's a bunch of people making light of a serious issue so they can all understand it. Lighten the hell up, dude. Not everything is sexism, even we know that! :)
11:25 pm
the comment "it hurts when a guy wears a condom" is just as dumb as guy excuses. yes, it may hurt when LATEX condoms are used.. so use LATEX! and i it still hurts....... get a numbing cream from your vagina dr. a numb cooch is better then an STD.. anyday! (ps: im a girl. a girl thats alergic to latex condoms.)
11:25 pm
in a fit of anger, i said use latex... i meant vinyl.
2:20 am
“'There is nothing coercive or wrong about women setting up boundaries of ‘I do it with a condom, or I don’t do it at all.’
There is something coercive in a woman demanding both sex and a condom from a man who is perfectly willing to forgo both, and then ridiculing him for his decision to sexually reject her."
Uh, John, which article/thread have you been reading? Obviously not this one. Wake up. (And people accuse feminists of trying to find offense in everything?)
2:22 am
Which is to say...none of the men we're talking about in this thread "sexually rejected" anyone, or was "willing for forgo both." None of the women we're talking about "demanded both sex and a condom." These are all cases of women who refused to have sex without a condom, and men who felt so entitled to sex (and to unprotected sex, at that) that they resorted to nagging and/or lying in order to get women to sleep with them without a condom. The person in these situations who's "perfectly willing to forgo" sex is the woman. The one who is coercive is the man. At this point you're just making things up.
10:36 am
My first serious boyfriend said he doesn't beleive in using condoms because life is supposed to be a gamble, and that people should be willing to take the risks that come with life.
Obviously, he wanted to have PIV sex, and wanted to have it with me, because he revised his view pretty quickly when I made it clear that this was a deal breaker for me.
I still find this totally hilarious whenever I remember it. I think he was trying to sound cool or 'edgy' or something. Epic fail.
11:05 am
OK, tried this condom on my boyfriend...Was definitely fun and different...We dont have issues using, but certainly can see where makes fun for us girls to strip it on him...
Not sure if its sold everywhere..but bought in my drug store in midtown
http://bit.ly/8Zrlpr
9:49 pm
Ok um, I have a good reason for not wearing a condom. Y'all might hate this, but seriously, stop to think before you start to write.
It's like this.
You're having sex with someone, right?
Why are you having sex with someone with whom you would either need to or want to use a condom?
It seems like the condom "proponents" have forgotten what sex is all about, if they ever really knew in the first place. If it's all about getting a few good rubs in? You've got real issues. Probably you would be better off not dry-rubbing that person, and going on and finding someone who you can have a real sexual relationship with. That involves, you know, "sex", not "mutual masturbation".
Oh, sorry: I forgot, you can't get an STD if you use a condom. Sure, right. No semen will be exchanged, no vaginal fluids, none of that can happen if you use a condom. Sure!
Seriously they are all about the *ILLUSION* of safety while providing no actual safety on either side. Fine they may make it more difficult (but not impossible) to have an accidental pregnancy, but they are also extremely good as an excellent excuse for "why not?" sex, which, really, if you really think about it, is just not very good at all. Find someone who you really want to have sex with, and have real sex with them. Leave the dry-humping to the prudes who want it "in" but not "with", the "no sperm left behind" crowd. And put some real meaning into all that sweating and bumping.
9:51 pm
" Joelle January 21st, 2010
11:05 am
#49
OK, tried this condom on my boyfriend…Was definitely fun and different…"
...see what I mean?
Ladies, cocks are not play-toys. Guys, well, if you can't figure it out on your own, you deserve to get "bagged".
Have fun
10:01 pm
" K January 20th, 2010
8:07 pm
#39
My argument is that condoms prevent transmission of STIs and pregnancy, and should be worn unless one wishes to get an STI/pregnant."
You shouldn't have sex with someone who can give you an STD in the first place. Using a condom as a preventive measure means that you are seriously worried that this person may have a transmittable STD but you would want to have sex with them anyway, and feel that a condom provides you with "good protection". First, they don't. A condom will not stop you from getting an STD from a person who has it. It is a birth-control device, and even then, only effective when used. Since there are many ways to transmit STDs other than through intercourse, condoms will not prevent the transmission of STDs. Even then they cannot prevent the transmission of ALL STDs even the ones that *are* transmitted through intercourse. Second, again, why do you want to have sex with this person in the first place? "They may or may not have an STD and you don't know". Stop and think about what you just said. You don't even know if they don't have any STDs and you want to have sex with them?
Hey, just a clue: maybe you ought to think about that a little more, before you roll over and spread your legs? Likewise guys, maybe you ought to think about what you're getting yourself into, before you strap one on and dive in? It probably would be a wise idea to hand her a dildo and go back and watch the game, wait until she's done. At least until the test results come back and you've been monogamous long enough to know what's what with whom. Just an idea.
"3) I can’t feel anything
You can’t feel anything when you’re not having sex with me. Which is your option if you don’t wear a condom"
Wow, if that passes for a wise rebuttal in your bedroom? You're staring at a desperate dude, and he's staring at a skank who's just looking for a roll. You two be happy!
10:04 pm
"Since there are many ways to transmit STDs other than through intercourse, condoms will not prevent the transmission of STDs. Even then they cannot prevent the transmission of ALL STDs even the ones that *are* transmitted through intercourse."
...just think about what happens when you have sex, you horny little bastards and biyatches, think about all the stuff that you do, and see if you can figure out why STDs can and will happily make their merry way from one to the other in spite of the fact that Johnny Boy is wearing a condom. Come on, you're both smart, wise, world-aware adults. Figure it out.
10:21 pm
Ok enough time.
Guys, realize this. You're going to get pussy juice all over you when you have sex. On your hands, your privates, your lips even. And you're going to rub it all over the place. And you probably don't know of all the STDs that women can get. Women likewise, don't think that all the STDs that men can transmit are transmitted through seminal fluid. Not by a long shot.
Go on WebMD.com or some such site and look up "STDs" click on some that you've never heard of, and learn something. And you will see what sort of fake science they are promoting when they tell you that condoms help to stop the spread of STDs. It's like saying that credit-repair companies can help you to repair your bad credit. The point is that they "can help". They can also do virtually nothing maybe even make things worse.
The point is that you should not be sleeping with someone who you do not KNOW does not have STDs. You don't know them well enough to know that, why the hell do you want them inside your body, or wrapped around a very valuable (supposedly) piece of your body? I mean get a fucking grip on yourselves! You have to live with the consequences of that for the rest of your life.
Third, and most of all, frankly, real sex doesn't involve a condom at all, so why use a condom and get used to having sex with one? And what are you going to do when you "really" want to have sex with this person?
And that's the whole thing. Women use condoms to turn men into playtoys, and men, thinking that they are "finally getting some", are stupid enough to play along. Guys, she's not really "giving up the pussy" if you have to put a rubber on to get it. It's that simple. Just think about what you're doing, and getting yourself into. Sure, you run the risk of an unwanted pregnancy, but by the same token, why are you having sex with this girl if you don't want her to have your child?
Human beings were given a huge sex drive to help them to reproduce and carry on the species. It isn't there to help them to figure out what to do after they get back from dinner and get bored with playing video games. Maybe this hasn't been explained to you in base-enough terms, it's been sugar-coated, or presented in some alternative point of view, or romanticized into a whole alternate meaning. But the fact is, if you don't want to have kids with someone, you shouldn't be fucking them, and if you don't know them well enough to have kids with them (much less not get an STD from them) you DEFINITELY shouldn't be fucking them. I believe that in the Midwest or the South they would put this in more genteel terms, but the meaning is the same. Abuse it and run the risk of ruining it, and believe me, you will never know which time that will happen. You keep rolling the dice and one time it will come up snake-eyes and after that it'll be too late. If you really value your body, don't waste it playing stupid games with stupid people. Condoms "can help" to reduce the risk but they are not going to eliminate all risk and they can't even reduce some risk-factors. For example, you're just not going to do any sort of effective job of reducing the chance of getting genital herpes by wearing a condom. And unless you're an experienced medic you're probably not going to notice genital herpes (especially in its early stages) before its too late. And there are plenty of other STDs that can make their way either before or after a condom is "applied" much less "used". You just don't know, but you know that you are using one because you are afraid of STDs? Again: why are you fucking someone who you think might have an STD in the first place?
10:32 pm
"The person in these situations who’s “perfectly willing to forgo” sex is the woman. The one who is coercive is the man. At this point you’re just making things up."
Sorry. A woman who demands that a man use a condom or else she will not sleep with him is being coercive as well. It's a simple threat, no way around it. "Either use a rubber or I will not sleep with you".
Second, she can say that to that man because she really does not want to sleep with him. If she *did* really want to sleep with him, she would do so even if he didn't use a rubber. It's like a man saying that he will not date a woman unless she sleeps with him. You can't have it both ways. If you lay out an "either/or" situation, that's coercion. You can say "I'm doing it for my own protection", that doesn't change the fact that it's coercion. That's just an excuse, a justification.
So the question comes down to whether your justification "justifies" your coercion. And you can say that it does, and the man can agree or disagree to your terms, but that doesn't change the fact that it is coercion. It would be the same thing if he said that he would not have sex with you if you insist on his use of a condom. Just that you would say that that is a bad thing because you think that it is a good thing to use a condom. You may think that it is bad, but it's coercion just the same.
And personally I see that as a very-good thing because I think that the reasons that people "insist" on the use of a condom are bullshit, and in doing so, they are sending up a big red flag that they are a world full of trouble. If you're dumb enough to think that condoms are effective at preventing STDs, then we don't need to be having sex. If you insist on it, then that's exactly the sort of wrongheaded "coercion" that I would run away from. It's like saying that you should ride through SouthEast DC with your windows down and car-doors unlocked just in case you get into an accident, the doors get jammed shut and you need to crawl out the window.
10:45 pm
"“The person in these situations who’s “perfectly willing to forgo” sex is the woman. The one who is coercive is the man"
That is wrong on so many levels.
She may be "perfectly willing to forgo sex" without a condom with this guy at this time. Let's not get carried away and make it a general statement. If the man insists on not using a condom when they have sex, it is no more or less coercive than her insisting that he does. As happens so many times in so many ways, the woman is just attempting to say that her coercion is good while his is bad, based on her belief that using a condom is good. But not using salt because salt is unhealthy doesn't make it a good idea to kill babies and eat them, and there are plenty of other unhealthy ingredients besides salt. The use of a condom doesn't make sex with someone a good idea especially when it would be a bad idea to have sex with them without the use of one, which is their operating theory. This is nothing more than "female logic": "it must be a good idea because I thought of it and I'm a woman and/or some other woman told me that it would be a good idea, and I think that it would be good for me, even if you're a guy and it would be bad for you".
If the fact that a man has a condom and puts it on leads either the man or the woman to have sex with someone who they suspect might have STDs and who they would not have sex with if the man wasn't wearing a condom? It's a dumb idea at best for them to have sex. At worst it will be a disaster for one or the other, if not both.
10:50 pm
The bottom line is that if you want to fuck someone and you need some "third-party tool" to make it safe for you, then it isn't safe and you shouldn't be fucking them.
This is aside from the fact that condoms are not very effective at preventing the spread of STDs.
11:27 pm
Knew it was only a matter of time before jf1 blew his verbose wad all over this blog *again*.
There is NO WAY to KNOW for CERTAIN that your partner (OR YOU) do not have an STI. For example: 20-30% of the adult population of the US are infected with HSV (genital herpes), but only 20% or so of that group present symptoms. If you do not present symptoms, it is difficult if not impossible to diagnose HSV. Many, many people just don't know they have it, especially males, as they are not encouraged to visit a reproductive health specialist on a yearly basis. The man who infected me had no idea until I presented symptoms. This is just one example. Many STIs present few, if any symptoms in men. Unless you escort your partner to a clinic and see the results for yourself, there is NO WAY to be completely sure about their sexual health.
You seem to be laboring under the delusion that STIs only infect a certain kind of person, the kind *you* would never want to sleep with, or possibly even talk to. The kind that you could look at, or maybe sniff a little, and be able to immediately tell they must have an STI, and walk away. The reality is that anyone, anywhere could have an STI and YOU CANNOT KNOW. As you repeatedly, redundantly point out, condoms are not completely effective at preventing diseases from spreading. BUT THEY HELP A LOT.
11:38 pm
Second point: you seem to totally negate the condom as a birth control device. I assume, due to this glaring omission, that in your reality, any woman who is having sex should be on birth control. Do you know how much birth control costs? Are you at all aware of the emotional and physical side effects, ranging from mild to intensely unpleasant, that many women experience while using hormonal contraception?
Just because hormonal birth control is available for women does not mean it is a good option for any particular woman. Plenty of women simply don't take birth control if they aren't regularly seeing someone, and it takes up to a month before it is "safe" to have unprotected sex after a woman resumes taking it. For the purposes of an unexpected hook-up, one-night-stand, or whatever, a condom requires no prescription and no waiting period to be effective.
1:09 am
If the man insists on not using a condom when they have sex, it is no more or less coercive than her insisting that he does. As happens so many times in so many ways, the woman is just attempting to say that her coercion is good while his is bad, based on her belief that using a condom is good.
And the fact that consistent use of condoms is a valuable public health measure that has drastically lowered the rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease? Is that just our belief?
Good heavens, you sound like the pope!
I really hate to break this to you, but "only have sex with the right people" has failed as a birth control, public health, social morality strategy for ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY...maybe something less quixotic that actually has a record of demonstrable benefit (like condom use) should be emphasized.
5:43 am
It's very simple: Condoms move with the motion of the penis, reducing sensation for the man far more so than for the woman. Is anybody surprised that women want men to wear condoms and men don't want to?
Anybody?
I mean, given only the fact that I've just stated, it seems like a pretty inevitable position. We're not going to agree on this. Women don't really give a fuck whether it has a negative impact on a man's experience, and men don't really give a fuck about the issues that are at stake for women. That's people for you.
If the choice were between abstinence and condom use, I would choose abstinence. Luckily, I don't have to. Women are perfectly within their rights to require a condom for sex. I am perfectly within mine to require the opposite.
Is condom use a good public health measure? Sure, so the fuck what? You know what would be EVEN MORE effective? Chemically castrate the entire male population and rely exclusively on artificial fertilization techniques to induce pregnancy. You can't deny it would be effective. Does that justify it? Of course not. Is there any reason that a woman couldn't demand chemical castration of any man that wanted to reproduce with her? Only the fact that nobody would be willing to do it.
Describing only the benefits of an action and totally ignoring its costs, in fact, pretending it HAS no costs, (largely because they have less of an effect on you than on your partners) makes it hard to take you seriously.
5:58 am
If you want to know what it feels like, I have a simple exercise for you. I encourage you to actually do this. If you have any interest in actually seeing this from another point of view, do this.
Find an object with an interesting texture, like corduroy or velvet, or a shag carpet. Run your hand over it, noting the unique elements of the texture, how it feels. Fix that firmly in your mind, recreate the experience of touching it mentally.
Now put on a latex glove. Run your hand over it again. Feel how your hand only picks up on the shapes in the dullest ways? All the individual fibers, lost. Rough vs. smooth, lost. Only the dull, numb, shadow of a real sensation, an anesthetized ghost of a feeling, like hearing a noise from very far away or watching something beautiful through fogged glass.
It's the difference between watching lightning and being STRUCK by it.
When you ask a man to wear a condom, at least know what you're asking.
7:49 am
As an older long married guy with lots of experience with condoms I offer the following suggestion.
To the poster (Morgan) who compared condoms with latex gloves I suggest the ladies try the quarter test. Your finger can easily tell the difference between heads and tails on a quarter blindfolded. If you can tell the difference between heads and tails with your penis you may have a claim on the sensitivity issue. I never found anyone who could.
11:29 am
Sexist comments of the week seem quite applicable to this thread and many of the comments posted here. Unless the women here are strapping condoms on themselves, they are in no position to mock men's reasons for not wearing protection.
Just kidding. We all know only men have any responsibility for sexual protection and it is not like female condoms are affordable or available.
2:12 pm
"We all know only men have any responsibility for sexual protection and it is not like female condoms are affordable or available."
A man doesn't want to wear a condom? Fine and dandy.
Now, is he going to complain when a woman doesn't want to fuck him because of it?
I don't see anyone here arguing that "only men have responsibility" for preventing STDs when it comes to sex.
What I do see is a thread that says men should have some obligation to bring birth control and STD protection to the table.
And, fact is, male condoms are generally cheaper, slightly more effective re: protection, easier to get (store, pharmacy, bathroom), and more well-known than female condoms so it shouldn't be a surprise that more women and men use them/request them.
And frankly, when women tend to bare more of the responsibility for birth control [in 2002 alone, the most common contraception used among women was the pill, followed by tubal sterilization, with condom usage coming in third, according to the AGI http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html, the brunt of birth control costs, not to mention the brunt of the physiological costs should birth control fail, I see nothing wrong with asking a man to step up and provide a condom. Particularly if it's *in addition* to whatever birth control she is using.
That's not sexism.
That's equity.
4:39 pm
"And, fact is, male condoms are generally cheaper, slightly more effective re: protection, easier to get (store, pharmacy, bathroom), and more well-known than female condoms [...]"
Those all sound like the "hilarious reasons why a guy won't wear a condom." There is no real excuse for not protecting yourself. It is not equity to demand that someone else covers a part of your protective because you think you are spending too much. It is not only sexist; it is lazy, not unlike a man making excuses for not wearing a condom.
Your body, your responsibility.
5:45 pm
"It is not equity to demand that someone else covers a part of your protective because you think you are spending too much. "
Good thing that's not what I said.
Personally, I'm covered. I take HBC. I also refuse to fuck men who won't wear condoms, even if I know their history.
Simple as that.
Fortunately, there are plenty of men out there who have a sense of personal accountability and responsibility and want to protect *their* health in addition to helping prevent unwanted pregnancy and see equity in balancing the forms of protection used.
8:56 pm
Yes, well women almost always do take care of the pregnancy side of things. Almost every American woman over the age of 15 is on the pill, even if they're not yet sexually active. Most girls go on the pill during high school for acne reasons, whether or not they're having sex. And yes, some women choose IUDs instead, but the fact is, it's EXTREMELY rare to come across a woman who doesn't have some sort of chemical birth control in her system.
Female condoms aren't a horrible solution...but they're not very effective, and they are much more expensive. That's just a fact. There's a huge difference between spending 4 dollars on a 12-pack of male condoms and spending the exact same amount of money on a single female condom. Plus, the birth control that almost all women are already on can range from as cheap as $500 every five years (for an IUD) to as expensive as $70-$80 per month (for many birth control pills). And women often shell out the money for male condoms as well; I know I always have them on hand. Plus...male condoms don't even have to cost money at all. They hand them out in Planned Parenthood and health centers and even some restrooms. You could use a condom for every single sexual encounter without spending a single penny. And you say there's no excuse for not protecting "yourself," but it is extremely dangerous and highly ineffective to use a female condom and a male condom at the same time. Really high risk of breaking. So it'll have to be one or the other.
Which one makes more sense: the one that is expensive, ineffective, uncomfortable for most partners, and may provide, if you're very lucky, a LITTLE more sensation for the man?
Or the one that's free/inexpensive, highly effective, and only problematic for people who think it's their RIGHT to have an orgasm every single time they have sex?
See, this is why many of us find it "hilarious" that men claim they "can't feel anything" with a condom. If you can't "finish"...frankly...so what? Most women have never had an orgasm during sex. It's simply not valued (and, for that matter, it's anatomically more difficult). But if a man doesn't finish, then all of a sudden that's a bigger deal? Bullshit, if you ask me.
10:21 pm
"If you can tell the difference between heads and tails with your penis you may have a claim on the sensitivity issue."
You're not just old, you're stupid too.
It's no wonder that women want you to wear a condom when they have sex with you.
10:35 pm
...argument a: the use of condoms helps to prevent the spread of STDs, therefore couples should use condoms when having sex.
By this logic, it would be unhealthy if not downright irresponsible for them to *not* use condoms when having sex. Thus requiring the male to use a condom is a good thing.
Anyone here think that this is logical?
You haven't addressed the issue. If there is a good chance that either partner has an STD, it is not healthy for the other to have sex with them. Use of a condom will reduce the risk of transfer, but not eliminate it, and indeed by giving both partners "false hope" (and as a result increasing the chance and frequency of sexual activity) it certainy *raises* that risk.
Cutting the risk in half but increasing the number of incidents by a factor of 50 results in a net increase in the transmittal of STDs between one partner with an STD and another without. On the other hand, simply not having sex until you're as positive as you could reasonably be that neither partner has an STD reduces the chance of transmission drastically, and 500 times "negligible" is still "negligible". Excuse me, but I don't think that in your long-winded post you ever quite grasped that point.
"There is NO WAY to KNOW for CERTAIN that your partner (OR YOU) do not have an STI."
No. You can't be 100% sure that neither partner has an STD. But you can be pretty damm sure. Sure to the point of irrelevance.
" For example: 20-30% of the adult population of the US are infected with HSV (genital herpes), but only 20% or so of that group present symptoms. If you do not present symptoms, it is difficult if not impossible to diagnose HSV."
Sure. And if you can't tell that your partner has genital herpes, even if they do, then probably it won't matter if you get it either. Not certainly but "probably". So using a condom to prevent their transmission would be ineffective on two levels. One it wouldn't stop the spread of genital herpes, and 2nd even if you got it you probaby wouldn't even notice. Making the point moot at least in terms of this one STD.
"This is just one example. Many STIs present few, if any symptoms in men."
And the same holds for similar STDs.
" Unless you escort your partner to a clinic and see the results for yourself, there is NO WAY to be completely sure about their sexual health."
Come on, you are willing to have sex with a guy who you can't trust to be honest with you about whether they have an STD or not even after a clinic visit? Do you take "smart pills" too?
"You seem to be laboring under the delusion that STIs only infect a certain kind of person, the kind *you* would never want to sleep with, or possibly even talk to."
...and you seem to be laboring under the delusion that engaging in personal attacks is a legitimate way to rebut my point. Say what you will about me, that's not going to make condoms any more effective for *you*.
"The reality is that anyone, anywhere could have an STI and YOU CANNOT KNOW."
If you can't cross the bridge between the concept of having sex with anyone, anywhere, and having sex with a trusted partner whose personal health and hygiene you're well familiar with, then I guess that this would be a real problem for you LOL
" As you repeatedly, redundantly point out, condoms are not completely effective at preventing diseases from spreading. BUT THEY HELP A LOT."
Yes, they do help a lot in fooling people into thinking that they are taking effective measures to protect their physical health when they have sex with someone who is practically a stranger to them, in terms of their physical health.
They don't do a damm thing to help you to avoid getting an STDs from someone who has one. For the simple reason that that condom is not always going to be between the two of you. The only way to KNOW that you are NOT going to get an STD from someone is to not have sex with them on top of other measures like not sharing needles or drinking or eating utensils or clothing, and so forth. Note that sex is just one transfer-vector.
10:49 pm
"Second point: you seem to totally negate the condom as a birth control device."
Now you're taking a strawman approach. Try to just deal with what I said, which was that you shouldn't be having sex with someone with whom you feel that you need to use a condom.
"I assume, due to this glaring omission, that in your reality, any woman who is having sex should be on birth control."
Again, skip the "assumptions" and stick to what I said. I said that sex is not meant to be a recreational activity. If you want to use it as such, then you have to deal with the physical realities of sex. You do have the choice of using birth control methods OTHER than condoms. You want to argue that condoms are the most effective method, try poking a hole in one and see how effective it is then. A method is no more or less effective than its use. Use it well, and it will be effective. Use it poorly and it won't be. But in the long run you have to realize that in trying to not get pregnant while having regular sex, well, the odds are against that, aren't they. And that probably holds true with condoms as much as anything else, right?
Like any mechanical aid, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. And like anything, the more often it is used, the more likely it is going to fail. Ultimately you're going to run up against the fact that they aren't perfect birth-control and certainly they aren't a perfect way to prevent the spread of STDs. So keep having sex with someone who has an STD and sooner or later you'll get it, even if you use a condom. Keep having sex with someone who can get you pregnant and sooner or later you'll *get* pregnant even if you use a condom. It doesn't matter how effective you think that they are, sooner or later they will let you down, and you'll be right up against that unpleasant reality.
So you want to think of it now or later?
People, if you are lucky your partner will not have an STD nor will they get one, and likewise if you're lucky then there will not be an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy at an inconvenient time. You keep fucking someone who might have an STD and who could get you pregnant (or get pregnant on you), and sooner or later your luck is going to run out. With a condom, with 5 condoms, with 5 condoms and a dental-dam, whatever. So why act like you're always going to have good luck with something that you know is going to fail sooner or later?
And this is quite seriously aside from the fact that sex is just "different" without a condom on a number of levels. You want to get used to sex with a condom be my guest. Me, I'll stick to the "old-fashioned" way. And I'll be happy to not have sex with any woman who says that she won't have sex with me without a condom. If she's *that* concerned about using a condom, then she can take her pack of condoms and go out and find another guy to have sex with.
10:53 pm
First of all, jf1...I haven't noticed you've actually provided any evidence that lack of access to contraception actually prevents sexual activity in any significant way. In fact, numerous studies of high school students find that those only exposed to "abstinence-only" education do NOT have lower rates of sexual intercourse (or later onset), but they do have significantly higher rates of pregnancy and STDs.
Since when does sharing eating utensils or clothing contribute to the spread of STDs?? Science FAIL.
Furthermore, "Just have sex with someone you can absolutely trust" is laughable...people can even be married to each other and truly think they can take the others' word, and be drastically wrong...Just ask Elizabeth Edwards!
Since you've so brilliantly addressed all of humanity's problems with pregnancy and STDs by declaring, "only have monogamous, strictly-reproductive sex!!" I've been inspired to solve some of humanity's other problems in a similar fashion:
We could stop the obesity epidemic by telling people to just eat healthier foods.
We could stop all drunk driving incidents by simply telling people never to consume alcohol.
We could eliminate unemployment by telling people that they should have a job.
We could fix world hunger by telling other countries they ought to grow more food.
We could end all wars by just telling people not to kill each other.
Or, better yet, while you're doing that, the rest of us will address practical approaches to reduce human suffering on THIS planet, shall we?
10:53 pm
...it's not "abstinence" that is ineffective. It's your self-control that's ineffective.
The rest of this argument is nonsense. You think that a piece of rubber is going to save your ass when it comes to sex, go right ahead. Keep pushing your luck and see how long it lasts. Just don't ask me to be stupid along with you, and if you think that holding out is going to make me be stupid along with you, keep right on believing that & see how well it works.
11:04 pm
jf1--ok, so you're not being stupid along with us...so, are you having sex? (I hope you don't mind answering a personal question) But your other post seemed to indicate you're referring to sex with "any" woman. Are you married? Are you trying to have kids? Because if you're having sex with anyone other than your wife (AND you have both been tested and you are positive she's monogamous), you can make fun of us all you want for taking on a certain level of risk, but be aware...if your self-control fails even very rarely, you would be taking on a lot MORE risk and thus being a lot MORE stupid.
11:05 pm
"...Condoms move with the motion of the penis, reducing sensation for the man far more so than for the woman. Is anybody surprised that women want men to wear condoms and men don’t want to?
Anybody?
...We’re not going to agree on this. Women don’t really give a fuck whether it has a negative impact on a man’s experience, and men don’t really give a fuck about the issues that are at stake for women. That’s people for you."
a) condoms do not "hug the skin". If they did, you would never have to worry about "leaving one behind" LOL There is some motion, but the bigger issue is that "rubbing" is not what it's all about, by far.
Which gets to b).
If you're fucking someone who doesn't give a damm about you and your "experience" while having sex, how sad is that?
c) you can't tell me that women can't tell whether a man is using a condom or not, or which condom they are using, any more or less than what man they are having sex with. And ultimately the bottom line is that they may be "happy" with a man using a condom, that may work for them, but one has to wonder why....taking health-concerns and pregnancy concerns out of the issue. How is sex different, on a pleasure-basis, for men and for women if a condom is used, vs if one isn't? I think that you ought to do a little more experimentation both ways :)
It depends on a lot of things. It depends on the two people involved, and their feelings for each other, and it depends on how they "get pleasure" from the sexual act. But no it's not a blanket "condoms are bad for men and good for women". It depends on what you are looking for...it's like the use of different sexual positions, sexual techniques. You change something and the results are going to be different.
I just think that the whole issue of STD-prevention and birth-control are bogus issues. Sure it sounds great but in real-life it's just not that way, and it's a bad place to start from in the first place. And demanding the use of a condom just makes things worse. How would you feel, as a woman, if the man were to say, "well if you're *that* worried about pregnancy then let's just stick to oral and anal"?
No but see you want to have your cake and eat it, too :)
11:10 pm
JF1 obviously cant pass the Quarter test so he is personally abusive
all repeat all safety measures are not 100% effective but that is not an argument not to use them
11:12 pm
You're free to define "self-control" and not "abstinence" that's ineffective...but the point still stands. The most effective diet in the world isn't actually any good if the average person can't stay on it.
Please remember, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a QUARTER of the brides were pregnant on their wedding day. If the PURITAN'S abstinence message wasn't strong enough, I think this gets at something more basic in human nature.
No one here is saying that condoms are 100% effective...not at all, but they do significantly REDUCE (not eliminate, reduce) risks and lead to massive public health benefits.
Imagining that human beings are fundamentally different than they are isn't going to solve anything.
11:40 pm
"JF1 obviously cant pass the Quarter test so he is personally abusive"
And you're a moron so obviously you're going to get personally abused. Attacking people in response isn't going to get you anywhere, you're still going to be a moron.
"all repeat all safety measures are not 100% effective but that is not an argument not to use them"
No, that is not the argument to not use them, and that is not what I said is the reason to not use them. The reason to not use them is the false sense of security that condoms give the user, combined with the fact that they actually lead to increased STD transmission as a result.
How many times do I need to explain this to you before you will face this?
11:54 pm
"You’re free to define “self-control” and not “abstinence” that’s ineffective…but the point still stands. The most effective diet in the world isn’t actually any good if the average person can’t stay on it."
That doesn't change the fact that diets are nothing more than attempts to modify the behavior of those who can't control their eating. Calling it a "diet" instead of a "lifestyle modification" doesn't change the fact that it's only necessary because of a fundamental flaw.
"Please remember, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a QUARTER of the brides were pregnant on their wedding day."
Yes, and most likely, a quarter of the brides were well under the legal age by todays' standards. Honestly that is irrelevant to the point.
"If the PURITAN’S abstinence message wasn’t strong enough, I think this gets at something more basic in human nature."
You're still not getting anywhere with this. At best you are assuming that the Puritans truly valued abstinence, and physical virtue before marriage. Who says that they didn't just pay lip service to the concept? If they really believed in it, why would any of the Puritan males actually marry a woman who obviously wasn't a virgin?
No one here is s"aying that condoms are 100% effective…not at all, but they do significantly REDUCE (not eliminate, reduce) risks and lead to massive public health benefits."
They only do that when the choice of not having sex with someone who doesn't have an STD is not an option. You're missing the counterexample of our own society. People have sex without condoms on a regular basis and don't get STDs as a result, simply because there are plenty of available sexual partners in our society who don't have STDs. When most if not all of the members of a society have an STD, then it's simple. Use of a condom will reduce the rate of transmission, because the alternative is 100% transmission.
The flaw remains, you're trying to extrapolate from an irrelevant situation to your current situation. We do not live in West Africa. We live in Washington D.C. If you can't find someone here to have sex with who doesn't have AIDS (or even a mild case genital herpes that is currently in remission) then you're in serious trouble. If you have to resort to having sex with such a person, it doesn't matter whether you use a condom or not: if you regularly have sex with this person, you're going to get their STDs. Believing that a condom will protect you is actually going to cause you to expose yourself even moreso. If you didn't make the flawed choice to rely on a condom, you would either be extra-careful to not have sex with someone with an STD or you wouldn't have sex. Yes it is difficult to know exactly for sure whether someone has an STD or not, but it is not impossible to know whether they have an STD or not before having sex with them. It just requires intelligence, patience and self-restraint. Your argument that condoms are a better method for preventing the spread of STDs is flawed on several levels. It's better than stupidly and ignorantly having sex with someone in an unknown state of physical health when you live in an environment where there is a high percentage of people with STDs, sure. But you have other options than that, here.
And the same goes for the Puritans, who really didn't know how human reproduction worked. And certainly if a girl got pregnant everytime a man put his dick into a girl, it would be a completely different story. Even then it probably would be more of a problem if they would actually NOT marry women who were not virgins. As it was, it was a mild scandal, sure, but obviously nothing serious enough to prevent the marriage. You're simply trying to use non sequiturs to justify your position, which obviously will not stand up to close examination.
