Why don't men use condoms? There are many reasons, even gay men have their own
Unprotected sex is so... easy.
It should be said up front that the rule that where human carelessness or stupidity is sufficient to explain it, malice need not be assumed applies here as well. "It's more comfortable for me, and the partners are usually fine with it," David, a student who has had unprotected sex with around 20 partners, told Men's Health. "When it comes to you, you just don't think logically," says Angel, a 35-year-old teacher who hasn't used condoms since he was 20. "It's not the smartest thing to do, but I get regular check-ups and I've never contracted anything."
Gentlemen have been lucky, but certainly not everyone has. Unprotected intercourse can end up not only with uncomfortable itching in the pubic area, but something far more serious. In addition to the diseases mentioned in the passage, the number of AIDS infections is slowly rising. However, this is no longer the 1980s or 1990s, when young people were dying of this disease from their idols, such as Freddie Mercury, Liberace or Isaac Asimov. Incidentally, even the last famous HIV+ Charlie Sheen is said to have contracted it in one of his only two unprotected casual sexual encounters in his life, according to TvTropes.
So what all can the (non-)use of a condom affect? Researchers at the University of Southampton have found that there is an inverse correlation between attractiveness and condom use. Firstly, confident men who consider themselves attractive are significantly less likely to use condoms during sexual intercourse. At the same time, men admitted that the hotter they found their partner, the less likely they were to use a condom themselves. So we're back to the roundabout way that when most of the brain cells have moved to the testicles, few people are in the mood to pull a condom out of their pocket.
But the explanation really isn't that simple. According to the New York Times, there's another crucial factor. Most men are said to be uncomfortable with the standardized condom size of about 17 inches. While surveys may tell you a lot, the average man's privates are an inch shorter. According to sexologist Debby Herbenick, this "problem" affects more than 80% of men.
But the reason for not using condoms isn't just psychological, it's that men feel inadequate. The "cape" sometimes simply tends to slip or, on the contrary, to accumulate unnecessarily at the root of the penis. Plain and simple, it's not comfortable.
And there's another explanation, specifically related to the gay community. According to Catie, many gay men simply don't trust condoms. The classic thin condoms, they say, are not suitable for anal sex and tend to burst. "The reason gay men died of AIDS far more than straight men in the 1980s and 1990s is because condoms broke, " says LGBT activist Rebecca Reinhardt, for example. In this case, however, it is more a gross misunderstanding of the statistics that gays have ironically adopted from conservatives. They once cited Dr. Dawn Smith's research on the (ine)effectiveness of condoms as proof that even a condom won't save them. And now even young men who don't want to bother with rubber bands have taken it up.
"My research actually shows the numbers that everyone quotes, but in a different context. It's true that gay men who strictly used condoms were 70% less likely to contract AIDS. But we never addressed the failure of condoms in that study, only their effectiveness. Condoms can break, slip or otherwise become damaged. But human factors and poor use are usually to blame," Dr. Smith told Catie.
But if we were to write that condom consumption is declining worldwide, we would forget one curious exception. That's socialist Cuba, according to recent news reports. There, condoms are one of the few things that are cheap and available. The government even subsidizes Asian-made "rubber bands", so you can get one pack of three for one crown. No wonder they are used in a thousand ways here.
At children's parties you'll find them instead of balloons, hairdressers use them instead of masks and winemakers even use them as an indicator of the state of wine fermentation. "When I use condoms during fermentation, the percentage of alcohol and the quality of the wine increases," says Cuban winemaker Orestes Estevéz. Fishermen, for their part, like these 'balloons' as cheap floats when fishing from the shore. The only question left is: "Does anyone in Cuba use them as they should?"
