Abstract
Condoms can be highly successful in preventing transmission of many common sexually transmitted infections, and are integral to many safer-sex campaigns. However, this relatively simple strategy is not effectively utilised, and research demonstrates intense, diverse, but patterned dislikes of condoms. In this article, I provide a discursive analysis of data collected in 15 focus groups on (hetero)sexual health, where condoms were overwhelming discussed in very familiar negative terms. My analysis focuses on a recurrent metaphor – the condom-as-killer – and considers the way the ‘nature’ of condoms but also of heterosex itself is constructed through this metaphor. The metaphor invokes a ‘battle’ between condoms and sex/sexual pleasure, situating condoms and sex as separate, and oppositional. The metaphor effectively constructs condom-wearing-heterosex as not really proper sex at all, providing a powerful conceptual resource for undermining condom use messages.
Far from being a ‘natural act’ (Tiefer, 2004: 394), sex is theorised by many as profoundly socially constituted, in terms of desires, practices, their meanings, and people’s experiences of them. Lying behind scholarship which draws on theories from scripting (e.g. Hoppe, 2011) or social representations (Winskell et al., 2011) to discourse (e.g. Gavey and McPhillips, 1999; Gavey et al., 2001) or social semiotics (e.g. Tavory and Swidler, 2009), is a recognition that the stories and meanings that exist socioculturally about sex, work to create potentialities and realities of sex for individuals. This process is far from a static, one-directional model – the articulation of discourse, for instance, works often to reinstate the very ‘nature’ of the object it supposedly describes. In this article, I take a critical discursive perspective to analyse anti-condom discourse and interrogate the ‘nature’ of (hetero)sex that is produced through this discourse. I take an anti-essentialist position, whereby this nature is understood as socially constituted, and contingent on time and place, rather than reflective of some core essence or truth about what (hetero)sex is.
Cultural narratives, sexually transmitted infections and the paradox of safer sex
Condoms are important because they remain one of the key public and sexual health strategies to fight the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs. See World Health Organization, 2007), which range from the minor to the fatal. STIs are a major source of morbidity globally, with potential significant future impacts in terms of fertility and other aspects of sexual and reproductive health, and thus constitute a significant public health concern (World Health Organization, 2007). Most STIs are preventable by correct, consistent condom use. However, the research literature on condom use demonstrates that condoms are often not routinely or consistently used in sexual encounters (e.g. Abel and Brunton, 2005; Adolescent Health Research Group, 2003; de Visser and Smith, 2001; Fisher and Boroditsky, 2000; Grimley and Lee, 1997; Grunseit, 2004; Measor, 2006; Santelli et al., 1997; Tavory and Swidler, 2009; Wellings et al., 2001), even when there is a common understanding of the importance of condom use for sexual health (Mantell et al., 2011; Mashinini and Pelton Cooper, 2012; Williamson et al., 2009), and/or an intention or desire to use them (Gavey and McPhillips, 1999; Gavey et al., 2001). The persistence and even increase in STI incidence is an outcome of inconsistent use. While it might appear that condoms offer a simple prevention solution to STIs, and thus the failure effectively to implement this strategy within heterosexual communities represents a paradox, the problematic uptake and use of condoms is understandable if we consider the cultural narratives that exist around them (I focus on heterosexually related condom discourse; the situation with condom use within gay male communities is also complicated, and is an overlapping yet also different story. For example see Adam et al., 2005; Adams and Neville, 2009, 2012).
Condoms are typically viewed negatively by users – and non-users – (e.g. Chapman and Hodgson, 1988; Flood, 2003; Holland et al., 1998; Lowe, 2005; Mantell et al., 2011; Measor, 2006; Smith et al., 2012; Tavory and Swidler, 2009; Williamson et al., 2009; Winskell et al., 2011), and patterned negative meanings around condoms and condom use are remarkably persistent across time and also across different geographic locations, within, but also beyond, Anglo-western countries. Anti-condom discourse primarily falls into one or more of three main categories: (1) pleasure/sensation; (2) intimacy/connection; and (3) spontaneity/interruption. Condoms are claimed to reduce the physical pleasure sensation experienced in sex, reportedly making sex like a ‘shower in a raincoat’ (Chapman and Hodgson, 1988) or ‘like eating a sweet in the wrapper’ (Mashinini and Pelton Cooper, 2012; Tavory and Swidler, 2009). Such imagery evokes a massively reduced sensory experience for men (pleasure reduction is sometimes also reported by women). Condoms are also claimed to reduce or remove the intimacy of sex, and the sense of emotional connectedness possible, resulting in ‘fucking not making love’ (Measor, 2006: 394). They are also disliked because they disrupt a smooth and insistent ‘trajectory’ of (hetero)sex towards coitus, apparently ‘killing the moment’ and making sexual spontaneity impossible.
