Contraception | Ask Garnet

Website Review: Undercover Condoms

I was recently contacted by Undercover Condoms because they wanted to let you know that they are a great place to buy safer sex supplies online. They asked me to review their website which I do not do for free. I review products for free because I receive the product for my time and effort. For website reviews I do require compensation for the amount of time I put into it. However, my opinions are genuine and cannot be bought.

I asked twitter and facebook followers what was important to them in an online safer sex store. The responses mostly included free or reasonable shipping costs, wide selection (something they wouldn’t be able to get at the drugstore), discreet shipping, easy to navigate site, and customer reviews. I’ve combined that with my own ideas on what makes a safer sex supplier website great to come up with this review.

What follows is pretty long and feel free to read it. However, if you just want a basic overall review skip to the end. Continue reading Website Review: Undercover Condoms

Vaginal Contraceptive Film

Q: My husband went to Walgreens to pick up some condoms. He said he saw VCF there, which he hasn’t seen in a long time. I went to the website because I’ve actually never heard of this film. Nowhere did it have it’s efficacy against pregnancy. It did however say “no birth control is 100% accurate” lol. We’re married and fine if it happens that I get pregnant..and it seems it might be better since we don’t have to stop to put on a condom. Thoughts?

A: For those who do not know, VCF is Vaginal Contraceptive Film. It is a small, thin, transluscent square that a woman inserts inside of her vagina. After about 15 minutes the sheet melts and coats the cervix with spermicide. It’s kind of like those mint strips you put in your mouth to freshen your breath, but for your vag to keep you from getting pregnant. It is not effective against STIs, and may actually increase your risk, which I will get into later.

The efficacy rates for pregnancy prevention are about 74% for normal use, 94% for perfect use. When paired with condoms the efficacy rate gets up to about 97%. When I say normal use vs. perfect use what I mean is that people screw shit up and don’t always do it right. In general, the more often you use something the better you get at it. So that 74% tends to be for the first year that you use a new method and your efficacy goes up from there. When I say 94% for perfect use that means how effective it is if you use it the correct way every time

You say that it sounds like it might be better because you won’t have to stop to put on a condom. However, you still have to stop to put in the VCF and then wait 15 minutes to make sure it is effective. So unless you plan ahead you will still be stopping and possibly stopping and waiting. And you may not want to plan ahead in this case unless you’re absolutely positive that you’ll be having sex later and this is why …

Nonoxynol-9

VCF is made from Nonoxynol-9 which is a spermicide. It is a very effective spermicide as it immobilizes sperm on contact. However, in such a delicate ecosystem as the vagina you might imagine that there could be some issues. If you use Nonoxynol-9 sparingly there shouldn’t be much of an issue if you’re in a monogamous disease-free relationship unless you are prone to infection. However, the more often you use it the more your vagina is exposed to this harsh chemical. And the more it is exposed to it the more likely you are to actually get vaginal lesions. For people who are not in monogamous disease-free relationships, this means an increased likelihood of contracting an STI especially HIV and HPV.

Like I said, it’s relatively safe if you’re not using it often, which is why you shouldn’t use it unless you are 99.9% sure that you’re about to get it on.

But there’s also the issue of oral sex. Say you and your partner have been having a grand old time fucking away and you just feel this need to have his cock in your mouth. Well now his cock is probably covered in spermicide and will taste not so good and will quite possibly numb your mouth a bit. Or maybe he’s been finger fucking you and rubbing your clit and then he just has to taste you … same thing. Genitals don’t taste so good with nonoxynol-9 all over them and they’ll also make your lips go numb and possibly your tongue.

This is precisely why I said 15 minutes of waiting. Sure you can makeout and feel each other up, but finger fucking and oral sex may make things less pleasant.

Conclusion

So VCF is decent at preventing pregnancy, especially when combined with other birth control methods, but it should be used sparingly and you may not want to put your mouths anywhere near anything that’s been put in your vagina. It’s a great options for some, and not so great for others.

