In a meditation on a recent outbreak of scares among his students, and on the circumstances leading to pregnancy scares in his own past, Hugo Schwyzer asks and then I think nicely answers a really important question.
I’ve been thinking more about why so many young people I know choose not to use contraception. The gal who came to see me yesterday had been on the Nuvaring, but her insurance coverage lapsed, and she couldn’t get the scrip refilled. She and her beau had condoms available, but chose not to use them. “I don’t know why we’re so stupid”, she said to me yesterday. The young man I work with who came to me last week, worried his girlfriend might be pregnant, also reported that “condoms were available” at the key moment, but “we went ahead without them anyway.” I wasn’t shocked. When I got my high school girlfriend pregnant, we had condoms nearby as well. I didn’t like wearing them, and my girlfriend said she hated the way they felt. So we used them “some of the time”. And predictably, a pregnancy resulted.
The $64,000 question is: “Why?” Why do bright, educated young people who are very clear about how exactly babies are made choose to have unprotected heterosexual intercourse so very often? Why, on many occasions, do they find such flimsy excuses for not using contraception, even when contraceptive devices are easily available? In some cases, of course, lack of affordability is an issue  condoms aren’t as cheap as some folks think, and other forms of prescription contraception have grown much more expensive in recent years. In other cases, one partner (almost always the male) will nag the other about how “uncomfortable” condoms are. But in plenty of cases, these young people have access to reliable methods of birth control, and choose not to use them. Ignorance is not an all-encompassing explanation, and neither is expense. Something else is at play.
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The sex education we need is about more than “protection.” It’s about more than providing access to abortion as a last resort, thought that remains an important component of justice-centered sex ed. Proper education will center on what sex means and what it doesn’t. And we can start by gently, firmly, and lovingly tearing down the myth that unprotected heterosexual intercourse represents the most intimate and magical expression of trust and love. Until we deconstruct that lie, we only tempt the unprepared to jump too quickly the lives they have to come.
That’s an amazingly thoughtful suggestion for inclusion in comprehensive sex education.
At least in most progressive circles we’re already good at pointing out that millions of people manage to have perfectly wonderful sex lives without penis-in-vagina intercourse to ejaculation — the central… sometimes the only (“I did not have sex with that woman”) significant heteronormative sex act.
And thanks to concerns about sexually-transmitted diseases (if nothing else) we’re already pretty darn good at stressing the importance of condoms.
But yeah, we haven’t been so good about busting the idea that unprotected PIV intercourse without a condom is as intimate, or maybe as ultimate, as sex gets.
Speaking for myself I was never that crazy about intercourse while fertile. I mean, sure, after my vasectomy reversal it was nice having the intention of being reproductive. But I got my vasectomy in the first place, at age 21, because the prospect of reproduction (in the pre-herpes, pre-HIV days when all known STDs were treatable with a single shot of antibiotics) stressed me to the point that I just wasn’t up to it. (Sometimes literally.) And I already had an appointment for a second vasectomy before our last planned, wanted child was born. (I think I had it only ten days after.)
Call me a prudish libertine, or a libertine prude, but carrying either transgression nor romance past a certain point approaches the objectification of a third person. And if that construction makes one squeamish then… well… so much the better! However the individuals ultimately deal with such a resulting pregnancy it’s a very big deal that, no matter how you slice it, is best avoided.
The key, maybe, is instilling an understanding that a “planned” (by omission) but unwanted pregnancy isn’t an ultimate thrill.
Update: Prompted by a comment from Five of Nine I need to clarify that while I zeroed in on Schwyzer’s point about the need to address attitudes towards unprotected intercourse in both sex education and popular culture, going beyond education initiatives it’s also really, really important to continue pressing for policies that make contraceptives for both genders that are safe, effective, easy to use, available, and affordable!
Submitted by 2482 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-11-03 03:17.
That first paragraph bothered me. Losing health care and therefore birth control.
I'm not sure PIV sex is considered the ultimate, it may be only the skill set and a change in sex education may not discourage it.
[Eek! I was so focused on the education component I blew past the availability component. I've updated the post to reflect that. Thanks, five. --fl]
Submitted by 2482 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-11-03 20:03.
There could always be an instinctual component to this, you know. After all, the primary purpose of sex is not "fun" or "stress reduction" - these are just beneficial side effects. The primary purpose of it is to "make babies"! Given that, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that young people sometimes get stupid and "forget" to protect themselves. People aren't always consciously aware of the reasons behind their behaviors. It's always possible that the instinct to reproduce occasionally overrules one's reason.
