[quote]smh23 wrote:
In the end: “risky” is a subjective term. I say 2% is a substantial risk. Let’s say I have sex 5 times a week, which is 260 times per year. That’s five failed condoms per year. There is some risk there.).
[/quote]
If the amount of sexual pleasure were reversed - would you and your girlfriend still prefer birth control pills over condoms?
[quote]therajraj wrote:
If the amount of sexual pleasure were reversed - would you and your girlfriend still prefer birth control pills over condoms?
[/quote]
Great question. She would, and I’d go with her call because it’s her body.
Again, condoms have kept me from fatherhood more times than I can count. But they’re not bulletproof, and indeed, when you put the risk in context, many people would deem them a (very modestly) risky method of standalone BC.
[quote]csulli wrote:
smh you have a fine argument, but in reality you have no idea what the risk actually is. Here’s how the data for that goes:
Some dude is having sex, just a bit before he goes off he stops and puts on the condom that’s been in his wallet for over a year and then finishes up. The chick gets pregnant, and obviously he’s not going to admit he used the thing incorrectly. He’s gonna say the condom was in perfect shape, no reason to have any holes, hadn’t been in his wallet for ages, was brand new, and he had been using it the whole time, and he’s going to want some kind of recompense for the product failing him.
They just skew the numbers. If the risk were really even as high as 2% I’d probably be a daddy right now, and so would a bunch of other dudes.
[quote]therajraj wrote:
The only people who consider condom use “risky” are poorly informed teens. Just look at hookup culture, people go around fucking random individuals without worry.
The aversion to condom use has to do with feel not with risk factor. [/quote]
This is so true. I distinctly remember being lied to multiple times about many things in high school. The biggest culprit was sex “education”. I swear to God, when I was in high school after being talked to about this shit by people the school brought in to give sex ed talks, I honestly believed condoms had at best a 70% chance of working.[/quote]
This argument is interesting but speculative. I’m not sure how the 2% figure is estimated, and I’m too busy to look right now, but I’ll look into it.
In the end, though, it doesn’t really get at my larger argument. Whether user error figures in to a higher degree or not, the 2 percent figure reflects a real-world risk.
And if anecdotal evidence means anything here (which it shouldn’t), I’ve had condoms break probably 4-6 times in my life.