Maybe It’s Time We Talked About, Well, You Know…
As a culture, we’re notoriously secretive about the specifics of sex. Not the glamour, mind you, but certainly the specifics.
In other words, we can splash images of naked bodies over the airwaves ad nauseam, especially when if they are soaked in blood, but it’s considered impolite to discuss the actual mechanics of making love.
Case in point: When was the last time you read anything definitive about the proper way to use a condom?
Well, in the March issue of Men’s Journal magazine, writer Melanie Warner offers a variety of tips on how to use condoms. Shocking, eh?
If you think so, I suggest turning to some other section of the newspaper.
What Warner shares are the results of studies done by a team of Nevada sex researchers. The team had been intrigued by news that the state’s 300 licensed prostitutes have suffered “virtually no incidence of HIV infection.”
Now, we’re talking here of women who, on the average, have sex 105 times a month, which is, Warner wrote, “22 more times than the typical sexually active American woman has in a year.”
The researchers examined the methods of “41 women who engaged in a total of 353 acts of vaginal sex.” In all, not one condom broke, only two slipped off completely and a total of 4 percent slipped off partially.
Their secret? The women, being professional and presumably not swept away with passion, were consummately careful. Some used two condoms at a time. All continually “monitored” the condoms while in use, and they used only water-soluble lubricants.
One of the co-authors of the study, a Dr. Robert Hatcher, told Warner that such information is useful for everyone.
“(He) recommends that couple incorporate these techniques into their own sex lives,” Warner wrote, “both to reduce their odds of contracting STDs and to prevent unwanted pregnancies.”
In closing, so as to give voice to both sides of the premarital-sex issue, I cheerfully add the following disclaimer: Of course, married or not, it’s far safer to abstain from sex completely.
Sexploitation plus: The 1976 film “Switchblade Sisters,” which will be released on video Tuesday, pulls few punches in telling its tawdry tale of women’s empowerment.
As one bitter revolutionary tells her sisters, “Sooner or later every women is bound to find out that the only thing a man has below his belt is clay feet.”
, DataTimes