Such discourses and constructions of condoms constitute at least part of the contexts in which heterosex takes place, and within which (western) individuals can experience, and make sense of, their use and/or non-use of condoms. They are part of a broader set of discursive constraints on condom use and safer-sex practices (Flood, 2003; Lear, 1996). Within the West, these typically include a coital imperative and constructions of heterosex (Braun et al., 2003; Gavey et al., 1999; McPhillips et al., 2001; Willig, 1998) which limit the potential of non-coital sexual activities, as well as constructions of certain partners as ‘risky’ and others as ‘safe’ (Hoffman and Cohen, 1999; Waldby et al., 1993), meaning that condoms are only deemed necessary with ‘risky’ sexual partners. Constructions of heterosexual relationships as ‘safe’ by nature, and as ‘condom-free’ (Civic, 1999; Ellen et al., 1996; Tavory and Swidler, 2009; Willig, 1995, 1997b) similarly undermine condom use. Linked to this, the centrality of a discourse of trust around heterosex – even for casual sex, but certainly in relationships – frames it as incompatible with condom use, as use signals ‘infidelity’ (Flood, 2003; McMillan and Worth, 2010; Smith et al., 2012; Tavory and Swidler, 2009; Willig, 1997a, 1997b). More broadly, the relatively recent western construction of (hetero)sex as being about and for pleasure (D’Emilio and Freedman, 1997) prioritises certain sensory elements of sex (Measor, 2006); a conceptual splitting between ‘pleasurable sex’ and ‘safe sex’ (Khan et al., 2004; Naisteter and Sitron, 2010) renders condoms (safety) and sex (pleasure) largely incompatible. 1 Similarly, an emphasis on intimacy produces an account of sex as being around an ultimate intimate connectivity. Intimacy and pleasure can be either converging or diverging constructions (D’Emilio and Freedman, 1997; Fahs, 2011).
If we move from a realist framework, which simply interprets negative accounts of condoms as the truth of the matter, to one informed by constructionism (Burr, 2003), the cultural narratives, metaphors and discourses around condoms (and sex, and relationships) work to produce the reality of condoms and condom use. We can understand condoms as really like this, because they are the (dominant) ways people have of making sense of what condoms are, what (hetero)sex is, and what heterosex with condoms is, through which any embodied material acts become experienced. In this article, I aim to take the analysis of condom discourse further, by not only demonstrating the persistence of anti-condom discourse, but by examining the way a particular nature of heterosex is constructed in and through (anti) condom discourse. I argue that this works to perpetuate ongoing resistance to condom use. In doing so, I examine Lowe’s (2005: 75) contention of a ‘two-way relationship between contraception and heterosexual practices’.
Method
The data for this article come from a qualitative project on the social contexts of heterosexual STI transmission, which involved 15 focus groups with ‘lay’ individuals aged below 35, as well as 32 individual interviews with professionals working in the area of sexual health (see Terry et al., 2012) in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The project conformed to standard ethical principles for the conduct of research with human participants, and received ethical approval from The University of Auckland's human participants’ ethics committee.
This article analyses the focus group data (see also Braun, 2008). Focus group participants were recruited through advertising, word of mouth, and snowballing. Two individuals were hired specifically to recruit participants from their broad networks. In total, 58 participants (38 female, 20 male) took part in 15 groups. Some groups were composed of strangers, and others of friends or acquaintances. Six were female only, four were male only, and the remaining five were mixed. The average age of participants was 25 (range: 16–36). Almost all participants identified as white, and most were working. The demographic profile of the participants does not reflect the ethnic/cultural diversity of residents of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Participants in 14 groups lived in Auckland, the largest city in Aotearoa/New Zealand; those in the remaining group lived in Hamilton, the closest but much smaller city approximately 120 kilometres distant. Most had lived in Aotearoa/New Zealand for the majority of their lives.
