Posts by Russell Brown
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to BenWilson,
Since the conversation has strayed that way, there’s also the huge issue of the porn industry staying very much away from depicting condom use.
There was a brief phase of it. It didn’t sell. People watch porn to have a fantasy, not watch something their teacher told them they should do.
It's a much bigger issue in the gay community. I recall Urge being under social pressure to take the bareback porn off their in-house screens, but I can't recall whether they did.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
This is quite a common argument, to which I think it’s pretty obvious to reply, “Wait, dude is pressuring you into something you don’t want to do? Why the fuck does it matter where he got the idea? DTMFA.”
Practices in heterosexual porn seem to be a mix of transgressive fantasies that a few people will want to live out (and good luck to them), things that some more people might want to try out (I suspect that porn has opened people up to coming somewhere other than the vagina -- although even when I was young I had gay friends who were spraying it everywhere), and frankly dumb stuff that no one really does outside porn (that penis-whacking thing, for example).
What’s most different, certainly in commercial porn, is the tone of the encounter. Even people doing really transgressive things IRL tend to be listening to each other a lot more than porn actors do. And that’s where porn often isn’t a good model for real-life sexuality.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to James Butler,
"below the Planck length"
If we weren't all on our best behavior I'd have snickered at that.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Moz,
Things that do actually work: femidoms and dental dams. Both are, as far as I can discover, almost 100% effective at preventing both pregnancy and STD transmission (excluding insect STDs like scabies and nits). Femidoms even work for PIV sex.
Has anyone used a femidom, or had sex with someone who did? Reports?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
Moz, settle. Pretending you think Lucy was pretending to be a man is not helping anything. If you actually want to have the conversation, stop sabotaging it.
I see how Lucy's comment was misread there -- it wasn't deliberate. But +1 on the Moz, settle. So that's two disembodied moderators saying that.
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Hard News: Who owns the news?, in reply to Paul Williams,
I’m anticipating a business model where I can pay a fee and access any/all publishers of any content accessible online and through whatever device I prefer.
The structural resistance to this in the TV industry is very significant. The whole business is territorial, and it sort of works.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Rageaholic,
While I was at Family Planning they asked if I needed any condoms, and I got some extra-large ones on a hunch. Sure enough, my partner had never tried them or even thought to, and he said they were significantly more comfortable and easy to use.
This is emerging as a very significant point. To take things back to the topic, I hope this is forming part of the curriculum material, because, as Ben said and the Kinsey study indicates, telling young people that condom use is gonna be totally sweet might be a serious problem when up to a third of users find otherwise.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Actually, data here wasn’t that hard to find. Here’s a highly relevant Kinsey Institute study from last year: Condom Discomfort and Associated Problems With Their Use Among University Students.
Nearly one third reported discomfort, including tightly fitting condoms, vaginal irritation, and loss of sensation. Discomfort was associated with breakage (p = .0001), incomplete use (p = .0001), and less moti- vation to use condoms (p = .018). Gender moderated the latter 2 findings. Adjusted findings indicate that students reporting discomfort were 3.6 times more likely to also report breakage (p = .0009). Continued investigation of this topic is warranted.
It does note the surprising paucity of research in this area:
One potentially important aspect of individuals’ experiences with condoms, however, has not been sufficiently addressed by previous research: discomfort associated with condom use.
Men and women reported problems in roughly equal measure. Men:
Among these men, the most common form of discomfort described was that the condom was too tight (36%). The next most frequent comment was that con- doms caused a loss of sensation (30%). As one male noted, “loss of sensation—sex becomes boring.” Other comments (provided by 3 or fewer men) included erection problems, allergies to latex, condoms are too big, and con- doms cause dryness.
And women:
We organized into categories the 44 comments from women who provided written comments regarding their dis- comfort. Among these women, the most common form of discomfort described was that the vagina became irritated (43%). The next most frequent comment was that male part- ners complained the condom was too tight (27%). Twenty percent of the comments indicated that the man lost his sex-ual pleasure as a result of condom use. Other comments (made by 1 woman each) were that the condom was too big for the male partner and that condoms made sex uncomfortable for both partners.
So apart from their own discomfort, women noticed their male partner’s loss of sensation. Problems were associated with unwillingness to use condoms – and to condom failure. Can I propose that we retire the word “anecdata” now?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
the fact that the member just looks so fucking stupid
Did you have to bring up McCully again?
Boom!
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Sacha,
“Show me evidence” seems like a dismissive response to the honest sharing of experience.
An ‘honest sharing’ of experience does not insist that it is universal.
I don't believe Ben insisted his experience was universal.