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:

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This post, Vaginal Contraceptive Film, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 08/29/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Vaginal Contraceptive Film. Thanks for visiting!
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I’m extremely intrigued by this and not totally sure how I feel about it. I mean at what point does it help to keep these people safe and at what point does it actually increase the likelihood of them acting these things out in real life? At what point does it become so objectionable that the products are actually illegal to sell? For example, I can’t imagine that it would be legal to sell a child stroker for pedophiles.

What do you think? Please discuss.

(via Early to Bed)

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This post, Topco Fucked Line, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/20/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Topco Fucked Line. Thanks for visiting!
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This is what I wrote:

First of all, no one’s dick should be going in anyone’s ass without a condom. Even if you are both disease free and monogamous the guy can get some pretty nasty infections from barebacking. We’re talking urinary, bladder, and kidney infections here. So always wear a condom for ass sex please.

And if you’re wearing a condom for ass sex then ATM should never make a difference because you can just pull the condom off or switch condoms to blow him. Simple as pie.

If for some reason you decide to not follow my earlier advice and decide that a burning feeling while you piss might be a fun thing to try, then I would highly recommend that you do not stick your dick in anyone’s mouth after it’s been in an ass. You can get e-coli or hepatitis. Hell you can just get e-coli from rimming so what do you think it’s like if you’re basically licking 6 inches inside of someone’s ass?

Please have more respect for your sexual partners as well as sex workers. Sex workers are people too and the more you promote their safety (ie no ATM, safer sex practices, autonomy, etc.) the longer they’ll work and the happier they’ll be. I personally think it’s way hotter to watch pornstars who like fucking and enjoy every second of it instead of ones who are coerced into practices that are unsafe.

I understand that accidents happen and sometimes you’re in the moment and forget what you’re doing. But once you realize it, please stop and go wash up real quick before you keep going. It’s better to be happy, healthy, and safe.

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This post, Ass to Mouth, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/05/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Ass to Mouth. Thanks for visiting!
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Read her story and donate.

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This post, Help a Sex Worker Out, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 07/01/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Help a Sex Worker Out. Thanks for visiting!
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But since there was the buzz today I decided to do a little bit of research. Both AAG and Essin’Em have written about their experiences with the company and that enlightened me quite a bit.

But all I can think about is how EF is so much like Suicide Girls (you’ll notice I won’t link to either of the sites because I dont’ want to give them traffic). I have a lot more experience in the alt porn community than I do in the sex blogging community. Or at least I did at the height of alt porn. So this is the connection I instantly drew.

Both sites are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are both pretending they are something they are not, but even worse is that they are pretending to be good, but they really have other intentions. They pretend to be the good people who have worked hard to create a good, ethical product or service and then they exploit it in order to make lots of money.

Suicide Girls pretended to be a typical alt porn site that just happened to rake in tons of dough. They even pretended to be run by a woman so that they could put a softer feminist touch on the whole porn thing. They weren’t out to exploit women! They were women! Bullshit. The bigger they got, the more difficult it was to keep the sheep’s wool in place. Their real goals and intentions started to show through more and more as models were made to sign ridiculous contracts while other models were banned from the website and yet their content still remained and was often sold off to the highest bidder. The community members and newer models refused to believe what was going on. They tried to discuss it in the community only to find threads deleted and them banned as well. SG fooled a lot of people, but a lot of us in the alt industry saw them for what they were pretty quickly. I was a part of a site that helped them into existence and then got stabbed in the back once they were doing well enough on their own. These good companies then changed their contracts to show the models that they would protect them and their images; to show that they were the real deal.

There are similarities here to EF. EF has made money by pretending to be an ethical honest sex shop like the feminist sex shops out there who have worked their asses off to spread the word about healthy sexuality and dangerous products. But see there’s an obvious difference right away. When confronted with the fact that anal-eze is dangerous they continued to sell it until it no longer fit in what they wanted their image to be. They didn’t stop selling it on principal. They sold it because people bought it and that makes them money. Only once they felt that it truly conflicted with the image they were trying to portray did they stop selling it.

EF is not a feminist sex shop. They have not worked hard to make the world a better place. They work hard to make money. And you know what, that’s fine. It’s a business which is supposed to make money. The problem is when they pretend that they are all the things that the feminist sex shops of the world have tried so hard to attain, but aren’t actually that at all.

And just along the same lines of SG, EF is now censoring and banning community members. I predict the next move they will make is to insist that all reviewers only review for them.

Ok the truth is that I don’t like drama, but I felt this needed to be said because I feel like it is so difficult to know who to trust in the adult industry. There are many wolves in sheep’s clothing and just straight up wolves. But without education a lot of people can’t even spot the wolves who aren’t hiding. There are so many dangerous products and exploitative services in the adult industry because there are few regulations. It is an industry that has to self-regulate. That is why it is so important to be able to trust who you are giving your money to.  If you can’t trust them, how can you be sure they’re not out to screw you in the most unpleasant way possible?

