Condoms aren’t just male birth control

The bears and the bees: Assumption of hidden motives hinder hookups

Hook ups are delicate things. The physical act, maybe not so much—but emotional transactions that occur during can be awkward, to say the least. Last spring I was with a dude in his room having fun when, out of the blue, he told me he “loved my eyes.” Said eyes became very wide. Love? We’d met maybe two hours earlier in a dark basement.
Granted, “I love your eyes” is a far cry from “I love you,” but it was still strange to hear from someone who, in all honesty, probably didn’t even know what color my eyes were. Then again, maybe it had just slipped out in the heat of the moment. I ignored it, assuming that either nothing more would happen between us after that night or we’d get to know each other well enough that I’d be cool with hearing that kind of compliment regularly. As it happens, we took the former path and never really spoke again.
But I did think about the compliment. More precisely, about how that sort of thing—the whispering of overly affectionate sweet nothings—is gendered. A girl, in my experience, could never get away with saying something like that. If, in the middle of an alcohol-fueled dalliance, she said anything beginning with “I love…,” alarm bells would start going off. CODE RED. STAGE FIVE CLINGER ALERT.

The bears and the bees: The pretty game: objectification, humiliation and the liberal arts

Anonymous ’17 is a guest contributor to this column and a female member of the Class of 2017. All names, events and locations in this narrative have been altered in order to disguise recognizable identities.
We all know the drill of arriving at a party. It smells like old beer and exhilaration. The designated bouncer stands in our way, a football player with an unimpressive drunken glaze, reclining against the door to stay upright. This barely legal boy will decide if we are pretty enough to be graced with the opportunity to grind our bodies against his other unremarkable team members and drink warm alcohol, hypnotized and exhausted by a throbbing black light in a dirty basement. It is just another off-campus party.
We call it the pretty test. And we take it, all girls and women, every day. Every time you can’t button your jeans, you fail. Every time you get whistled at or hit on, you pass. It just so happens that Bowdoin has a culture that makes this test prevalent and obvious. It is well known you should be prepared for the boy that decides whether you are accepted or rejected, beautiful or ugly. He’s the difference between intoxicated dancing and calling your mom while eating microwave popcorn. So you better wear a crop top in sub-zero weather and stop eating the soft serve.

The bears and the bees

Condoms aren’t just male birth control

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Anonymous '16

Columnist

February 7, 2014

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.

You’ve probably already figured that out, but I wanted to confirm, because I think it’s time we talk about birth control. Specifically, male condoms.

I’m not going to talk about the pros of using condoms, because if you’re like me, you’ve probably gotten that message countless times in various forms. Possibly including that time the health practitioner interrupted you when you asked about birth control to tell you that ONLY CONDOMS PROTECT YOU FROM STIs. Which isn’t entirely true, though I was a little too taken aback by her delivery to make the point at the time. Then again, this was the same one who slut shamed me over getting a birth control prescription in the first place, so maybe she’s not the best example. I don’t go to her anymore.

In any case, whatever decisions you’re making now regarding condom use are hopefully pretty well informed. So I’m not going to talk about the technical advantages or disadvantages, other than the fact that I’m pretty sure one of the least fun moments of a sexual encounter is that awkward fumbling with the condom right before doing the deed. It’s followed closely by the difficulty of removing tight pants, though the condom thing wins out for me.

Instead, I want to talk about the gendered aspects of condom possession and use. In my experience, condoms are seen as a more male-focused form of birth control, I assume because they typically go on the male organ (unless you’re using female condoms, though I think most Bowdoin students stick with the male kind).

I didn’t fully understand what that meant until a dude expressed surprise that there were condoms in my room. I’m not saying this is a typical reaction, but it did get me thinking about condoms and the way we view them. Are women not allowed to have condoms, either in their living spaces or on their person?

My immediate answer—and hopefully yours too—is that women are absolutely allowed to have condoms. There’s no way I’m going to assume my overnight guest is going to be carrying around a rubber, so it only makes sense that I keep some in my nightstand. And with the prodigious availability of condoms on campus, there’s no reason not to grab a couple on your next foray to the Health Center, whether for friends or yourself.

Elsewhere, however, this isn’t the case. In New York, district attorneys could once use the fact that a woman was carrying a condom to build the case that she was a prostitute. And by “used to be” I mean up until two months ago. Granted, it wasn’t the only necessary evidence, but it’s still striking that in an age when so many women walk around with condoms in their purses, the act was so lately linked legally to such a stigmatized group.

Hopefully that stigma doesn’t exist at Bowdoin. Which brings me to my next point. I can’t tell you how many of my female friends have had a guy ask whether he really needs to wear a condom if she’s on birth control. This isn’t an inherently offensive question by any means, but it can be tiresome. The answer is often yes, we need to use one, because two methods are better than one. Or because we’re nervous about STIs. Or for any other conceivable reason. Condoms are not male birth control. They do not concern solely the male person in this (hypothetical, and heteronormative) situation, but are instead something that involves both partners.

We are fortunate at Bowdoin to exist in a space where “safe sex” is promoted, problematic as that particular phrase may be. But I still think our relationship to condoms could, and should, be less gendered. Condoms aren’t just for boys. They’re for everyone.

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