All participants had had experiences of heterosexual sex and the vast majority identified as heterosexual. The average number of sexual relationships was six; the average number of sexual partners was over 12. At the time of data collection, 64% were in a relationship, and the average duration of these relationships was over three years; almost all were monogamous/exclusive. Seventy-five per cent reported that they had engaged in casual sex at least once. Virtually all talked about engaging in ‘unsafe’ sexual practices (e.g. intercourse without a condom, not knowing the STI status of partner or self) at some point, and 73% reported some sort of sexual health check up (at least once). Twenty-five per cent reported having had at least one known STI (of these, 27% reported more than one; 7% overall).
The focus groups took place at the university or at participants’ homes, at a time that suited. Discussion time ranged from approximately one to over two hours. Topics discussed included: ideas and meaning around having sex; what sexual health is; knowledge of STIs and STI prevention; factors associated with unsafe sex; Aotearoa/New Zealand’s STI statistics; and ideas about sexual health promotion. All discussions were audio-taped and transcribed using the orthographic method, with some punctuation added for readability. When extracts are presented, an ellipsis (…) indicates some text not relevant to the analysis has been removed; the focus group number and sex make-up of participants is noted. Names and other identifying features have been changed; in most cases, participants chose their own pseudonyms.
Analysis was conducted from a social constructionist theoretical perspective (Burr, 2003). Data were initially coded thematically (Braun and Clarke, 2006). All sections of focus group transcripts that contained talk about condoms were collated into one file, and were then read, coded and recoded into themes. My analysis in this article focuses on specific aspects of the condom data, and draws more extensively on elements of ‘critical discursive psychology’ approaches (e.g. Edley, 2001; Wetherell, 1998), and work on the analysis of metaphor (e.g. Weatherall and Walton, 1999), to examine closely the production of reality through language. My interest is in examining anti-condom discourse and, particularly, a metaphor of the condom-as-killer, and in unpacking the way a ‘nature’ of heterosex is constructed within these accounts, a nature that is inherently incompatible with condom use.
Analysis
I begin by briefly highlighting the very few ‘positive’ framings of condoms, to contextualise my focus on the anti-condom discourse. Accounts of condoms that could be coded as ‘positive’ were very rare in the data (only 17 extracts were coded as positive in any way across the entire dataset); most commonly, these related to a reassurance, lack of worry or ‘peace of mind’ (Melanie, FG15-female) related to risk of pregnancy or contracting an STI, following sex. On two occasions, positive accounts related to making sex ‘nice and contained and unmessy’ (Molly, FG3-female). However, the articulation of positive accounts around condoms or condom use was not necessarily easily-sayable, even in all-female group discussions: Extract 1 (FG15-female) Melanie: I might sound like a prude I find it really like I I I I I like to use condoms and I actually find it quite gross not using them just I find– ?: Oh really? Melanie: Like the whole semen in body thing quite weird. ?: Oh really?
Here, Melanie’s identity-amelioration work, her hesitation and multiple-repeats of the ‘I’ signal ‘liking’ condoms as uncommon, and as a perspective that’s not easy to express. That this account is unexpected is reinforced by the repeated ‘oh really’ response from one of her co-participants. Overall, then, positive accounts within the data were very rare, and potentially difficult to express, suggesting a widespread cultural norm of anti-condom sentiment.
In contrast, both anti-condom discourse and reports of condom-free ‘risky’ sexual practices were prevalent. While reported relationships to condoms were complex, sometimes contradictory, 2 and certainly not uniform, a range of repeated and frequent negative meanings were evident, across both women’s and men’s accounts, in mixed- and single-sex groups. I begin by briefly outlining dominant accounts of condoms and ‘safe-sex’ practice, to provide the broader context for making sense of discursive framings on condoms that follows.
‘Safe sex is condoms I reckon’ but ‘condoms suck’ 3
In line with public health discourse, the dominant account of ‘safe sex’ was of condom use. For instance: Extract 2 (FG15-female) VB: What for you guys counts as safe sex, what would you think of safe sex? Sally: Condom. Phoebe: Yeah condom protected sex.
However, while condoms appear as the standard response to a question about what counts as safe sex, this was bounded and limited, with safer-sex discourse typically located only around vaginal intercourse.
