The need to adjust our pre-feminist notions of paternal responsibility notwithstanding, this unpublished draft from last December is a reminder that we need to adjust pre-HIV notions of "sexual freedom" in relationship to condom use.  (The context was the Julian Assange incident.)

Anthony McCarthy of Echidne of the Snakes, who remembers the impact HIV had on his community of gay men, brings his bitter understanding of condom-avoiding "knowing transmission" to heterosexuality.

...as you know, women are infected with HIV through vaginal sex as well as through anal sex by men who are infected. Straight men are often infected through anonymous sex with women or men just as gay men are. I suspect that for many women, who have grown up with the idea that AIDS is primary a problem for gay men are at the stage gay men were in the early days before the syndrome even had a name.

Of course this is all by way of explanation for my comments on the accusations made about Julian Assange. Being a witness to the deaths of dozens of gay men I knew, knowing that just about all of them with a few exceptions, likely were infected through casual sex with someone they didn't know, knowing that women can be infected by men, all of that informs my thinking on whether or not people should be having casual sex with people they don't know in 2011. And the fact is they shouldn't. Women deserve better than they're going to get from men under those circumstances, men who have sex with men deserve better than they get from it. There is nothing liberated about being infected with HIV or hepatitis or chlamydia or any number of other infections that can injure and kill you. Having sex with someone who can persuade you to engage in sex you don't want or who can trick or force you into it is the opposite of free choice. No more than getting robbed by a conman. And there is no law you can make that will protect you from any of that which is stronger than protecting yourself. And there is nothing that is more likely to protect you than knowing who it is you're agreeing to have sex with.

Source: Echidne of the Snakes

At the time I drafted this I was on a real tear about "knowing transmission" not only of sexually transmitted diseases but pregnancy.  The more diligently men pursue reproductive responsibility the easier, both socially and biologically, it'll be to advocate for revision of paternity statutes as well.

(Good news on the paternal contraception front, incidentally.  Via Beth Saunders, it sounds like in addition to condoms, withdrawal, and/or surgical sterilization men will soon have not one but three reversible hormonal contraceptives to pick from, which means that men will finally be able to use double contraception without help from a partner.)

Will we ever be able to ditch condoms? Not as long as there continue to be multiple partners and sexually-transmittable illnesses. But with the possibility of new male contraceptives we can dramatically reduce the possibility of knowingly or even just carelessly transmitting paternity.