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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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This is just incomprehensible to me. I'll admit that I grew up sheltered and nerdy, but still: none of my friends were having sex or really even close to having sex in middle school. Maybe the 90s were better after all?

Maybe this is difference between Sweden and the US but when I grew up in the 90s in a completely white, affluent suburb my estimation was that some 20-25% had sex before the end of middle school, with women having slightly more sex (due to being able to find marginally older partners). Another 30-40% had sex some time during high school (weighted towards the end) and the remaining 40-50% during university.

The survey reports that 60% of teenagers report using a condom during their last sexual encounter. Is that not kinda low given teenage pregnancy rates? I am a prude in real life who dislikes salacious talk, so I haven't talked about condom usage with my friends. So I don't really have a strong intuition here.

Who the hell uses condoms for anything but one night stands? You might as well not have sex at that point.

You might as well not have sex at that point.

I would like to suggest that perhaps you are not quite doing it correctly.

Fucking with condoms is like eating candy with the wrapper on, only worth it if you're starving.

Perhaps it's different if you're circumcised and have somewhat limited sensitivity in the first place.

I honestly don't understand this perspective. What about the rest of the meal?

If I were a woman and a guy told me that, I would be insulted.

Edit: And some of the best sex I had did not end in an orgasm, at least not for me.

Good foreplay only makes it worse.

Also, regardless of whether the sex ends in orgasm or not, the sex is so much better without a condom. The goal is as intimate and pleasurable sex as possible, condoms are a major impediment to both, with or without orgasm.

But your initial claim was not merely that sex without a condom is better; rather it was that it was pointless: You said, "You might as well not have sex at that point." That was the claim that I was skeptical of.

It's high-variance, but there are a subset of men (both straight and gay) who can't get very far with a condom on during penetration, sometimes up to the point of losing the ability to maintain a decent (or rarely, any) erection entirely. The exact causes cover wide ground, such as low-level skin sensitivity, mental overhead, performance anxiety, mumblemumbles-it's-not-just-soccons-afraid-of-jerking-it, or for... not entirely understood reasons (one fun hypothesis: American condom sizes are moronic).

This class of problem is less 'well, I guess I just have slightly reduced sensation and might just be edging with my partner today', 'it's time for a long oral session!' or even 'I'd rather bottom', and more 'this is going to be actively frustrating for everyone involved, and not even in a fun chastity cage sorta way'.

Contra some of the other posters, I don't think this is universal, or even disliking condoms is universal -- there are a surprisingly large number of people with condom-related kinks, for entirely unsurprising reasons. Some of these frustrations might even be solvable with practice and familiarity. But a lot of the mainstream model of the complaints is dismissive in unhealthy ways.

(one fun hypothesis: American condom sizes are moronic).

Please elaborate on this if you've a theory.

I don't endorse this, but the theory goes:

American condom sizes are established by the FDA, as a rule, partly for standardization reasons, and partly to simplify testing. Condoms must have a fully-unrolled length of at least 170mm, and has a narrow band of widths. Technically, the standard uses a 'flat width', as one-half the unstretched circumference. While this has somewhat expanded in recent years, from 50-54mm 'flat width' (100-108mm circumference) before 2008 to 50-57mm 'flat width' (100-114mm circumference) in 2008, and in 2022 with limited acceptance of more broad sizes for ONE-brand condoms, in practice if you go to a big-box store, chances are pretty good you're going to get something in the 52-54mm 'flat width' range (104-108mm circumference), and if your store doesn't sell ONE-brand, most of the sizing guidance is worse-than-useless or actively misleading.

And that works for the average guy, even if it's technically a little long.

Go much away from those bounds, and it doesn't work as well, and they're narrow bounds. For obvious reasons, this is a more popular cause celebre among the well-endowed. You can fist a latex condom if you want, but it gives a bit of a pinch, not even in the useful way that a cock ring would, and most dicks are more sensitive than forearms. There's people who can kink on pinched there, but there's a reason chastity cages don't work like that. Too-short condoms are prone to rolling off or breaking, and this can turn sex into the unfun sort of wrestling match.

But the problems are, if anything, worse on the shorter or slimmer sides: having a much-too-long condom leaves a bunch of cruft at the base, and having a too-wide one augments the whole 'fucking a plastic glove' problem. And for people who are nervous or don't have the hardest erections, there's a worse feedback loop, where a condom that's just a little loose when fully erect is a constant (and boner-killing) struggle to keep on and tight enough to get significant sensation from if not at full mast.

The UK/EU standards aren't much wider, but they're still at least better.