By Christopher DeMarcus (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 27, 2013
What is proper condom etiquette?
No, not how to put it on. I think I can understand the instructions – though I’m sure there are also plenty of YouTube how-to videos.
I’m not talking about how to protect a banana. I’m talking about the bowls of condoms that have been left in bathrooms on the UFV campus. Is the rule, “take a condom, leave a condom?” Can I take more than one? Am I allowed to double-dip? What happens if we touch hands when we both grab at it? Is it okay if I use them to make water balloons?
Investigative reporting knows no bounds.
The first thing I learned, was that it is not “take a condom, leave a condom.” Apparently, the bowls of rubbers were not left for a free market of contraception trade, but for health reasons. Condoms aren’t just for preventing babies, they’re for preventing disease. Okay, I admit. I knew that – we know that.
But condoms go on the penis. An organ which is regarded as highly private; the most offensive organ in our culture, even more grotesque when erect. On an aesthetic level, condom bowls don’t feel right in public places. A private bar or gas station bathroom is the native home of the condom dispenser, not the public university.
Of course, we know condoms allow for a 90 per cent STD- and baby-free ride. All the fun with none of the trouble. They get sold to us any way they can: for empowerment, sanitation, pleasure, confidence, and security. We get it. Condoms are good for us.
But if we’re going to cross the line with making the private public, why are we stopping with condoms? The bathrooms should have free pamphlets on how to hunt down and prevent breast and prostate cancer. Don’t worry about the cost, we’ll pay for the messages with advertising revenue from social media networks. Think of the possibilities: the public washroom could become the new private bathroom.
[pullquote]But health isn’t just the mechanics of biology and psychology. It is the social connections of our psyche, our human spirituality. [/pullquote]
Like it or not, how we get down on each other has become public. Whether it’s China’s one-child policy or how Canada gives foreign aid in the form of birth control, sexuality is regulated: the law says condoms are good.
We think of ideas like sexual commitment, natural planning, or vasectomy as silly – or even more blasphemous: as permanent. The condom doesn’t only protect us from health issues, it also prevents us from having to make a promise. Thanks to the condom we’ll never get tied down by that pesky ex-human we dated. Condoms are freedom and flexibility. You can enjoy the sex buffet now, and try to make a baby later in life – when the time is right. Biomechanics be damned, we have the technology to drive us into a perfect future.
The concepts of sexuality as a “form of expression” or “empowerment” are old. Sex today is about lust and pleasure, nothing more. There is no love. There is no connection. There is no responsibility. We don’t need it. We have the technology to throw each other away when we’re done.
Exactly 50 years ago from the time of writing this article, Aldous Huxley died. Unlike JFK—who died the same day—Huxley slipped away quietly in his bed at the age of 69. Kennedy was filmed getting shot by a sniper at age 46. We tend to recall Kennedy’s Camelot over Huxley’s Brave New World. We remember JFK’s sex life more than Huxley’s vision of an over-sexualized future. In our modern world condoms are caring. They are morality. They are the way we keep healthy. They protect us from the unknown.
But health isn’t just the mechanics of biology and psychology. It is the social connections of our psyche, our human spirituality.
Perhaps it’s time we think more about committal attitudes and love. About deeper connections and the value of sexuality, instead of the cost of it. Maybe we’d get in less trouble if we kept our penises to ourselves until the time is right. Maybe it’s time to return to building trust instead of lust, or at the very least, learning that responsibility can’t come from a bowl in the bathroom.