(I'm not saying that young people lack self-control, more like they often haven't yet learned self-awareness in regards to sexuality.)
Submitted by 2482 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-11-04 04:20.
Maybe they don't want to admit they're doing it. I was pregnant twice in college, essentially because I felt guilty and ashamed about having sex. If you don't want to admit you're doing it, you're much less likely to do the things to prepare for it adequately.
From the age of about six, my mom made sure I was well aware of the mechanics of pregnancy, and, moreover, that SEX IS BAD. I can't blame her for thinking that way. Her own ignorance cost her one miscarriage around 20. Then she was thrown out of the house when she got pregnant with my older brother. The father (my dad) was, inconveniently, married to someone else - not cool in a small town in Tennessee. So the lesson that was repeated every year was "This is how it works. DON'T DO IT."
Also, was one of the kids chosen to go to a day-long "True Love Waits" event in high school. (Strangely, they never told us what we were going to, just that a few of us had been "chosen" to go to this special thing that would get us out of school for the day.) I was simultaneously mortified and baffled when, a few minutes into the event, I realized we were going to be talking about sex all day.
At the time, I didn't even know teenagers or college students had sex. I was fat, poor, wore glasses, and was mostly kept at home except for marching band trips. I was forbidden to date until I was 18 (by which time I'd already be away at college), but I was in no danger of going on a date, let alone having sex. I thought sex was something like paying the mortgage - some dull thing adults did that didn't have anything to do with us kids. Anyway, I walked away from good old True Love Waits knowing that having sex before marriage was Not the Right Thing. I still didn't quite understand why anyone would want to.
So, I arrived at college with zero boy-girl relationship skills and having no knowledge whatsoever of how sex fit into that (other than that it was Wrong) or what sexual arousal was, or what it felt like. I was still a few trips to the library short of finding out that women could have orgasms or how. This was the early 90s by the way, not 40 years ago.
I went on my first date when I was 19 and was having sex within three weeks. I got pregnant within six months. Going to a store and buying condoms required that I actually acknowledge that I was having sex, so I preferred not to do it, though I occasionally did, but only in neighborhoods far from campus.
Going on the pill was out of the question. No way was I going to a doctor and admitting to a stranger that I was having sex. I didn't want anyone to know that I was "that" kind of girl. I wanted to be "good."
All that stuff doesn't just fall away because you have your 18th birthday. Worse yet, it doesn't fall away because you get married. Even when I was married, I wouldn't go to a doctor about going on the pill. I STILL didn't want anyone to know I was having sex. The guilt and shame don't just go away. Once it's in there good, even a marriage license can't dislodge it.
Scoff at it all you like, but all that business they sell kids - mostly girls - about being "clean" and "pure" is powerful. Lots of people behave in ways that suggest that they don't buy it, but I know I'm not the only one who still secretly wants to be "good."
If nothing else, I'd like to have back the hundreds of dollars that were spent on those two abortions. Obviously, I should have spent a little on condoms and the rest at the therapist's office....
[Hi Myrtle. I'll never scoff at you for any of that. First because I'm from a small town in Tennessee myself. Second because if you were in college in the 1990s then I was a sex information and referral service volunteer around the time your mom first became pregnant... and so I can say not only weren't *you* alone, neither was she -- not at all, at all. The good news is it sounds like you're breaking that cycle with your own children. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 2482 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-11-04 19:20.
I didn't mean that *you* would scoff, just that those notions of the importance of purity, etc. are pretty well mocked up, down and sideways in the modern, adult world, whereas they have a lot more power when one is younger and surrounded by conservative, church-type culture.
I don't have any children yet - not sure whether I ever will. I've been having imaginary practice conversations in my head with the future, theoretical daughter/son about all this for a while, just in case.
I'd like to thank you too, for this blog and the smart, wonderful way you write about how feminism really is for everyone, and not some retributive machination cooked up by ugly women who hate men.
Submitted by 2482 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-11-05 18:46.
Fertile Mytrle,
You have described the reason that I think there is so much out of wedlock births in our community. Even those who are not avid church goers are influenced by the ministries stress of abstinence for all unmarried women. The community also reinforces this. Their piousness is always questioned. Of course the aestheticism fails, because most people don't seek that kind of life, but there is still guilt. Therefore they can not admit their sexuality. So as you say to use birth control would mean that they would have to admit to being of week flesh or a bad person and of course a sinner. I think they are still in this mindset, even after having a few children.