Here is a how-to video provided from the makers of a VCF:

Why We So Desperately Need Good Sex Ed

There are several new studies out that scare the hell out of me. Sex education should be a basic right for everyone. It is a necessity. How can you possibly keep yourself sane and healthy if you are having sex, but don’t know anything about it other than it feels good? And hell, if you’re a woman, maybe you don’t even have that much going on.

The Sexist points to a recent study (giant pdf) done by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy which surveyed single Americans aged 18-29 asking them about their perceptions of contraception. It turns out that women don’t know too much and men know even less.

Twenty-eight percent of young men think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one. Twenty-five percent think that women can prevent pregnancy by douching after sex. Eighteen percent believe that they can reduce the chance of pregnancy by doing it standing up.
For the most part, men lagged behind women on the pregnancy prevention front. And when the study dipped into the realm of “female” forms of birth control, the gender divide intensified. In the study, 29 percent of men and 32 percent of women reported that they know “little or nothing about condoms.” When asked to rate their knowledge of birth control pills, 78 percent of men reported to be clueless, compared to 45 percent of women.

To really drive the level of stupidity home, the article shares anecdotes from women with clueless boyfriends not understanding how the NuvaRing works (“how is it going to catch my semen?”) or even how women’s bodies work (can you shower on your period while not wearing a tampon?). They point to the lack of sex education and knowledge of women’s bodies as the problem here and I have to agree strongly.

The next study done by the Kinsey Institute shows that Americans can’t even agree on what sex is. The study was a survey of 486 mostly heterosexual 18-96 year olds. They asked a series of questions involving different sexual acts and then asked them if it was sex. “Would you say you ‘had sex’ with someone if the most intimate behavior you engaged in was [blank]?”

“two out of ten people did not concur that penile-anal intercourse was sex, and three out of ten said ‘no’ to oral-genital activity, as did half of the respondents about manual-genital contact.” And, while 95 percent classified penile-vaginal penetration as sex (one has to wonder what does count for the remaining 5 percent), that number dropped to 89 percent in cases where the man doesn’t ejaculate.

You have to wonder if this is part of why people are so clueless about safer sex and birth control. If we can’t even decide on what sex is then how can we adequately protect ourselves? And hell that’s why Gold Star Lesbians are still considered virgins by so many mainstream folks. I mean, how can queer sex even exist at all within these kinds of definitions? Its no wonder so many people so offensively ask how two women can have sex.

It reminds me of when I lost my virginity. I had a pretty traditional view of losing one’s virginity at the age of 17 and yet my boyfriend at the time still considered himself to be a virgin even after we had, what I considered to be, sex. His penis went in my vagina and he broke my hymen. It hurt. There was no real thrusting or orgasms that night. But I thought I’d lost my virginity. According to him though, neither of us had.

Can we please stop with the abstinence only education already? It does NOT work! We all have a right to know how to take care of our bodies and learning about sex is a huge part of that.

Trust Women

Today is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the 5th annual Blog for Choice event. For the Past 5 years NARAL has been asking bloggers questions related to the right to choose in order to raise awareness for reproductive rights and ask what they mean to us. This year’s question is:

In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women,” this year’s Blog for Choice question is:
What does Trust Women mean to you?

To me, trusting women is about understanding that we can make our own informed decisions. We do not need to be coddled. We do not need to be told misinformation in order to make the “right decision.” We do not need to be forced to look at ultrasounds of the fetus to make a decision that we’ve already thought long and hard about. We do not need to be ordered by a court to do what is best for us and our families. If kids are given comprehensive sex education they will be given the tools with which to make informed decisions about sex and family planning. Women will have the ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to plan families if and when they want to. We need to help women to be able to make the right decisions for them by helping everyone to be educated about sex and sexuality.

I also think that part of trusting women is listening to their stories and having more women coming forward with them (if they so choose) to show that they make hard decisions that are right for them. Abortion especially is so demonized and we normally only talk about it in terms of rape or incest cases, but what about the rest of the women out there who get them? So many women feel like they can’t come out and share their stories because they do not want to be demonized or judged for making a decision that was right for them. That was why I shared my story back in August soon after Dr. Tiller’s murder. Read it here.