12:03 am
The bottom line is that for a woman to say that a) she would only have sex with a man when she feels that he is mentally and physically healthy in general b) even given a) there is a small chance that he isn't c) therefore just to be sure she will insist on using a condom is nonsense.
She is only guessing that he is mentally and physically healthy, and she is relying on the condom to make up the difference. The problem is that we live in a binary world regardless of our belief in the power of statistics and probability. Either he has an STD or he doesn't. If he does have one, and she has sex with him frequently, then she is likely to get it anyway whether she uses a condom or not. Same with having infrequent and/or irregular sex with multiple partners, whether a condom is used or not, sooner or later that will catch up with her.
Her only true protection is in reducing the risk that her partners have an STD, and that means going beyond guessing to actually getting tested and getting to know that person before having sex with them. You do that and you make wise choices for your sexual partners and condoms become superfluous except as birth-control devices or whatever other side-benefits that the pair get from the use of condoms. WRT birth-control that depends on their desire to have children and their ability to use other options successfully, and that feeds into the original issue. Smart people with self-restraint who are a good match do not accidentally get pregnant and even if they do it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact that's what is supposed to happen. Expecting to have sex but not get pregnant is like putting your hand on a stove and expecting to not get burned. Indeed you want the stove to be hot when you touch it, and indeed the point of sex is procreation. Not mutual masturbation.
12:10 am
And so, in the final analysis, if someone is willing to have sex with you but won't do it without a condom, it's just as likely as anything else that they think that you really might have an STD and would never want to have a family with you, but they're willing to put up with all of this for a good rub if you'll just consent to the use of a condom. Especially if the longer they're with you the more they insist on one, because any intelligent couple can avoid an unwanted pregnancy without using a condom. It just requires a little willpower, patience, restraint & self-control. Sure there's a chance that that might all fail and she gets pregnant at a bad time, but if that's a huge big problem then the two of you have much bigger issues than her getting pregnant.
12:19 am
"Although men face consequences for not wearing a condom, women tend to face greater consequences. "
And they only face these "greater consequences" if they are at risk of getting an STD from their partner or getting pregnant at an unwanted time from their partner or from a partner they don't want to have children with.
And I'm telling ya, 2 out of three are good reasons to not have sex with the guy in the first place. And guys you really have to think for yourself, about why she is so insistent on your using a condom, and what that means. I'm not saying that it's one thing or another for sure, but you would be wise to find out, because if you buy into a womans' bullshit just to get some pussy, you can't argue afterwards that you were too smart to buy into it, or unwilling to do whatever was necessary just to get her to have sex.
Your smart play would be to keep your dick in your pants until she has marched her tight ass down to a clinic with you at least twice and shown you the test results each time. Then you can call the shots.
Even then you still have to trust that she isn't getting some on the side. But in the long run if you can't trust your partner, you're screwed. You just can't rely on a condom to save your ass and that goes both ways.
12:22 am
LOL I'll tell you one thing, she might be making *you* use a condom, but that doesn't mean that she's making some *other* dude use a condom.
12:35 am
...if she insists, ask her why, if she says "because it's for my own protection", ask her w hat she's afraid of. Don't be afraid to ask, don't feel insulted, if she says something take her seriously but demand that she be open and honest about what she thinks.
If she won't do that you have a bullshitter on your hands.
If she says "I'm afraid that you may have an STD" then take her down to a clinic and you both get tested and wait until you've been tested twice to have sex. It's that simple. Really you should do that anyway. Because if you feel that YOU need to wear a condom because SHE might have an STD then why do you want to stick your dick in her in the first place, right?
No, the thing to do is to get tested and just wait, bide your time, see if she's serious, see if she actually wants you and not just sex. Then if she starts to talk about pregnancy figure out when she's on her period, that works for just about every case. And if you're still worried, there's always anal and oral. 3 out of 4 ain't bad, and that way you find out whether it's either "vaginal intercourse with a condom" or "nothing".
Honestly to me there's not much difference between the two. It's kind of hard to get your dick wet when you're wearing a condom but hey if you're just in it to bust a nut, slap on a condom and go for it.
12:39 am
jf1: "sex is not meant to be a recreational activity"
Your arguments all depend on this premise.
Therefore they will be irrelevant to anyone who doesn't agree with it. No matter how long your comments are.
12:41 am
last but not least for those who think that I'm insensitive about getting a woman pregnant, if that were the case I'd have plenty of kids. I just know the difference between "I have to use a condom just to get some" and "I have to use a condom to keep her from getting pregnant this time".
Avoiding unwanted pregnancy is the responsibility of both parties, but that doesn't mean that both parties want to avoid a pregnancy for the same reason. Same with just about everything that a man and a woman can do together.
12:46 am
The reason to not use them is the false sense of security that condoms give the user, combined with the fact that they actually lead to increased STD transmission as a result.
How many times do I need to explain this to you before you will face this?
You can say it over and over again (and, boy, have you ever!!). But that doesn't make it true. Please provide some credible evidence for this dubious claim of yours.
Again, all of your "You should know everything about your sex partner" and "You should be ready to have a baby with your sex partner" is absolute and total nonsense. Pretending human behavior could be so easily changed is absurdly naive and flies in the face of, as I have said, ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY.
10:57 am
"You can say it over and over again (and, boy, have you ever!!). But that doesn’t make it true. Please provide some credible evidence for this dubious claim of yours."
Funny I was just thinking of this this morning and I wanted to add something else on a point that someone else made, and even though I've already responded to this I'll respond again.
So the assumption, backed up by numerous statistical studies, is that the use of condoms reduces the STD transmission rate and cuts down on unwanted pregnancies, yes? Let's say that this is true, given these studies. Just for the sake of argument. This still doesn't explain the exact mechanism by which this result occurs.
But the bottom line is that we are assuming that people have sex with partners that have STDs and/or in situations in which they could get pregnant, yes?
Well remember that
a) health clinics do not test for all STDs.
(this is the point that I was going to mention originally)
And there are a lot more STDs out there than you or even I know about.
b) even testing for STDs doesn't mean that the test is effective. I'm sure that you are aware that an AIDS test is only ~98% effective and then only given the presence of related antibodies (pardon me if I don't have this exactly right, I'm not a medical professional), the point being that the test would only work at least 6 months (give or take) after exposure to the virus, even then, usually it takes repeated exposures for effective transmission. And you must have enough detectable viral-related material for the test to work. So not only are they not 100% effective when they are used, they have to be used within a certain window after exposure.
I have also mentioned previously that condoms themselves are not 100% effective barriers against the transmission of STDs, likewise they are not 100% effective barriers for pregnancy.
You put it all together and the answer is clear. You keep having sex with someone who has an STD and/or who could get you pregnant and you will get their STD and/or get pregnant whether you use a condom or not. Condoms at best merely retard the inevitable result. At worst they incite it, because you take more risk and have sex more frequently believing that you are effectively protected. Stated another way, sometimes they will keep you from getting pregnant and/or contracting some STDs.
They are not like magic fairy dust that you put on your boyfriends (of the moment) dick and you are completely protected from both pregnancy and STD. In the long run your only protection is your avoidance of copulation at a time and method that will get you pregnant, or with someone who has an STD. Assuming that you don't have one yourself already.
"Again, all of your “You should know everything about your sex partner” and “You should be ready to have a baby with your sex partner” is absolute and total nonsense."
No, your extremism is nonsense. It's an ideal but in practice you should try to know as much as you possibly can to give you more than confidence in your partner. Dismissing the ideal because it isn't realistic is no reason to dismiss the rational near-case. Or to rely on an ineffective substitute for intelligence.
"Pretending human behavior could be so easily changed is absurdly naive and flies in the face of, as I have said, ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY."
Human behavior can be easily changed, and IS easily changed if the humans involved simply change it. If they can't change their destructive nature then you need to rethink your "need" to have sex with them. It's that simple. Your excuse-mongering is just making the situation worse. Looking at the fact that there are 5 million pedophiles and rapists out there and you don't know who they are is no excuse for you to have sex with a near-stranger and rely on a condom for protection. If you didn't have a choice, you lived in a world where say 85% of the men out there had AIDS or an STD, then I could hardly fault you for using condoms given your available choice of sexual partners. If you're having regular sex with a steady partner, I can hardly fault you for using a condom at least on occasion -certainly when the occasion calls for it- to avoid an inconvenient pregnancy. That's just responsible personal behavior. But to DEMAND that they use condoms before you will have sex with them is a different story.
But hey, some guys will happily go for that just to get laid, and I'm sure that you will find a guy who will happily agree to it. Just don't be surprised when you get pregnant and/or get an STD anyway.
11:12 am
Which just gets to the general point. We all have a brain. Even the dumbest and slowest of us have a brain.
A brain is like any tool. You can either use it for constructive purposes, or destructive purposes. Assuming that you know enough about logic to think your way out of a paper bag, and assuming that you don't suffer from some medical defect that prevents you from thinking rationally, when you use your brain to "rationalize" doing stupid things, that's no ones fault but yours. And God help anyone who is stupid enough to trust you and rely on you.
When these two people use a condom, it's a simple physical fact. Eventually one of them is going to transfer any and all STDs that they have to the other, and if they can get pregnant together, they are GOING to get pregnant together. Whether they use condoms once, sometimes or every time. Sooner or later it's going to happen.
You can be a stupid ignorant excuse-mongerer all that you want. Won't change a thing about that. And if you have a brain that is in good working order, why the hell would you rationalize having sex with someone who is dumb enough to not know how to avoid getting you pregnant without using a condom and who actually might have an STD and would have sex with you either knowingly or in ignorance?
Is this something that you just don't see, or what?
Sure even the best of us screw up occasionally but that doesn't mean that we willingly drive into a brick wall. Relying on a condom is doing just that. In no way can condoms change the fact that sex is a major transmission vector both for STDs and for semen, you know, "the stuff that gets you pregnant". They can only reduce the probability that a specific STD is transmitted during this act of sex, likwise they can only reduce the transmitted sperm-count in any given act of sex.
Since these transmissions are not zero, given repeated sexual events, eventually they will add up to an "infection" event.
Do you want me to explain the math of this?
11:17 am
"Since these transmissions are not zero, given repeated sexual events, eventually they will add up to an “infection” event."
And don't forget that this requires that you and your partner form a fertile couple (hardly a given) and in the case of STD transmission, that your partner has an STD. Either now, or goes out and gets one and brings it back and you try your luck again the next time.
What part of "a condom is not an effective defense against this" do you not understand?
11:19 am
...so guys, here's the bottom line.
She insists that you need to use a condom or she won't have sex with you. You need to figure out why she is so insistent about it.
Girls, the same the other way.
11:23 am
...likewise if you need to insist that your soon-to-be lover needs to use a condom, then you need to think about why you need to fuck them.
9:45 am
jf1, I really enjoy that you have now started to quote *yourself* to prove your points. How about, instead of ranting endlessly, you provide some sources to back up your spurious claims? Or maybe you could join the rest of us in the human race and admit that people seldom fuck just to make babies?
1:25 am
"How about, instead of ranting endlessly, you provide some sources to back up your spurious claims?"
Don't call them "spurious claims" until you've disproved them. Enjoy the research.
" Or maybe you could join the rest of us in the human race and admit that people seldom fuck just to make babies?"
Um, that's the point. Think about it. Just sit back and think about the whole damm issue. You want to have sex, a lot, with someone who you're not sure doesn't have any STDs, without catching them if they do, without a pregnancy. How much sense does that make? Just think about it. Pick all the stupid parts out of it and take them on one at a time.
Which part of all this does the use of a condom eliminate? Answer: not a one. As I've already explained. You don't believe me? Well, you can either go forward confident that I'm wrong, or you could do some research on your own and think about what you learn. Your body, your choice.
1:36 am
...condoms, when used properly, are somewhat effective at preventing pregnancy and the spread of some STDs. Like anything that has a significant chance of failure, repetition raises the likelihood of failure. Basic probability. If they are 90% effective, then if you use them 10 times you're almost certain to have at least one failure. Use them 100 times and you're almost certain to have 10 failures. How often do you want to have sex, again?
And that's not even counting the STDs that condoms can't stop, the transmission vectors that are not blocked by condoms even when used properly, or the times that you don't use a condom "properly".
You really need links for all this?
Really the only effective way to not get pregnant is to not have sex in any way where you can get pregnant. First of all, don't have intercourse while you're ovulating. Likewise the only effective way to not get an STD is to not exchange contaminated materials with someone who has one. Since you can get an STD from a surface contaminated with viable STD agents, any surface that is contaminated with viable STD agents by someone who has an STD can be an STD transmission-vector.
Again...you really need links to "verify" this, to explain all this for you? Or do you just need to do some reading on human reproduction and basic pathogen-transmission on the Internet? Start with "STD" on webmd.com and go from there.
1:44 am
...so if you're a guy and your girlfriend won't have sex with you witout a condom because she's afraid of getting pregnant, tell her that you will be happy to wait 10 days after her period starts and then you can fuck to your hearts' content without a condom with little if any chance of her getting pregnant. If she won't do it because she's worried that you have an STD, tell her that you are worried that she has one too, and that if she does, it's highly likely that a condom won't keep her from giving it to you. Then when you get through staring at each other with all sorts of evil thoughts running through your heads, you can see if you still want to have sex, and if so, go get tested at a clinic that will test you for more than just chlamydia, AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhea and then figure out what you want to do from there. You two might still want to have sex, you might not, but the thing is at least you know something about who has what. Not like before. You go through all those tests together and she still keeps yapping about a condom "just in case"? She's probably full of shit. Maybe not. But still, probably.
And sure if you're getting hot and heavy a few days before her period starts, or you're not sure when her period starts, who can blame you for using a condom "just in case". But by the same token using one "just so she won't get pregnant" when there's almost no chance that she will get pregnant is just stupid. That's what patience is for. That's also what "knowing who you're fucking" is for :)
1:55 am
Well, if these agents could be transferred on "surfaces" they wouldn't be called "sexually transmitted," now would they? It's a class of infectious agents that generally require contact with bodily fluids. Science FAIL on your part.
Second, nowhere have you proved that access to condoms increases the rate of sexual activity. They don't. People have sex for all sorts of reasons, including a great many really stupid ones. Abstinence education is a colossal failure, and has succeeded only in higher STD and pregnancy rates, because the average person is not fully rational in this regard. Public health measures need to be effective for a significant portion of the population, EVEN if you disapprove of those people or dislike them. What's more, some people like to actually LIVE a little, and we should encourage them to take measures to protect themselves, not to miss out on life completely.
jf1=Shakespeare, William. Macbeth: Act V, Scene 5, lines 26-28.
1:55 am
...of course, if you're screwing some crazy-ass girl who will lie to you about her period, then you might as well play a few rounds of Russian Roulette afterwards, for even more fun :)
likewise if your "boyfriend" says "no I'm sure that I don't have an STD, I just got tested..." or "I would never have sex with someone who might have an STD..." why not get drunk and drive, too while you're at it?
In any case, seriously, learn about things like herpes and the like, and make sure that the first time their pants come off, it's in a well-lit room and you take some time to Check Their Shit Out. And that's hoping that there aren't any oral STDs involved. There's always the chance that it's in "remission" or something, but that's true for anyone and if you're that worried about it, you're probably not going to have sex with anyone ever. Until the day that you get drunk and get your freak on with some stranger you never intend to see again...c'est la vie :)
But seriously cheaters, ho's and skanks have a bad rep for good reason. There's no excuse for skanky sex. You might as well take a needle from a junkie straight out of prison and stick it straight in your arm. You know that you're going to get horny and want to have sex, it's even possible that you know that you are going to get horny and want to have sex with one person. So do it the smart way or be ready to regret it forever after. Condoms are no substitute for intelligence.
1:59 am
jf1, your public health advice is even MORE dangerous than telling people "use a condom." Do you have any idea how much more risk your methods would expose people to, if they trusted the rhythm method (which is LESS effective than condom use) and clinical STD testing without the basic precautionary measure of consistent condom use? Even assuming real human beings would live up to your ideals of who is and is not entitled to have sex, your crackpot advice leads to a great deal more personal risk and public health dangers.
2:01 am
"Well, if these agents could be transferred on “surfaces” they wouldn’t be called “sexually transmitted,” now would they?"
Wow, you sound like you think that health medicine is strictly logical.
" It’s a class of infectious agents that generally require contact with bodily fluids. Science FAIL on your part."
Even if that's the case, you think that your body has to have actual contact with their body for those "bodily fluids" to be transmitted?
Even if that's the case what part of "condoms cannot prevent this" do you not understand?
"Second, nowhere have you proved that access to condoms increases the rate of sexual activity. They don’t."
It doesn't matter if they do or not, for any specific person. Certainly you can go to the store right now instead of trying to argue against me and buy 2 cases of condoms :) the issue is not "access to condoms". the issue is the effectiveness of condoms in terms of stopping the transmission of STDs and preventing pregnancy. And central to that issue is the act of sex, yes?
Sorry it was "access to condoms" all along. My bad.
2:01 am
Until the day that you get drunk and get your freak on with some stranger you never intend to see again…c’est la vie :)
So be prepared and have a condom ready, you blithering idiot!!!
2:09 am
No, agents can be passed via contaminated blood, needle sticks, etc. BUT in two years of medical school I haven't heard a single case report of chlamydia, gonorrhea, or AIDS being transferred via casual contact. So, really, provide data or shut up.
And, yes, it absolutely matters whether condoms influence the rate of sexual activity. If a population is going to be having (let's imagine) 10,000 sex acts whether condoms are involved or not, and the risk of transmission without a condom is 30% and the risk of transmission with a condom is 1%, the safe-sex population is going to have only 100 transmission events, while the unprotected sex population is going to have 3000 transmission events. So, since sexual activity is a fixed variable, the only thing that matters is how much safer condoms are relative to UNPROTECTED SEX, not abstinence.
12:23 pm
"Don’t call them “spurious claims” until you’ve disproved them. Enjoy the research."
Basic Logical Argument Fail (You should start printing these out and framing them!)
The onus of proof is on the one MAKING the claims. You continue to insist that since condoms MAY be ineffective OCCASIONALLY, they shouldn't be used at all. This is directly contradictory to every published public health study ever. Is this based on anything other than your (weak) grasp of probability and statistics, coupled with your prejudice against casual sex and those who engage in it? If so, please provide evidence, INDEPENDENT of your own opinions.
1:19 pm
Here's some logic for ya:
1. You don't wear condoms, and instead, when you're in a serious relationship and having sex, you rely on the rhythm method. That is, according to you, you wait until ten days after the beginning of the woman's period, and then have sex all you want.
2. Congratulations, you just skipped the part of the month when the woman is least likely to get pregnant, and started having sex at the time of the month when the woman is MOST likely to get pregnant.
3. If jf1 had frequently gotten women pregnant (which, if he used his method, he almost definitely would have), he probably wouldn't be so quick to come on here and defend unprotected sex.
So...he must have either never had sex, had very little of it, or he uses condoms more than he's letting on. So he's probably either a child who doesn't yet have a decent understanding of math, science, the reproductive system, etc. yet, (he'll grow out of it), an adult who can't get any woman to agree to his less-than-logical views enough to agree to have sex with him...or else he's full of shit and does use condoms.
10:49 pm
"BUT in two years of medical school I haven’t heard a single case report of chlamydia, gonorrhea, or AIDS being transferred via casual contact. So, really, provide data or shut up."
Maybe by the end of 4 years you'll have heard of other STDs not to mention other ways to transfer the above.
Good luck over the next 2 years!
ps please let us know what medical school admitted you so we can know which graduates to avoid LOL
10:52 pm
"And, yes, it absolutely matters whether condoms influence the rate of sexual activity. If a population is going to be having (let’s imagine) 10,000 sex acts whether condoms are involved or not, and the risk of transmission without a condom is 30% and the risk of transmission with a condom is 1%, the safe-sex population is going to have only 100 transmission events, while the unprotected sex population is going to have 3000 transmission events."
Right, and that's the best-case argument for the use of a condom to prevent the spread of STDs. Now start to think in terms of cases that are somewhat less than "best-case". You know, like real-life.
All while ignoring the fact that even in your own best-case scenario you're still talking about 100 "transmission events" with the use of a condom every time.
10:55 pm
"So, since sexual activity is a fixed variable,"
LOL try saying that 3 times fast :) the ony thing "fixed" about sex is that you'll want to have it. Everything else is a variable. So, so many variables. You're speaking about hypotheticals as if they have real-world significance. In the real world you don't have "percentages". You have events. You can even call them "non-events", but still. Percentages only apply to large sample-sizes identically-processed.
10:59 pm
"1, your public health advice is even MORE dangerous than telling people “use a condom.”
Only if you're an idiot. But you're assuming that idiots can use condoms effectively to stop the spread of STDs and eliminate unwanted pregnancies LOL
"Do you have any idea how much more risk your methods would expose people to, if they trusted the rhythm method (which is LESS effective than condom use) and clinical STD testing without the basic precautionary measure of consistent condom use?"
You're avoiding the issue. People expose themselves to risks through their actions and decisions. Transferring the blame for the consequences of their actions and decisions onto a 3rd party is excuse-mongering. Go out and have sex with someone who has an STD, using a condom every time, get an STD and blame me for it. Feel free. Do it without a condom, and blame me for it. Knock yourself out. That still won't change the fact that you went out and caught an STD. You can write 10,000 pages on the Internet saying it's my fault. I'm not the one with the STD. You are.
11:10 pm
"The onus of proof is on the one MAKING the claims."
No, it's on the person who stands to suffer the most if they disagree with them.
Talk about this all you want. In the end you will still be presented ith the same set of options. Rely on a condom to keep you from getting pregnant and/or getting an STD, or rely on not having sex with someone who has an STD and/or not having sex when you can get pregnant as a result. Analyze this anyway you want. In the end it's still your body and your life. You decide, you act, you deal with the consequences. One of which is that you will get an STD and have to face the same choice that the person who gave it to you had to face, once they found out that they had one.
With regard to the "rhythm method", similarly, it's not impossible for a woman to get pregnant during her period, just as it is not impossible for her to get pregnant at any time during the month. Life is a bowl of cherries. You pick one, put it in your mouth, bite and chew. Whatever comes out, you deal with it. Or else you don't eat cherries. Simple.
If you want to use the rhythm method, then you need to learn when the lady is likely to get pregnant so you can not have sex during that time. I'm not saying that this is a good way to prevent the transmission of STDs. The best way to do that is to not have sex with someone who has an STD.
In fact that's the only effective way to not get an STD. That's a prerequisite. Don't come into contact either directly or indirectly with anyone who has an STD.
And if you need proof of that, come back and see me after your parents prove to you that 1+1=2.
Cheers
11:22 pm
"That is, according to you, you wait until ten days after the beginning of the woman’s period, and then have sex all you want.
2. Congratulations, you just skipped the part of the month when the woman is least likely to get pregnant, and started having sex at the time of the month when the woman is MOST likely to get pregnant.
3. If jf1 had frequently gotten women pregnant (which, if he used his method, he almost definitely would have), he probably wouldn’t be so quick to come on here and defend unprotected sex.
So…he must have either never had sex, had very little of it, or he uses condoms more than he’s letting on. So he’s probably either a child who doesn’t yet have a decent understanding of math, science, the reproductive system, etc. yet, (he’ll grow out of it), an adult who can’t get any woman to agree to his less-than-logical views enough to agree to have sex with him…or else he’s full of shit and does use condoms."
I'm flattered that you would actually try to take this approach and since you have done such a good job of taking this approach I'll just use it to illustrate the perils of faulty logic.
The problem is that you are wrong on almost all counts, yet you assume that you are right throughout. Let's take a counterexample. Say a couple have intercourse just one time and the girl gets pregnant. What would you say was the cause of her pregnancy? Their lack of condom use?
You don't know whether they used a condom or not. I didn't say. It's entirely possible that they did use a condom yet she still got pregnant, right?
Even if they didn't use one, that would be bad luck for them to have sex just the one time and for an unwanted pregnancy to result. Assuming, of course, that their having sex doesn't mean that they want to conceive together. It might actually mean that they *did* want to have a child together, at least subconsciously. But you haven't allowed for the chance that they may superficially claim to be interested in birth control yet subconsciously (not to mention instinctively) really more interested in reproduction.
The problem here is that there is a disconnect between the mind and the body. The mind often has contradictory wants. For example, it wants to have sex yet not have a pregnancy result from it. It wants to have sex yet not contract an STD.
But the very method by which STDs are transmitted are through sex or sexual byproducts. Likewise for pregnancy (in fact many women joke that pregnancy is just an extremely potent form of an STD LOL).
The point is that you can't stop people from having sex and you can't stop people from getting pregnant and certainly you can't stop them from contracting STDs, yes? Obviously. It happens all the time.
So what makes you think that the use of a condom will stop both?
The fact that you are not thinking logically.
And that is the exact problem.
If I show you a gun, then the bullet, and a plate-glass window, then I fire the gun and you see the bullet go through the window, how logical would it be for you to expect the plate-glass window to stop the bullet from hitting you if you were behind the window when I fired the gun? Do you think that just because you are behind the window and not some other schmuck that the plate-glass will defend you?
If you do then you are a classic example of wishful-thinking that defies all logic and reason. It's the exact same problem with condoms. You put a little piece of fucking rubber between you and his cock and you think that you're not going to get pregnant or get an STD? You're out of your mind. Yet here you are talking about "logic".
11:30 pm
If it were impossible for you to get pregnant or catch an STD if you use a condom during sex, then you might be thinking logically to rely on one.
But you know that it isn't impossible in either case. So relying on one instead of a method which is even more reliable is illogical. Arguing that you should rely on the less-reliable method instead of the more-reliable method (or even both methods together) is even less logical.
Like I said before, I don't dismiss condoms for the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. I dismiss them for the prevention of STD transmission, they are only effective in certain cases for certain STDs, and then only when used intelligently. I totally dismiss the argument that a woman should or even must demand that a man uses a condom before she will have sex with him. That's simply nonsense.
And labeling it "basic health-care method" isn't going to make it less nonsensical because you take a clinical approach. You think that nurses, doctors and clinical researchers can't be stupid and illogical too? Any honest health-care practitioner will tell you that the only way that you will not get pregnant and not catch an STD is to not have sex and not exchange bodily fluids of any sort with someone who does have an STD. So what the fuck more do you want? You think that you can have sex and not do that, even if you use a condom? Then you are, at best, seriously delusional. At worst you're a fucking idiot.
11:32 pm
That's a lot of words, jf1, but you still haven't provided any objective information to back up your ludicrous claims.
Everyone knows that any sexual activity carries risks (hell, even walking down the street carries some risks!!), but intelligent people don't write extremely rambling, unsourced, misinformed, and self-contradictory posts to lecture people about what risks they are allowed to take. Intelligent people look honestly at what are modifiable behaviors and what are not, and work to provide people with the information and means to achieve their desired quality of life while reducing risk as much as possible.
11:36 pm
...really any woman who equates mandatory condom use with sex is a skank trying to pretend that she isn't. You want to make sure that you don't get an STD from a guy? You don't have sex with him until you're sure that he doesn't have an STD. Enough said.
11:37 pm
"but intelligent people don’t write extremely rambling, unsourced, misinformed, and self-contradictory posts to lecture people about what risks they are allowed to take."
...whatever.
Argue with the bumps on your crotch. Not me.
11:41 pm
"That’s a lot of words, jf1, but you still haven’t provided any objective information to back up your ludicrous claims."
Seriously, stop trying to debase and undermine my posts and go read up on STDs and basic human reproduction on the Internet. That's a much more effective solution for you.
11:42 pm
"Intelligent people look honestly at what are modifiable behaviors and what are not, and work to provide people with the information and means to achieve their desired quality of life while reducing risk as much as possible."
And delusional assholes make posts like yours in response.
Gee which one of us is intelligent and which one of us is just a delusional asshole?
11:47 pm
...honestly this is like telling kids not to drink and drive and they sit there and yap on about how much alcohol they can consume and how it affects their motor skills and the various things that they can do to mitigate and manage the effects.
The simple phrase "don't drink and drive" is utterly lost on them, and with total confidence in their ability to manage both alcohol and a car, they go out, drink and then drive. Anyway.
Fucking enough already.
Use a condom if you want. Don't bitch when you get an STD anyway.
11:54 pm
And, now to slut-shaming:
"…really any woman who equates mandatory condom use with sex is a skank trying to pretend that she isn’t. You want to make sure that you don’t get an STD from a guy? You don’t have sex with him until you’re sure that he doesn’t have an STD. Enough said."
No, a woman who insists on mandatory condom use is a responsible adult. A man who tries to shame her or deny the efficacy of condoms in reducing (not eliminating, REDUCING) the risk of disease transmission is a selfish bastard and an idiot who is at very high risk of contracting STDs.
Furthermore, the practices you've described indicate you are in a lot more danger of disease transmission than someone who uses safe-sex practices.
12:00 am
As for drinking and driving, telling kids not to drink is ineffective and stupid. You acknowledge that kids don't follow advice, and yet you're totally resistant to epidemiologically-proven interventions that DO make people safer.
To use your drunk driving analogy, advocating abstinence from alcohol has no proven benefit. It even leads to forcing the problem underground and causing more risky behaviors. However, the Designated Driver program is one of the most successful public health campaigns ever, and has greatly reduced alcohol-related MVAs.
Similarly, tell people the most effective way to protect themselves while having sex (use a condom, every time, unless you're in a stable monogamous relationship and have both been tested) and let them make their own decisions about when & with whom to have sex (they will anyway, as you've already acknowledged).
10:49 pm
"As for drinking and driving, telling kids not to drink is ineffective and stupid."
LOL
It's good solid advice. But you think that it's stupid to say that to kids because the kids are too stupid to follow it.
By *that* logic it's stupid for me to say that wearing a condom is not a solid defense against either STDs or pregnancy, and that insisting that your partner wear a condom before having sex with them is bullshit on many levels...simply because you're too dumb to believe it or to follow it?
Hey, you got me. I can't argue with that "logic". Won't even try.
I'll just point out in passing that it's medically proven that teenagers have an undeveloped section of the brain that is involved in rational thinking. I realize that, rationally-speaking, you may not care, and it's therefore "stupid" to tell you this, but I'll do it anyway. But come to think of it I guess that it would be stupid to give teenagers ANY advice, for that same reason, right?
10:53 pm
Anyway I return to my original position. You have to be ignorant, an idiot, or, ok, "brain damaged", or even all three, to believe that wearing a condom will protect you from STDs. They won't even keep you from getting pregnant. And given these two facts, my original position still stands, don't put much stock in any prospective "sexual partner" who insists on the use of a condom before they will have sex with you. Given the above comments, I will neither try to prove it or provide evidence. I'll just say it, and let you choose to believe or disbelieve. This is supposed to be a land of Free Choice, so, make your own choice. Enjoy :)
11:01 pm
"No, a woman who insists on mandatory condom use is a responsible adult. A man who tries to shame her or deny the efficacy of condoms in reducing (not eliminating, REDUCING) the risk of disease transmission is a selfish bastard and an idiot who is at very high risk of contracting STDs."
You're wrong. Not even "period". You're just plain wrong. A woman who insists on "mandatory" condom use before having sex is either
a) free of STDs and proposing to have sex with someone who is also free of STDs
b) not free of STDs yet proposing to have sex with someone who *is* free of STDs
c) not free of STDs yet proposing to have sex with someone who is not free of STDs.
and also
the one case that you wish to consider
d) free of STDs yet proposing to have sex with someone who is not free of STDs.
You're focusing on the latter case and ignoring the other THREE.
You're also ignoring the fact that the use of a condom will not insulate her from her partners' STDs. Completely utterly and totally ignoring that, at best.
Then you're reduced to stating as a fact that the male is "shaming" her into having sex without a condom. Hey, calling a slut a slut isn't "shaming" her. It's just being honest. Assuming of course that she is a slut and she is a slut if she has sex with someone that she barely knows, and knows them so little that she doesn't even have a clue if he has a communicable sexual disease or wouldn't give a damm if she got pregnant as a result.
OR
she wouldn't want to get pregnant by him anyway
OR
she WOULDN"T give a damm if she did.
Ergo, "slut".
A skanky fucking slut. Who is using "the power of the pussy" to intimidate the man into having sex on her terms.
You may not want to see it that way but if you just sit back and think about it without getting your ego (or your emotions) all wrapped up in it, and just think logically...well then you might actually agree with me.
Dude how many fucking ways do I have to spell out the obvious to you before you get it?
11:07 pm
"Furthermore, the practices you’ve described indicate you are in a lot more danger of disease transmission than someone who uses safe-sex practices."
Wrong, wrong wrong. Because you are equating the use of a condom with "safe-sex practices".
Keep reading what I said above until it sinks in! Relying on a condom is not a safe-sex practice! Fucking a, you idiot, "safe sex" is itself an oxymoron! The whole point of sex is to get some of you into some of her, and vice-versa. There is no such thing as "safe sex" in the first place. One way or the other, someone is going to get fucked. It's just a question of when, where, how much and in how many ways!