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The concept and practice of ‘protected’ oral sex (both fellatio and cunnilingus) was rejected (as is common, see Stone et al., 2006): Extract 3 (FG7-male) VB: … what would you think of you know as safe sex? James: Um a condom usually. ?: Mmm. James: That’s about it. VB: Mhmm. Jason: Yeah. I mean I gather that strictly speaking um you shouldn’t even be having oral sex if it’s going to be (mhm) protected but everyone does so um. Brandon: What’s that what’s that thing dental dam or something? Jason: Brandon: And while I go down on you you know- Jason: (laughs) Yeah I’ll just slip out my my gladwrap- James: A condom for your mouth. (laughs) … Dylan: I I wouldn’t know about what you could get off the woman from her giving you oral sex I’d have no idea I’ve heard some people say they reckon it’s quite dangerous and then other and then the general consensus seems to be you can’t really catch anything. VB: So you wouldn’t you wouldn’t wear a condom? James: During what? Jason: For a blowjob? VB: For a blowjob. Jason: No. James: No no try and avoid that one (laughs). Dylan: It’s just not even worth it.
This extract demonstrates what could be called the ‘standard story’ (Nairn and McCreanor, 1991) of safer heterosex: the use of condoms, but their containment to just vaginal (or anal) intercourse. Dylan’s use of ‘just’ in the final line provides a bottom-line position: the use of a condom renders fellatio not just less pleasurable, but ‘not even worth it’. These participants normalise not using a condom or a dental dam during oral sex, through invocations of ‘consensus’ and what ‘everyone does’. While condom use (for coitus) simply is ‘safe sex’, condom use for fellatio, or dental dam use for cunnilingus, do not form part of standard safer-sex discourse. Indeed, Brandon names the product, but then disclaims certainty of this knowledge – ‘dental dam or something’ – while Jason reinforces non-normality with the adjective ‘esoteric’. The use of language of ‘gladwrap’ (clingfilm) or a (plastic) ‘shopping bag’ (Jocelyn, FG8-mixed) similarly positions them outside the conceptual realm of sex. Such talk constructs the dental dam as an item not designed for the task in hand, as unerotic, and thus as categorically separate from sex. An evocation of ‘holding hands and wearing gloves’ in relation to condom use for fellatio (George, FG8-mixed) does similar work: it invokes ‘unnaturalness’ and ‘undesirableness’; the unstated desirable in these acts is skin-on-skin contact. Effectively, the idea of protected oral sex is framed as an unreasonable, excessive, and undesirable ‘demand’; such talk also constitutes an articulation of what ‘sex’ should be about, which I develop further later in the article.
Despite a ready articulation of condoms for coitus as safe sex, condom-protected vaginal intercourse was similarly often framed as ‘unnatural’ or less than natural by a number of participants: Extract 4 (FG11-mixed) VB: … what do you think, what is safe sex? Ava: Condoms. Cathy: Condoms. Mikey: Artificial. VB: Artificial? Mikey: That’s the first word that comes to mind … yeah so that’s why I feel that’s artificial, it’s, it takes away to from me the naturalness of the act.
This lack of ‘naturalness’ was one of a range of offered motivations for why people might do ‘unsafe sex’: Extract 5 (FG14-female) Kate: Pleasure, and doing it the most natural way, and feel good factor, and kind of what we said before about pleasing the guy, and you know, what as a girl, as a woman, knowing that guys hate condoms generally speaking, and wanting it to have, like, to be good for them.
This extract invokes many common features of anti-condom discourse (e.g. Flood, 2003). Across the dataset, the ‘safe sex is condoms’ account coexisted with overwhelmingly dominant negative constructions of condoms, as negatively impacting across all aspects of sexual experience. Participants easily articulated dislike of condoms: in the previous extract, Kate associated ‘hating’ condoms with men; like many other female participants, she also expressed her own ‘hatred’ of them:
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Extract 6 (FG14-female) Kate: I think condoms are awful things I wouldn’t I hate them.
Kate’s language of hatred evokes a passionate, unequivocal and emotional response to condoms. The level of dislike of condoms, and the negative experience of sex with condoms, was often constructed as particularly intense through the use of such extreme language: Extract 7 (FG12-mixed) VB: So it’s kind of why, you know, people have unsafe sex because? Hermione: It’s easy. Gertrude: Condoms suck. Bob: Condoms do take away all the feeling … Gertrude: It’s so much more fun without one. Bob: It is definitely better without one … Gertrude: I think it feels horrible. Bob: Yeah definitely. Gertrude: I can’t stand them.