My Story

In light of recent events – specifically Dr. Tiller’s murder, federal marshals being removed from the aide of Dr. Carhart, and the ongoing violence focused on reproductive health clinics – I’ve decided to tell my own story. I believe that it is extremely important for women (and men) to come out and talk about how their reproductive health clinics have helped them and why they are a positive necessity in our society. We should all tell our own stories.

My story isn’t a pretty packaged story about how I was a victim of incest or rape. Not that these stories are ever pretty, but they are the ones that so often come to view when we are talking about women who need to be able to have abortions. The stories of innocence lost. The women who “deserve” to have a pregnancy terminated. What about the rest of us? We all need control over our own bodies.

I expect that a lot of people won’t agree with my decisions. And I also expect that there may be some backlash because of it. But I refuse to hide when the people who are trying to help women are being murdered.

I tell this story from a sex positive viewpoint; the idea that there is nothing inherently evil about sex. In fact there is a lot of good in it, but there are risks as well.

When I was 18 I was a typical teenager. I thought I was invincible. I thought that nothing bad could happen. And so, even though I knew full well what the consequences were, I had unprotected sex with my boyfriend. I was not a victim of abstinence-only education, I had comprehensive sex ed starting in 5th grade. I was also raised in a sex positive household where information about sex and condoms were always available. I did know better. But I was in love and the sex was fantastic.

What I didn’t know was that I was with a young man who was also extremely fertile, as many 18 year olds are. He hadn’t told me that he had gotten two other women pregnant before me. And he definitely should have known better. But we’re both to blame for what happened. A couple of months before my 19th birthday I got pregnant.

I had always thought that if I got pregnant before I was ready that I would have an abortion. It would be an easy decision. When it actually happened I was struck by how difficult the decision actually was. After all, this life had been created out of love.

After thinking about it for a few weeks though I knew that it was the right decision. I had not been planning on bringing a baby into the world and was smoking at the time. Not a great way to start a pregnancy. My mom, a very supportive woman in general, refused to support me emotionally or financially if I chose to have the child. My boyfriend whom I loved dearly, all of a sudden disappeared when I became pregnant. I had my whole life ahead of me. And even dedicating 9 months to pregnancy was a burden my body could not handle. The first couple months that I did go through were awful and I knew it would only get worse. My body has always had issues with health and pain.

I did not know how to go about seeking an abortion. I am so incredibly lucky that it all turned out as well as it did considering I was doing my research via the yellow pages and, being a broke teenager, cost was my main concern. Had I lived in the Bible Belt instead of a suburb of Chicago I’m sure I would have ended up talking to a crisis center that would’ve misinformed me about pregnancy and abortion. And in my relatively fragile state, that would have been very difficult to deal with.

Ten days after my 19th birthday my best friend took me to a women’s reproductive health clinic. There were lots of women with boyfriends in the waiting room. I was the only one with my best friend.

I don’t really remember much of that day except for having a difficult time peeing in the cup, accidentally stepping on a button on the floor in the operating room that made a loud noise, waking up in another room with my underwear back on, and my best friend taking care of me that evening (mmm Blue’s Clues macaroni and cheese). But it all went pretty well.

As the years went on I became pretty loyal to Planned Parenthood. I really wish I had gotten the procedure there, but I’m happy that it went well. Planned Parenthood has been there for me through thick and thin. They’ve helped me through condom breakage, STI testing, genital warts, pap smears, putting me on the pill to prevent pregnancy, and then keeping me on it to prevent ovarian cysts. They’ve been there when I’ve cried, they’ve laughed at my jokes, and they’ve been non-judgmental of my lifestyle choices. They’ve been like a really good friend to me. And as a good friend I’ve tried my best to give back as well. I’ve donated time and money to them. I ran the local college campus chapter of VOX (Planned Parenthood’s student outreach) and I’ve worked as an escort keeping myself between women entering and leaving the clinic and those who did not agree with why they thought those women were there. I will always support Planned Parenthood and I hope that they are always able to support me.