It's only possible if you redefine "sex" in such a way that it's "safe". However you define "safe".
11:15 pm
This is so stupid that it's worthy of two replies all on its own.
"“Furthermore, the practices you’ve described indicate you are in a lot more danger of disease transmission than someone who uses safe-sex practices.”"
You don't know what the fuck you are talking about, all you are doing is assuming that you know ANYTHING about what you are talking about and PROJECTING your opinions onto me. Just as I would be if I sat here and said that you have half a brain. You may be an idiot, but I can't know that you have only half a brain, vs 3/4s or even 2/3rds. And you can't know what level of danger that I am in vs someone who uses your favorite methods of having somewhat protected sex because you don't know my partners and you sure as hell can't speak for the general public in that way.
You're just a blithering idiot whose main method of winning arguments is smothering your opponents in stupidity. Open mouth, affect "oral diarreha", continue until the other person gives up. They quit trying to reason with you and you "win" by default, then you must be right.
So you think that you've won now? You're sure that you're right? Go out to Las Vegas, strap one on and go bang a few dozen street whores and tell us whether you've got an STD or not. Perfectly legal, you get laid, and you get a good story out of it. Plus solid proof one way or the other. Or ok why don't you sponsor a few of your wise and educated ladyfriends in college to go to South Beach this spring and have sex with a few-dozen guys, you supply the condoms, they come back and get tested for STDs? Just for fun send them to Rio afterwards for Mardi Gras. Again, a free trip, all the sex that they can handle and a great story to tell afterwards. Plus the pleasure of being able to prove me wrong by experiment, yes?
11:17 pm
...by the way make sure that they all use the condom "properly" each time, otherwise the results won't be scientifically valid.
11:19 pm
Come on, dude. Find just one girl. Give her a regular allocation for beer, a free room at any party-place in the world, and enough condoms to last her there if she has sex 5 times a day every day. Tell her it's all in the name of Science, and she might even get rich and famous as a result. Come back in 3 months or so and tell us how it worked out. All I want to know is if she made it without catching even one STD.
11:22 pm
"A skanky fucking slut. Who is using “the power of the pussy” to intimidate the man into having sex on her terms."
...
...
...
...
11:23 pm
or ok go to any Ivy League college where the women are of course "smart enough" to practice "safe sex" exclusively, and are probably not going to have steady partners or want to get pregnant, pick a bunch of girls at random and test them for STDs. Find one that doesn't have any and send her to stage 2 above, on Spring Break.
Repeat year after year, spring, summer, winter and fall, and let's see those condoms keep her perfectly healthy until she decides not to use one with her future lifemate. And then we'll test him for STDs as well. What do you think the results will be?
11:25 pm
"You’re just a blithering idiot whose main method of winning arguments is smothering your opponents in stupidity."
...
...
...
...
11:27 pm
"One way or the other, someone is going to get fucked. It’s just a question of when, where, how much and in how many ways!"
...
...
...
...
11:29 pm
Just one more: "Dude how many fucking ways do I have to spell out the obvious to you before you get it?"
...
...
...
...
One could make an entire series of jf1 de-motivational posters, if one were so inclined. Hmmm, hmmm... What do I have going on Sunday afternoon? I think I can pencil it in somewheres...
11:36 pm
It doesn't matter what the odds are. If it's possible that you could either get pregnant or get an std even if you use a condom properly?
All that matters is if that happens or not.
Not playing Russian Roulette doesn't make a handgun any safer. All that matters is that simply having one makes it possible that you or someone else can get killed by it. If there is anything that makes sex "safe", it's not having sex with someone who has an STD. Period.
11:40 pm
"What do I have going on Sunday afternoon? I think I can pencil it in somewheres…"
You could be the most sophisticated person with the most delicate sensitivities and I could subject you to an entire month of cheezy, dehumanising porn.
You'd still want to fuck some guy when it was over. Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit.
11:45 pm
"You’d still want to fuck some guy when it was over. Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit."
...
You lost me after "sanctimonious" but slightly before "bullshit." Your barely-restrained misogynistic hostility is coming to the fore... you might want to do something about that.
12:37 am
jf1, why is only the woman in your casual-sex scenario a skank? Isn't the man just as fucking skanky as she is?!
Why is she a skank for insisting on a practice that, while NOT 100% effective (we've mentioned this tons of times and yet you still insist we're ignoring it), will greatly reduce the risk to both of them?
Isn't he the fucking skank for wanting to have low-commitment sex without taking necessary physical precautions? Shouldn't we shame him for failing to do something that's EVIDENCE BASED, rather than live in this la-la-land where people only make prudent sexual decisions?
Of course, I am not advocating risky sexual practices (you are but you don't realize it, but I've already tried to point that out to you)...the access to condoms shouldn't make people feel more free to engage in sex that they otherwise wouldn't do. BUT, as I've said many times before...imagining that maligning condoms will limit promiscuous sexual behavior flies in the face of the most basic human behavior, and you've admitted it yourself in earlier posts. If people don't have condoms they'll just engage in the same risky behavior they always will, without the significant added protection of a condom.
You just hate women and you think that by treating them as polluted and stupid you have somehow made it ok for you to ignore basic public health precautions because it's "her problem."
Calling women names won't change the fact that if you sleep with someone without protection whom you're pretty sure doesn't have an STD...you could be in a lot of trouble. And, thinking women who have STDs are "other" and you're better than those "skanks" isn't going to help you one bit if you don't protect yourself and you miscalculate the medical history of your partner.
7:57 pm
You ask, so I answer...
"jf1, why is only the woman in your casual-sex scenario a skank? Isn’t the man just as fucking skanky as she is?!"
Of course they are not necessarily equally as skanky. One may be a virgin, the other have 100 notches on their bedpost, when they have time and inclination to add another notch. Even if they do have unprotected sex, it's not a given that any and all STDs will be transferred between them.
"Why is she a skank for insisting on [the use of a condom]...?"
I didn't say that she is a skank for that reason. See above.
"Isn’t he the fucking skank for wanting to have low-commitment sex without taking necessary physical precautions?"
If you load the issue that way, probably.
but you're loading the issue. By that logic, a married man and woman who have unprotected sex are "fucking skanks". Especially in this day and age where a marriage means a lot less than a lifetime commitment and fidelity.
"Shouldn’t we shame him for failing to do something that’s EVIDENCE BASED, rather than live in this la-la-land where people only make prudent sexual decisions?"
But you're making a "la-la land" "science-based" decision as well. You're assuming that the use of a condom will be an effective deterrent to STD transmission ignoring both the probability of failure if "properly used" as well as the probability of improper use. Not to mention the probability of failure due to multiple events.
Otherwise your opinion is noted, and certainly I will treat it with more respect than you treat mine LOL
Seriously it's all irrelevant if you actually have sex, either with or without a condom. Once you have sex then the game is on.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=9461
RESPONSIBLE SEX IS NOT JUST SAFER SEX. Be sure you are ready emotionally and physically. Not having sex (abstinence) is the most effective way to avoid AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Respect your beliefs and your family's guidance. Don't be pushed into sex.
It doesn't matter what type of sex you have, how you have it or how often. Once you have sex with someone, at best you don't know if you have an STD. You can only be reasonably certain after you have been together and are certain of monogamy to a great enough extent to know that having more sex with that person won't increase your likelihood of catching an STD from them, materially. Indeed the best way to know is to go ahead and have rigorous and frequent unprotected sex with that person, that will give you two people to test LOL
And that is the point that many people find themselves in, having had regular unprotected sex with someone and becoming almost positive, if not completely positive, that they don't have any STDs, then having to find a new partner and losing that confidence in the purity of their sexual partner. So they try to make up for it by wearing a condom. Unfortunately that won't correct a misdiagnosis on their part or eliminate any chance of STD transmission in either direction. But it's the best that they can do, short of not finding a new sex partner. So that's what they do.
In *that* light it's almost a given that the first time they have sex they will both want to use a condom, but with increasing encounters the use of a condom will fade from their minds. And that's ok. That's only human nature. In the long run we don't want to have sex with a condom.
My point is that such an approach also fosters the use of condoms for *other* reasons, and it's easy for someone to use the "safe sex" excuse to justify forcing their partner to use a condom, when really they want to use a condom to keep distance between themselves and their partner. But of course even a condom can't keep them from commingling. And if you really want "high-commitment" sex, don't use a condom. Get right down to it and you will see who is willing to stay with whom and under what conditions.
The bottom line is that there is no way to have a healthy relationship with someone if you can't trust them, and if you can't have sex with them without a condom for fear of getting an STD that they either know about or they don't (or likewise for fear of giving them an STD that you have, that you either know about or you don't), then you definitely can't trust them. The bottom line is that plastic relationships are not real and if you want a real commitment then you won't reach for a condom before having sex. Much less insist on one.
So you say, "so a woman has to get pregnant (or get an STD) to have a real commitment from her boyfriend?"
Only if you equate having sex with getting pregnant (or getting an STD). And only an idiot would do that.
8:11 pm
now having reduced the main point to brass tacks, let's get to your secondary personal attacks.
"Of course, I am not advocating risky sexual practices"
In my opinion as stated repeatedly, you are. So just on this point we disagree. Before you say anything else.
"you are but you don’t realize it, but I’ve already tried to point that out to you)"
You have not failed to make your opinion clear on this matter. What you have failed to do is to convince me of the truth of it and you have failed to do so because you cannot overcome the basic fact that sex is risky by restating your opinion ad nauseam that it is not.
"…the access to condoms shouldn’t make people feel more free to engage in sex that they otherwise wouldn’t do."
What it should or should not do is one thing. What it does or does not do is quite another. Clearly these are all personal decisions. You can believe what you want, face facts or not, you still will have your opinion. So what's the point of the following?
" BUT, as I’ve said many times before…imagining that maligning condoms will limit promiscuous sexual behavior flies in the face of the most basic human behavior,"
...you can entertain yourself as you like, but putting words in my mouth is another story. I don't malign *condoms*. I malign those who believe that they have magical powers and who attempt to force others to buy into their beliefs.
" and you’ve admitted it yourself in earlier posts."
If this is true then why can't you let my posts speak for themselves? Why do you feel the need to rewrite what I said and say that I said what you are saying?
" If people don’t have condoms they’ll just engage in the same risky behavior they always will, without the significant added protection of a condom."
Now you're projecting your opinions into the *actions* of others. Don't you have any faith in all the people who feel the same way that you do about condoms and "safe sex"? You have no confidence that if they don't have condoms, that they won't engage in "risky behavior", as you put it? LOL you are a person with very little esteem for your fellow man. On one hand you want to claim that the use of a condom is a smart idea, on the other you claim that people are too dumb to not have sex if they don't have a condom!
Do you often want to make cakes, have them and eat them too, all while saying that it tastes so different from what you though it would taste like? LOL
"You just hate women"
You're just a desperate mud-slinger.
" and you think that by treating them as polluted and stupid"
So you think that I think that all women are polluted and stupid? Yet...I sleep with them anyway? Do you seriously think that I'm as confused and conflicted as you are?
" you have somehow made it ok for you to ignore basic public health precautions because it’s “her problem.”"
You obviously need to continue to rewrite my stated opinions because it is clear from reading them that I do not think this. Clearly you are just doing this for the sake of creating an argument. It somewhat infers that you agree with what I actually said but refuse to admit it.
"Calling women names"
Look: a skank is a skank. That doesn't mean that all women are skanks. I see that you have problems separating the two concepts and I can see why women would insist on the use of a condom before having sex with you ;)
"won’t change the fact that if you sleep with someone without protection whom you’re pretty sure doesn’t have an STD…you could be in a lot of trouble."
And you could be in a lot of trouble even if you are very sure that they don't have an STD. Because you could be wrong. That will not change the fact t hat a condom will not keep you from getting STDs if they have any...a basic fact that you cannot argue away...so around we go again, I guess...
" And, thinking women who have STDs are “other” and you’re better than those “skanks” isn’t going to help you one bit"
Sure it is, if I use basic precautions like "not having sex with them" as a result. Don't you get it?
" if you don’t protect yourself"
SEE ABOVE
" and you miscalculate the medical history of your partner."
The best protection against that is to not have sex with them while there's a realistic chance that you have done so.
Is this hard for you to grasp?
Argue against that if you will. You will not have sex with a condom each and every time you have sex. Sooner or later you will ignore your own "safe sex" practice. And you will be right here where we are now. Facing the reality that your partner MAY have an STD and *you* MAY have an STD as a result of earlier "unprotected sex" on both sides.
How then will you deal with this?
By reaching for a condom, after you just had sex without one?
8:14 pm
jf1, in the real world, people have sex for many different reasons, and none of your infantile moralizing will prevent that. And, pretending "high commitment sex" means no condom is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. You are advocating an extremely dangerous idea that putting oneself and all future partners at much higher risk of serious disease has any bearing on emotional attachment. Not at all. If you genuinely love or respect someone, you care about their welfare and you don't take chances with their health or yours. Conversely, you can genuinely trust someone and they can be lying to you. You can think that you trust someone but you're actually just giving in to the passions of the moment.
8:15 pm
A 5 year old girl may not understand the possible consequences of being alone with a middle-aged man. A 30 year old woman has no excuse for this.
We generally encapsulate this issue with the phrase "child molester".
Thinking of him as a "child molester" won't have any realistic positive effect for you, the child or their family? Or do you need to have that concept explained to you in graphic detail before you get both it and the implications?
8:25 pm
dude, girl, whoever you are, sooner or later you will come face to face, chest to chest, lips to lips, "genital area to genital area" with the fact that sex is risky, love is risky, life is risky, and there are all kinds of risks but the very riskiness of it all depends on who you are, who you deal with and how you deal with them, and likewise they with you. The risk is far more complicated than having sex with or without condoms, obviously, to any intelligent person.
The bottom line is why are you fucking someone who might actually have an STD?
Once you confront, admit and face two facts, one that condoms will not protect you from STD transmission and certainly not if you keep having sex, and second, that if you keep having sex with that person, sooner or later you will stop using condoms with them, you're left with that one bridge over t hat one moat. Either they're a healthy sex partner for you or they are not, and either it's healthy for you to be fucking them -condom or no condom- or it is not. It's that simple. Pull out a thesaurus and a stack of New England medical journals and write a 100,000 word paper to argue otherwise. That will provide just as much protection from STDs as a condom. And you can either worry about getting (or giving) an STD, or you can worry about having a healthy sexual relationship with that person, not to mention a healthy personal relationship with that person. You cannot do both. You cannot have a lack of trust between you and your partner and have a healthy relationship with them at the same time. Having sex with them (and they with you) is either good for the two of you, or it is not, and if it is not then you shouldn't be fucking each other in the first place.
No amount of analysis can get you past or around that point. And using a condom will just keep you there.
8:27 pm
"jf1, in the real world, people have sex for many different reasons, and none of your infantile moralizing will prevent that."
...likewise creating a strawman argument isn't going to prove you right either.
8:29 pm
jf1,
"Now you’re projecting your opinions into the *actions* of others. Don’t you have any faith in all the people who feel the same way that you do about condoms and “safe sex”? You have no confidence that if they don’t have condoms, that they won’t engage in “risky behavior”, as you put it? LOL you are a person with very little esteem for your fellow man. On one hand you want to claim that the use of a condom is a smart idea, on the other you claim that people are too dumb to not have sex if they don’t have a condom!"
No, because as someone in the health care field, I see the results of these actions all the time. Also, there is abundant evidence that consistent use of condoms throughout a population lowers that population's incidence of STIs dramatically. Similarly, numerous studies on teen sexual behavior show that those taught to practice abstinence do not have sex at any lower rates, but do have higher rates of pregnancy and STIs because of lower rates of protection use. This is parallel to the well-established finding that needle-exchange programs do not increase drug use but do dramatically limit the spread of HIV.
8:30 pm
Here, I'll copy and paste your post again, just to prove a point:
"jf1, in the real world, people have sex for many different reasons, and none of your infantile moralizing will prevent that. And, pretending “high commitment sex” means no condom is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. You are advocating an extremely dangerous idea that putting oneself and all future partners at much higher risk of serious disease has any bearing on emotional attachment. Not at all. If you genuinely love or respect someone, you care about their welfare and you don’t take chances with their health or yours. Conversely, you can genuinely trust someone and they can be lying to you. You can think that you trust someone but you’re actually just giving in to the passions of the moment."
now, does that make what you said any more true or any less true?
Give it a rest. The proof is in the pudding. Go forth with your concepts of "safe sex" and see how well it works for you. I'll stick with mine. When you're happy and content, let us know.
Oh and tell us if you're still using a condom regularly, if at all.
8:38 pm
"The bottom line is why are you fucking someone who might actually have an STD?"
ANYONE might have an STD. That girl with a "promise" ring might have an STD. A NUN might have an STD. So use a condom!!
And, they are *vastly* more effective than nothing:
http://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/latex.htm
Nothing in medicine is 100% effective--healthy diet? Some very people still drop dead of a heart attack at 45. Does that mean you should say, "screw it!" and eat cheeseburgers all your life? Of course not--be healthy and intelligent and your chances will be much better. Similarly, condoms are not 100% effective, but those who use them are much, much safer than those who think they can tell who has an STD, or who think they will never sleep with the wrong person.
8:41 pm
"No, because as someone in the health care field, I see the results of these actions all the time."
No, what you see is the result of people who have sex with people who have STDs. Assuming that you work in a health-care clinic...and even so I'm sure that you see patients who don't have any STDs (at least not as far as you can tell) which of coursre means that they are happily having sex with people who don't have STDs, or at least not to the degree where they get it and display symptoms.
Don't you understand that whether they use condoms or not, eventually all people will fall into one of these two groups?
Or is your point that more will fall into one group than the other, depending on how often they use condoms? If that's the point you are trying to make then you still do not get that whether they use condoms or not, they will not get an STD if they don't have sex with people who don't have an STD!!!!
You are trying to say that people who do not use a condom regularly will get an STD? They will get an STD ONLY if they have sex with someone who has one and gives it to them. And yes unfortunately that happens, because there are people out there who have STDs. So what do you think the solution should be? To force them all to use condoms?
That will not stop the transmission of STDs!
And certainly some people will have sex more frequently and with less selectivity thinking that condoms will effectively protect them, making the situation even worse. Do you understand this, yes or no?
Likewise, do you or do you not understand the simple basic fact that people will not use condoms every time they have sex, even the first time they have sex with a new partner?
So you talk about "infantile dreaming". Your "solution" IS NOT WORKING. As you say, "you see it every day". Because it has several basic fundamental flaws, none of which you can eliminate by repeating your stupid mantra.
Why do you continue to push a supposed "solution" to a problem that every day you see fail? Because the alternative is to admit that people have STDs, have sex and will transmit them? And you just can't do this? So there you are, every day, denying the Reality of your own existence not to mention the reality of the existence of thousands of others, yet you call *me* an infantile dreamer?
People basically fall into 3 camps. Those who have an STD and know it, those who don't have an STD and know it, and those who may or may not have an STD but aren't sure either way. Make it clear to them all that this is the case. And tell them to make intelligent choices about who to sleep with. That's the best that you can do. Some of them are simply not going to do that, no matter what you say to them. But for God's' sake don't bullshit them with PC health-care prattle that won't do a damm thing to protect them in the long run.
8:41 pm
"ANYONE might have an STD. That girl with a “promise” ring might have an STD. A NUN might have an STD. So use a condom!!"
Sure. Anyone might have an STD. But that probability varies from near 0 to near 100%.
You're groping them all together. That's simply not rational.
8:42 pm
...and yet again I must point out to you that using a condom will not protect you from STD transmission.
So arguing for the use of a condom to prevent STD transmission is ALSO not rational.
You keep tripping over these same two points time and time again.
8:47 pm
"Similarly, condoms are not 100% effective, but those who use them are much, much safer than those who think they can tell who has an STD, or who think they will never sleep with the wrong person."
...and similarly, running your car into a brick wall at 45mph is much, much safer than filling it with concrete and driving off a bridge.
Does that mean that you should advocate driving into a brick wall at 45mph over not driving into a brick wall at all?
How long do you want to try to go around this?
Your logic is just fundamentally faulty. You're reduced to using an extreme case to make a slightly-less extreme case look good. But it only looks good in comparison to an extreme case. The fact is that using a condom is no substitute for choosing your sexual partners intelligently. And you can use a condom and still "think they can tell who has an STD, or who think they will never sleep with the wrong person."
Or you can not use a condom and "think they can tell who has an STD, or who think they will never sleep with the wrong person."
You look at the results of both combined and condemn the latter while trying to laud the former. You can't separate them. Real life isn't like that. So why not address the common case, the common denominator? The only true solution is to make better choices about who to sleep with and when. Hint: if you feel that you need to use a condom with them for your own protection? It's probably not a good idea to sleep with them.
8:50 pm
"Hint: if you feel that you need to use a condom with them for your own protection? It’s probably not a good idea to sleep with them."
...and why is that?
Class?
"BECAUSE A CONDOM IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF STDS."
Among many other reasons.
8:53 pm
You are trying to say that people who do not use a condom regularly will get an STD? They will get an STD ONLY if they have sex with someone who has one and gives it to them. And yes unfortunately that happens, because there are people out there who have STDs. So what do you think the solution should be? To force them all to use condoms?
That will not stop the transmission of STDs!
It will lower it drastically...STDs are not an inherent population characteristic...They depend on the public health measures of a society, not its sexual activity. Have you ever seen what the STD rates are in different states in the US? http://www.avert.org/stdstatisticusa.htm
By far the highest rates of STDs tend to happen in states that are conservative and who promote abstinence-only education.
Condoms are not a perfect solution, and no one ever said they were, but your solution, to imagine that people can tell who has an STD and limit their sexual activity accordingly, has failed miserably and led to spikes in STD rates in recent years (especially among young people).
8:57 pm
Perhaps a more general case would help you to get past this mental block of yours.
Let's say that your partner is 100% clean, absolutely no STDs at all. You have some sort of miracle test that would prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But, you are sure that they are a homicidal psychopath. And they have a history of killing their sex partners when they fall asleep after sex. Would you use an anti-sleep drug -even one that was proven to be almost 100% effective in preventing sleep- and go ahead and fuck them anyway?
Let me assume that you agree that a rational, intelligent, well-balanced person would not take this chance just for the sake of having sex with someone who they would not want to give their life to. To say the least.
Now say that you were only 50% sure that they were a homicidal psychopath with such a history. You ready to climb into bed with them now?
How low would that percentage have to be before you would willingly if not eagerly drop your drawers and slam booty with them? 10%? 5%? 0.00001%?
Note that you cannot be sure, at all, that any of your partners are not homicidal psychopaths nor will they become homicidal psychopaths after having sex with you. Yet you presumably are not a virgin and have no intention of remaining one if you are. So what's your excuse for engaging in admittedly idiotic sex with a series of potential homicidal psychopaths?
Realize the big difference between this and STD transmission is that STDs are not going to kill you in your sleep. Thus even having wild, crazy unprotected sex with thousands of complete strangers, as long as you don't have to remain with them afterwards, is still much safer than having sex with a condom with even 1 complete stranger and then falling asleep in bed next to them.
And if you worked in law-enforcement you'd know this for a fact.
8:58 pm
ps
I hope that you will answer this question before one of your former or even future partners kills you while you are typing up an answer.
8:58 pm
You claim, “BECAUSE A CONDOM IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF STDS.”
FALSE!!! They're highly effective for many STDs when used appropriately:
http://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/latex.htm
And, condoms fail much, much less than abstinence fails!
9:04 pm
Actually, jf1, many people ARE killed by their husbands/boyfriends/intimate partners. It's a sad fact of life. Still, never having a relationship with anyone is hardly an acceptable solution for most people. Very, very few people are willing to shut themselves off from human contact entirely because of the remote risk that someone could hurt them. Similarly, "Don't have sex" is just not an acceptable solution for most people, and history has borne this out unceasingly.
Everything in the world carries risks--you can minimize but not eliminate it. Why, just because you can't eliminate it, are you determined not to even minimize it?
9:07 pm
"So what do you think the solution should be? To force them all to use condoms?
That will not stop the transmission of STDs!
It will lower it drastically…"
No, that will not lower "it" drastically. Again you display common ignorance of STDs and their transmission when condoms are used. STDs come in many forms, are transmitted in many ways and have various degrees of transmission even if a condom is used "properly". Some can even be transmitted without sex. And there are many types of sex that can result in STD transmission other than intercourse or oral sex on the male. Some STDs have a significant transmission rate even if an STD is used during intercourse or oral sex on the male.
Your whole attitude about this is the product of common ignorance and illogic.
"STDs are not an inherent population characteristic…They depend on the public health measures of a society, not its sexual activity."
They depend on nothing less than its sexual activity. The public health measures are a factor as well, but certainly sexual activity is the major transmission vector for STDs, another misnomer based in ignorance and illogic. You can get an STD from someone that you've never even heard of, much less slept with.
9:10 pm
"You claim, “BECAUSE A CONDOM IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF STDS.”
FALSE!!! They’re highly effective for many STDs when used appropriately:"
Whoever you are, go back and have a cup of coffee or something, go for a walk, and then read what I said that you are saying is false, and then read why you think so.
Read what the fuck you are quoting and writing.
And then consider that even if they are "effective" for a given STD and transmission method, if you continue to use that transmission method in the face of that STD, eventually you're going to get it anyway. It doesn't matter whether you use a condom or not: you keep having sex with someone who has an STD and eventually you are going to get that STD. Likewise with single-experience sex with someone with an STD.
9:11 pm
Provide links to reputable epidemiological sources for your claims or shut up.
9:13 pm
...they are not even 100% effective protection for a human egg against sperm while in a position that a fertilized egg may result in a viable pregnancy. How the fuck do you think they are going to keep you from getting any one of a host of bacteria and viruses over the course of your sexual lifetime?
9:13 pm
"Provide links to reputable epidemiological sources for your claims or shut up."
Go grab a box of condoms and submit your ass to any interested party at a local bar and prove me wrong.
9:15 pm
"Actually, jf1, many people ARE killed by their husbands/boyfriends/intimate partners. It’s a sad fact of life."
So obviously a fact of life that you can't even deny it.
Keep thinking about it and maybe you'll be able to admit this special case of it, as well.
9:15 pm
Ah, I see you're incapable of finding factual basis for your claims. Just as I thought!
9:18 pm
"Everything in the world carries risks–you can minimize but not eliminate it. Why, just because you can’t eliminate it, are you determined not to even minimize it?"
Why do you deny what I have been saying all along? You are just arguing that the use of a condom is an effective way to minimize the risk of STD transmission while intelligently choosing your sex partners is not. I am arguing the opposite. The problem is that you are unwilling to put your money where your mouth is. While that is how I live my life.
You are not only wrong, egregiously and blatantly wrong, but you are so wrong that even instinctively you will not rely on your own advice. And no sane person would.
9:19 pm
"Ah, I see you’re incapable of finding factual basis for your claims. Just as I thought!"
And if you said that I was posting from Mars, I'd be just as worried about your opinion as I am now.
9:21 pm
Again, provide data or shut up.
9:25 pm
...laws mandating the use of seat belts while in a moving vehicle argue that studies have shown that the use of a seat belt saves lives. Which do you think that drivers prefer: going out and getting into accidents every day while wearing seat belt, or not wearing a seat belt at all while driving carefully enough to not get into an accident, all while relying on the thousands of cars that pass by them to not get into an accident with them either?
Public policy is put into law to force the public to follow the policy "for its own good". Why not force people to choose their sexual partners in a safe manner? Why not mandate their sexual partners?
Because that would take too much risk out of life and put in too much government control. People are happy with a certain amount of risk in the pursuit of happiness and the exercise of freedom. The same goes with the use and nonuse of condoms. You are happy to sit here and freely rely on nonsense and abuse of statistics in order to try to make a point. That still doesn't make you right. Just like choosing to drive without a seatbelt doesn't make it legal.
9:26 pm
"Again, provide data or shut up."
I have already said that I will provide all the data that you want based on your taking a box of condoms and submitting to sexual activity with anyone that you run into tonight at any bar in the DC area.
9:27 pm
...assuming that you don't have an STD already LOL
9:31 pm
"The plural of anecdote is not data." Don't you know anything about how the scientific method works?
9:31 pm
...seriously I am so confident in my opinion that I predict that by the time you've had sex with 100 complete strangers in the DC area, even if you demand that they each use a condom, they each open a fresh untampered-with condom-pack and slip it on with a healthy dose of spermicide, even if you zip-tie it on so it can't slip off and spill while inside or around you, that you will have an STD. I'll bet you $5 on it.
In fact we can even document this experiment and write a scientific paper out of it.
9:33 pm
...even if you only have sex with 2 complete strangers a month, that's just 5 years of random hookups. No problem for the average thirtysomething.
So go find a group of thirtysomethings who have faithfully used condoms and test them for STDs. No problem given your work environment, right?
9:34 pm
May I humbly request that fellow readers of The Sexist flag every one of jf1's comments on this thread until he actually provides a scientifically valid source to back up his claims? CDC, WHO, NEJM, The Lancet, etc., will do fine, but cluttering up this blogs with his misinformation is getting tiresome.
9:37 pm
...seriously I think that in the long run, when you really sit down and analyze this scientifically, you'll agree with me that women who insist that their lovers use condoms are skanks. They know the odds and so should you.
No sane, health-conscious, health-minded person would pick up some stranger and have sex with them. Much less if they thought that they would need to use a condom for protection.
9:40 pm
"May I humbly request that fellow readers of The Sexist flag every one of jf1’s comments on this thread until he actually provides a scientifically valid source to back up his claims? CDC, WHO, NEJM, The Lancet, etc., will do fine, but cluttering up this blogs with his misinformation is getting tiresome."
Why rely on some 3rd-party?
Go grab a box of condoms and some lube, head out to your favorite bar and prove me wrong. It'll take a most a couple of months to gather sufficient scientific evidence if you pick-up someone every night and let them have their way with you. Maybe not even that long. Or you can set up a nice gangbang on CL and get it over a few days.
9:42 pm
Hell if you really want to prove that you are right, pick up a bunch of the nastiest, dirtiest skankiest motherfuckers that you can find and let them fuck you with a condom. Go to a porn convention and tell them that you want to recruit some new "talent". Then compare them to established industry "talent". Most porn stars now are regularly tested for STDs, so that's even a good control-group. Or just an ad in the City Paper and have sex with everyone who answers. Go ahead and convince yourself scientifically that you're right. Your life depends on it!
9:48 pm
...it's almost like you'd rather sit here and argue with me, then to go out and put your own philosophy into practice. I guess that having sex with a condom isn't all that exciting after all. Unless you're too horny to think about it instead of just doing it.
Yet another hypocrite rears their head yet again.
10:11 pm
I should clarify...please only flag jf1's comments that occur after he has been asked to provide data and fails to do so. Prior to that point, one could argue his statements add to the discussion in some limited way (i.e., showing the misinformation and delusions that public health efforts are up against!), but after several very verbose repetitions of the same confused & misinformed opinions, I think we all get the general idea, and we don't need another 1,000 words of this drivel.
And, as a public health announcement: jf1, NO ONE thinks that having a condom is an excuse to engage in activity that they would not otherwise engage in, so all your insulting and misogynistic scenarios are pointless. People will make their sexual choices according to their desires and values, but when they do, they should protect themselves as fully as possible.
11:10 pm
"And, as a public health announcement: jf1, NO ONE thinks that having a condom is an excuse to engage in activity that they would not otherwise engage in,"
I would insist that you either prove that with valid and reputable scientific data or shut up, and to have your posts flagged until/unless you do so, but it's so obvious that you're wrong that it's not worth the trouble.
Really.
The whole point of condoms is to assist in the desire to engage in risky sex that people would not engage in otherwise, at least not so often or so freely.
11:11 pm
And the same goes with any sexual aid. Really.
11:19 pm
I mean you could hardly be more wrong. The major goal of most human endeavor is to make things "safe and enjoyable" that would not be that way without their effort to make it so. So that people can enjoy it safely and thus do it more often.
Honestly you're so stupid that you've fallen out of the bottom of the gene pool and popped up on the other side of the planet. I guess that's why you're so busy typing away on the Internet instead of picking up strangers and having "protected" sex with them. Even with a condom no one is dumb enough to fuck you tonight.
11:34 pm
You see, unlike you, I actually CAN provide data:
From the World Health Organization:
http://www.wpro.who.int/media_centre/fact_sheets/fs_200308_Condoms.htm
With consistent and correct use of condoms, there is a near zero risk of HIV. Studies on couples where one partner is infected show that with consistent condom use, HIV infection rates for the uninfected partner are below 1% per year.
Condoms are also effective barriers against other diseases such as herpes simplex, hepatitis B, chlamydia and gonorrhea. They also prevent pregnancy, although not as effectively. However, pregnancies reported with condom use are often due to user failure rather than product failure.