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This post, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 05/13/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Thanks for visiting!
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I think a lot of people have slightly different variations on the meaning, but the shortest summation I can come up with for my own definition is: Sex is good and healthy when done safely and consensually.

That seems really simple, but unfortunately Western society is very sex negative. Sex is only really acceptable in the confines of a heterosexual marriage where the goal is procreation. In fact, in U.S. society, nothing should ever be done for the sole fact that it feels good.

For example, masturbation in a sex negative society is pretty far down on the hierarchy of sex acts because it is only done to please oneself. And when we try to convince others that masturbation is good and healthy we often find ourselves talking in terms of what it can do for your health. Oh, you’ll reduce the likelihood of prostate cancer, you’ll help relax menstrual cramps, you’ll lower your risk for incontinence in your old age, it will improve your  mood, etc. What about: it feels good? Masturbate because it feels good!

But if you really want to easily show just how sex negative we are let’s look at what is acceptable to let children see. In this society we seem to prefer to have our kids watch someone being physically abused than to see a naked man or woman, let alone see naked people enjoying their own or other peoples’ bodies. Which would you think would be more damaging for your kid to walk in on: someone being brutally murdered or a loving couple having sex? I would personally prefer a child to walk in on the loving couple. This obviously can’t be true though of a lot of people who have no problems with their kids watching network TV, but when a breast is accidentally flashed they go berzerk. Because kids have never seen a breast before that’s for sure.

And the response usually of sex negative folks when confronted with the idea of sex positivity is usually one of morals, but also one of concern for unwanted pregnancy and STIs.

The morals I already covered. Mine are obviously different since I think that sex is good and violence is bad. But the issue of unwanted pregnancy and STIs is when sex positive and sex negative folks seem to talk past each other instead of engaging in an actual discussion.

Sex negative folks seem to have the opinion that unwanted pregnancy and STIs are there to deter people from having sex. It is god’s way of punishing the wicked. They blame sex positive people for teen pregnancy and rampant rates of STIs. And not only are we talking past each other here, we’re using different terminology. For sex negative folks we’re promiscuous, not sex positive. Even though, in reality sex positivity has no real effect on how many sex partners a person has or does not have. And we reject the word promiscuous because of it’s negative connotations.

Sex positive folks realize that while pleasure is good, it comes with it’s fair share of risks. Everything worth doing in life comes with risks. But sex positive people also emphasize using protection. We don’t see STIs and unplanned pregnancies as a punishment from god, but more as a consequence to being irresponsible and in general just something that can happen when you take risks. When you drive a car you wear your seatbelt. You can still get into an accident and you could still die, but your risks go down exponentially. And for most Americans, driving or riding in cars is worth the risk.

I, as a sex positive person, do not care how many people you have sex with or what kind of sex you have with those people. I care that you are having safe sex with people who actively participate in the sex and that you’re enjoying yourselves.

I advocate for comprehensive sex education because I feel that people need to know all the facts before engaging in sexual activity. Sex negative people, on the other hand, tend to lean more towards abstinence only education because if you tell the kids about sex they’re going to want to do it. I think that is ridiculous. Kids are going to learn about sex from the wrong places (and gain a lot of misinformation) and they are going to have sex anyways. It is necessary to give them the tools to decide when to have sex and how to do it safely and pleasurably.

Now I’ve been pretty black and white here. The truth is that everything is a spectrum. It’s doubtful that most people are completely sex negative or completely sex positive. They are somewhere in the middle. But it’s a bit easier to kind of lay out the different beliefs in opposition to each other to give you more of an idea of the differences between the two.

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This post, Sex Positivity, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 05/05/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Sex Positivity. Thanks for visiting!
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One of the articles I found to be rather compelling is Risky Business: Pregnant in America which talks about the high maternal mortality rates in this country. For such a rich country it is absolutely appalling that there are 40 other countries with lower maternal mortality rates than ours. Who says that carrying a baby for 9 months and then giving birth isn’t a burden on a woman’s body? Especially in this country where prenatal care is too costly for those without insurance and c-sections are performed in dangerously high percentages.

In Slow Death by Rubber Duck: What we don’t see can hurt us the author talks about all the hazardous chemicals we come across in our daily lives. These include things like baby bottles, canned foods, and tuna fish sandwiches. What is so obviously missing in the lists of harmful objects is sex toys. The article talks about how the FDA isn’t doing enough to ban harmful products, but doesn’t mention at all that the FDA doesn’t even regulate sex toys at all because they aren’t deemed worthy of their time. Most sex toys are classified as a novelty item and therefore are not meant to be put inside of one’s body. Uh … yeah. That’s bad news especially when you consider the report Greenpeace did a few years ago that measured the level of phthalates in sex toys and came out with some scary results. This is why it is so important to only buy sex toys from companies that are reputable.

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This post, Kind of a Downer, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 03/18/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Kind of a Downer. Thanks for visiting!
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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.

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This post, Why We So Desperately Need Good Sex Ed, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 03/06/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Why We So Desperately Need Good Sex Ed. Thanks for visiting!
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