The Lady Is a Tramp: Safer-Sex Kit Survey Says...

Curious to see where people were at regarding safer-sex stuff nowadays, I posed a simple question to my Twitter followers/followees:

If you could bundle the perfect safer-sex kit, what would you put in it? No judgments, just doing some research…

Here are the results of my utterly unscientific and unabashedly unrepresentative (sample group too small) survey about what people want in their safer-sex kits.

Most responders would pack in their kits (in descending order):

–condoms (various sizes/textures/flavors)
–lube (either H2O- or glycerin-based),
–a sex toy
–dental dams
–Plan B
–disposable towelettes (aka wipes)
–money
–finger cots
–soap
–underwear (edible & non)
–handcuffs
–lip gloss or lip balm
–sex-toy cleaner

Some other fascinating answers: erotica, honey, blindfolds, map, perfume, lingerie, feathers, and lollipops. My pal Liza Sabater even wrote a response post to my question.

What fascinated me the most, though, was who responded: I received nine responses from self-identified women and three from self-identified men. (No one who identified as gender-nonconforming responded.) The women answered my question on Twitter, where I originally posted the question. The men responded after I approached them in real life, either face-to-face or on phone. But it’s not as if I don’t have male or gender-nonconforming followers on Twitter….

Still, 3:1.

The <a href=http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html”>Guttmacher Institute says this about condom use:

–18% of U.S. women who use contraception rely on their partner’s condom use.
–7.3 million women use barrier contraceptives, such as the male condom. Condom use is especially common among teens, 20–24-year-olds, childless women and never-married women.
–45% of teenage women who practice contraception use condoms, either alone (19%) or with another method (25%).

Considering these stats, people still use—and like to use—condoms. The responses to my small survey seem to say that women are, at least, vocal in wanting them, whether or not it’s the only prophylactic they want to use. And it’s not as if the guys I asked didn’t want rubbers in their kits—it was the first answer all three of them gave—but I just find the relative silence by the men online baffling.

Hmmm….