High rates of condom use have resulted in dramatic drops in the numbers of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). After condom use rates rose among Thai sex workers from 14% in 1989 to 94% five years later, STIs dropped from 400,000 to 30,000 per year. Condom use in Thailand and Cambodia has resulted in drops of HIV rates of more than 80% since the peak of the epidemics.
And more here:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/multimedia/podcasts/2009/hiv_condoms_20090325/en/index.html
Booyah.
11:42 pm
Apparently two links puts a post over the edge for moderation, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow to read the World Health Organization links. BUT, in the meantime, here is some more data about the ineffectiveness of telling people to abstain:
In addition to the Cochrane study, another federally funded study of four abstinence-only programs by the Mathematica Policy Research Inc., published in April of 2007, revealed similar results. The research group found that “participants had just as many sexual partners as nonparticipants and had sex at the same median age as nonparticipants.” In other words, abstinence education programs did nothing favorable – the result was the same as if there were no program being offered at all.
Now a third study, this by Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, revealed some of the most troubling data of all. A national longitudinal study of adolescents, specifically 934 high school students, examined one of the factors used as a measurement of success for abstinence-only education programs, the virginity pledge.
Final Nail in the Coffin
In the most recent study, researchers compared teens who had taken the virginity pledge to those who had not taken a pledge. The researchers found results similar to the aforementioned studies.
First, the rate of the teens taking part in sex was the same. Those taking the virginity pledge were just as likely to have intercourse. The only positive, statistically small, was that those taking the pledge had 0.1 fewer sex partners over the five year study than did those who did not take such a pledge.
However, two other findings were most damning. First, those taking the virginity pledge were less likely to protect themselves. Pledge takers were found to be less frequent users of condoms and other forms of birth control.
Therefore, those youngsters who took the virginity pledge were not only just as likely to have intercourse, they ultimately were more likely to take part in sex in an unsafe manner. This has led experts to conclude that the lessons students take from their abstinence-only education programs is a negative and/or faulty view of contraception.
From Open Education .net
You see, those of us in the real world find it very easy to provide data when asked...for those in la-la-land, not so much...
3:36 am
Dude, you're STILL talking? Give it up, man. No one with even a little bit of grounding in science or math could possibly take you seriously.
8:33 am
"However, two other findings were most damning. First, those taking the virginity pledge were less likely to protect themselves. Pledge takers were found to be less frequent users of condoms and other forms of birth control.
Therefore, those youngsters who took the virginity pledge were not only just as likely to have intercourse, they ultimately were more likely to take part in sex in an unsafe manner. This has led experts to conclude that the lessons students take from their abstinence-only education programs is a negative and/or faulty view of contraception."
Cut to the chase.
Did they find that these participants caused an unwanted pregnancy or transmitted an STD more or less often than the members of the group that used condoms regularly?
Funny I don't see any 3rd-party notes relevant to the main issues under discussion here, anywhere in your post. It seems that the only benefit that they provide to your position is that they reiterate the "party line". Ignoring the fact that you're talking about a study based on teenagers.
"No one with even a little bit of grounding in science or math could possibly take you seriously."
Well, it seems that at least a few people here do take me seriously, one must assume that if you are right, they have no grounding at all in science or math. Unless what you mean to say is that they "could not seriously agree with me". I think that you can believe that all you want. The evidence overwhelmingly points to the fact that intelligent, well-balanced socially-adjusted people rely on common sense and good taste to choose their sexual partners and to protect their mental and physical health, not condoms. Sluts, whores and johns rely on the mere availably of a sexual object and condoms. Plus or minus a few other "objects of consideration". In other words they are the exact opposite.
So that means that either you are egregiously wrong, or there are no intelligent, well-balanced socially-adjusted people who have even an ounce of familiarity with math or science. Not to mention both.
Seriously you can keep this up and continue to fail and fail badly or just grab a large box of condoms, go out and have sex with every random stranger who will take you on, and prove me wrong.
8:39 am
I mean, you have to be an idiot to not realize that if you rely on a condom for protection from STDs and you keep using condoms and having sex with people who have STDs, that you will end up with just about every possible form of STD that isn't stopped by a condom, and a few that supposedly are.
Forget about "familiarity with math and science" Try just being familiar with basic logic.
9:10 am
Besides if these researchers really thought that "unprotected" sex was so risky, why did they even have the study?
It would border on child abuse, certainly exploitation, to even use teenagers in a proactive, controlled study with unscreened participants. And if it wasn't controlled then you don't know if the kids were actually using condoms or not.
So for several reasons I doubt the significance of any sexual study involving teenagers. Adults would be the only credible subjects, and then you'd have to find adults who would happily have sex with people of unknown STD status without using a condom for a control group. Otherwise their "abstinence" would override the condoms in terms of effectiveness. Assuming again that the people who were supposed to use condoms actually used them.
12:00 pm
"cut to the chase":
Here you go:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/20/bush-teen-pregnancy-cdc-report
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.
...
The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.
The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
Please consider yourself schooled.
Now, don't just raise absurd theoretical complaints (that have no bearing on public health and show a ridiculous failure to understand human subjects law)...PROVIDE REPUTABLE DATA!!! Oh, that's right...you can't!
2:50 pm
"The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
Please consider yourself schooled."
So what's the point?
This still doesn't prove that reliance on condoms to prevent the spread of STDs and/or unwanted pregnancies actually works with teenagers. It certainly doesn't disprove what I said, that making intelligent choices with regards to your sexual partners is the best form of prevention of both STD transmission and unwanted pregnancy. All it says is that a high percentage of teenagers in the south practice unsafe sex. It doesn't say WHY.
You cannot prove your point with parallel data showing a correlation between belief in abstinence and high STD rates. Obviously there is no correlation between actual *abstinence* and high STD rates unless the transmission was through nonsexual contact (another loose end which you can't tie up through a sex study).
You're bouncing all over this issue like a puppy dog hoping to find a bone. There is no bone here for you. The only way to not get an STD or to keep from getting pregnant when you don't want to, is to not have sex with or exchange bodily fluids with anyone who could get you pregnant or give you an STD in the process. Period.
2:59 pm
...if at a certain point in time you could show a clear downward trend in STD and pregnancy rates related to a change in public policy, you would still have to deal wiht the fact that public policy is not the only influence on pregnancy and STD rates.
You also can't eliminate the fact that people either have STDs or they don't. Yet they can still get pregnant (on one side of a pregnancy or the other) and they can still catch an STD. The use of a condom cannot prevent either an unwanted pregnancy or STD transmission, and on top of that, repeated uses of condoms are even less effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies and STD transmissions, in the same way that continuing to play Russian Roulette makes it even more likely that you will blow your head off even if the odds of killing yourself with each pull of the trigger remain the same.
You simply don't have a leg to stand on, in this argument. You can bring in all the abstinence studies and condom studies that you want. You can't add 1 and 1 and get 4. Those studies do not add up to the sweeping conclusion that you want to make.
3:02 pm
...on the other hand if you start off with 3, and add 1, it's pretty easy to get 4.
Even starting with the general case that your partner may have an STD, you still have the choice to have sex with them or not (assuming that we focus on sex as the transmission vector). Even if you've fucked them 500 times before, it's still your choice to have sex with them again. You can count your money and go home or roll the dice again. If you lose on the next roll you have no one but yourself to blame.
Assuming that you have not lost already.
Whether you use a condom or not.
3:06 pm
Or let's start with 5 and subtract just one to get to 4.
Since you can't be 100% sure that neither of the two of you have an STD, and knowing that condom use cannot ever be 100% effective in preventing the spread of STD and knowing that the more that you have sex the more likely that both partners will end up with the same STDs whether a condom is used or not, if you two keep having sex and continue to be monogamous (again ignoring any nonsexual vectors) you have two and only two possible outcomes.
Either neither of you will ever have an STD, or you both will have the same STDs.
3:07 pm
Now. I've made it as simple and as clear as I possibly could for you. In two different ways that arrive at the same point.
If you don't get it yet, you're an idiot. It's that simple.
3:10 pm
...and obviously the more sex you have, the more likely you are to get pregnant. Whether you use a condom or not. And likewise if you can't see *that* then you're an idiot.
3:24 pm
So. Giving your "evidence" as much credit, logically-speaking, as reasonably possible, even if belief in abstinence is not an effective birth-control method or STD deterrence for the population at large, that still doesn't mean that reliance on condoms will keep you from either getting pregnant when you don't want to, or catching an STD. You just cannot logically cross the chasm from one to another.
On the other hand, you *could* simply take advantage of the fact that, given the probabilities pA and pC > 0, pA + pC > pA alone. That is, to rely on pA and use pC as a bonus. And the fact is that the winners of the STD "lottery" actually made good choices about who to have sex with. Not bad ones while relying on a condom to make up the difference (a double mistake). Sure some of them may have made bad choices but were saved by condom-use (i.e. they got lucky). I'm not saying that condoms don't help to retard the spread of STDs and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. I'm saying that reliance on condoms instead of reliance on using your brain is stupid as well as ineffective, and doomed to inevitable failure.
You can show all the 3rd party papers that you like. You can't change that basic fact. It's just too simple an issue.
3:28 pm
...anyway. Even thinking that you need to demand that your partner use a condom before you have sex with them should be a sign to you that you shouldn't have sex with them in the first place.
And the same the other way.
4:48 pm
Really, everyone, flag jf1 until he provides data...
"actual abstinence"?
Actual abstinence has not existed, on a population level, for all of human history. Pretending people will be abstinent is totally absurd. Let's look at Britney Spears, Bristol Palin, John Edwards, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Foley, the list goes on and on.
"A clear downward trend in STD rates"?
It was called the 1990s and early 200s. Already mentioned in the above-cited sources.
And, the Thailand data cited above. Decrease of EIGHTY FUCKING PERCENT. 92% for sex workers. Bite me.
"Even thinking that you need to demand that your partner use a condom before you have sex with them should be a sign to you that you shouldn’t have sex with them in the first place."
Which would mean you couldn't have sex at all. That is simply not the way human beings work. I've provided abundant evidence that this is so, and you have failed to provide any proof that those who claim or try to be abstinent are remotely successful on a population level. In fact, I have shown that those who claim or try to be abstinent have sex JUST AS MUCH as the rest of us, but are more careless/ignorant about protection, and thus get pregnant MORE often and have MORE diseases.
5:08 pm
You claim:
"Either neither of you will ever have an STD, or you both will have the same STDs."
Not true. The CDC (cited above) estimates that the rate of HIV transmission with condom use among couples with 1 infected partner is less than 1% per year.
"and obviously the more sex you have, the more likely you are to get pregnant. Whether you use a condom or not."
Not true. As shown here:
http://www.fhi.org/en/rh/pubs/booksreports/latexcondom/pregandstdprev.htm
only 1 cycle of non-condom use increases your likelihood to get pregnant by almost a factor of 5 (compared to condom failure rates). So, a person using condoms consistently can have many, many times more sex than a person who doesn't use condoms, and still be safer.
Again, I have the facts on my side.
5:45 pm
"Pretending people will be abstinent is totally absurd."
Indeed. Let's talk about people who are actually abstinent in terms of not having "unprotected" sex with people who have STDs. Since that's what matters.
Now you say that people will not be "abstinent". Yet you claim that people should use a condom for protection. Likewise pretending that consensual adults will restrict themselves to sex with a condom is absurd.
So when are you going to get real?
5:49 pm
ps with regard to the rest of your last post, do you realize that you are saying that something I said is not true and then posting data that proves me right?
"the rate of HIV transmission (out of all possible STDs, and even then only considering intercourse) with (regular?) condom use among couples with 1 infected partner is less than 1% per year."
So at best you're running a 1% chance each year of getting HIV (ignoring all other STDs) through intercourse with a partner when you use a condom. And so how many year do you expect to have sex with this HIV-positive person without getting HIV, again, ignoring any other STDs that they have, which you clearly want to do?
5:50 pm
"only 1 cycle of non-condom use increases your likelihood to get pregnant by almost a factor of 5 (compared to condom failure rates). So, a person using condoms consistently can have many, many times more sex than a person who doesn’t use condoms, and still be safer."
Yes but that doesn't mean that they will still be safe. You seem to be totally ignoring this. Condoms may reduce your chance of getting specific STDs or unwanted pregnancies by a factor of 20 when used properly each and every time. Keep having sex with that person and eventually you will get their STDs and/or have an unwanted pregnancy anyway.
What part of this is unclear to you?
6:05 pm
again I must go back to the kid analogy, I guess.
You can tell a kid not to drink and drive, you know that they will drink and drive. They will think that they can handle drinking and driving. They will think that they are not going to drive, drink, and then want to drive. They will think that they are not going to drink, drive, and then want to drink.
In a number of ways they stumble to the point.
The point is that if you put kids cars and alcohol together you will have trouble. Not with all kids, all cars, and all alcohol but enough to cause a real problem. So we regulate all three parts.
Your solution is to try to regulate the one part that won't actually get regulated in practice. My solution is to regulate the entire system. In terms of the kid analogy, it would be for parents to not let their kids drive their cars without supervision, and to only let kids who have established that they are trustworthy to actually drive. You still run the chance that they will sneak in a bottle now and then but in the long run you have to live with that. Your position seems to be that simply telling the kids that they shouldn't drink and drive will be enough, if they don't actually drink and drive. That they will be safe if they don't drink and drive, and they will be unsafe if they *do* drink and drive. And indeed it is good for them to demand that none of their friends drink and drive.
What, you think that that hasn't occurred to parents throughout history? It doesn't work. Some kids drink and drive and don't get into accidents. That teaches other kids that it's not a given that they will get into an accident if they drink and drive. It continues to excess until one of them actually does get into an accident, but they don't get killed, so they have a story to laugh about and they go on engaging in risky behavior until 4 girls get killed on prom night. Even then they blame the guy who provided the liquor. If the kid who gets killed is a guy, at worst they blame the parent who indulged their desire for a car. 9 times out of 10 they blame the kid himself. I'm not trying to be sexist here but the majority of times the girl doesn't get blamed for the situation, she's only the victim of it but the blame isn't hers. The guy is always blamed to some degree. But the point is that guys don't get STDs without women to have sex with, assuming that they're straight and get the STD from sex. So somehow, somewhere earlier, the girl had sex with a guy and got an STD from him.
That's how these things happen.
And you really think that telling women that they should use a condom when they have sex will prevent this? I'm telling you, after 192 posts on this topic I still don't see a credible argument to support this. On the other hand I see a lot of people having sex without protection and not getting STDs or getting unwanted pregnancies as a result. On one hand you've got one situation, on the other hand you have the other. You can't deal with the difference, you can't understand why that difference exists, you deny at least 50 posts from me and some from other people explaining why? C'est la vie. Again I have to say that you are a poster-child for why women want to use condoms during sex.
6:10 pm
Beyond that you're reduced to comparing the biomechanical effectiveness of a condom to abstinence, assuming that both are actually used.
On that case you lose, and you will continue to lose.
The simple break-even point between a woman who relies on condoms for protection and a woman who uses intelligence and common sense when choosing her sex partners is a simple matter of how effective the condom is at stopping all relevant STDs (not just HIV, or even HIV and the 4 they test for down at your local clinic) and how intelligent and patient the woman is. You focus on one of the details and deny the larger picture while claiming that 3rd party data proves you right.
Listen, when you're wrong, you're wrong. Regardless of how much data you want to bring to the argument. Regardless of how many papers you want to quote. Because all that matters is that your argument is based on faulty logic.
6:18 pm
Besides,
"“only 1 cycle of non-condom use increases your likelihood to get pregnant by almost a factor of 5 (compared to condom failure rates)."
If a woman has sex without a condom on a daily basis, she'd still be lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) to get pregnant. Amost certainly a complete exchange of STDs will happen in short order.
Put a piece of rubber around the mans' cock while you have intercourse and that's still going to happen eventually. Condoms are not going to contain semen completely, you still have to actually put it on which involves putting your dirty sticky pre-spunk laden hands on the outside of the condom and, you know, inserting your penis into her vagina (not to mention other sex acts that don't involve vaginal intercourse), and there are plenty of STDs that are transmitted in other ways than through ejaculation into the vagina during intercourse. Maybe you just ought to go read up on the details of STD transmission while you're researching condom effectiveness. Honestly you sound like all you know about sex is what you've read in a pamphlet at your local clinic.
6:25 pm
...the unfortunate thing about people like you is that you're well-studied but irrational.
You can be wrong 500 different ways. All of which take a hell of a lot of time and energy to deal with.
6:26 pm
"Really, everyone, flag jf1 until he provides data…"
You're the only person here who needs "data" to see what is obvious to everyone else.
And you go out and get it and still can't see.
6:51 pm
Seriously go and find some data to show how often the average female has sex.
Take your various probabilities with and without condom use each time, and figure out how many times they would have to have sex to get each STD you can find on webmd if the male has a 50% chance of having it each time.
Then do the same if the female has it half the time.
Multiply the odds together for each STD and you will find the probability that both the male and the female will have that STD already assuming that each had sex with someone who had it, half the times that they had sex.
Then go back and look at your sexual frequency numbers and see where you end up in all cases.
Then consider what happens if one partner actually has each STD with 100% certainty, reexamine your numbers in that light.
For example, say the average woman has sex 24 times each year. Say the odds of HIV transmission from a partner who has it are p, and with a condom that drops by a factor of 20, as you claimed earlier, to p/20. So if she has sex N times with someone who has HIV without a condom the odds are slightly over N*p (i.e. 1 if p is > 1/N) that she will get HIV also. With "proper use" of a condom the odds are about 1/20th of that, right?
So even if they use a condom "properly" every time, they have sex for 20 years and she will get HIV too.
So you are talking about 20 years of "proper" condom use with one partner who "might" have HIV to match the risk of having "unprotected" sex with a person who "might" have HIV, at her normal sexual frequency.
And this makes sense to you?
To you, this is "logic"?
Again the only way that it would be "logical" to rely on condom use would be if it made the transmission of *all* possible STDs virtually impossible each and every time. Not half of 1%. 0.0000000000512%. Or lower. Which it won't. That simply cannot happen, and it will not happen. No one is going to use a condom with a steady partner for a year.
6:52 pm
Colossal understanding of statistics FAIL:
"On the other hand I see a lot of people having sex without protection and not getting STDs or getting unwanted pregnancies as a result. "
Yes, and you could see a lot of people surviving the Titanic...that doesn't mean crashing into icebergs is safe.
Colossal understanding of human nature FAIL:
"Beyond that you’re reduced to comparing the biomechanical effectiveness of a condom to abstinence, assuming that both are actually used."
That's the whole point...you CAN'T assume that both are actually used in a comparable way. Condom use is a vastly more modifiable behavior than sexual activity. I have provided numerous studies to support this. You haven't been able to come up with one measly citation!
I think I will listen to the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and the National Institutes of Health much more than I will listen to some verbose idiot on the Internet who spews his misinformed opinions and can't back them up and thinks he can just say "you're wrong" and totally ignore the facts of the real world.
6:58 pm
On the other hand the use of a condom makes sense if you only intend to have sex with a person once, twice, maybe a handful of times, before you stop engaging in such sex, and you think that they are clean enough to at least not have any skanky surface STDs. Plus you can trust them to use it right.
Condoms don't even make the perfect playtoy for no-strings-attached sex. But they're a lot better than "no sex at all" or "no condom at all" when having NSA sex.
So why can't you see that they enable exactly that sort of "relationship"?
Did your "data" refer to regular condom use with one partner or multiple partners? LOL
Sure they can claim that they're not interested in NSA sex but as long as they are free to cut the string afterward it's the same thing, for all intents and purposes.
7:02 pm
And likewise if she's on the pill and/or the guy is a master of the "rhythm" method maybe coupled with the "withdrawal" method and the "alternative entry" method, then they can go on having NSA sex for years. Even with multiple partners.
You might not want to call that "skanky behavior". I'll be happy to do it for you.
7:09 pm
Colossal understanding of medicine FAIL:
"Again the only way that it would be “logical” to rely on condom use would be if it made the transmission of *all* possible STDs virtually impossible each and every time."
No medical treatment or intervention is EVER 100% effective. Nothing. Not aspirin. Not penicillin. Not angioplasty. Not vaccination. Not mammograms. Not PSA. So by your logic no one should ever bother with medical care ever again? Enjoy the Middle Ages...
7:24 pm
"Colossal understanding of medicine FAIL:
“Again the only way that it would be “logical” to rely on condom use would be if it made the transmission of *all* possible STDs virtually impossible each and every time.”
No medical treatment or intervention is EVER 100% effective. Nothing."
So admit that it doesn't make sense to rely on condoms to prevent the spread of STDs.
7:28 pm
"So by your logic no one should ever bother with medical care ever again?"
No, but by your logic people should rely on medical treatment to deal with communicable diseases, even when there is no effective treatment for certain STDs.
Oh and then there's that "don't have sex with people who are likely to have STDs in the first place" method. Which seems to have worked throughout Known History.
7:41 pm
Colossal understanding of history FAIL:
"Oh and then there’s that “don’t have sex with people who are likely to have STDs in the first place” method. Which seems to have worked throughout Known History."
PROVIDE EVIDENCE...because I can tell you that the rates of admission to mental health hospitals for syphilis in the early 20th century were astronomical. Once penicillin was discovered, asylum populations dropped dramatically.
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/berridgev.html
9:17 pm
Yes, I see that you have quite an eye for the details yet almost always miss the big picture and have trouble keeping up with the conversation.
You must be fun on a date.
9:21 pm
ps in the early 20s asylums were the place where the mentally-disturbed were dumped, yes.
but you didn't have to be deranged from syphilis to be called "mentally disturbed". For example, married men used to have their ladyfriends put in asylums to have abortions outside of the public eye.
I correct my earlier post. You have a keen eye, even an obsessive eye, for certain details. But not only do you miss the larger picture you are too obsessed on some details and too ignorant of other details to even begin to understand the world in which you live in, not to mention its history. Yet this doesn't stop you from engaging in terminal pendantry.
9:25 pm
"Yes, and you could see a lot of people surviving the Titanic…that doesn’t mean crashing into icebergs is safe."
Nice try, but I think that attempting to use my own logic doesn't prove that you are right in making yours.
Nor does reliance on "expert opinion" especially when you quote it out of context, assuming that it's correct in the first place.
The botton line is that when you are wrong, you're wrong. If you were right, I'd happily admit it. You're not.
There are 9 billion ways to be wrong. Just one way to be right, unless you redefine the term LOL
So far you've hit a sizeable percentage of them. Really.
9:28 pm
"“Beyond that you’re reduced to comparing the biomechanical effectiveness of a condom to abstinence, assuming that both are actually used.”
That’s the whole point…you CAN’T assume that both are actually used in a comparable way. Condom use is a vastly more modifiable behavior than sexual activity. I have provided numerous studies to support this. You haven’t been able to come up with one measly citation!"
It's not the point, moron. You either use condoms or you don't. You don't have a choice when it comes to having sex. You're not going to go through your life without sex and living a healthy life at the same time. You *can* do that without using condoms as long as you choose your partners wisely. Your erroneous and moronic position is that you can do that by having sex with condoms even if your partner has an STD.
No one in their right mind is going to willingly choose to have sex with someone who has an STD and rely on a condom for protection.
9:28 pm
"You haven’t been able to come up with one measly citation!”"
You're the only idiot that I see here who needs to see one.
9:33 pm
"No one in their right mind is going to willingly choose to have sex with someone who has an STD and rely on a condom for protection."
And only a fool would willingly rely on a condom for protection with someone who might have an STD. No one is going to eagerly use a condom unless they already have an STD themselves or they are desperate for some sex. Your "advice" therefore applies only to the moronic and the desperate, which often are one and the same. And of course such people would have real trouble restraining themselves from having sex with people who are likely to have an STD.
9:35 pm
Seriously you doubt what I'm saying? The go grab a bunch of condoms, walk up and down 17th street/Connecticut ave in DC going up to just one girl in each bar that you enter and tell her "I would have sex with you as long as we use a condom, even if you have an STD".
You're bound to get lucky, laid and prove me wrong all at once!
9:37 pm
Girls you definitely can follow my suggestion and see how it works for you. Whoops you already do.
12:15 am
"You *can* do that without using condoms as long as you choose your partners wisely."
Absolutely, totally, demonstrably false, as I've shown here many times.
"Your erroneous and moronic position is that you can do that by having sex with condoms even if your partner has an STD."
You can't be totally safe--nothing in life is totally safe. But, a consistent condom user will be vastly SAFER than some idiot who thinks they can tell who is or is not safe to sleep with.
1:53 am
@jf1 - inre your stance that a committed, monogamous couple would never have any reason to use condoms: my boyfriend and I are committed and monogamous and we use condoms because his foreskin doesn't retract completely and it's painful for him to have sex without a condom. I think this is rare but you have no idea how many people are out there with various rare circumstances that might lead to them using condoms other than as BC or STI prevention, so you shouldn't assume things. It's insulting that you think we're not having "real" sex or that I'm turning him into a "playtoy" when the only reason we use condoms is for his comfort.
Also, why do you care so much what other people do with their genitals? Also, why do you have time to post like 150 comments on this one page in like a week and a half? Are you really lonely or something?
2:23 am
Holy fucking shit.
I just came here for the funny "dude won't wear a condom" stories. WHERE ARE THE FUNNY "DUDE WON'T WEAR A CONDOM" STORIES?
I'm going for a lie down. Have fun arguing, you guys.
9:40 am
"But, a consistent condom user will be vastly SAFER than some idiot who thinks they can tell who is or is not safe to sleep with."
You're assuming that everyone who thinks that is an idiot. Like you.
"High rates of condom use have resulted in dramatic drops in the numbers of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). After condom use rates rose among Thai sex workers from 14% in 1989 to 94% five years later, STIs dropped from 400,000 to 30,000 per year. Condom use in Thailand and Cambodia has resulted in drops of HIV rates of more than 80% since the peak of the epidemics."
Um, I got this from one of your own posts.
Likewise...
"The most effective diet in the world isn’t actually any good if the average person can’t stay on it."
That's only true when it fails. It's actually a very good diet if the person who is using it stays on it and it works. Again you are being an idiot.
The problem is that you started off as an idiot, and you have not really changed, regardless of all the "data" and quotes that you have found. You're still hobbled by that fundamental flaw.
But there's one thing that stands out above all this, beyond your general misuse of the data that you reference. You seem to really think that condoms won't lead people to have sex when they wouldn't have it otherwise, as if they have sex just as much when they don't have have condoms even if they think that condoms are effective protection against STDs and unwanted birth, which is, if I understand you, exactly the position that you insist on maintaining. Somewhere you quoted something which you think proves you right on that, and I'm trying to find it right now...
But it's clear to me that logically the only reason that a persons' rate of sexual activity would not change due to the availability of condoms would be if they didn't care about an unwanted pregnancy or STD, assuming that you are right and that condoms are effective counters to these issues. But why would that be?
Well, either they would happily have sex and run the risk of getting pregnant by someone who quite possibly has an STD, or they are pretty damm sure that their partners don't have an STD. But that's just me thinking logically...
The linchpin to your whole argument is that you think that people are too stupid to tell if their partners have an STD yet still care if they do have an STD or if they get pregnant. Yet they would be smart enough to use a condom, if that was an effective barrier to STDs and pregnancy. Yet their sexual activity wouldn't be affected either way. They wouldn't have sex more often if they had condoms, or less often if they didn't. Is that an accurate summary of your position, which you think that you have proven (repeatedly) throughout these 220 posts?
This is why I have to find that post that you made about sexual frequency and condoms, with some 3rd party data that supposedly supported your opinion.
Ok seriously I'm trying to find some 3rd party data that you have posted beyond this comment of yours (since your "3rd party data" generally proves me right)
You: "Second, nowhere have you proved that access to condoms increases the rate of sexual activity. They don’t. "
Funny...but have you actually tried to post some 3rd party data to prove this, or are you just making a straightforward counterstatement in denial, without a shred of supporting evidence to back you up? You? No way!
The basic premise here is that women should not have sex with men without insisting on the use of a condom. Yes or no? So your 3rd party data (to prove me wrong on this) would have to establish that even without condoms women will have sex at the same frequency anyway. Yes or no?
So either these are dumb, ignorant women, who might even have an STD already (and very likely if your argument is true) or they are possibly smart but still ignorant (likewise) or they are smart and well-educated (and probably don't have an STD, yes?). But they still don't use condoms on a regular basis?!? I wonder why.
Your whole position is a ship with a growing hole in the middle, rapidly taking on water and sinking out of sight, with every post that you make trying to keep it afloat. "Asian sex workers saw an 80% drop in HIV and STD transmission after they began to use condoms regularly!" Indeed. "Abstinence pledgers who didn't actually "stay the course" and didn't use condoms had higher STD and pregnancy rates than people in a similar age group who used condoms.". Really? What a surprise!
But no: people won't have more sex and risky sex more often if condoms are available, than if they aren't. No way. Even if that is the entire premise of your argument. And the best that you can do is to say "that won't happen".
Seriously I'm trying to find other examples, like this, of you arguing against yourself and proving yourself wrong :)
"And, yes, it absolutely matters whether condoms influence the rate of sexual activity. If a population is going to be having (let’s imagine) 10,000 sex acts whether condoms are involved or not, [see you've already confused yourself in the space of a single sentence!] and the risk of transmission without a condom is 30% and the risk of transmission with a condom is 1%, the safe-sex population is going to have only 100 transmission events, while the unprotected sex population is going to have 3000 transmission events. So, since sexual activity is a fixed variable, the only thing that matters is how much safer condoms are relative to UNPROTECTED SEX, not abstinence."
9:53 am
I think that I finally may have found something
SOMETHING
that I can actually use to put the stake through this entire thread.
The basic question here is. Will women have sex at the same rate whether a condom is used or not? In spite of all the "advice", the "data", the "opinions". Are you still going to fuck just as much, just as often, regardless of whether a condom is used or not?
Because if you think that using a condom is a great idea but you can't stop yourself, you can't even *slow down* from having sex without a condom, what the fuck difference does it make? You are either relying on your partner to not have an STD and get you pregnant when you don't want to get pregnant, or you don't really care that much if he does get you pregnant and/or he gives you an STD!
How many ways can you slice this cake? Just two and only two!
See here's the basic problem. We're talking about SEX.
Not "a medical experiment". Not a biomechanical experiment. The basic issue here is that women have sex with guys because they want to have sex with them, not "prevent the spread of STDs and avoid pregnancies". And that is my whole point. You want to have sex with someone, you're not interested in "preventing the spread of STDs and avoiding pregnancies". Seriously you're interested in some "pregnancy". Just maybe not right now. The other half of the equation is that you have to be a true dumb-ass or a true skank if not both to have sex with someone who really might have an STD (instead of just in the hypothetical "we can't be 100% sure that we don't") sense. I'm talking about "real-world" possible, "that guy/girl might actually have an STD" kind of way. There's no way around it. And people like that are likely to *get* STDs. There's no way that condoms are going to stop that from happening. Indeed if they would have sex without a condom at the same frequency as they would *with* a condom, then it probably will happen...if their sexual partners are likely to have STDs.
The bottom line is that yet again we prove that the only surefire way to prevent the spread of STDs is to not have sex with people who might have them.
Seriously this whole frequency thing is killing me and now I'm going to have to create a text file just with this guys' posts. More later.
10:13 am
Ok "LeftSidePositive", I used the nice little search feature of FF and read through all your posts twice (as much as I could stand to read them).
I could not find any "3rd party data" as you love to say, that speaks directly on the topic of a correlation between sexual frequency and the availability of condoms, in any age-group. I think that we can take it for granted that people will have sex at *some* frequency whether condoms are available or not. I respect your background (it's somewhat obvious reading your posts) as a professional health-care worker but I think that your opinion is bound and framed by that very background. You're not seeing outside the "health-care worker" box. You're not admitting the weaknesses of condom-proponance. In one of your earlier posts you stated that most if not all choices for women have negative components.
LeftSidePositive January 20th, 2010
7:08 pm
#33
@JohnDias,
What you fail to realize is that for a woman, all choices carry significant downsides (Birth control? here’s your increased risk of blood clots, weight gain, imperfect reliability, etc.
....that's true for men as well, and likewise, it's not fair for one half of the partnership to make decisions that are good for them but negative for the other half. Insisting on the use of a condom is one of those decisions. And that's why men and women don't just meet, have sex, fall in love, marry and be happy forever after.
But the one thing that they should both be able to happily agree on is that having sex with each other shouldn't be something that causes permanent damage to their health, or leave one of them alone to raise a child by herself or face having an abortion.
And the only way that they are going to get to that point is to abandon condom-use altogether and deal with the consequences like mature, caring, loving adults. Condoms lead to anti-coupling behavior, sure they may have sex but that artificial separation leads to bad relationships and the first thing that any good couple will do is to stop using condoms.
You may not like it, but that's how it is.
