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More condoms! Condoms for all!
Opinion: Attitudes to sex are ignored in favour of condom ideology.
Often, when confronted with a problem, it is easier to choose an appealing but futile solution, rather than tackle the real cause. So is the case with our response to our STI and unplanned pregnancy crisis.
In the last decade, cases of chlamydia have skyrocketed eightfold. Our liberated sexual culture has also had massive implications for children and for what the family is. The 2006 Census counted 189,213 one parent families.
And we all know the answer to this crisis, don’t we? More condoms! Condoms for all! Free for every man, woman and child!
Hold on. Condoms were deregulated in Ireland 15 years ago, yet STI rates have risen astronomically. The historically more liberal UK actually has the highest teen pregnancy rates in Western Europe. Some will argue that this is due to ignorance surrounding contraception, but the 1993 Education Act made sex education in UK schools statutory.
Something is amiss in the debate on how to tackle the problem. While organisations like the Irish Family Planning Association constantly advocate safer sex as the way out of our STI epidemic, a larger, more vital element of the debate is constantly ignored: that is our values and attitudes regarding sex.
Look, in my limited experience, I know of two occasions personally and another a friend told me of, where the girl involved was perfectly willing to have unprotected sex (my friend and I graciously declined). These girls were also completely sober. What this tells us isn’t that condoms need to be cheaper or more easily available, but that there is a shockingly blasé attitude to sex among people. That isn’t to say that women are worse than men; I am speaking only from my personal experience (I am one of those quaint, old-fashioned fellows who only swings one way, so I wouldn’t know much about the joys of having a man between the sheets).
The point isn’t that no one had a condom – people will always be caught unprepared – but that these girls were happy to take such a stupid, irresponsible risk. Irish people 40 years ago didn’t have access to contraception, but they also didn’t contract the myriad of exotically-named infections on the scale that we do today. They didn’t bring so many children who will never know their father into the world either. What kept them from the predicament we face was their attitude towards sex. Nowadays, wearing a condom is all that matters. Who you have sex with, when or why is considered irrelevant.
Of course, the Ireland of yesteryear was bleak and repressive, a land where priests roamed, village by village, striking down peasantry with biblical versus of fire and brimstone. We’ve heard all that. I also know the sexual revolution is a sacred cow for the media here. But it mustn’t go unquestioned.
Perhaps there is much to be learned from the gravity that previous generations attached to sex. The meaning they gave sex was more powerful in many ways than any contraceptive. When sex became meaningless and casual, contraception alone could not halt the rise of STIs, because self control became redundant, while risk-taking became inevitable. When something becomes easily obtained and is demystified, why suffer the annoyance of its refusal, irrespective of the circumstances?
Then there’s when contraception fails. Condoms have a 3% failure rate when used correctly - try selling flights that crash ‘only’ 3% of the time.
Perhaps our attitudes to sex are another product of a consumerist culture where saying ‘no’ simply isn’t an option anymore. Either way, we are going to need a lot more than simply condoms to clear up this mess. Instant gratification is the dogma which we now live by and no piece of latex will ever change that.
By: John Francis Power
