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Female condom woes
December 11, 2006
My dear friend Amber and her boyfriend Rusty run the very awesome Georgia Podcast Network, and one of the things that I think is supercool about them is that they do a good amount of sex-related stuff, though the site isn’t specifically about sex at all. I love how they weave podcasts with interviews about sexuality into the fabric of the site as if sexuality is a normal part of life - oh wait, it is. In some respects, I think that in some respects this gives them a better chance of getting their sex-positive message out to the people who need to hear it than I have, because people who come to their site aren’t already looking for info on sexuality.
Anyway, slight fangirl-ness aside… yesterday I gave a listen to their podcast review of the female condom, for which of course they needed to do hands-on (or genitals-on) research. The podcast is done in a really cute way - they are actually recording from bed, and they take breaks in recording to do the research, adn then come back (winded) to report their findings. I keep hoping they’ll upload a XXX version of the podcast, but it appears they’ve self-censored, and I understand why… plus it gave them the opportunity to use the Jeopardy jingle, always amusing.
You should listen to the very entertaining podcast, but the gist of it is: Rusty and Amber really dislike the female condom. They both say some really funny things about it, but the main thing that Amber said that really got my goat is “Why are they still making this thing?”
Female condoms are often encouraged for use by women who cannot get their male partners to wear a condom. The most obvious solution to the problem of a partner who doesn’t like to use condoms is to get rid of that partner, but this isn’t an easy or realistic solution for lots of women whose lives are entangled with their partner’s in some way. Female condoms put condom use in the power of the woman - though as Amber and Rusty pointed out its fairly easy to have a whoops moment and slide the penis into the vagina outside of the actual condom.
Amber and Rusty snark a bit about the excessive lube that the condom comes with - but in my opinion more lube is better. Lube reduces the friction and stress on the condom and reduces likelihood of breakage - I wish latex male condoms came with this much lube. Also, its polyurethane - good for people with latex allergies, but also an excellent conductor of heat. Though the instructions for using a female condom may say that as soon as you’ve got it installed, you’re rarin’ to go, actually its a better idea to wear it for up to half an hour first - this gives the polyurethane time to warm up and mold to the walls of the vagina, which will not only help keep it in place, but will also (with exception of the external ring bit of it) make it feel less like humping a plastic bag and more like humping a flesh and blood vagina. A female condom is also a pretty awesome way to prepare for a potential quicky - you might not want to walk around with it inside you for the suggested “up to eight hours” but one of the complaints people have about condoms is that it reduces the spontaneity. If a woman puts one of these suckers in in advance, you can kinda capture that spontaneity, all safe-like.
True indeed, the female condom is a little difficult to get used to, and its kind of unwieldy and without lots of lube its a little, uh, squeaky, but it is a good thing as well, though an imperfect solution to a problem.
Posted by Dacia at December 11, 2006 04:11 PM
Comments
Dacia, Thanks for the link and the nice things you said about our site!
I hadn’t thought of the “douchebag male partner refusing to wear a condom” aspect of it. So, yes, I reckon that’s a good reason for the FC to exist.
Still though, it’s really awkward and cumbersome to try to use. It’d have been nice if the instructions (that we had to pull from Google since there weren’t any included with the ones we ordered) had mentioned anything about it working better after being inserted for half an hour.
Posted by: Rusty at December 11, 2006 04:59 PM
“I hadn’t thought of the ‘douchebag male partner refusing to wear a condom’ aspect of it. So, yes, I reckon that’s a good reason for the FC to exist.”
I had thought of that aspect. I had known from way back when that that was one of the main selling points of the FC. But I still think it’s some weak shit. Absolves douchebag partner of any responsibility. Although maybe if he sees all the ridiculousness that goes into using the FC, he’ll realize, “Oh, or, I could just suck it up and use a condom already.”
As for the lube, it wasn’t the amount that was annoying, it was the fact that it was cheap and smelled bad. Obviously we have our own lube, but introducing a third-party substance wasn’t an option, for the sake of scientific experiment.
Anywya, in closign, it was just really, really difficult, and awkward, and didn’t feel safe, to be honest. So not only does it fail from an aesthetic standpoint in my opinion, but also from a safer sex standpoint.
Oh, and we happily would have posted an X-rated version. We wanted to just record all the way through, and not censor our language. But we didn’t want to take a bunch of shit from people who have problems with acting like an adult. Eh. SUcks, I know, but whaddya do.
Posted by: Amber at December 11, 2006 05:09 PM
I’ve never had a partner who used the female condom, but I did know a woman in SF who really, really loved them. She said, though, that she never used them with anyone she didn’t have a long-term interest in, because sex felt very intimate with them — too intimate for a simple fuck.
Posted by: Chris at December 12, 2006 06:08 AM
I’ve used the female condom because of my latex allergy and I wasnt into it at all…although that may have been in part due to my um…unique interior design. but, it totally felt unsexy and like I was having sex in a plastic bag
Posted by: Bella Vendetta at December 13, 2006 06:36 PM
I’ve used one with a woman before. The sensation through the material is nicer than through a condom, but they can easily get pushed aside or bent so the cock ends up slipping inside of the woman.
Posted by: Josh Jasper at December 14, 2006 01:54 AM