So at this point you're looking at pushing a "diet" of condom use which is neither effective for the general public at large, or appropriate. It might be effective for some [the Thai sex-workers surely thank you] but not for all [and they would probably be even happier if they didn't have to sell their bodies to make a living].
Just like how sterilization might be an "effective" method of birth control, but really not a good choice for most people. You need to stop thinking about the numbers and look at the people that you treat. And see them as human beings, not just patients.
10:32 am
...the side issue is that given several choices for a partner, women will not change their sexual frequency whether they use condoms or not simply because they will either use a condom or not depending on the partner of choice at the time they choose to have sex.
Which gets us back to square one.
She can't fuck Joe, who is her real interest, and most likely Joe is a healthy adult male who she might even want to have kids with. She would never want to use a condom with Joe. So she calls Jim. "Hey Jim, come on over for some dinner and a movie". Later that evening Jim is putting on his coat to go home and she says "why don't you stay and have a drink?" Jim says "ok I might actually get some!" to himself and they get comfortable and next thing you know they're hot and heavy and he's reaching for her panties. She stops him and says, "I keep my condoms in the drawer by the bed". And you know the story from there.
Either he gets one out and puts it on or he doesn't get any. And if he doesn't get any, Jeff will get some the next night. Because Jeff will be the kind of guy that she's sure that she would fuck if she had to and also she's sure that he would actually put a condom on if she tells him to. But she has no real long-term interest in Jeff beyond getting through a "dry patch" with Joe. Or maybe even convincing Jim to 'stop being a dumb ass and actually use a condom when I tell you to'".
They all would be better off to stop worrying about condoms and go find a real partner who won't require them to use a condom, and also who isn't likely to have an STD or want an irresponsible pregnancy. Here the condom is the enabler of bad behavior, just like any illegal drug. And a person of good moral character and quality (and intelligence) will avoid condoms like the plague, unless and until they are in a solid relationship where they serve a good purpose as a birth-control device. Or ok sure you partner gets HIV through a medical procedure and you're left with the prospect of no sex without a condom or twice the medical bills for HIV meds. I still say that in the long run you're looking at twice the medical bills for HIV meds even if you use a condom.
10:57 am
Beyond that I think it's hypocritical to criticize abstinence as a policy. It may not be effective for some people but not because abstinence is not an effective way to prevent the spread of STDs. You still have to be smart about who you sleep with, and obviously you can't rely on "abstinence" as a birth-control/STD-control method if you're going to actually have sex. It cannot function as a method of "birth-control" because the point of "birth-control" is to make sex possible without a pregnancy. Trying to compare it to condoms and the pill on that level is just stupid.
12:20 pm
"Condoms lead to anti-coupling behavior, sure they may have sex but that artificial separation leads to bad relationships and the first thing that any good couple will do is to stop using condoms."
Who the fuck are you? What the fuck happens to you when you have sex using a condom? Does it make your dick fall off or something? I simply can't fathom how bad sex-with-condom must be for you, personally, that you can write a sentence like the one above. Do you have some kind of medical condition?
Condoms lead to bad relationships? Is this based on yet another preposterous "scenario" coupled with some "laws of probability"? And why can't you get it thru your head that plenty of people will engage in behavior, such as one-night-stands, which you find "skanky", but are the exact situation where a condom will be most effective?
You need to tease out your notion of how people (not just women, everyone) "should" have sex and recognize how they *do* have sex. Your loving-monogamous-couple situation is of course ideal for many people, but lots of people are non-monogamous, and lots of people aren't in a relationship but still wish to have sex occasionally.
Have you really never gone to a bar with the intent of finding a girl to take home? Did you insist she come to the clinic with you first for testing, or did you just roll one on, protecting yourself and her, for the night?
LSP has cited some excellent studies which you seem to utterly discount because they don't speak to... actually, I have no fucking idea why you discount them. You remind me of a Young Earth Creationist: their position is pre-determined, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever change their mind. You have already made up your mind on this issue, and have no intention of changing it, so you engage in hilarious and bizarre logical perorations to wriggle out of the facts presented.
LSP is talking about public health issue in *populations* whilst you cannot seem to think in any other terms than specific cases. Sure, any *one* sex act contains all sorts of risks, but *across a population* condom use results in a decrease of the risk. Not elimination, no one has said that, but a population-wide decline.
And please, stop using the condom as a metaphor for the division of the sexes. We are all members of the same species. Condoms protect men just as much as they protect women.
When you find that nice lady who you want to be with forever, and you both get tested and start to go bareback, that's *great* for you, but until then, condom use is the cheapest, most effective and easiest way to protect yourself and your partners. If sex-with-condoms is just that unbearable for *you personally* then that's your problem. Advocating your position for *anyone else* is just ridiculous. Frankly, it is in your best interest that any of your potential partners be consistent condom-users before they encounter you.
12:38 pm
"Who the fuck are you? What the fuck happens to you when you have sex using a condom? Does it make your dick fall off or something? I simply can’t fathom how bad sex-with-condom must be for you, personally, that you can write a sentence like the one above. Do you have some kind of medical condition?"
Sorry to upset you with an honest opinion, whoever you are. Let's try "you respect mine and I'll respect yours".
Think that has a chance of working, here?
12:40 pm
"And why can’t you get it thru your head that plenty of people will engage in behavior, such as one-night-stands, which you find “skanky”, but are the exact situation where a condom will be most effective?"
Of course they will. Does that make it a good idea? Wouldn't "not engaging in skanky behavior" be a better solution? Or do people *have* to be skanks?
So when one skank says to another skank, "you'd better put a condom on that nasty thing if you want to have any chance of sticking it in me" we should respect this?
12:40 pm
You'll respect my opinion? Really? Despite my chromosomal and political handicaps? That's so big of you.
12:41 pm
"You need to tease out your notion of how people (not just women, everyone) “should” have sex and recognize how they *do* have sex. Your loving-monogamous-couple situation is of course ideal for many people, but lots of people are non-monogamous, and lots of people aren’t in a relationship but still wish to have sex occasionally."
And lots of people have sex with minors, animals and dead people. Let's open our minds to that and embrace the concept of condom-use there, as well.
12:43 pm
and finally...
"Have you really never gone to a bar with the intent of finding a girl to take home? Did you insist she come to the clinic with you first for testing, or did you just roll one on, protecting yourself and her, for the night?"
Like I said, condoms lead to bad relationships.
I take it that the rest of your post should be read but not replied-to, given the standard that you've set to this point.
Thanks for playing.
12:44 pm
You just compared a one-night-stand, which is both legal and normal adult sexual behavior, with pedophilia, beastiality, and necrophilia. If this is the sort of argument you feel best serves your position, at some point, I would think you might want to re-examine why you've taken this position in the first place.
Epic.
(Fun Fact! "Beastiality" is not in Firefox spell checker.)
12:57 pm
...well, in all fairness. I wouldn't want you to think that I dismiss your opinion out of hand.
"LSP has cited some excellent studies which you seem to utterly discount because they don’t speak to… actually, I have no fucking idea why you discount them."
Try reading my replies. And paying attention instead of closing your eyes and chanting your preconceived notions.
" You remind me of a Young Earth Creationist:"
...whatever
"You have already made up your mind on this issue, and have no intention of changing it, so you engage in hilarious and bizarre logical perorations to wriggle out of the facts presented."
...it's either that, or I have just spent the better part of two days actually discussing this logically and factually with someone who has the opposite point of view, and came out of this even more convinced that I was right. Is that a problem for you to face?
""LSP is talking about public health issue in *populations* whilst you cannot seem to think in any other terms than specific cases. Sure, any *one* sex act contains all sorts of risks, but *across a population* condom use results in a decrease of the risk. Not elimination, no one has said that, but a population-wide decline."
First of all, all sex acts happen on a specific case by case basis, not in terms of a general population. We are all individuals, and what is good for one person in one situation can easily be bad for another. What works well for a Thai sex worker might not be a good idea for a young professional in the DC area. Easily could be a very bad idea, indeed. Maybe you missed the part of our discussion where we talked about the perils of "one size fits all" solutions? Go back and read that as well. Also the part about how to determine the likelihood that any two members of a society have an STD, read through that also. You want to take an experiment and generalize from the results, your generalization breaks down as soon as you lose correlation between the experimental conditions and the conditions that you begin to consider. There's no point in discussing those papers further, they simply don't apply to everyone in the real world. Leaping from the experimental data to illogically-derived conclusions (not to mention contradictory conclusions) is even worse, and that what LeftHead has been doing throughout this whole exercise. Just like you are doing now in trying to "explain" something to me when you just got through saying that I am fixed in my opinion and I ignore all evidence to the contrary.
"And please, stop using the condom as a metaphor for the division of the sexes. We are all members of the same species. Condoms protect men just as much as they protect women."
And if you really think that then you have dismissed my opinion out of hand. Fine. I won't try to convince you that I'm right. Play the game and see how "well-protected" you were all along, and how "safe and sane" you are at the end.
Or try this.
Make a chart of all the STDs that are prevalent in a given society, as well as the pros and cons of condom use. Feel free to post it here. Don't argue with anyone, just post your opinion about how effective or ineffective condoms are and let's all see what it is exactly. Let your opinion stand on its own merit, in the public eye.
Assuming that you really don't believe what you've said earlier, and that you would actually think that we might change our minds based on data and alternative opinions. Or else, why not just head down to the local store, pick up a box of ondoms and go out and have "safe sex" with some complete stranger in a park? Wouldn't that be a better use of your time than lambasting someone who won't ever change their opinion on an Internet message board?
1:00 pm
...seriously I believe that all of you who think that condom-use is such a great idea should be spending your Sunday afternoon having "protected sex" instead of reading this site, yes?
Or have you had your fill of it already and are now looking for something to do while your partner of the evening showers and catches a cab?
1:44 pm
"You just compared a one-night-stand, which is both legal and normal adult sexual behavior, with pedophilia, beastiality, and necrophilia. If this is the sort of argument you feel best serves your position, at some point, I would think you might want to re-examine why you’ve taken this position in the first place."
Actually I grouped them all together to make a point. They are all forms of sexual activity in which condom-use would be wise. Likewise it would be wise to use a condom when you want to have sex with someone who has an STD, especially one that is "effectively" blocked by a condom. If this is the sort of sex that you like to have, then fine. Use a condom to your hearts' content. I've said that repeatedly.
1:47 pm
...likewise if you want your new "lady friend" to rank having sex with you down with having sex with a HIV-positive drug-user, a client at a Thai sex emporium, or a diseased corpse, smile at her when she insists that you use a condom, strap one on and make her happy. If that sort of thing makes you happy.
1:53 pm
...and always remember that condoms won't stop you from getting STDs like herpes and genital warts, crabs and the like, things that don't require the transmission of semen into the vagina or the intake of vaginal fluid (or biological agents in vaginal fluid) into the urethra. Anything that might get on your hands, in your mouth or on your scrotum during sex? You're going to get that whether you have a condom on or not.
And not all of them can be treated by your local health-care practicioner.
2:03 pm
This does make me think of what a lesbian does for "safe sex". Can't really argue for condom-use then, can you. Unless some old sex-toys are involved. No, it's pretty hard for a lesbian to blame a guy for giving her an STD, unless maybe she was pretending that she wasn't a lesbian, or else she was raped. But apparently heterosexual women are happy to do that when they get one. "It's the guys' fault!"
No it had nothing to do with her decision to have sex with him, really.
2:19 pm
"When you find that nice lady who you want to be with forever, and you both get tested and start to go bareback, that’s *great* for you, but until then, condom use is the cheapest, most effective and easiest way to protect yourself and your partners"
That's simply not true.
The cheapest, most effective and easiest way to protect yourself and your partner(s) is to not have sex with them. That fundamental disconnect between reality and the fantasy of "safe sex" with condoms is the issue here. If you all really respect each other and you aren't sure that you don't have HIV, syphilis, herpes, gonorreah, genital, vaginal or oral warts, HPV, UTI, crabs, fleas, lice or whatever, just simply do not have sex with them until you are sure. Just as sure that you reasonably can be.
That's all there is to this. Anything that says that condoms will keep you safe (not to mention promote healthy relationships between two people who are having sex because they are drunk or desperate) is delusional nonsense.
2:25 pm
yourstdhelp dot com, since I can't put a link in, is just one of many sites that Google returns when searching on "lists of human STDs".
Information on STD's STI's and Viruses
Sexuality is one of our most basic and beautiful characteristics as human beings. We are all driven toward each other because of it. Unfortunately Over the years intercourse has become increasingly dangerous. With STDs And viruses spreading like wildfire across the world we must all take steps to protect ourselves. The estimated total number of people living in the US with STD is over 65 million. There are literally millions of new STD cases each year creating an extremely dangerous environment for all of us. Most at risk of contracting an STD or STI are people from ages 16 to 26 Young people tend to be more promiscuous and by having more partners increase there risk in contracting an STD or virus {not "because they don't use condoms"}. There has also been a steady STD increase in college students because of drug and alcohol use {again, not because they don't use condoms}.
There are many types of sexually transmitted diseases and viruses out there which can be easily treated or can be become terminal (deadly). But all of them are dangerous. We all have unanswered questions about STD's and viruses, and being properly informed is without a doubt our best defense to preventing, contracting, and/or spreading these harmful disease's and bacteria's.
{actually that's wrong, also, the best defense is to not have sex with people who have STDs}
In this web site we will go over the most common STD's, virus's, and STI's including Aids/ HIV, Scabies, Chlamydia, Crabs, UTI, Pubic Lice, Gonorrhea, Genital Warts (HPV), Syphilis, And Genital Herpes. You can find all the information on prevention of STDs, diagnosis and symptoms Of STD's (Do I have an STD?), STD treatments, and STD cures. We also have videos Pictures, Photos and pics on STDs and peoples personal experiences on how they contracted the STD's and how there dealing with them day to day.
2:33 pm
...and I'm sure that you're tired of hearing me say this by now, but even the ones that are supposedly "deterred" by a condom? That doesn't mean that when you have sex with a condom with someone who has that STD, that that STD will effectively be deterred by that condom, that time. For example you don't even have to have sex with someone to get HIV from them, they can transmit it through saliva and blood exchange. So you're hoping that not only does that condom not fail or leak, but that you don't get any HIV viruses just by kissing, licking or sucking, even rubbing on something that would expose you to it.
That's just for HIV, note that there are plenty of other nasties on that list.
4:00 pm
"You seem to really think that condoms won’t lead people to have sex when they wouldn’t have it otherwise, as if they have sex just as much when they don’t have have condoms "
Yes, and I've provided ample epidemiological evidence to prove that this is the case.
"But it’s clear to me that logically the only reason that a persons’ rate of sexual activity would not change due to the availability of condoms would be if they didn’t care about an unwanted pregnancy or STD, assuming that you are right and that condoms are effective counters to these issues. But why would that be?"
It's called EDUCATION and AVAILABILITY. People (starting in middle or high school) need to be taught how important condoms are, so we don't have a bunch of idiots like you running around. Once people know that, they'll be vastly more likely to remember to have some in their purse or wallet when they go to a bar, or keep some in their house.
"it’s not fair for one half of the partnership to make decisions that are good for them but negative for the other half. Insisting on the use of a condom is one of those decisions."
You're honestly comparing the mild inconvenience of *slightly* lowered sensation to the risks of painful and/or deadly STDs, childbirth, medical complications, and death??? Shut the fuck up!
4:01 pm
You say, I could not find any “3rd party data” as you love to say, that speaks directly on the topic of a correlation between sexual frequency and the availability of condoms, in any age-group.
THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!
4:01 pm
You ask:
So when one skank says to another skank, “you’d better put a condom on that nasty thing if you want to have any chance of sticking it in me” we should respect this?
YES YOU FUCKING SHOULD!!!
4:02 pm
Your absurd story:
"She can’t fuck Joe, who is her real interest, and most likely Joe is a healthy adult male who she might even want to have kids with. She would never want to use a condom with Joe. So she calls Jim."
THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!!!!!
If Joe is such a good guy, and they're not yet in a committed relationship, and he hasn't been tested, OF COURSE he would be willing to use a condom. They, as mature responsible adults, would use condoms as their relationship starts out, until they check out each others' medical history and decide to be exclusive. If Joe isn't willing to use condoms he's a DOUCHEBAG and a SELFISH BASTARD and absolutely not husband or father material.
The rest of your hypotheticals are just as faulty.
4:04 pm
Research FAIL:
Most at risk of contracting an STD or STI are people from ages 16 to 26 [sic] Young people tend to be more promiscuous and by having more partners increase there [sic] risk in contracting an STD or virus [sic] {not “because they don’t use condoms”}. There has also been a steady STD increase in college students because of drug and alcohol use {again, not because they don’t use condoms}.
YOU HAVE NO FUCKING PROOF OF THIS...you've cited a source and then put what you want it to say in brackets, and then say you dismiss whatever it says that you disagree with. These populations are actually quite likely NOT to use condoms, and you have failed to provide any evidence about relative risk with relation to condom-using habits.
Furthermore, what part of REPUTABLE SOURCE do you not understand?! Something that is so pathetically badly edited that it omits punctuation, misspells "their" and seems unaware that many STDs are viruses (not "or"). THREE ERRORS IN THREE SENTENCES?! Oh, dear heavens!!
4:08 pm
"“You seem to really think that condoms won’t lead people to have sex when they wouldn’t have it otherwise, as if they have sex just as much when they don’t have have condoms “
Yes, and I’ve provided ample epidemiological evidence to prove that this is the case."
You've also provided more than ample evidence that it's not true. Simply saying that some people actually rely on condoms for protection means that they are having sex because they have condoms when they would not have sex otherwise.
Don't you see that otherwise the condoms would prove to be insignificant even to them?
Oh talking to you is like riding a ferris wheel. You just go round and round the same old issues, never getting anywhere.
4:10 pm
"You say, I could not find any “3rd party data” as you love to say, that speaks directly on the topic of a correlation between sexual frequency and the availability of condoms, in any age-group.
THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"
I meant that I couldn't find any such data in your posts, moron.
Sorry that I forgot to actually write that in there.
4:13 pm
You claim:
"You’ve also provided more than ample evidence that it’s not true."
WHERE???
Show me some evidence!!!
"Simply saying that some people actually rely on condoms for protection means that they are having sex because they have condoms when they would not have sex otherwise."
This refers to INTELLIGENT, RESPONSIBLE people who use a condom every time. THOSE people are prepared, and don't have sex without a condom. HOWEVER, idiots like you, on a population level, have just as much sex as the responsible adult population, but do it without protection. You're trying to lump two different groups into one and then pathetically trying to claim that the behavior of one group invalidates the other.
4:14 pm
"I meant that I couldn’t find any such data in your posts, moron."
Reread the data on teen-abstinence studies, you idiot.
4:18 pm
#245: a great example of you avoiding the point, repeatedly. Just not getting it. I won't copy and paste your myopic responses.
#247 yes we should respect it when one skank tells another skank that they won't have sex unless the 2nd skank puts on a condom? Whatever
#248: again you don't et it. Why should either of them want to get in bed with someone who seriously might have an STD? Why would they want to have a "loving, committed relationship" with each other, if that's the case? You're focusing on the possibility of sex with someone and not asking the basic question of why would either of these two want to fuck each other much less *date* each other if they actually might have an STD between them! That is the part that is not realistic. Except, of course, in some popular Thai sex shops, and similar places.
"If Joe is such a good guy, and they’re not yet in a committed relationship, and he hasn’t been tested, OF COURSE he would be willing to use a condom."
Oxymoron. Same on her case, as well. "Good guys" do not hop into bed with respectable women when they don't know their STD status. Same with "good women" and respectable men. Sluts, skanks and whores do.
4:36 pm
Well, I guess if you just define away 99% of the population, fine!
"“Good guys” do not hop into bed with respectable women when they don’t know their STD status. Same with “good women” and respectable men. Sluts, skanks and whores do."
The vast majority of people DO NOT get their partners tested on a first, third, or whatever, date. This is just totally wishful thinking on your part, and quite simply not how human beings interact. Much more likely, people will see someone, be afraid to ask about their status, or be attracted to them and delude themselves into thinking the other person *must* be safe, because they couldn't *possibly* have an STD if they seem so nice and attractive! The passions of the moment can lead to some colossally bad decisions, and denial is very powerful in this regard. Your assessment of who is a "good guy" or a "good girl" is not likely to be very reliable.
So, for 99% of the population (which, if it makes you feel better, you can call sluts, skanks, and whores), they should use condoms each and every time until they're in committed relationships and have been tested.
4:36 pm
re: #248 again, if your comments at the end are true, then why is this "intelligent responsible" woman trying to have sex with him in the first place?
I love watching you shoot your own argument down in flames.
mid #249: calm your hysterical ass down, woman (come on, admit it, I've seen your posts elsewhere). I was just pointing out that they did not say "because they did not use a condom". Of course you've dismissed the entire site because of three spelling errors, so you might as well dismiss that too.
Re: #148:
"Similarly, numerous studies on teen sexual behavior show that those taught to practice abstinence do not have sex at any lower rates, but do have higher rates of pregnancy and STIs because of lower rates of protection use."
For one, I doubt that you are summarizing the actual data correctly, not to mention the summaries that the authors themselves made in their own reports. Second, your premise is that you can find data that shows that teens who supposedly practice abstinence (supposedly for birth-control) have sex at similar rates to those who use condoms (supposedly for birth control). And from this you claim, "therefore having condoms doesn't influence sexual activity".
You really think that teens who are supposedly not having sex at all, by agreement as part of an "abstinence" program, wouldn't have sex more if they had condoms and were ethically and morally free to use them? Much less young adults who believe that condoms are an effective protection against STD-transmission and pregnancy and who want to pick up other young adults in bars and have "one-nighters" and/or don't want to wait to confirm the STD status of their partners much less their own?
Again: a) I don't see any proof in your posts that this is not the case. b) that is exactly what you advocate that they do, so why wouldn't those who "buy in" to your philosophy have sex more often if they have condoms than if they don't? Some negative karma would restrain them?
Of course, those who do not buy into your philosophy (which, of course, would make them degenerate STD-givers who would be absolutely bad parents and husbands) would ignore your advice and just either a) have sex without caring about STD status (or trusting their instincts) b) not have sex, until they are sure of the STD status of their partner and themselves anyway. Right?
So now we can't talk about abstinence vs non-abstinence teenagers. We have to talk about teenagers who either have or do not have access to condoms.
You have 3rd party proof that demonstrates that teens that do not have access to condoms still have sex at the same frequency as those who do? Seriously I missed such "proof" anywhere in your posts.
But even so, let's assume that you are right for once. What does it say if teens who do not have access to condoms still have sex just as often as teens who do? And the same for adults, by extrapolation, assuming that that also is true?
Don't be afraid to stand up tall and swing hard, ok?
4:38 pm
Moreover, let me remind you that the title of this thread is "When Dudes Won't Wear Condoms," and all the stories offered are about guys who DO NOT know their partners' STD status, and are willing to sleep with them anyway, but are not responsible enough to wear a condom. It's, sadly, a very VERY common phenomenon.
4:50 pm
#252
er, you're wrong, plain and simple.
In the first part you admit it indirectly. In the second you make a giant assumption which is of course wrong. The main reason that your opinion is wrong is this, and it is very simple.
People either have sex or they don't. They go out and find someone who will have sex with them on their own terms, whatever those terms are. Sometimes their terms are flexible but still. You can't run two (in this case, 3) opposing experiments at the same time and make a general statement about the resulting data as if you got the same data from both experiments (much less all three). Either they had sex with a condom or they had sex without a condom, but still certainly they did choose to either not have sex without a condom or not have sex *with* a condom. So you have three parallel experiments:
a) having sex, whether they have a condom or not (i.e. insisting that they have sex whether they have a condom or not)
b) using a condom, whether they have sex or not (i.e. insisting on the use of a condom regardless of the consequences)
c) not using a condom, whether they have sex or not (i.e. insisting that they do not use a condom regardless of the consequences).
You're trying to mix the three issues into one issue and make an absolute statement about just issue a) (i.e. frequency of sex with a condom vs frequency of sex without a condom assuming that condoms are available in both cases). Their priorities could be any one of the three, their list any possible combination of the three.
What I'm trying to point out to you and what you are trying to avoid, evade, and deny exists, is that some people will refuse to have sex even if a condom is available, on the basis that they should not have to use a condom to have sex with someone. It's a conscious choice. You may not like that choice, you may think that it is irresponsible and wrong, you may dismiss it out of hand.
And you have the right to do that.
That doesn't make your action to dismiss the related statistics out of hand a valid statistical decision.
And the same goes the other way for those who choose to have sex simply because a condom is available. Now you may say, "overall, statistically the availability of condoms has no effect on sexual frequency". I say that you are dismissing all the times when people choose not to have sex [whether a condom is available or not]. You're only counting the "positive" events.
You're dismissing those who truly practice abstinence.
4:51 pm
re #257, sounds like you're trying to make this a gender issue. Again.
4:52 pm
Comprehension FAIL:
"re: #248 again, if your comments at the end are true, then why is this “intelligent responsible” woman trying to have sex with him in the first place?"
Can you honestly not understand an "if...then" statement? How stupid are you? IF he's not interested in wearing a condom, THEN he's not husband material. An intelligent, responsible person (male or female) is likely quite interested in sexual activity (they're human), but they fulfill those interests in a safe & intelligent way.
"You really think that teens who are supposedly not having sex at all, by agreement as part of an “abstinence” program, wouldn’t have sex more if they had condoms and were ethically and morally free to use them?"
YES!!! READ THE FUCKING DATA!!!!
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/93/6/955.pdf
"Adolescents enrolled in schools with condom availability programs were no more likely to report ever having had sexual intercourse or having been sexually active in the preceding 3 months. In fact, they were slightly less likely to report having had sexual intercourse (Table 2)."
jf1, Reality. Reality, jf1. I'm so glad you two could finally meet.
Then you ask:
"But even so, let’s assume that you are right for once. What does it say if teens who do not have access to condoms still have sex just as often as teens who do? And the same for adults, by extrapolation, assuming that that also is true?"
IT MEANS THEY NEED TO BE EDUCATED TO USE CONDOMS!!!!!!
4:58 pm
...the experiment that you need to do is to have two groups, otherwise the same. With one group you isolate them from condoms. The other, you make condoms available to them.
You see how often each group has sex, otherwise. And then you can see the direct influence of condom availability on sexual frequency. You can't see that by comparing abstinence success/failure rates to sexual frequency with condoms. What you see is at best something like "how many times they fail to not have sex without a condom" compared to how many times they succeed in having sex with a condom. With some "how many times they fail to not have sex when condoms are right there" thrown in.
4:59 pm
re #260: just answer the question. Very simple. No ranting no raving, no ducking, dodging, weaving and ducking...no intellectual dodgeball...
Just answer the question.
5:00 pm
"What I’m trying to point out to you and what you are trying to avoid, evade, and deny exists, is that some people will refuse to have sex even if a condom is available, on the basis that they should not have to use a condom to have sex with someone. It’s a conscious choice. You may not like that choice, you may think that it is irresponsible and wrong, you may dismiss it out of hand."
I can clearly see they exist--this whole thread started to complain about them. I am pointing out that this choice is EXTREMELY dangerous both for them and for public health.
"You’re dismissing those who truly practice abstinence."
Of course, because that's a very small amount of the population (VASTLY smaller than those who claim they're abstinent!). To those people, condom or not is irrelevant, because they're not having sex. So they just don't matter in this public health discussion. More importantly, the abstinence-education data I've shown proves that education about condoms and making them available does not in any way lower the rates of the true abstainers.
5:00 pm
#262, which question didn't I answer?
5:03 pm
Reading comprehension FAIL:
"…the experiment that you need to do is to have two groups, otherwise the same. With one group you isolate them from condoms. The other, you make condoms available to them."
I just quoted this experiment. Read the link from the American Journal of Public Health in #260
5:06 pm
re: #260:
in the summary of the link that you provided, the following information is given:
" Objectives. This study assessed relationships between condom availability programs
accompanied by community discussion and involvement and adolescent sexual practices.
Methods. Sexual practice and condom use differences were assessed in a repre-
sentative sample of 4166 adolescents enrolled in high schools with and without con-
dom availability programs.
Results. Adolescents in schools where condoms were available were more likely to
receive condom use instruction and less likely to report lifetime or recent sexual inter-
course. Sexually active adolescents in those schools were twice as likely to use con-
doms, but less likely to use other contraceptive methods, during their most recent sex-
ual encounter.
Conclusions. The strategy of making condoms available, an indication of socioenvi-
ronmental support for condom use, may improve HIV prevention practices.
"
So their point is that in schools where kids are "educated" about condom use, they either have sex with a condom or use a condom while having sex (this isn't clear) twice as often as in schools without such an education program, and assuming that condom-use reduces HIV-transmission (and likewise assuming that kids will either have HIV or have sex with someone who does), then having condom-education classes in high schools would be good in the long run for reducing HIV-transmission rates (at least among teenagers).
I don't see anything here that says anything about abstinence programs or comparing the sexual activity of kids who are not in condom-educational programs to those who are. You want to point that out in this paper? Or do you want me to search the whole paper looking for data to support your argument?
5:09 pm
re #264, go back and look for a question. See if it has an answer after it.
Re #265, again: where in this paper does it say that the students in question were isolated from condoms?
Presumably they took an anti-sex pledge, not an anti-condom pledge, yes?
5:13 pm
...also I must point out that you are attempting to build an argument about the influence of condom availability on sexual frequency based on a study involving teenagers.
Teenagers who may or may not be fully aware of the consequences of sexual activity, in particular the details of STD transmission and the effectiveness of condoms (at doing anything, really).
5:13 pm
Reading FAIL:
"I don’t see anything here that says anything about abstinence programs or comparing the sexual activity of kids who are not in condom-educational programs to those who are. You want to point that out in this paper?"
Page 957, you idiot. (3rd page in the .pdf) And table 2. I also quoted the relevant passage in my post.
The Guardian paper above quotes the CDC's findings on abstinence, and the Open Education article discusses the Cochrane study.
I've already shown this, and your reading skills are just too poor to understand, apparently.
5:16 pm
"Teenagers who may or may not be fully aware of the consequences of sexual activity, in particular the details of STD transmission and the effectiveness of condoms (at doing anything, really)."
Hence why they need comprehensive sex education and access to condoms, birth control, and voluntary STD testing. Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?
5:17 pm
ps
your answers in #263 are nonsense.
I didn't say that they were celibate. And you persist in making a huge assumption about their ability to make good choices with regards to their sexual partners.
Reading your message in this thread, you'd say that most if not everyone who has sex without a condom would get an STD. Look around you. Take a guess at how many people have STDs and how many have unproteted sex on a regular basis. If you're unsure, why not ask them? Tell them that you're a professional health-care practicioner and you're just taking an unofficial sample.
5:20 pm
..." However, the practice of making condoms
available in schools is far more controversial
and less likely to be openly endorsed by
school administrators."
Why is that?
Because it would be seen as an endorsement of teenage sex? I wonder why.
5:25 pm
....seriously look: somewhere in this vast quantity of scientific "noise", especially if I follow the references, may be something that proves that people will have sex at the same frequency whether they have condoms or not.
Your hope seems to be that that will not be the case once they are "educated". I say that it depends on what sort of "education" they get. Hopefully their sexual frequency will depend much more on the quality of their relationship with their partners than on whether they are fully "educated" about condom use. That's all I'm saying.
Keep up the good work, young lady. Maybe the life that you save will be your own...maybe the guy that you choose to have sex with won't have AIDS or some STD because you convinced someone else to use a condom. And then you won't have to worry about whether your own condom use is effective or consistent. In any case I hope that you won't date guys who have STDs.
5:28 pm
(besides it would be quite ironic if you dismissed a man as "husband/father material" who wouldn't bend to your demands to use a condom before you would have sex with him, and he didn't have any STDs, and chose instead a man who would use a condom but only because he knew that he had an STD)
5:54 pm
re #270, why is it so difficult for you to see that I would be the last person to dissuade teenagers from a sex-ed class as long as that class doesn't promote condoms as an effective deterrent to STD transmission and promote condom-use in general?
Your sphere of influence consistently abuses its access to teenagers and young adults in promoting a false agenda. You're a walking example of it in this thread.
Sure, let kids and young adults know THE FACTS about STDs, STD-transmission, pregnancy and condom-use. The problem is when fiction and fantasy are presented as fact. If you can't stick to the data then you have no business talking to these kids and young adults about sex (not to mention relationships at large). Then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
6:00 pm
And the fact is that your opinion that a man would be a poor husband and/or father because he won't use a condom with a woman is sheer fantasy.
Besides, how is he to become a father if he always uses a condom? At SOME point you have to trust in each other and stop using protection just to have a family (unless you want them to use AI or adopt). And either one could have an STD at that point, regardless of the degree of testing they both have gone through.
