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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Part of it is that condoms seem to be extremely high-variance in how much people tolerate them. With the exception of a few gay guys with pretty specific kinks, no one likes condoms, but I know some people who seem to have slightly reduced sensation, some who it's meh, some who take forever to get there and not in a good way, and some who can't stay hard or perform with a condom period. Ymeshkout's written about about polyamory and condoms that suggest it's got a lot of revealed preference sorta stuff going on.

((The Standard Explanation for condom shyness is too much masturbation, somehow. The conspiracy theory level answer is that the FDA has historically been extremely restrictive about what types and especially sizes of condom are acceptable, for ease of testing, and this leads to a situation where being even slightly off from the average in one of any dimension leads to a condom that's always slipping off or like wearing a bad cock ring. And very few people are average. But I'm not sure.))

This is part of why 'normal use' statistics for condoms end up really close to effectiveness with the withdrawal or rhythm methods, where even perfect-use numbers aren't great.

The Pill has different problems; complex drug and food compatibility, highly dependent on keeping a good schedule, the interactions with weight are a mess, and the personality changes are... not great.

There's a lot of hope that (especially copper) IUDs have/would solve a lot of this -- they're not without their religious opponents, but less so than even the morning after pill, and they skip almost all of the above with a shockingly high effectiveness -- but it's still kinda hard to get buyin from (non-Planned Parenthood) doctors for women of childbearing age, and they're exceedingly painful for most women who haven't been pregnant before.

very good comment, reported for quality.

I think an actually effective sex ed class would involve trying on different condoms to see how they feel and find one that you like. But admittedly that's not possible with the low-trust world we live in. So instead we get a gym coach screaming at us about STDs and maybe, if we're lucky, putting one on a banana.

Here's my half-joking conspiracy: all condoms are the same size because I've tried every size and they all fit the same until "after"

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