So let them go get tested first and then they are both that much closer to a real, fruitful relationship instead of a "quickie". Your approach rationalises "quickies" because kids will want to have them, and rationalizes using condoms because "quickies" are risky. Sex is risky whether you use a condom or not, it's that simple. Your approach promotes a false security that simply doesn't carry over into the real world. Whether you are impressed that Thai sex workers are better off with condoms or not. They obviously are not interested in real, fruitful relationships with their customers! And the same goes for most people who want to use a condom.
6:04 pm
#271, abstinence and celibate mean the same thing, idiot.
It's not a huge assumption. Look at the epidemiological data (that I've already linked to) indicates that non-condom users account for dramatically more cases of STD transmission than condom users. Read the Kinsey report.
The CDC estimates that 75 percent of the US population will be infected with HPV at some point in their lives, let alone other STDs. That's a very significant source of avoidable morbidity and mortality, and a proportion that's way too high to take a risk with having unprotected sex!
6:05 pm
Besides what are you going to do when one of the kids asks you if you pick-up strange men and have sex with them, and if you do, do you use a condom every time?
If you say yes then you will appear to support that behavior. If you say no they will think that you are lying and disregard everything else that you say. Until you show them pictures of herpes and genital warts and the like. And then they might listen. Then they'll start to pick their partners based on who is likely to have VD and how sexually-desperate they are. Just like an adult will.
6:15 pm
"Because it would be seen as an endorsement of teenage sex? I wonder why."
Even though there is no evidence for it! So, there are some school administrators who are as ignorant as you are, and refuse to take proven measures to reduce sexually-transmitted disease.
"re #270, why is it so difficult for you to see that I would be the last person to dissuade teenagers from a sex-ed class as long as that class doesn’t promote condoms as an effective deterrent to STD transmission and promote condom-use in general?"
So, you *would* dissuade teenagers from a class that promoted the proven most-effective public health measure available? Don't you care about the health of the young people of this country? Is your moronic uninformed opinion more important to you than young people's life & death? What a scumbag you are!
Re: fatherhood and condoms. Of course a couple who is trying to conceive won't use a condom. That ranks pretty highly on your "stupidest points" list, and that's saying something! There is, however, a LONG way to go between being attracted to someone and wanting them sexually, to wanting to have a child together. Years, really... And, when a relationship starts out, even if you hope it's forever, it may not be, so protect yourself!
6:18 pm
Self-awareness FAIL:
"If you can’t stick to the data then you have no business talking to these kids and young adults about sex (not to mention relationships at large)."
This coming from the pompous idiot who has failed to provide ANY DATA WHATSOEVER in defense of his position, while I've shown at least six peer-reviewed studies.
7:14 pm
#277: of course there is a difference between abstinence and celibacy. Maybe you ought to read a basic dictionary?
"So, you *would* dissuade teenagers from a class that promoted the proven most-effective public health measure available? "
That all depends on what is considered "the proven most-effective public health measure available". And why. I've already explained my opinion on this.
"There is, however, a LONG way to go between being attracted to someone and wanting them sexually, to wanting to have a child together. Years, really…"
Or, maybe not. Maybe they're the same thing.
Or maybe not, if they put a "magic pickle-skin" on and there's no chance of of the woman getting pregnant! Of course there's no other realistic way that can happen, in your book. And let's just forget about the fact that that pickle-skin won't stop her from getting an STD, why not?
But hey, if he doesn't put on on, he can't be good "husband/father material". All nice and scientifically-proven :) Of course it's impossible that you're wrong, or that her demand would make her bad "wife/mother material" either :)
7:16 pm
"It’s not a huge assumption. Look at the epidemiological data (that I’ve already linked to) indicates that non-condom users account for dramatically more cases of STD transmission than condom users. Read the Kinsey report."
...but it's impossible for "non-condom users" to transmit STDs that they don't have, yes or no?
And condoms won't prevent the spread of all STDs, yes or no?
So what does that tell you, logically?
Go ahead read the Kinsey report if you need to find the answer.
7:18 pm
Post #283:
Yet again I have to say that in spite of all your efforts to prove your point, you have utterly failed, at least in my opinion, except in proving me right in saying that women who demand that the male use a condom before they will have sex with them are skanks to be avoided, and the wise thing for men to do in this situation is to put on their shoes and leave.
7:19 pm
...assuming, of course, that she is resolute in her demand. People do make mistakes.
7:51 pm
"Is your moronic uninformed opinion more important to you than young people’s life & death? What a scumbag you are!"
Look, bitch, I am neither moronic nor uninformed, and certainly my advice would suit young people much better than yours. Same for everyone else.
You'd have them wrapping-up in condoms and still getting STDs thinking the condoms would protect them. I'd tell them to consider the true risk of sex and to choose their partners in that light, they have to live and die with what happens afterwards.
Your opinion is that if they just use a condom they'll be fine.
10:36 pm
Basic internal consistency FAIL:
"women who demand that the male use a condom before they will have sex with them are skanks to be avoided, and the wise thing for men to do in this situation is to put on their shoes and leave."
Um, you blithering idiot, if he has his shoes off already at this point, doesn't that imply he *was* planning on having sex with her WITHOUT knowing her full sexual history?! Therefore HE'S a skank who is willing to have unprotected sex without ascertaining they're both clean, strongly indicating that's a pattern for him, so he is VASTLY more likely than she is to have an STD in the first place!!
"Your opinion is that if they just use a condom they’ll be fine."
No, but they will be dramatically safer than those who don't use condoms. Again, you can never be 100% safe with anything in life. But, thinking you'll be abstinent and not being prepared for when you fall off the wagon is a recipe for disaster.
"certainly my advice would suit young people much better than yours."
NO, YOU FUCKING IDIOT--That's why the rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and HIV among young people have spiked in the last few years, because of abstinence-only education that's giving people the same dumbass advice you are, and teens are suffering the consequences.
10:59 pm
"Um, you blithering idiot, if he has his shoes off already at this point, doesn’t that imply he *was* planning on having sex with her WITHOUT knowing her full sexual history?!"
Yes, and the point is that if he can't trust her to be clean, and she can't trust him to be clean, then they're both skanks.
But if he knows that he's clean and she can't extend the same courtesy, then she's a skank, and she's announcing it by demanding that he use a condom before they have sex. Face it it's either that or she can't trust *him* but would have sex with him anyway.
11:00 pm
"“Your opinion is that if they just use a condom they’ll be fine.”
"No, "
Yes, that is exactly your point...otherwise why bother with condom-use at all...much less insist on it...
"...but they will be dramatically safer than those who don’t use condoms. "
No they won't. Not if they don't have an STD between them.
Really, it's that simple.
11:02 pm
"NO, YOU FUCKING IDIOT–That’s why the rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and HIV among young people have spiked in the last few years, because of abstinence-only education that’s giving people the same dumbass advice you are, and teens are suffering the consequences."
No, if there is any reason that it has spiked, it's because of people having sex with people who have those STDs. Whether they use condoms or not.
It's that simple.
And you are advocating condom-use as if it will stop the spread of STDs. Knowing that it will not.
11:03 pm
#287--so what if he's trusted someone else to be clean, and was wrong? Then he's no longer clean. And, how does he know she's clean? How does she know he's clean? By "trusting"?? What a load of horseshit! This kind of logic is why we have the STD rates that we do in this country.
No one is announcing that they have an STD by wearing a condom. If anything, they're probably safer because they look out for their health. But, you can't be sure, so USE A CONDOM!!!
11:04 pm
....don't worry, I can understand how you can be so sure that you are right and I'm so sure that I'm right and you will still argue that I'm wrong.
I'm not arguing that you're wrong. That point is long past. You are left to argue this because you can't prove that you're right. The fact that I'm right is obvious. People only get STDs from other people who have them. Don't have sex with people who have STDs and you won't get any.
11:07 pm
Logical argument FAIL:
"No, if there is any reason that it has spiked, it’s because of people having sex with people who have those STDs."
Which, numerous epidemiological studies have shown, people get those STDs vastly more frequently WHEN PROTECTION IS NOT USED. And, since you can't tell for sure who has an STD, use a condom!
"And you are advocating condom-use as if it will stop the spread of STDs. Knowing that it will not."
PROVIDE SOME FUCKING DATA!!! I've provided abundant data that it does greatly limit the spread of STDs. You have utterly failed to refute this.
11:12 pm
Yet another logic FAIL:
"Don’t have sex with people who have STDs and you won’t get any."
And your idea of not having sex with people with STDs is "trusting," once you've already started to undress?! That's an incredibly low standard for being sure your partner doesn't have an STD...so, you're at much higher risk than you think for getting one.
Once having any STD turns someone's face neon blue and makes their hair turn into snakes, then your methods of assessing who has an STD and who doesn't might actually be effective.
11:59 pm
"And, since you can’t tell for sure who has an STD, use a condom!"
So your position "fails" on two points.
One in spite of all your vaunted medical knowledge and references, even you can't tell for sure who has an STD. By your own admission.
Second, in spite of your affection for condoms, even *they* can't stop the spread of all STDs. Again by your own admission.
So using your method you would have people use ineffective STD-barriers in a hopeless attempt (yet firm belief, that you reinforce) to stop the spread of STDs that they can't even detect but you are so sure are there, and then inevitably would get the STDs ANYWAY the moment that they stop using condoms, which will happen inevitably!
So yet again you undermine your entire argument.
Instead of just letting them get tested for STDs to the point of confidence and then not using condoms. Which is...what 99% of sensible people will do. Happily.
You argue entirely against this!
12:00 am
"And your idea of not having sex with people with STDs is “trusting,” once you’ve already started to undress?! "
No, dummy, it's trusting *BEFORE* you start to undress. And if that changes after you start, then pack up your shit and go home.
Simple as that.
12:03 am
"Which, numerous epidemiological studies have shown, people get those STDs vastly more frequently WHEN PROTECTION IS NOT USED. "
I swear it's like you have a mental block or something.
People ONLY get STDs when they have sex with someone who has an STD, short of some unfortunate biomedical accident. Have sex with someone who has an STD more frequently? And you will get an STD that much more quickly. Rarely if ever have sex with someone who has an STD? And it's very unlikely that you will ever get one.
Whether you use a condom...or not!
It's that simple.
Now before you start to argue otherwise please print that out and tape it to your monitor and spare both us and a lot of other people a whole lot of trouble. Then go take out your issues with the testing clinics. I'm done with you, really.
12:06 am
“And you are advocating condom-use as if it will stop the spread of STDs. Knowing that it will not.
"PROVIDE SOME FUCKING DATA!!!"
If consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, then yours must be infinitesimally small.
I showed you an entire site with data on STDs. In graphical detail, text and pictures, real-life stories. Go read it. Stop preaching your falsehoods and learn the truth.
12:44 am
Is a basic understanding of probability just completely foreign to you? Have you never heard the phrase "relative risk"???
"No, dummy, it’s trusting *BEFORE* you start to undress. And if that changes after you start, then pack up your shit and go home."
How can that change after you start? Don't you already have a printout from the physician in hand certifying that they're clean? Otherwise you simply don't know for sure. All you're saying is that you rely on your own intuition to tell if someone's clean--if they act in the way you imagine a "clean" person should so you "trust" them. Trouble is: you distrust people who engage in the most responsible behavior.
"An entire site"?? Ooh, that's impressive! If shown you what, six, seven?
Furthermore, the site didn't even state what you claimed it did, not to mention it was so pathetically amateurish it wasn't even edited for basic grammar. NOT a reputable source anywhere on par with the CDC, WHO, NIH, or AJPH. Really--learn to use the Internet.
7:10 am
If nearly all trolls are males, then, if we wanted to lower the incidence of trolls we would discourage males from attending this forum.
This argument requires a lot of unpacking. First is the premise that nearly all trolls are male. I have no scientific evidence for this, but from my experience on the internet it appears to be true. I would say at the very least 90% of trolls are male. Now I would like to clarify what kind of trolls you have on this site. These trolls aren't the type that use ad hominem attacks or talk about how much feminism sucks. You know they are trolls by several signs. First, they almost exclusively come on the site to argue. They rarely contribute to the dialogue in a non-confrontational way. Second, reverse sexism is their favorite topic. Gotcha! Third, they will almost never be dissuaded on any point and, if they are, will never admit it. Finally, the high volume and quick responses reveal their underlying psychopathology. This is just a little too fun for them.
Caveats:
1) I am advocating profiling and that is bad.
2) The goodness of the numerous non-trolling guys outweighs the badness of the trolling ones.
3) Discrimination based on gender is inappropriate for a site that is expressly opposed to such behavior.
Any thoughts? By the way I'm a dude.
8:33 am
"“No, dummy, it’s trusting *BEFORE* you start to undress. And if that changes after you start, then pack up your shit and go home.”
How can that change after you start? "
That's the entire premise of this blog.
You women are the ones saying that guys who won't use condoms are dicks, selfish assholes, "unsuitable husband & father material".
Really you're consistently startling in how nonsensical and logically-inconsistent you are. You base your entire premise on two falsehoods: one that condoms are an effective deterrent to STD transmission and that people shouldn't wait to find out the STD status of their partners before having sex. Then wonder why this is still an issue after 300 posts in this one thread.
Don't you think that if men had no logical leg to stand on when it comes to not using condoms, that they would happily just put one on and get laid, and all the worlds' problems would be solved? But your viewpoint is so biased that you can't even see straight. You can't even acknowledge the facts and truth that are right in front of your face. Straight guys get STDs from women, straight women get STDs from men. If they have an STD already they are a transmisison threat whether they use a condom or not. If they don't, then they aren't!
You're far better off to take care of the problem from a global perspective than from a local one. It's that simple! Sure some people fail to do that and in the aggregate there is a problem, yes. That doesn't hold true for every individual obviously, not even for the majority of us, you dumb-ass bitch!
People don't want to use condoms for the simple reason that sex is better without them. And if you really want to have good sex, not to mention a good relationship, make sure that your partner doesn't have an STD before you get into bed with them, and if you can't trust them on that point, then why the fuck are you fucking them in the first place? You really think that you are going to have a good relationship with someone that you can't even trust to be clean when they get inside you, or you get inside them?
8:37 am
"How can that change after you start? Don’t you already have a printout from the physician in hand certifying that they’re clean? Otherwise you simply don’t know for sure."
Not only have you already said that even after testing you can't be 100% sure, not only have you admitted that most if not all STD clinics only test for a few STDs, but I've already explained this to you many times.
GET TO KNOW YOUR FUCKING PARTNER BEFORE YOU FUCK THEM. Don't fuck them as a way to get to know them. Don't rely on whether they put a condom on when they want to have sex with you as a way to decide whether they are a good partner for you or not!
I've said this already once. Go do a survey of the people in your life and ask how many of them use condoms every time they have sex. Ask them how many of them have gotten tested for STDs, gotten their partners tested, how often and what the results were. Just go get some real data instead of pestering these teenagers and college students who you KNOW are having risky sex. Get your head out of your ass, lady, and get out and see the real world.
8:39 am
"First is the premise that nearly all trolls are male. I have no scientific evidence for this, but from my experience on the internet it appears to be true."
Indeed why not just define a troll as any male who posts on an Internet forum and be done with it. Then you can dismiss the opinions of most if all males quite "logically" and easily.
Sorry, "all trolls".
8:51 am
"Trouble is: you distrust people who engage in the most responsible behavior."
Trouble is: your definition of "most responsible behavior" is idiotic. It equates "having sex with a condom because you don't know if your partner has an STD or not" to "most-responsible behavior"!
Enough of you, crazy-lady. Obviously I disagree with a good 75% of what you say.
8:54 am
"Furthermore, the site didn’t even state what you claimed it did, not to mention it was so pathetically amateurish it wasn’t even edited for basic grammar. NOT a reputable source anywhere on par with the CDC, WHO, NIH, or AJPH. Really–learn to use the Internet."
Yah obviously i don't know how to use the Internet.
Feel free to pick your choice of preferred sites to substitute in place of the one that I gave to you, I did after all suggest that you use Google to find info on STDs.
Holy shit are you a dumb-ass "know-it-all" conceited bitch. God it's no wonder that you rely on condom-use. You wouldn't have a clue of how to effectively protect yourself from an STD otherwise.
8:57 am
"First, they almost exclusively come on the site to argue. They rarely contribute to the dialogue in a non-confrontational way."
...ergo, the only valid posters are those who agree with you and who show respect for you?
Whatever, asshole...not like *you're* trolling, though, is it...
9:01 am
@Jf1
My argument wasn't that most males are trolls; rather most trolls are males. Further I am bringing up the possibility that a feminist blog is a hotbed for male trolls; much more so than other forums. If we were to ban all males from all forums the blogoshpere would suffer. If we were to ban males from this particular forum, I'm still undecided.
9:02 am
To all:
Look, I know that this is hard for people to understand, but trust me. If you want to have sex with someone and you seriously think that they might have an STD, take a moment and think about how much sense it makes to have sex with them, whether you use a condom or not.
If you think that there's very little chance that they have an STD, almost no chance at all, that's fine, but wait until you're sure before you have intercourse with them. At least turn the lights on and take a look and see what you find. And if you're really smart you'll just wait a while, test their character in other ways, even drag them down to a clinic with you and get tested together. But seriously read up on STDs on the Internet before you make all these irreversible decisions, until you are sure that you know what is out there and you can detect it, because otherwise you're going to have to go to a doctor to find out for sure.
Once you get it on you there's a very good chance that it will not come off, and condoms just aren't going to prevent that from happening.
From there you're on your own. Good luck. and remember one last thing, when it comes to sex, there are always more partners out there. It's not worth ruining your life over one "nut". Better safe than sorry.
There, I've said my piece. You guys can now all sit here and "agree" to what I just said :)
9:03 am
Wrong again. Not all those who argue are trolls. All those who come here only to argue and do so in a confrontational way and are arrogant and are never dissuaded are trolls.
9:06 am
...we all make errors in judgment from time to time. It's only human. Don't compound that tendency by planning to make a stupid decision on a regular basis.
9:08 am
"Wrong again. "
so obviously by your own definition you're a troll.
9:13 am
Troll purging is typically not the behavior of a troll. Also arguing with a troll is not troll-like. Further, since troll is at least in part determined by the community, whether you or I are a troll must be determined by the community. Judging by the vast number of your responses that have been flagged, I hereby declare you a troll.
9:20 am
Basically you're a virus and I am the vaccine. Once I thoroughly out you as the troll you are, my job as a "troll," will be done. Your purpose as a troll is to harm the "organism."
9:27 am
Ooooh Banyan, you wrecked the game! The plan was to keep jf1 posting and posting until he'd wrecked any credibility he might have had (which, to our credit, I think we accomplished.) The further plan was to keep jf1 posting his rants as a way to waste his time, but in retrospect, clearly his time isn't all that valuable. On the other hand, I figure a text ratio of 1:10 (me:him) is pretty big win. But he is getting a little tiresome. Perhaps you know best.
9:38 am
You see the psychology of a troll is that they feed off others responses. They thrive on the negative attention. That's why he argues in a somewhat coherent way. He knows that's the only way to get the attention he's looking for. But don't be fooled; he's not actually curious about ideas or sensitive to the fact that this is a community and therefore something to be respected. For him, argument is only a means for intellectual conquest and negative attention from other people. I don't think people should feel guilty about purging a troll, just because he can think logically. He clearly does much more harm than good, and therefore should be encouraged to leave ASAP. My party analogy works once just fine. If I was at a party and most of the people at the party disliked me and thought I was of little worth, I would leave the party.
9:55 am
"The plan was to keep jf1 posting and posting until he’d wrecked any credibility he might have had (which, to our credit, I think we accomplished.)"
What you actually did is keep me posting until this thread was basically full of posts representing two completely different opinions. A thorough airing-out of the topic was accomplished. Now you're reduced to trying to make me look like a troll, the standard "subhumanisation" technique.
So clearly you've given up on arguing your position logically and rationally, and thus it's clear that your position is devoid of logic and reason.
10:01 am
"If I was at a party and most of the people at the party disliked me and thought I was of little worth, I would leave the party."
More proof that you're just trolling. You're neither agreeing with "most of the people at the party" nor even talking to "most of the people at the party". You're talking to me and maybe one other person here, one of whom is also trolling with you (as if you hadn't noticed that all but 2 of the other posters have abandoned the thread). In other words you've inserted yourself into a 2-person discussion along with a 2nd person and are now consistently harassing one of the 2 people who are discussing the OT, with the aid of another person.
You, and "K", are now just trolling. Plain and simple.
.................
In the main, the point here is well-discussed. Those of us who a) accept that and b) have better things to do than to waste our time with either argumentative idiots or straight-up trolls will now leave.
10:03 am
"Basically you’re a virus and I am the vaccine."
A more apt description is that I'm a human being who was engaged in intellectual discussion on the Iternet and you're just a social-STD who is attempting to latch onto me.
Using the same ethics that I would use with any other form of interpersonal discussion, I simply deny you the opportunity to do so, and thus you are rendered moot.
This will be my last post to you, whoever you are, but what you are doing is clear.
10:05 am
...and that takes us back to #298, which I think has already been exposed as nonsense.
Not quite "trolling" just irrational and delusional, and as such, simply wrong.
10:07 am
Basic understanding of premise FAIL:
"one that condoms are an effective deterrent to STD transmission and that people shouldn’t wait to find out the STD status of their partners before having sex."
1) I've provided numerous citations that condoms are as effective as any medication can be reasonably expected to be. They provide huge public health benefits.
2) Not that they shouldn't wait to find out their partners' STD status, but that they don't. By your own admission, you talk about "trusting" your partner's STD status, and making guesses as to whether they're clean based solely on your own prejudices. Again, I have shown that populations that are told to follow your advice have rates of STDs that are spiking in recent years.
10:08 am
jf1, I thought you'd taken your toys and gone home?
10:11 am
Once again a significant percentage of your comments have been flagged which provides independent evidence that you're a troll. Would you like to conduct a poll to determine whether people here think you're a troll? I think time will tell if I'm a troll, but I'm confident that the vast majority of people who have had any exposure to your discourse will determine you to be a troll. The fact that I'm "harassing," you in your two person "discussion" constitutes trolling if and only if you aren't a troll. If you're a troll, then I'm simply troll purging.
10:23 am
"leg to stand on" FAIL:
"Don’t you think that if men had no logical leg to stand on when it comes to not using condoms, that they would happily just put one on and get laid, and all the worlds’ problems would be solved?
[...]
People don’t want to use condoms for the simple reason that sex is better without them.
THAT'S your logical leg to stand on?!?!?! Your third one??? You're just a spoiled child who cares more about your short-term pleasure than your health or your partners'. All your verbose posts are nothing more than justifying your juvenile, selfish idiocy.
"You really think that you are going to have a good relationship with someone that you can’t even trust to be clean when they get inside you, or you get inside them?"
Look, STDs do NOT make people morally bankrupt. Of course people should get tested & treated, but with a 75% lifetime risk of HPV ALONE, you really can't go around with your ridiculous idea that only unworthy people have STDs.
Also, you have conceded multiple times that "people make mistakes," which is what I've been saying all along--people who claim they're going to be abstinent make enough "mistakes" to make them statistically indistinguishable from those who have an honest assessment of their sexuality. The trouble is, people who think they only make good decisions in bed think their mistakes are just a one-time slip-up, and they are more likely to make their "mistakes" unprotected and therefore get STDs.
10:23 am
...so in the end here's the deal.
A man and a woman are at the "point of no return". They've both decided to have sex short of one issue that may or may not remain between them going forward.
The options are thus:
The woman insists on condom use but the man refuses
The woman insists on condom use but the man agrees.
The man still has to make the choice of whether to actually have sex with this woman. But so does the woman, in terms of having sex with the man. As we have seen it is easy to talk about condom-use in the abstract as a means of self-protection, but talking about it and actually doing it are quite another thing. Some even want to ake it more than that, such as "a good way to tell whether the other person would be a good mate".
But that's also a lie. There's nothing that says that even if the man agrees to use a condom, or even if she insists on one, that the other person will think of you as a good match for them as a result. Likewise even if the man brings up the mandatory condom-use qualification for having sex with the woman. There's a complete disconnect between the conditions for sex, the sexual act, and whether or not this means that the two have a healthy, long-term, reliable, dependable, safe, monogamous relationship!
They could even both want that with each other (note that there are two conditions right there) but that doesn't mean that they will actually *find* that with each other. So why complicate the whole issue (and enable abusive and exploitative, sluttish sexual activity) by attempting to place the focus on "safe sex" when condom-use will not ensure "safe-sex" in the first place? As I said before, it is actually a *detriment* to the development of a healthy relationship for a couple to use condoms except in the case where they are financially not ready to start a family. Face it: if you can't get pregnant as a result, the sex is little more than a good rub, like two children playing in the park. Except they're playing with each other in bed. If sex was really all that significant, especially if it's the major thing between the two, it will be over in a half-hour or so and they will go on much as before. It happened in the past, the future is still wide-open. Ok sure you may have reduced the odds of HIV, gonorreha or syphilis transmission from that one act, but you would have done an even better job of that by not having sex in the first place, especially with someone who actually might have any of those three STDs. The condom won't protect you from other STDs that aren't blocked by a condom (and there are many) and there's always the chance that you could get the STD anyway even if you *do* use a condom and have sex with someone who has an STD that is supposedly blocked by a condom. Sometimes they just fail, or the use is sloppy, "improper". It does happen even given the best intentions. What if the intentions aren't the best?
What if one partner actually has an STD, knows it, but is more interested in having sex than in being honest about their STD status? You're going to find this out by insisting that they use a condom? No.
What if they have an STD but don't know it, and with both of you thinking that there's little chance that either of you have an STD, you're both a little too sloppy and the STD is transmitted? Are you going to find that out by insisting that they use a condom? Yes! But what are you going to do afterwards? Get a shot of penicillin? Well, what if "an honest mistake" is made but the STD isn't treatable? You are putting yourself square in the sights of this situation by having sex with someone that you don't know doesn't have an STD even if you DO use a condom. So in just having sex with them you are accepting this possibility.
Now what if you want to wait until they establish to the limit of reason that they don't have any STDs before you have sex with them (and you do the same for them)? Let's be honest here: are you going to use a condom with them anyway? You might the first time. You might the 2nd time. The third time that condom is staying in the pack. You're going to look up months from now and say "gee, it's been a long time since we've used a condom, and I don't see any signs of any STDs so I guess that this is a good safe partner".
The difference is what: one, two, maybe three condom-uses? So why dismiss someone who may be a good partner for you on the basis that they wouldn't agree to use a condom the very first time that you had sex with them? If that's your approach then you'd better be damm happy that you did that after you start having sex with someone else, who happily agrees to use a condom, and puts you right back at square one. If he lets you and your precious condom walk right out the door to another man for that sole reason and finds another woman and is happy with her, don't blame anyone else but yourself.
10:28 am
What exactly is wrong with #298?
You say you're supposed to already know who's clean, but by the situation you describe you're really just imagining what you want about your partner. IF someone is in fact clean, and you have the clinical data to prove it, why are you less sure about them when they take basic precautions? I think it's far more likely that you never got the real data in the first place.
10:38 am
Because ultimately the reality of love is this. We either have a special someone out there who is waiting for us and who is the right person for us to be with, or we don't, and there are many people who are just "good for a while" and we move from one to the other like any migrating species will, any species will which forms temporary bonds between the genders. You can't know whether you are one or the other, because we all are the 2nd time until we find out that we actually are the first type. So mere disagreement can be the basis of a breakup, on condom-use or anything, it's all in the couple to decide this. But certainly in the long run, in the abstract, you make decisions and deal with the consequences and if the consequences aren't in your favor then you lose. At best you're left to learn. Maybe you get it right the next time. No guy with any sense is going to let a woman harass him into wearing a condom. If it's that big of a deal for her, he can find another woman and be happy with her. There is simply no argument that says that giving in to a womans' demands is going to make a man happy in the long run. If she's always right, and you always have to agree with her for the relationship to work, guess what? Eventually she's going to lose respect for you *ANYWAY* and go find a man who she feels that she has to work to keep, that she's lucky to have. A certain amount of disagreement is a good thing for any healthy relationship, and it's a simple fact that sometimes people have to make mistakes, suffer, learn and grow.
So you lose that partner as a result? Obviously they weren't the right partner for you. And in the long run you are better off without them. Doesn't matter whether they agree to use a condom or not. All that matters is that they refuse to have sex with you unless you do what they say. They lay down those conditions? You make them live with those conditions, walk away and find someone else. You won't regret it except for one thing: the fact that you can't bust a nut in her. But trust me you're better-off not being a slave to your sex drive. For a number of reasons.
If anything, be a slave to your brain. Your intelligence. Think first, think again, think even a third or 4th time, then act. And then think some more. All you can do from there is hope that your information is correct and that you will actually be rational and not let your emotions make you do something stupid. Demanding that your partner use a condom as a condition for sex is not a smart thing unless you really want to break up with them anyway. Making ANY demands on your partner as a condition to continue the relationship is an indication that you really want to break up with them. Indeed if you feel the need to do this, you should rationally and intelligently question the decision to continue the relationship even if they agree.
10:39 am
"What exactly is wrong with #298?"
Why not just read w hat I wrote after it? I think that I've already explained.
There's probably more wrong in it, though, on which I have yet to comment. After all, you wrote it.
10:49 am
"IF someone is in fact clean, and you have the clinical data to prove it, why are you less sure about them when they take basic precautions?"
If you say that you are a Democrat and then you vote for a Republican, your bona-fides as a Democrat are clearly in question. If your actions are inconsistent with your claimed position then it is clear that your claim is shaky. Unless of course there's something else going on that we aren't aware of, and in that case you either aren't being open about the entire situation or I'm being too hasty to judge you.
This is what trust is all about. You can trust someone or not. But you can't have a healthy relationship without it. You walk into a situation demonstrating a lack of trust on critical issues? Why should they trust you in return? You're starting the relationship on a bad foot and what do you think is going to happen from there?
Seriously you say that the man is being self-centered in refusing to use a condom. You don't see how self-centered the woman is being by demanding that he use one without any real evidence that he should?
The simple fact that he might have an STD is not "real evidence" that he should use a condom UNLESS they are both too eager to have sex to wait until they can screen themselves to the point of confidence (I know that you will debate that but still). Ergo: sluttism. On both parts. So what are you left with. Two people who don't trust each other to not have an STD, but who still want to have sex with each other. How is this going to be a good start to their sexual togetherness? Only if they are both utter sluts and *as* utter sluts they will place no value at all in their sexual partner "of the moment" or even the sex that they are about to have. Unless of course it's exceptionally good sex, and even then they would lose the thrill of "discovery" with a new partner to keep on having monogamous sex with that same partner. So one is likely to cheat on the other, and they both know that, if they are intelligent, and if one is intelligent and the other isn't all that smart, then surely you don't expect the intelligent one to really place much stock in anything that happens in the next half-hour while they're wearing a condom, as long as they don't get an STD out of it.
10:51 am
Understanding of relationships FAIL:
" Demanding that your partner use a condom as a condition for sex is not a smart thing unless you really want to break up with them anyway."
Putting aside for a moment many millions of people who are not, in fact, looking for a long-term relationship, even if you want a relationship to last forever it may not, so you should take steps to protect yourself. If you think you've found "The One," have unprotected sex, meet another "The One" the next month or year or so, and then another "The One," etc., etc., you've just exposed yourself to a lot of risk! Very, very few people stay forever with their first girlfriend or boyfriend.
And no, this is not about "doing everything the woman says." This is an extremely well-proven public health measure that's necessary for BOTH of them. If you don't like her taste in music or you don't want to take out the garbage, fine, but don't act like something as important as STD protection is just any old disagreement.
10:51 am
...and if they are an utter slut and they do get an STD anyway (which is quite possible) what do you think that they will do when the next person who wants to believe that they are concerned with STD-transmission demands that they use a condom? Or even professes concern over STD-transmission?
Well they might admit that they already have an STD. Sure.
10:58 am
"even if you want a relationship to last forever it may not, so you should take steps to protect yourself."
How many times do you want to go around on this? I completely agree with that point.
I don't see condom-use as an effective way to do that. In fact it makes it even more likely that you will get an STD and/or end up in a bad relationship in which even if you don't get an STD from this person *now* you might get one later if they have sex with someone else, get an STD and then give it to you.
If condom-use would actually prevent the spread of STDs this would be a non-issue. They can't even keep you from getting HIV!
You can have 5 condoms on when you have sex with someone who has HIV and still get HIV from them. They're like oven-mitts, a hot stove can still burn you even if you're wearing one.
It is a farce to say that condoms are effective protection from STDs. There is only one effective protection from STDs. Don't get involved with anyone who has one.
11:05 am
"Understanding of relationships FAIL:"
And what do you think, that I'm some teenager who is fresh out of a sex-ed class?
You're failing to maintain basic credibility in this discussion. So I really am going to have to show some self-restraint and limit myself, I think that I've said more than enough already and just talking to you is creating more opportunity for you to power-up your Delusion Field.
Good luck with your condoms!
11:06 am
"2) Not that they shouldn’t wait to find out their partners’ STD status, but that they don’t."
Condoms are not going to save stupid people from getting STDs. Period. End of discussion.
11:07 am
Causality FAIL:
"If your actions are inconsistent with your claimed position then it is clear that your claim is shaky."
HOW exactly is condom use inconsistent with being clean? Statistically, people who regularly use condoms are much more likely to be clean than those who "trust."
"You don’t see how self-centered the woman is being by demanding that he use one without any real evidence that he should?"
WHO. CDC. NIH. AJPH. NHS. Guttmacher Institute.
You're being a self-centered idiot ignoring all real data and living in denial.
"The simple fact that he might have an STD is not “real evidence” that he should use a condom UNLESS they are both too eager to have sex to wait until they can screen themselves to the point of confidence (I know that you will debate that but still). Ergo: sluttism."
Okay, so you think somewhere between 75 and 99% of the population are sluts. Well, your misanthropy aside, all those people should use safe-sex practices. Also, many more than 25% of the population have long-lasting, meaningful relationships.
11:09 am
Logical conclusion FAIL:
"Condoms are not going to save stupid people from getting STDs. Period. End of discussion."
False. I've provided abundant data that they are a highly effective public health measure, that have drastically reduced the rates of STDs (yes, even among stupid people).
11:12 am
Ok one last post.
I'll shut up and read what you have to say without comment.. You shut up and read Savage Love.
11:16 am
"'“Condoms are not going to save stupid people from getting STDs. Period. End of discussion.”
False. I’ve provided abundant data that they are a highly effective public health measure, that have drastically reduced the rates of STDs (yes, even among stupid people)."
Yes, I've already acknowledged that reducing the HIV rate among Thai sex-workers from 80% to 20% is an impressive achievement. But that still means that 20% of Thai sex-workers have HIV.
11:17 am
you're clearly a glass half-full person.
Realizing this, it would remiss for me to waste time trying to point out that a half-full glass is still half-empty. And you don't even know for sure what is in the glass or who is going to put what in it next.
I'll just say that and leave this alone.
11:20 am
Practical solution FAIL:
"There is only one effective protection from STDs. Don’t get involved with anyone who has one."
Oh, that's really helpful advice!! And, no need for smoke detectors or fire escapes-- you can avoid all house fires by simply not living in a house that's flammable. No need for seatbelts--you can avoid all car accidents by never driving near anyone who's going to hit you.
Wishful thinking at its most absurd!
11:22 am
..seriously I promise you that I will read your posts. I don't dismiss the information that you provide in them, merely the conclusions that you reach from that information. Your conclusions are uniformly wrong.
Don't argue with me about this. Go forth confident that you are correct and enjoy the benefits of your learning and wisdom! :)
11:24 am
...please, go back and read post #331.
11:26 am
...honestly you consistently leave out critical parts of the issue, just blatantly ignore them. Then use that flawed conclusion to reinforce your delusions in other areas.
You're not "stupid", just irrational.
11:28 am
Re #331, a teenager fresh out of sex-ed class would at least be more informed than you are.
11:33 am
Self-awareness FAIL:
"…honestly you consistently leave out critical parts of the issue, just blatantly ignore them. Then use that flawed conclusion to reinforce your delusions in other areas.
You’re not “stupid”, just irrational."
This is exactly what YOU'RE doing, not me. There's an easy way to tell--I am able to quote abundant peer-reviewed data from world-respected research organizations. You haven't confronted them in any meaningful way--you've just spewed out a lot of prejudiced nonsense and fanciful scenarios that don't remotely correspond to actual human sexual behavior.
3:26 pm
"Re #331, a teenager fresh out of sex-ed class would at least be more informed than you are."
Really this epitomizes your level of rationality quite well, as well as your inability to deal with the facts in front of you that you don't like. That, basically, prove you wrong.
Denial as blatant as yours is *so* tedious. Boring. Repetitive to the point of predictability.
3:42 pm
ok post #345, time to put a stake in this argument. End it once and for all.
If you believe that condoms are an effective barrier to STD-transmission and you insist on their use for sex, the first time, then there's no reason to ever have a discussion about STDs between the two of you. Ever. At best the conversation goes like this:
"let's have sex"
"ok..."
"but I insist that we use a condom"
"ok". gets a condom and proceeds to have sex.
Repeat with the use of a condom as a given. Now the male has to think the same way that you do. If he doesn't use a condom then he ould expose himself to whatever STDs that you have (that he doesn't know about, but now he has effectively nullified the issue by agreeing to have sex with you with a condom. His only point of contention is that the condom may have been effective for a single act, but over time it will lose effectiveness on mere chance. But that chance is the same each and every time, unless he just doesn't use one. So now he has to use one. And if you want to stop using condoms then he has to throw the same argument back in your face.
Only when you confront the reality of sex without a condom will you have a serious discussion about STDs and confront the reality of them. Unless, of course, you happen to discuss STDs before you have sex, and discuss your individual sexual histories, or even afterwards you discuss any issues of infidelity and whether condoms were used or not during those "external" sessions. But that's just the same as individual sex before you two had sex the first time. Just another instance of it, so causality is lost. It doesn't matter whether either of you have sex with someone else after you meet, all that matters is that a condom was used. And again you are forced to accept their version of events, or say that they are a liar and can't be trusted. But you have no reason to say that unless you test the othe rperson for STDs and they come up positive. But they could come up positive anyway, either for STDs that they had before you or STDs that they got from you. And what do you think that they are going to say if they test positive? That you gave them an STD even though they used a condom with you every time. But you will say "that's impossible!".
Because that's your position right now. That it's just not possible to get an STD if you use a condom during sex.
Or else you have to come out from behind your Denial Field and admit that you're wrong about the effectiveness of condoms in terms of preventing STD-transmission, which shoots your whole argument to bits and pieces. So you won't do that. Instead you'll add full power to your Denial Field until you can calm down again.
3:47 pm
...of course that doesn't mean that your partner has to actually agree with you, just not verbalize his true opinion. So he's already lying to you, playing along just to get in your pants. Eventually he'll realize that you're just a dumb skank who believes that condoms will protect you from STDs. And he'll keep tapping your pussy until he finds someone else to fuck who actually has a brain. Then he'll dump you at high speed, either overtly if he's not all that smart and has at least *some* ethics (and certainly if his other pussy insists on it) or covertly if he is "crafty", certainly until he's sure that he can keep on tapping his new pussy the same way that he can tap his old pussy, hopefully even better.
And then when you find out that he's tapping some new pussy you will break down and cry and call him a cheating skank and he'll look at you and say? "I'm a cheating skank? You're the one who is dumb enough to think that condoms will protect you from an STD, to the point where you would happily fuck me even if I had one. If I was a skank then I'd stay with *you*. I may have cheated on you for a while but I did come clean eventually. I could have just never told you and stopped calling you altogether, leaving you to pick up the pieces. I did you a favor. Now just go out and find some new cock and you can forget all about me".
How many times has that happened to you?
And you still haven't learned, have you.
3:49 pm
...or of course, you could drop him first, and then just say that he didn't impress you enough to let him tap it without a condom. So you had to find someone else.
3:51 pm
...ps, if you want, you can spend some time on the Internet searching for papers from reputable sites that will prove me wrong. Why don't you give that a try?
4:03 pm
"It doesn’t matter whether either of you have sex with someone else after you meet, all that matters is that a condom was used. And again you are forced to accept their version of events, or say that they are a liar and can’t be trusted. But you have no reason to say that unless you test the othe rperson for STDs and they come up positive."
...well, you could say that he was a liar and can't be trusted simply on the basis that he cheated on you, especially if you found out without him telling you, but if he told you then he was honest enough to tell you when he didn't have to (unless he was pressured by the other woman or by external forces).
So yes you could say that he can't be trusted even as a boyfriend and dump him on that basis, but that's probably ok with him because he cheated on you in the first place because he wasn't happy having sex with you. His only problem is if he loses his new pussy and your puss at the same time, with no new pussy in sight. But at worse that puts him at square one with yet another girl. And if he doesn't have an STD yet he can say that he's lucky that condoms were effective *enough* to keep him from getting one from you, because surely at that point you're not going to go out and get a test just to prove to him that you don't have an STD. In fact you might even have one from your previous boyfriend. So the moment that you insist on his wearing a condom as a sexual precondition, he's in a no-lose situation unless that condom fails to protect him from your STDs. Either you give up the pussy and justify his choice to wear a condom, or you hold out on him afterwards and justify him going out and finding some new pussy. Either way he's going to get laid, and he might even get some better pussy out of the deal. All you're going to get is your box of condoms and a sore pussy. Assuming, again, that he doesn't have an STD and he doesn't transmit it to you. Which is what you're hoping for, in this case, right?
But if he does wear a condom and gives you an STD anyway then you're not only fucked but polluted as well. That, young lady, is the outcome that he is going to avoid if at all possible, in terms of that happening to *him*.
4:08 pm
...unless you think that he should want to stay with you even if you have an STD...
In other words you think that he should value a sexual relationship with a woman who has an STD over one who doesn't. So again we get down to brass tacks. Would you happily date, even marry, a guy who has an STD, if you knew that he had one? And if so then you're facing a lifetime of sex with him, and what are you going to do from keeping that STD off you? Use a condom? LOL
That's completely unrealistic. Do you seriously think that couples where one partner has AIDS always use a condom and never have sex without one yet still have a satisfying sexual relationship? What about other STDs like herpes and genital warts? Sure, that's going to work well.
I wouldn't even date a girl with a cold sore much less a full blown case of genital herpes or warts. And there's no fucking way that I'm going to face a lifetime of condom use in the hopes of not getting HIV from some woman. I'd rather spend the rest of my life fucking a blowup doll.
4:13 pm
For the last time, if condoms were truly an effective barrier to STD-transmission, women would actually feel completely free to go out and have sex with strange men, as long as they felt safe otherwise. And monogamous relationships would be that less significant. There would be no legitimate reason for a couple to complain if one "stepped out" on the other, as long as it didn't destroy their own relationship. In fact Dan Savage actually argues for it!
..sure, you'll find out real quick if your partner really loves you if you let him choose other partners freely and return. He might even love you more just for that reason alone.
4:16 pm
Not to mention that if he's out giving a "Dirty Sanchez" to some gay guy, and you call him over for a quickie...all he has to do is slap on a new condom and he's ready to please you!
4:22 pm
...the bottom line is that if you truly think that condoms are an effective barrier to STD transmission then there is no such thing as "skanky sex" as long as a condom is used. So why do you care if your partner is faithful or not as long as he is happy and with you? Why not let your "eager beaver" hop out and "take the edge off", a little, and come back and spend "quality time" with you?
Obviously because of the health risks associated with sex even when condoms are used. Just for a start. Not to mention the implications to those of us in society who have morals, ethics, values, and common-sense :) but then you don't need to care about us, just go out and "get" a new "boyfriend" at will :)
Just make sure that they each strap on a condom and all is well :)
...hey, it works so well for gay guys, why not for straight women? I mean that's what you claim that *straight* guys do, right? Have sex with every woman who will lay down for them, using a condom to make it all "ok", right?
So obviously strict condom use eliminates all health-care problems related with skanky sex. Sure!
4:29 pm
...now if you could just eliminate that pesky 20% HIV+positive rate with those Thai sex workers who use condoms.
Life would be all roses and sunshine.
And condoms too :)
Hell, then you'd be stupid to even take a chance with sex without one, right? :) We'd all use condoms all the time and rely on AI for reproduction. I mean, if you could just actually prove that rigorous condom-use meant that you would never get an STD no matter how many people you fuck, life would be great! We could even criminalize sex without condoms just like we have criminalized driving without seat-belts, exceeding the speed-limit and talking/texting on a cellphone while driving, because you know how dangerous those acts are and how effective the laws against them are :)
....of course people still speed while driving without a seatbelt on and using their cellphone, so I guess that a lot of people have so much to learn ;)
4:31 pm
...put your money where your mouth is.
Create ads on OBC.com, CL, Match and PoF that list one and only one criteria. The guy always uses a condom, and always will.
See how many ads you get in response.
Then just pick a few at random and have at it :)
4:32 pm
Amanda Hess, I'd like to suggest that you consider a "Report this User" function on this comments section.
"Flag this post" works very well for people who post single, short, stupid comments, but someone like jf1 who posts hundreds of long-winded posts to completely dominate a discussion can't be effectively addressed by flagging posts. I've tried flagging his posts--it literally takes HOURS.
I'm all for intelligent and even contentious debate, even with people with whom I will never agree. BUT someone who regularly misrepresents his opponents' arguments, blatantly ignores or fails to address factual information, and spins ridiculous (and very VERY long) fanciful scenarios instead of presenting demonstrable facts is not adding to the discussion in any way.
On the other hand, I do feel that misinformation about sexual health and gender violence should be answered. Furthermore, it seems that posters like this want to dominate and silence female voices, so I do consider it important to answer them back, or they think they've won.
But, if someone is blatantly disregarding all logical discourse to dominate a conversation with a bunch of nonsense this forum should really not offer it space, especially when it prevents others from engaging in useful discussion.
4:49 pm
Hi LeftSide,
I've forwarded your idea to our comments guru. The "flag this comment" system is just a test-run, so we'll be re-evaluating it and considering tweaks sometime soon. I'll definitely raise the "report this user" function for discussion.
Amanda
4:59 pm
"“Flag this post” works very well for people who post single, short, stupid comments, but someone like jf1 who posts hundreds of long-winded posts to completely dominate a discussion can’t be effectively addressed by flagging posts."
Hey, I've more than let you and others speak your piece. So you hate it when I actually have intelligent, rational thoughts and write them out here? LOL I can see how that *would* be a problem for you.
But if you want to burn the opposition for lack of a better method of rebuttal, feel free. Just goes to prove my point about you and your PC cohorts :)
Anyway this topic is played out already. It's better, much more potential-packed, to talk about legalizing pot. Many of the same issues with almost none of the obvious holes and logical flaws. Legalizing prostitution (even given the availability of condoms) will never fly simply because condoms just aren't an effective means of preventing the spread of STDs, and prostitution is an excellent way to take this issue to its logical extreme. So let's try pot-smoking, which so many now claim is absolutely NOT harmful to the smokers' health, has NO negative side effects (as long as they are not smoking while operating machinery, or some such idiocy).
And even better, there's plenty of scientific data available on the Internet to back up these claims!
So why is smoking pot still illegal, unethical and immoral, and indeed, un-PC? Except for perhaps legitimate medical usage?
Seriously if you can't argue your way out of a dime-bag you have no chance of arguing your way out of a condom-pack.
5:01 pm
re: "I’ll definitely raise the “report this user” function for discussion."
yes, you can't have Internet cliques without such a function :)
Luckily I was able to make my posts when true Free Speech existed in your blog comments :)
I'm sure that many sexually-active people will read all this and thank me. If not today than someday for sure.
5:04 pm
"I’ve tried flagging his posts–it literally takes HOURS."
Try just reading them WITHOUT automatically and thoughtlessly engaging your Denial Field.
You might learn something useful.
5:07 pm
"and spins ridiculous (and very VERY long) fanciful scenarios "
Ok fine. Let's hear some of your scenarios (attach the adjective of choice) that demonstrate the use of condoms in a successful manner in terms of facilitating long-term relationships.
Why not some anecdotes or even hypothetical scenarios? How exactly does this work to the betterment of Mankind? It ould be nice if you could explain this without such reliance on "scientific data" :)
Since we're all individuals and condom-use ultimately breaks down to an individual choice. Let's leave the statistics out of it, since condoms can and do fail to prevent the spread of STDs at least "on occasion". Even you have admitted that they are not 100% effective.
So take us through your scenarios where they are used and are at turns effective and ineffective.
5:10 pm
Seriously please show us how you work your way forward given each possible member of the condom-use "sample space".
You know, man and woman in a monogamous relationship who do not have STDs who use condoms every time, man and woman in a monogamous relationship who do not use STDs who use condoms occasionally, man who has an STD in a monogamous relationship with a woman who doesn't who use condoms every time, etc and so on.
Tell us how all these cases work out behind your Denial Field.
5:12 pm
...I've shown you my opinion of how they all work out in my version of Reality. Now show me how they all work out in yours.
5:17 pm
Honestly I'm 150% confident in two things here.
One, I'm right. And 2nd, that you're so wrong that you can't even handle it.
5:24 pm
Really I have tried to think of a way in which you are right. There isn't one. Reliance on condoms to halt or even reduce the spread of STDs will just lead to more STDs that aren't blocked by condoms. But those fall into two camps. One, the STDs that are blocked by *proper* condom use, and the STDs that are blocked even if condom use is improper.
There are just too many STDs in both camps for condoms to be an effective means of preventing the spread of STDs. They may knock down the numbers of a certain group of people in which certain types of STDs are prevalent, sure. But stop people who do not have STDs from getting them? You're just dreaming.
5:27 pm
jf1 asks, "So you hate it when I actually have intelligent, rational thoughts and write them out here?"
If you ever have an intelligent or rational thought I'll let you know.
5:30 pm
jf1 says: "Ok fine. Let’s hear some of your scenarios"
I don't use scenarios. I use DATA. Objective, measurable evidence that happens in the real world, validated by statisticians and experts in the field.
5:31 pm
"There are just too many STDs in both camps for condoms to be an effective means of preventing the spread of STDs."
Sorry I got ahead of myself there, I meant to say that there are not enough STDs in both camps for condoms to be an effective means of preventing the spread of STDs. There are too many that are not in either camp and even then the ones that are only blocked by proper use beg to be transmitted during improper use. I apologize for not stating that clearly. Even beyond that you can't extrapolate to the social consequences of condom use based on the statistics of STD prevention. That's one reason that I brought up pot-smoking. The argument that it is health-neutral is fairly clear, and well-supported medically. Pot smoking is still not accepted in our society any more than excessive drinking is.
Or, flagrant promiscuity.
If you can't rationalize a couple sitting around and getting stoned on a regular basis in terms of their social image, then you have no chance of rationalizing them resorting to condom-use on a regular basis in terms of their social image. No sane woman is going to want to date a guy who she feels that she has to use a condom with for her own protection, and likewise, no sane guy would date such a woman.
5:31 pm
"I don’t use scenarios. I use DATA. Objective, measurable evidence that happens in the real world, validated by statisticians and experts in the field."
Data is meaningless without context.
5:41 pm
This doesn't make any sense:
"They may knock down the numbers of a certain group of people in which certain types of STDs are prevalent, sure. But stop people who do not have STDs from getting them? You’re just dreaming."
How would the number of STDs in a population go down if people who didn't have them weren't prevented from getting them??
5:43 pm
"Data is meaningless without context."
Context means situations in THE REAL WORLD. Not in your head. You haven't provided any credible reason why these contexts don't apply, and you haven't provided any objective evidence that supports your point of view.
5:51 pm
Re #370:
what, do we see some light, here?
You're actually asking with an open mind?
Let's review. Condoms effectively prevent the transmission of certain STDs based on the probability of a transmission given a sexual event in which condoms are used, properly.
They do not prevent the transmission of all STDs with equal effectiveness. Likewise, given multiple events the likelihood of a successful STD transmission is higher than the probability of a successful STD transmission given ONE event (under the associated conditions in which the probability is specified), yes?
Plus we assume that some STDs are cured through medical treatment, yes? And as well, some of the test group enter and some exit. Presumably if the percentage of test-group members with an STD is higher than society at large, the rate will decrease simply through "aging" of the grup members. In the case of HIV some of them will die out (or have their t-cell count restored through treatment) and be replaced by others who do not have HIV. Your 80-20 numbers are likewise affected by this.
So there are numerous ways that the prevalance of certain STDs can drop without condoms preventing *all* STDs from being transmitted through sex. Which can happen and presumably does happen (I'll grant you that that is possible) but in any case condoms still do not prevent the transmission of all STDs. They aren't even 100% effective with ANY STD. Which you've already admitted.
So in the end it's up to you now to admit that I was right when I said that. And you know why.
5:53 pm
re: #371
So provide some real-world context. Instead of just referring to scientific papers. For each possible independent scenario involving a man, a woman, a box of condoms, and the list of STDs that I sent to you earlier. Feel free to correct that site based on any site you choose.
5:54 pm
you said that my scenarios are "ridiculous (and very VERY long) fanciful scenarios ”"
so let's see yours.
Show us how condoms work in your world.
6:03 pm
re #368, trust me: if we lived in a world where all men care about is getting laid, believe me we would happily use condoms. We'd have them on already before she even mentions them.
Of course you'd have to have women who would have sex with such men, which sort of takes us back to square one. As long as women care about more than just having sex, men will care about a lot more than sex.
Given that concern, condom-use will just be a side-issue, not the main concern. By far. And that's how it should be.
6:07 pm
"As long as women care about more than just having sex, men will care about a lot more than sex."
At last we come to the crux of the issue. Poor ol' jf1 just isn't getting any. Are you honestly saying that, as a gender, men would just fuck all day long if they could get away with it? Now who's the one throwing out gross over-generalizations and offensive stereotypes?
(Protip: It's you.)
6:09 pm
#372, ok, this is actually an attempt (I think at an honest argument) so I'll thank you for that. Here is where you're wrong:
1) You can't just claim that you imagine people are dying off. Provide credible information. Anyway, how would condom use affect the rate of who dies off or leaves a population?
2) You also forget that these populations are being ADDED to. In the case of Thai sex workers, by new people being involved in sex work. In the case of high schoolers, by new people who enter high school. These people don't have the diseases in question, and are being protected by condoms from getting STDs, which is what you asked about.
3) The condom effectiveness rates I've quoted are per YEAR of use, not EVENT. Read the information I've given you, for goodness' sake!
6:14 pm
"1) You can’t just claim that you imagine people are dying off. Provide credible information. "
You're talking about Thai sex workers, 80% of whom are HIV-positive.
"2) You also forget that these populations are being ADDED to"
I mentioned that if you read what I said.
"3) The condom effectiveness rates I’ve quoted are per YEAR of use, not EVENT."
Per year, per event, whatever. I hope that their effectiveness per event is higher.
6:16 pm
re #376 assuming that you're not strictly trolling, it's quite possible that your post is nothing more than an over-generalization, a mass of assumptions. I'll leave you to comfort yourself with whatever gave you that impression. Consider yourself lucky that I even responded to that post.
6:18 pm
...also you are neglecting the fact that the data could be skewed through a loss of randomness, if Thai sex workers let it get out that 80% of them had HIV, that might affect their "marketability" LOL
6:18 pm
I... feel... soooo... lucky...! I shall treasure this moment, forever. Thank you, wise jf1, for deigning to reply. I'm sure you have much better things to be doing with your time...
6:21 pm
"Are you honestly saying that, as a gender, men would just fuck all day long if they could get away with it?"
...I guarantee you that that would happen on occasion and it *does* happen on occasion, given the right context. If that has not happened to you, I'm very sorry.
But this is a side-question to the issue under discussion.
6:22 pm
"Thank you, wise jf1, for deigning to reply. I’m sure you have much better things to be doing with your time…"
Oh I do, and I'm sure that you do as well :)
but every once in a while shit like this has to be done, otherwise you women would just fill your heads up with bullshit even worse than they are already LOL
6:22 pm
1) No, you idiot. The RATES OF HIV CASES in the population dropped by 80%. Not that 80% are positive. Honestly, how stupid are you?
2) And those people who are added to the population are having sex at the same rates as the original population, but when the population uses condoms they get STDs at a much lower rate. Really, this is elementary.
3) Please discuss how that may affect transmission patterns.
6:23 pm
I'm so glad we have your assiduous attention telling our silly lady-brains how to think. I don't know how I'd manage without anonymous bigots on internet message boards explaining the facts of life to me.
6:27 pm
By the way, according to the WHO, the prevalence of HIV among Thai sex workers in the height of the epidemic was 44%. Just in case you were wondering.
6:32 pm
"Anyway, how would condom use affect the rate of who dies off or leaves a population?"
LOL you're the health-care professional, and you're asking *me* that?
Just how confused are you?
Seriously you need to talk less about "data" and more about context. It's an old scientific adage. You can have all the data that you want. If you can't put it in context, then you don't really understand it. It's just numerical gibberish.
Especially if you can't put it in accurate context.
Furthermore if you can't logically extrapolate from the data in context, you fail to do proper science. Any idiot can look at a spreadsheet of numbers and make conclusions. The science is in the logic used to make the conclusions, not simply in generating the data.
The proper way to perform any scientific experiment is to map out your test-cases -possible starting conditions, experimental progressions and outcomes- before you begin to do any experiments. Then you have to ensure that the data correlates to the cases that you test, this requires rigorous control of how you connect results to the experimental method. Basically you have to plan the whole thing out from end to end to really know what you are doing and perform valid experimentation, then its a simple matter of counting the results from each experimental case, each progression. You know what is possible, all you do is collect statistical information on what results occur from what starting-cases and from there you attempt to make logical conclusions based on the statistics. So you have to lay out all this ground work before you even start, much less have it available when you're done (not to mention when you're talking about conclusions).
You said that all my cases were nonsense, so what are yours? I mean, you should know for sure, especially since you love to reference all this "3rd party data" :)
6:36 pm
...to get to the point, you sweep up too much "experimental-area" under the heading of "either of them may have an STD". Break this down into specific cases and life will be much easier for you.
Either he has an STD but she doesn't,
she does but he doesn't,
they both do
or neither do.
Start from each case, throw in mandatory condom use and tell me what happens, logically, from each case.
Then you could perform the experiments and gather data and make conclusions, or you can try to reference earlier experiments of the same type. But if you just make a sweeping "reference" then it's quite unclear that you actually understand it.
6:54 pm
Wow, you really don't understand the scientific method at all, do you?!?!
Setting up a case in your head and deducing logically from that is called a syllogism, and was the standard of thought IN THE MIDDLE AGES. The rest of us have advanced in our thinking over the past 700 years.
If you're trying to actually measure people based a priori on whether or not they follow the behaviors you want them to, or have the characteristics you want them to, this is called a case-control study and IS NOT VALID for determining the prevalence, because it is set artificially in the study design.
7:02 pm
...besides...you say "either of them may have an STD" as if that's a given. Without prior testing, you don't know that any more than they each know if they each "may" have one. You have, as we say, a dependent variable that is a function of two independent variables.
The male and female each have independent and uncorrelated probabilities of having an STD. They may have any one of many STDs. Some of them will "effectively" be blocked by proper condom use and some won't. The condom use may be proper and it may not. You are stringing together a whole lot of independent variables and trying to rationalize a certain range for the resultant dependent variable. That simply does not follow mathematically without some additional information about the individual independent variables, in other words you have to knock some of those independent variables into a dependency.
What you seem to be missing here is that that is exactly what men and women do when they decide both who and when to have sex. You speak of condom use and "STD prevalence" in the abstract and you refer to statistics across a group. As I said before, these are invalid simplifications (I said "you're ignoring a host of relevant information" or something like that).
You do that just in talking about Thai sex workers, not to mention men and women in general. So I said to you, "ignore the statistics. Get down to individual cases, where the statistics only apply in terms of condom effectiveness in preventing the transmission of individual STDs on a per-STD basis" (even that is probably based on general use but still).
I just want you to say what would happen in each case, each independent case, given that both have an STD, one has an STD or neither have an STD, the STD could be any one or many of a range of STDs and they may or may not use a condom properly every time they use a condom (but assume that they do use a condom every time).
You also can talk about whether the condom use is the mans' idea (and the woman either goes along or they don't have sex), the womans' idea (and the man either goes along or they don't have sex) or both through mutual agreement.
So now we have, let's count...3 independent variables (combining the STD-type into the question of whether either of them have an STD). Representing "STD" in binary form, you could have from 0 to 2^N-1 depending on how many STDs N you consider. Double that for each of them together. You represent the "terms of agreement" by a 3rd independent variable with 4 values, requiring 2 bits to code. You need at least a L=2N+2 bit code to represent the experiment space, just for the STARTING POINTS.
Where N is the # of STDs that you consider. The end result of all this experimentation is to determine a probability Pl for each possible outcome l. And you assume through vast oversimplification that you have values for Pl for each point in the experiment-space. when you don't. You not only don't have those values, but you don't even know what the experiment-space really is, much less the set of possible experimental progressions.
But you're happy to talk here as if you're a flipping expert and you should be taken seriously.
So fine say that you want to talk only about HIV, HPV, HPS-1 maybe and "Gn" for gonorrhea. Just those four. Valid since many of the others can be suppressed through medical treatment, if not outright eliminated. That gives you 10 required "bits", and 1024 possible specific experimental starting-points. Specific experimental cases stem from there, flowing strictly by logic (the strict application of proper logic).
So in your world, what happens from each case?
Don't worry about what they know or don't know. I didn't put that in as a variable. You don't need to consider it to map out your experiments. If we include their specific knowledge (or understanding) of their STD status that would require 2N more bits...a total of 4N+2 bit coding for over 64 thousand possible combinations for just those 4 STDs. With associated logical progressions.
7:05 pm
"1) No, you idiot. The RATES OF HIV CASES in the population dropped by 80%. Not that 80% are positive. Honestly, how stupid are you?"
Well, in that case it would be even less impressive. 80% of 40% is what? A lot less than 80% :)
And if you have problems with thought experiments then you must have problems with much of contemporary quantum-mechanics as well. Is that the case?
7:06 pm
"I’m so glad we have your assiduous attention telling our silly lady-brains how to think. I don’t know how I’d manage without anonymous bigots on internet message boards explaining the facts of life to me."
Lady ;)
Sarcasm is only as sharp as the mind that wields it. In your case I must admit that your sarcasm is quite dull. Not like your words are a reflection on your intelligence or anything.
7:08 pm
"If you’re trying to actually measure people based a priori on whether or not they follow the behaviors you want them to, or have the characteristics you want them to, this is called a case-control study and IS NOT VALID for determining the prevalence, because it is set artificially in the study design."
Stop whinging and tell me just what you think would happen given each possibility assuming that we limit the two subjects to confronting just the 4 STDs that I mentioned above. If you can't do that then at best you're an experimentalist. And people don't want to be lab-rats, you realize this?
7:12 pm
hm, actually I was wrong, if we consider what they each think that their own STD status is not to mention the others, that adds quite a few more bits to the requirement. We have to represent not only their own STD status as it actually is, but what they each think that it is both for themselves and for their partner. That's 3N bits just for each one, a total of 6N bits together, just for this!
Plus the 2 bits to represent "freedom of choice" :)
A total of 26 bits just given the aforementioned 4 STDs. We're already up to 64 million starting points.
Can you two ladies handle that? :)
7:13 pm
and you can add 2N more for what each one thinks that the other one thinks they have. For a total of 4 billion possible starting points.
7:16 pm
That may be wrong too, there may be something to say for how faithful each thinks the other will be (and how faithful they actually will be) after they have sex. Then you have to consider the STD status of the people that they cheated with, how many times they cheated with them, how many different people they cheated with...this experimental space has grown astronomical, and we're still only talking about 4 STDs.
..what a mess!
I wonder how you could possibly actually test all these cases through experimentation? Luckily we're using our minds to work through this, huh?
We just have to make true logical decisions and restrain ourselves from illogical conclusions :)
7:17 pm
..or you can process all this information emotionally like women tend to do ;)
7:22 pm
ok I'll quit here. It's been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would be a vast oversimplification leading to highly erroneous results (ignoring the possibility for illogical conclusions based on those erroneous results) to only consider STDs that can "effectively" be blocked by a condom and mandatory condom use between two adults. Such an analysis proves nothing other than the person making it is highly irrational.
But that's ok if they come to the right conclusion, but how would we know what "the right conclusion" is? Clearly that depends on who you ask. Which is, I guess, why so many people have different opinons on this and why they feverently believe in their opinions. So fine. Go out and find someone who you want to have sex with, who wants to have sex with you, and who will agree to your "conditions" and see how well it works.
As I said before, the best proof is the pudding itself. Stop telling everyone else to use condoms and go out and use some yourself, goddam it.
7:24 pm
Oh, my god: "Well, in that case it would be even less impressive. 80% of 40% is what? A lot less than 80% :)"
You are such a fucking idiot. You don't even understand how percentages work??? You're feeble mind cannot comprehend the phrase "reduced by X percent"?
7:30 pm
But LSP! He used a "winky face"! Don't you know what a "winky face" means?! It means he's willing to humor your silly lady-mistake, because of your chromosomal deficiency and all.
And also that he expects you to emoticon back at him as he blithely dismisses your entire gender as thinking individuals. To wit:
"..or you can process all this information emotionally like women tend to do ;)"
... Sometimes I wonder, does jf1 know any *actual* women, or does he just read about them in magazines?
7:55 pm
"… Sometimes I wonder, does jf1 know any *actual* women, or does he just read about them in magazines?"
...one thing that I've learned in life, people who are much smarter than I am tend not to have long conversations with me. On the other hand I do tend to have long conversations with people who aren't nearly as smart as I am simply because I like to hear myself talk. I do impress myself sometimes.
8:03 pm
Study design FAIL: "Without prior testing, you don’t know that any more than they each know if they each “may” have one."
EXACTLY!!! And, this is exactly how people interact in the real world. The vast majority of the time partners DO NOT know their std status a priori. If you actually wait to find out someone's status before you sleep with them, you would be pretty (but not entirely!!) safe, but since the majority of people don't actually do that, it really has no bearing on the public health issue and the topic of this thread. But, if you're in a situation where you don't actually have a recent printout from the person's health provider certifying they're free of STDs, use a condom.
All of your wasted words on how many starting conditions there are is irrelevant--you're just describing a bunch of case-control studies that don't address what the prevalences of these groups are in the actual population.
In sum--people who use condoms consistently have dramatically lower STD prevalences than those who don't. None of the 1000's of words you've written about "starting conditions" change that fact.
8:08 pm
"Study design FAIL: “Without prior testing, you don’t know that any more than they each know if they each “may” have one.”
EXACTLY!!! And, this is exactly how people interact in the real world."
But the doubt is all in the minds of individuals, not the two together. She thinks that she knows that she doesn't have an STD so she demands that he has one because she doesn't know his status as well as she knows hers. Why can't that work both ways?
The product of the two doubts is clearly less than each individual component. You take her doubt and just...run with it to all sorts of illogical conclusions.
You should be more rational. Unless you're happy just being an emotional girl ;)
But in any case you and many women like you are trying to force men into wearing condoms when really they just don't want to. So how's that working for you?
Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- To some men, she might seem like the perfect woman: She's a willowy 5 feet 7 and 120 pounds. She'll chat with you endlessly about your interests. And she'll have sex whenever you please -- as long as her battery doesn't run out.
Meet Roxxxy, who may be the world's most sophisticated talking female sex robot. For $7,000, she's all yours.
"She doesn't vacuum or cook, but she does almost everything else," said her inventor, Douglas Hines, who unveiled Roxxxy last month at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lifelike dolls, artificial sex organs and sex-chat phone lines have been keeping the lonely company for decades. But Roxxxy takes virtual companionship to a new level.
Powered by a computer under her soft silicone "skin," she employs voice-recognition and speech-synthesis software to answer questions and carry on conversations. She even comes loaded with five distinct "personalities," from Frigid Farrah to Wild Wendy, that can be programmed to suit customers' preferences.
"There's a tremendous need for this kind of product," said Hines, a computer scientist and former Bell Labs engineer.
Roxxxy won't be available for delivery for several months, but Hines is taking pre-orders through his Web site, TrueCompanion.com, where thousands of men have signed up.
"They're like, 'I can't wait to meet her,' " Hines said. "It's almost like the anticipation of a first date."
8:11 pm
Wow.
How long before she's "interviewed" on Leno? :)
Would she make as much of an ass of herself as Madonna has on a regular basis when she appears on Letterman? I wonder how much statistical data can be downloaded into her computer-brain? :)
8:27 pm
I swear, can you post without posting nonsense? Is that at all possible?
" If you actually wait to find out someone’s status before you sleep with them, you would be pretty (but not entirely!!) safe, but since the majority of people don’t actually do that,"
Do the majority of people have an STD?
Do they even have one, not to mention many?
Then for the majority of people this is ok.
It actually works well.
Even your Thai sex workers didn't have an HIV rate over 50%, right? Even before using condoms?
Are we at the point yet where over half of the US population has an STD, yes or no? I presume no, and ask you further, what percentage of the US population uses a condom on a regular basis? 50%? 20%? 10%? Do you even know?
Do you even *care* to know?
Or are you just intent on chanting your mantra...knowing that people don't want to hear it?
"...but since the majority of people don’t actually do that, it really has no bearing on the public health issue and the topic of this thread."
What, the fact that even a minority of people actually wait to find out the STD status of their partner (not to mention themselves) has no bearing on the PH issue or the topic of this thread?
WHAT?!?
So you're just going to dismiss my entire position out of hand? I see :)
Apparently you don't feel like considering it seriously :)
" But, if you’re in a situation where you don’t actually have a recent printout from the person’s health provider certifying they’re free of STDs, use a condom."
Yet again for the Nth time, the fact that you think that they don't know the status of their partner does not equate to their use of a condom. It doesn't even *imply* the use of a condom. You have said many times that they cannot know for sure. So be done with this. There will always be uncertainty just as there will always be hard-ons and wet-pussies. Hard-ons and wet pussies aren't going to use a condom just because you're afraid that they might get an STD if they have sex! You have to give them something better than "if you don't know the STD status of your partner for sure then use a condom". Don't you get it?
Writing it on a fucking billboard doesn't make it make sense! Your fucking fear of the unknown with regards to two other people doesn't make a good explanation for why THEY should use a condom. The central issue is the woman who is on the verge of having sex INSISTING on the use of a condom. NOT YOU. Your opinion is fucking irrelevant and your statistics have no significance in their situation.
But you would feel better if they respected your opinion over their own, yes?
"All of your wasted words on how many starting conditions there are is irrelevant–you’re just describing a bunch of case-control studies that don’t address what the prevalences of these groups are in the actual population."
No, and in individual cases the prevalances of these groups in the actual population doesn't matter either. There's no connection between general statistics and individual cases. Your point is not only moot, it's nonsensical.
8:35 pm
If your position made any sense at all, if it were at all logical, we could look at general statistics across the population and KNOW the likelihood that each of us has an STD.
It's like you do not fucking understand statistics and probability.
If you were making any sense at all and you were a white female between the ages of 21 and 25 with a 4-year college degree from an eastern school, we could just look up the "general statistics" on such women and KNOW the likelihood that you have an STD. It would be, let's see...ask the Google...23.15376829385%. Depending on whether we are talking about a weekend night or a weeknight. No other factors considered. You don't see the difference between that and actually talking about your specific case?
It's no wonder that you babble about "data". It goes in your eyes and out your mouth just like there's no brain between the two.
If that were true you would have an equal chance of getting an STD from fucking any white guy between the ages of 21 and 26 with a 4 year college degree from an east-coast school, yes?
I swear you're too dumb to see how dumb you are.
8:37 pm
Basic syntax FAIL:
"But the doubt is all in the minds of individuals, not the two together. She thinks that she knows that she doesn’t have an STD so she demands that he has one because she doesn’t know his status as well as she knows hers. Why can’t that work both ways?"
What the hell does this mean? "The doubt is all in the minds of individuals, not the two together"??? Huh? What point are you TRYING to make, and could you say it in English?
She doesn't know his sexual history, so she should insist he uses a condom. He probably doesn't know hers either, so he should insist on a condom.
8:47 pm
Oh, my god!! Not understand statistics and probability? Like you, the fucking genius who can't understand the phrase "reduced by 80%"??
What point are you trying to make with this college-educated white male aged whatever? Any person may have an STD. It doesn't matter if a group with which you have arbitrarily associated them has a 25% or a 44% chance. That person either does or doesn't. You don't know. So protect yourself. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
This makes no sense:
"The central issue is the woman who is on the verge of having sex INSISTING on the use of a condom. NOT YOU. Your opinion is fucking irrelevant and your statistics have no significance in their situation."
Yes, I am saying she should insist on the use of a condom. (So should he, too, but this thread is specifically about dealing with guys who don't.) How do the statistics have no relevance to their situation? For all they know they could have STDs, so they should take steps to protect themselves and their partner. Statistically, those who protect themselves are MUCH better-off.
8:49 pm
...the female, who insists on condom use, is making that determination on her own, on her own basis. Which could be for any reason.
You are making it for your own reasons and agreeing with her, partially because you have no idea who she's fucking. You're making a whole host of assumptions and running it through that rats' nest that you call a brain and agreeing with her.
What if she looks at you like I would and says that you're an idiot? What would you say about her then? Well, *I* disagree with you, what if she does? Are you going to say that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot?
You cannot just SAY these things and make them true. Even if you feel like saying it. simply vociferously and repetitively voicing your opinion in a strident tone does not make the words coming out of your mouth any more logical (indeed in polite society we tend to dismiss such pronouncements out of hand, as the voice of a mad person, but I won't go that far as that isn't logical either).
You don't know the STD status of your partner, you have two simple choices (I swear this is like explaining drinking too much to a 15 year old). Either you have sex with them or you don't.
They're going to have sex assuming that they stay together.
Thus they have two choices. Use a condom or not.
They're going to stop using condoms if they stay together.
But look here we have you sayng that they should use a condom!
Because condom use cut HIV rates by 80% for Thai sex workers and they also reduced STD rates for teenagers in Massachusettes and "in general" they are good for our society!
That doesn't matter a hill of fucking beans for the two people who are staring at each other with lust in their eyes. They are not "general society" do you get it?
We must assume that they want to have sex because they find each other to be sexually desirable. Is this simply because he has a cock and she has a pussy? Because they're both horny and each is willing? You act as if it is!
Have you ever stopped to think about why they want to have sex with each other? Has that ever occurred to you? And do you think that every couple wants to have sex for the same reasons, in the same conditions?
Can you simply not see that even if they do not KNOW the STD status of each other, they still may be quite right in THINKING that neither one of them has an STD and unprotected sex between them would be just fine? Even if you think otherwise? In fact your "statistics" prove that that is the case quite often, yes?
Yes, some couples are wrong in reaching this opinion. I realize this. But that doesn't mean that they are ALL wrong. But you don't care about that, you have a mantra and you want them to repeat it. That will make you happy and in your opinion, "make them safer".
Well I have a mantra for them too even though you just dismissed it out of hand. Fine. Let's just forget about it then because you will be happier that way.
Well following that logic, let's assume that the woman would be happier if the man uses a condom. Let's take logic entirely out of this and run on pure emotion. Let's assume that she'll even be so ecstatic that she will fuck him if he doesn't and she'll be so unhappy that she won't have anything to do with him if he refuses. Fine. Are we to assume that the man has no emotions as well, yes or no? Because if he is ruled by his emotions much like a woman is, then he is just as likely to do something even less logical, just like a woman. Yes or no?
And if she insists that he uses a condom, he will EMOTIONALLY respond by telling her that the only reason they need a condom is if she has an STD. And she will EMOTIONALLY respond in the same vein. And then they each will EMOTIONALLY deny that they have an STD. And then they will say, rationally, "ok, fuck it, we either won't use a condom or we won't have sex".
Yes or no?
Or, "emotionally" the man will agree to use a condom and then resent the woman forever after. And as well she will resent the fact that she had to make him use a condom.
And in the long run neither of them will ever really know for sure if they have an STD (yes?) so they are locked into this negative emotion forever, she not trusting him and he resenting her.
And that is what you RATIONALLY think should happen?
But you don't give a shit as long as they use a condom. Right? That's all it takes to make you happy, right?
8:55 pm
"What the hell does this mean? “The doubt is all in the minds of individuals, not the two together”??? "
They're not the fucking borg, lady. They may each have the same opinion but the opinion exists in her head or his, maybe they each share it but it's not "a common opinion".
They cannot have the exact same opinion about who has what STD and what to do about it and why. They may come to the same conclusion and state it together (or at least profess to) but they won't have the same rationale behind it.
The bottom line is that it's highly unlikely that they each share the same opinion about who has what. And once one of them puts their foot down on the issue of condoms, the other has to either play along or lose outright. Even if he says "yes" that doesn't mean that he actually thinks that it's a good idea or even necessary simply because he's not arriving at this point by free will and shared info He's arriving at it by coercion.
...........................................................................................
if she thinks that he may have an STD and makes him use a condom because of this and he does not think that he has an STD what the hell do you think is in his mind if he agrees?
Why should he agree to support her fear, even reinforcing it, by putting a condom on?
You're not considering ANY of this. Just leaping from your favorite "data" to your favorite "logical conclusion". With 5 million assumptions along the way.
8:56 pm
She doesn’t know his sexual history, so she should insist he uses a condom. He probably doesn’t know hers either, so he should insist on a condom."
Again you're assuming this.
Yet thinking that they would want to have sex with each other.
and this makes sense to you. somehow
9:00 pm
let me just summarize here.
As long as your opinion is extrapolated from the data that you choose to see and the logic that you wish to use, it is no better than that data and no stronger than that logic.
Your logic is weak and your data highly irrelevant, almost completely irrelevant, to any one couple. Time and time again you miss this.
There's really nothing more to say here. I realize that you refuse to think logically, if you even *can*. I see that you prefer to analyze everything emotionally and call that logic. I give up. It's pointless strying to have a logical discussion with you based on facts and relevant data and I cannot deal with you on an emotional level.
400 fucking posts of this is more than enough proof of this.
9:02 pm
You're making a blanket statement based on general principles that everyone should use a condom.
It's like you just don't understand what you're saying or the world in which you are speaking.
9:03 pm
...even worse it's like you don't give a fuck, at all, about the real world. All you care about is the way that you think that things are and what you want people to do.
9:09 pm
Well, I must occasionally be guilty of this too.
It doesn't make sense to argue about what someone else should do. You're not in their situation, you don't know the facts of their lives. Even the facts that you do know don't tell you anything conclusive. You have to do what is right for you, they have to do what is right for them. It just doesn't help for you to act as if you know what that is.
At best you know what is right for yourself. And the mistake you make is in believing (even thinking that you are rational in saying) that what is right for you is right for everyone else. I'm not quite that bad but I'm not sure that my position is entirely "great" either. I'll have to think about this, and no I don't see any further discussion with you as helping in that. You're the problem that I'm trying to avoid: letting my emotions convince me that my opinion is rational.
9:23 pm
Anyway immediately I can see that the central point is the threat of no sex without a condom. Like any threat it's impossible to make this decision without considering the negative consequences emotionally and reacting to them emotionally.
This raises the spectre of the woman demanding that the man use a condom simply on an emotional level, no logic involved, simply due to the threat of STDs period, in the abstract, or because she's afraid of what she or her friends will think if she has sex with him without a condom. Even when, logically, there's no reason for them to use a condom at all.
It's easy to see that the woman could insist that he use a condom out of fear of STDs and their consequences (or fear of something else) and he, knowing that he absolutely does not have an STD would agree to it just to make her happy (and calm her down, and get laid). It's also easy to see that he might react negatively to this threat and refuse not only to use a condom but to even have sex with her if she changed her mind or just agree to it but "pay her back" in some other way at some other date and time.
It does open the door to a discussion of the entire concept of one person threatening the other in a relationship, with threats of witholding sex or any other "favor". Much like date rape or spousal abuse or any other form of domestic violence. Except that we are supposed to believe that in this case it's a good thing. Because it would make her "safer". But would it really?
Not only is there the possibility that there is no chance of her getting an STD from the guy (and you don't know this a priori, neither do you care)
...but there is also the possibility that it will inspire the guy to do something bad to her, in return. Or something good for him but bad for her.
The point is that all of these concerns must be taken in mind by the woman when she makes her demands. Actions do not happen without consequence and he cannot predict the consequences. She can only live with them, just as he must if he acts in response to her demand. It is a massive assumption on many levels to assume that condom use will make them both safer much less that she should demand that he use a condom. I realize that you're incapable of seeing that and I hope that you will forgive me for talking to myself again here. You wish to only speak of condom-preventable STDs in sex between adults where there is a real-world chance that they may actually exchange these STDs if they have sex, ignoring the possibility that they neither have an STD nor use the condom correctly nor have an STD that isn't "condom-preventable" nor have a relationship that isn't strong enough to tolerate such one-sidedness on the part of the female. And that's fine. You live in a simplistic emotionally-derived world. You don't have to live with the consequences of your own advice so you are free to give it out at will, even push it onto others.
I did not know this when I first started to understand your position. Now I can see it clearly and frankly that makes this entire issue a moot point. What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. In fact it often isn't.
9:49 pm
another point:
you're assuming that the two are actually a good couple. And thus assuming that they are like-minded.
It's entirely possible that they are not like minded yet still want to have sex with each other, indeed they only agree on this point. Presumably the woman would put condom use before having sex with the guy in this case? "she should, she would be better-off if she did".
Would she really?
I can't get around that question. Would he really be better off if she used a condom? Why?
But that begs logic and hard data and that isn't going to happen here. For every guess that we make there is a counter. We really don't know if it would be good, or bad, or immaterial.
We don't even know the consequences of condom-use for these two individuals. This whole fucking thread is just layers of guesses glued together with assumptions.
"...they would be safer if they used a condom". Why? Better question, "how"?
Because condoms (mostly) prevent the spread of certain STDs? That means that they would be safer?
No. This is not logical.
It means that they would be AT LEAST as safe as if they did NOT use a condom, assuming that she did not *force* him to actually use it, and he uses it of free choice. They might even be *more* safe but only if one of them has an STD that is transmittable through intercourse and that STD is one that is effectively blocked by a condom (and they use it properly).
So there is an inherent, fatal, flaw, in her demanding that he use a condom before she will have sex with him. Her choice should be to *offer* him (the choice of using) a condom, and at best refuse to actually have sex with him if he chooses not to take it and use it of his own free will. This still leaves the question of why she feels that he needs to use a condom in the first place. And there is no way around this, this is a delicate question. Simple "brute force" emotion-driven statements could ruin the whole issue just as much as anything else. Let me explain.
If a man were to say to a woman, "I would like to have sex with you, but I'm going to use a condom because you might have an STD and I'm unsure of it, and I want to be safe", how would a woman respond? Stop thinking about how it's a good idea for a woman to make a man wear a condom because he might have an STD and think instead of how you would feel if a man that you want to have sex with were to say to you that you might have an STD and he's going to wear a condom "just in case".
Pretend just for the sake of argument that you would not feel insulted, get dressed and walk out of the room never to speak to him again. Pretend likewise that you wouldn't agree to it just to have sex with him just once, to see what it was like, and then, never speak to him again, and tell all his friends that he had a small cock and cried like a baby after you made love. Let's pretend that these things don't happen as an emotional response to his statement about the necessity of using a condom with you. What do you do, what do you say otherwise?
It seems to me that if you are sure that you don't have an STD you will say so, at the very least. And then he would say, "oh but we don't need to use a condom then, except that I don't want to get you pregnant right away"...and so you agree to let him use a condom. And that might work both ways. But you say, "I just had my period, there's no way that I could get pregnant right now".
Now the question is, would you say that if you were worried that your "boyfriend" might have an STD? No you would not, because he would immediately want to have sex without a condom, not having fear of a pregnancy, right? Assuming, of course, that he trusts you when you say that you couldn't get pregnant.
And so again we arrive at the question of trust. Who has what STD is matched by who can get whom pregnant and when. It appears that the reasonable argument for condom use is to prevent an unwanted pregnancy not to dissuade a certain STD or two from crossing from one to the other across the linens of love. Even bringing STDs into the discussion automatically renders the idea of having sex moot, at least between rational people, even a fair share of emotional ones. And here I am saying that you are being entirely unrealistic in thinking that you can tell your partner that you are afraid that he might have an STD and still expect him to want to have sex with you. Likewise that he would have sex with you even if you mention STDs to him. And insisting that he use a condom just ain't gonna to work out well.
And I think that you would know that very well if you would just try to follow your own advice. You might get him to use one, he may even want to use one on his own, you may see "general data" show that condom use reduces STDs in the general population, but I'm telling ya, a bunch of unhappiness is going to result from this and in the long run you're just not going to have a good relationship with anyone if either of you think that using a condom to prevent the spread of STDs between you is in any way a good idea much less "necessary". That's the kiss of death.
But that's just my opinion. Yet again I say, feel free to go forth and prove me wrong. I am not going to insist that you agree with me.
9:54 pm
What the fuck?
"What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. In fact it often isn’t."
This makes absolutely no fucking sense. Condoms protect BOTH genders. Why is this so hard for you to understand??
9:56 pm
"Her choice should be to *offer* him (the choice of using) a condom, and at best refuse to actually have sex with him if he chooses not to take it and use it of his own free will."
Not to make it a precondition to him.
Never try to force anyone to do anything for you in the bedroom. It's just not a good idea. Even if you think that it's a good idea for them, too. I would think that you women would react to that instinctively, I think that it's fair to say that men would react instinctively to that too.
You ask them to think about it "intelligently" trust me all sorts of things are going to go through their head. No guy is going to say "ok I'll use a condom if it'll make you happy" and not have some real doubts about you.
You want to make that deal with the Devil, keep it in your own head. And as far as making you "safer", it will only make you safer if the only STD he has is one that will be blocked by a condom. But in any case you really shouldn't be fucking this guy.
And saying that "you want to but you don't know his STD status so you want him to use a condom" is no excuse. Ignorance combined with impatience is no excuse to be stupid.
9:58 pm
In which jf1 inadvertently describes his own thought processes:
"…even worse it’s like you don’t give a fuck, at all, about the real world. All you care about is the way that you think that things are and what you want people to do."
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING.
Oh, we'll just assume that good people would get tested before having sex. Oh, we'll just assume that people are only having sex to potentially create a baby. Oh, we'll just assume that a woman who insists on a condom is a skank. Oh, we'll just assume that people who say they won't have casual sex actually won't. Blah, blah, blah-de-fucking-blah!!
You've ignored TONS of real-world data about how people actually behave, and about what actually happens to people who make certain life choices, and yet, you can't accept it and you start spinning ridiculous scenarios to try to justify your totally untenable position.
9:59 pm
Understanding of English FAIL:
"“Her choice should be to *offer* him (the choice of using) a condom, and at best refuse to actually have sex with him if he chooses not to take it and use it of his own free will.”
Not to make it a precondition to him."
How is it NOT a precondition if she won't have sex with him otherwise???
10:01 pm
So yet again we are left with the possibility that the condom will not block an exchange of STDs looming over our heads like an old shoe, an ax, an anvil, or an unwanted uncle :)
You make him put it on to no effect.
He wears it and you still get an STD, or worse, he get one from you.
The bottom line is that you had sex and got an STD and no amount of "hard data" or "logic" is going to get it off.
And frankly that's the choice that all couples face whether they know their partners' STD status or not. The only way that they will actually find out for sure whether they have an STD or not is to get on top of each other and start grinding, sucking and rubbing. You think that you can avoid that risk with a condom, you're wrong. Plain and simple. You need to decide whether you want this guy (or guys, this girl) even if she *does* have an STD. Plain and simple.
cheers
10:03 pm
last but not least
ergo the whole concept of "safe sex" is an oxymoron. And those who preach it are delusional idiots.
10:05 pm
You need to decide if you want to fuck your partner even if they give you an STD. Because you cannot prevent that from happening if they do have one.
10:07 pm
Okay, so jf1 was almost trending toward relevance there for a few posts before he totally went off the deep end again...Amanda, I think I'll stress again how valuable a "report this user" feature would be!
10:09 pm
"This makes absolutely no fucking sense. Condoms protect BOTH genders. Why is this so hard for you to understand??This makes absolutely no fucking sense. Condoms protect BOTH genders. Why is this so hard for you to understand??"
They can only protect you from any specific STD when
A) that STD is effectively blocked by condoms
B) when they are used correctly
C) and that STD cannot be transmitted in any other way.
Like condoms cannot prevent the spread of HIV when HIV can be transmitted in other ways than through intercourse without a condom. Like, condoms are not an effective way to prevent the spread of other STDs like genital herpes and warts, among many others.
So you are wrong. Inherently wrong. On this count as well as the others that I pointed out above.
And I've told you this 500 times already.
10:10 pm
re: #421
I rest my case.
10:14 pm
...oh, I'm so patient and tolerant that I should be a teacher somewhere.
You don't say to the guy, "I won't have sex with you if you don't agree to use a condom".
You don't say, "if we aren't going to use a condom then I'm not going to have ex with you".
You say something along the lines of, "would you like to get a condom?"
And if he says no or tries to argue otherwise and you are so sure that you need him to use one? Then don't sleep with him.
The rest is up to him, really. You've made your choice, now you'll have to deal with it.
10:17 pm
"
Okay, so jf1 was almost trending toward relevance there for a few posts before he totally went off the deep end again…Amanda, I think I’ll stress again how valuable a “report this user” feature would be!"
I'll spare you the trouble.
You whine like a little bitch when you lose.
So we won't play. You can't handle it.
10:44 pm
"You need to decide if you want to fuck your partner even if they give you an STD. Because you cannot prevent that from happening if they do have one."
...and that explains why people take-back partners when they cheat.
I just figured it out. That finally makes sense to me. They miss them so bad that they would take them back even if they have an STD, even though they were unfaithful, especially if they can rationalize the infidelity and they think that no STDs will come back in the process. But obviously they did cheat and they could have an STD so at least some part of the process is tolerance of that. But *that* part is no different than it was when they first met.
8:37 am
...well, after all those posts the truth of my original position is even more clear. And more logically-established than ever.
1: abstinence is really the only way to keep from getting an STD, and even that assumes that you don't get one through nonsexual contact. Condoms are simply not effective protection for STD-transmission.
2: beyond that the only thing you really can do is to make good choices when it comes to choosing your sex partners, and either choose them because you're as sure as you reasonably can be that they do not have an STD, or else be prepared to deal with the consequences if they do.
But beyond that...really I must point out that a certain poster here is demonstrating why liberal policy has generated such a national backlash. It's because they start off with a few bits of bacon and lettuce and say that they now have a huge "Happy Meal" and that everyone can eat it, should eat it, and be happy, and it'll be good for them. When that's just not the case. But they stick their fingers in their ear, look at their bits of bacon and lettuce and begin to restate their position like a mantra. *Then* they begin to castigate those who disagree with them, as if their belief has granted them godlike status, and to even criticize them is a crime.
Attempting to force a policy on other people based on half-truths and dogged denial is just not a healthy way to deal with friends and family. If you really think that it's a good idea for you to use a condom, then either use one or don't. Don't attempt to force someone else to buy into your belief-system. I think that fundamentally every man who has read this thread has instinctively realized that that part of this whole argument is just wrong, not to mention that women would never give into such a threat made by a man. Indeed the moment that he insinuated that she might have an STD? She'd leave. Unless she was a skank and knew that she might have an STD, and then she'd think that he was a skank too for wanting to have sex with her anyway. Ultimately the bottom line here is that sex is not clean, it cannot be made clean and that two people who are about to have sex have an unspoken agreement between them that they are about to engage in an unclean act. An act that is no more clean than the two people involved. Only a delusional person would think that such an act can somehow be "sanctified" by condom use. Condoms are the epitome of skanky sex and for very good reason. Condoms are the symbol for a person who engages in sex when they are not in a position, either romantically or financially, to support a child, and as well they likely are also using the condom in an attempt to isolate themselves from their partner even further in terms of STD-transmission. There is no romanticizing or sanctifying the use of a condom. And indeed they will be happy to let you down if you try to do so. Which in the end is why so many people are so eager to suggest that others use condoms. "It sounds like a great idea for you, especially because you're in such an at-risk group. But for me they aren't necessary, because I don't deal with the same risk-factors that you have to deal with".
Doctor, heal thyself. Follow your own advice and leave others to seek the path best for them. Don't threaten your partner by telling him that you will not have sex with him if he doesn't use a condom. Give him the option of choosing one on his own, and follow his lead. If he chooses not to use one and this is a huge deal for you, just don't have sex with him. Stand up for your own beliefs. And that way you can't be accused of trying to leverage your pussy to get your way in bed. Similarly if he threatens to withhold sex from you for lack of compliance, you can then decide whether you will break things off with him for that reason alone. But don't let your partner beat you over the head with a half-truth. Condoms are not going to keep you from getting an STD.
8:39 am
"Condoms are not going to keep you from getting an STD."
...indeed, if belief in their effectiveness leads you to have risky sex with a skank who actually has one, then obviously they will make it even more likely that you will get one.
8:42 am
How?
Because they will only block certain STDs during intercourse, not all, even if used properly, and there's always the chance that they won't be used properly as well as the chance that you can get the STD through nonsexual contact, or sexual contact other than intercourse.
Keep rubbing up against a dog with fleas and eventually you're going to get fleas.
9:12 am
@jf1 hey sorry for last night. I was out of line and being a prick.
9:17 am
Last but not least:
"Amanda, I think I’ll stress again how valuable a “report this user” feature would be!"
Yes, it would be extremely valuable to you because it would help you to power up your Denial Field. You could then use it to request that anyone who not only disagreed with you, but who actually had the logic and intelligence to make their argument stick and yours look bad, consistently, could be blocked, banned or entirely deleted.
Thereby freeing you to propagate your nonsense in a forum that people actually read (as opposed to the CDC website). And that's extremely valuable to you. Obviously.
Otherwise you would just dismiss my postings here out of hand as the rantings of an uninformed lunatic ;) and dismiss this entire site as the sort of place where lunatics an be found, and refer people to sites that you prefer, "credible sites" where they can find "helpful and accurate information that will help them to keep themselves safe". But you can't do that because, really, you don't have any idea of what content would be on such a site. You don't even understand the real-world meaning of the phrase "helpful and accurate information that will help them to keep themselves safe".
So you want Amanda to help you in your misguided quest. You can't make it work on your own. So indeed such a feature would be "extremely valuable" to you. Just another sign of how misguided and delusional you are. The best thing for you to do would be to take what has already been said here and just work with it.
12:51 pm
I think there has to be a better name for this than "doublespeak", the art of saying something that is at best only partially true. In the main, false. Possibly even completely false given the right circumstances, but still maybe even totally true given the "wrong"(?) ones as well.
Like, "condoms make sex safer".
It all depends on what assumptions you put into play when you hear things like this.
1:01 pm
Echo Chamber!!!
4:22 pm
Oh, dear heavens--I just made the mistake of checking back on this thread.
Really...this community is not in any way benefitted by some idiot who posts thousand-word screeds, cannot understand the most basic applications of the English language, the laws of probability, or mathematics.
Worse, this idiot ignores, conflates, or mischaracterizes arguments, hurls a lot of misogyny, and answers real objective evidence with ridiculous ramblings about "Mary" and "Joe" and "Jim" and "Jeff" and how his made-up characters somehow refute reams of real-world data.
He has his positions refuted by real evidence over and over again, and then keeps repeating the same crackpot theories.
Then, after all of his delusional ramblings and total ineptitude at understanding basic logical thinking, he declares someone who has presented him with clear, consistent evidence has "lost."
Ms. Hess, this member is quite simply NOT acting in good faith and should not be tolerated.
4:31 pm
Of course not! I mean some of his arguments are coherent, but he certainly isn't a seeker of truth, and would not have nearly as much fun without saying denigrating things. You see I think it's a sickness; he garners power over women by luring them into argument, never accepting even straightforward arguments, and mixing in all the words that will piss off any woman and especially a feminist woman. It's play at the expense of other people. He knows that and that's why he became especially angry when you pointed out that he harbors some dangerous attitudes toward women.
6:05 pm
@Banyan, yes I know...but, he also derives some power from spouting out his ideas and imagining they're "validated" by everyone's silence.
Honestly, I've had some long (and quite contentious) arguments with other posters here, but at least people were honestly presenting their opinions and listening to others (even if only to prove them wrong, they put effort into ACTUALLY trying to prove them wrong, not spitting out long, incoherent screeds and declaring that their word vomit counts as a refutation).
That's why I think that jf1 is a special case and needs to be removed.
1:33 pm
"I mean some of his arguments are coherent, but"
...dear God, that *must* have been painful :)
I hope that you feel better about it by now, really.
1:38 pm
"Worse, this idiot ignores, conflates, or mischaracterizes arguments, hurls a lot of misogyny, and answers real objective evidence with ridiculous ramblings"
....I'm waiting for the moment when you confess that you're actually talking about yourself.
When is that going to happen? Oh boy, I can't wait :) it's always so much fun when the main character comes to the realization that they're the embodiment of all of the character flaws that they're so happy to point out about others!
Usually happens when they realize that they can't be right about everything all of the time, and *no* one is wrong about everything all the time...has that bit of data crossed your Denial Field yet?
1:42 pm
"Honestly, I’ve had some long (and quite contentious) arguments with other posters here, but at least people were honestly presenting their opinions and listening to others (even if only to prove them wrong, they put effort into ACTUALLY trying to prove them wrong, not spitting out long, incoherent screeds and declaring that their word vomit counts as a refutation)."
...boy, you really have your Denial Field at high power. Must be *damm* radioactive in your immediate area. Noticed any local power-outages lately?
"That’s why I think that jf1 is a special case and needs to be removed."
I read and understand what you say :)
Whether you actually believe what you say, is entirely debatable...whether anyone else should pay serious attention to you, is quite a different subject entirely.
I think that by now the managers of this site and of the Sexist have seen more than enough to make such a decision all on their own. Maybe you don't see it that way, but I sure do LOL
Keep complaining about me and it will be clear that your main concern is to complain about me.