Alongside emotional evaluations, Bob’s use here of an extreme case formulation about a loss of ‘all the feeling’ works to produce a very negative reality for condom use. Extreme case formulations are used to bolster claims (Pomerantz, 1986), and work to persuade about the reality of a particular claimed version of events or reality (see also Potter, 1996). Here, the ‘feeling’ of sex is constructed in dichotomous terms: with a condom, you have no feeling; without a condom, you have full feeling. This was articulated in exactly the same way by James: Extract 8 (FG7-male) James: I know I think about it, but you know, I hate wearing a condom, kind of just destroys all the feeling, you know.
With the use of such language, it becomes inappropriate and even unreasonable to expect condoms to be routinely used in vaginal intercourse, particularly given the current dominant western discourse which focuses on the right – indeed, obligation – to maximise sexual pleasure (Braun, 2005; D’Emilio and Freedman, 1997). If sex is about pleasure, and condoms remove, let alone just reduce, pleasure, they effectively remove the purpose of sex. These articulations reveal the entrenched way pleasure and safety remain competing sexual discourses in relation to heterosex (see Khan et al., 2004).
The use of extreme language was common throughout discussion of condoms: Extract 9 (FG7-male) VB: So condoms are you of the same? Jason: Hate them, yeah, hate them and it, yes, it destroys the (pause) impetus it can- Dylan: Makes everything clinical I think. Jason: Yeah. Brandon: It does, yeah, that’s a, that’s a good word clinical. Jason: It’s like, it’s like trying to like, you know, going to give someone a massage and putting on surgical gloves (laughter) it’s like, you know, not, just not nice, um, yeah. Brandon: Yeah it does, it takes the emotion out of it and it’s not even a laziness thing, it’s not like you know, ‘oh I can’t be bothered I don’t really care about you know giving you something’, it’s really is, it just kills the passion, it just kills the whole you know the build up to it.
Here, Brandon, Dylan and Jason articulated many of the ideas already noted. They constructed condoms as unnatural (clinical), not least by a ‘ridiculous’ comparison – a massage given wearing (latex) surgical gloves. The ridiculousness of this idea is demonstrated by the men’s shared laughter (see Billig, 2005), with shared laughter demonstrating shared meaning and understanding (Keyton and Beck, 2010). This imagery works to construct ‘sex’, in and of itself, as an implicitly ‘safe’ activity that should not require the use of – unnecessary – latex. 6
At the end of Extract 9, Brandon’s account of sex is of an activity that follows a ‘natural’ trajectory, with a build-up of passion which (implicitly) culminates in both intercourse and (his) orgasm. This is a familiar and normative account of (western) heterosex, strongly reflecting widespread and pervasive coital and orgasmic imperatives (Lowe, 2005; McPhillips et al., 2001; Potts, 2002), with heterosex an activity that appears to remain normatively defined by (preferably orgasm-producing) coitus as the ultimate act (Gute et al., 2008; Randall and Byers, 2003; Richters and Song, 1999; Sanders and Reinisch, 1999). I now interrogate this idea of heterosex as having a natural trajectory which a condom disrupts or destroys.
The condom-as-killer
In Extracts 8 and 9, the use of extreme language around destruction (‘destroys’) and death (‘kills’) evokes the condom-as-killer, a metaphor which appeared frequently in the data. The condom-as-killer destroys an otherwise ‘natural’ progression of sex, and the pleasures of it. Along with accounts of pleasure removal, condoms reportedly killed the mood of sex: Extract 10 (FG2-mixed) VB: Why do you think people do have, you know, unsafe sex then, why might they? Samantha: Cos they’d say fuck it, it kills the mood putting on a condom. Kevin: They’re terrible. Samantha: They’re terrible things really. Kimberly: They are actually.
This account is again characterised by extreme and maximising language (Potter, 1996), where the effects of condoms are brutal and final – death and destruction are not partial effects. As Edwards, Ashmore and Potter argued, ‘death’ arguments invoke ‘the reality that should not be denied (1995: 26, emphasis in original). The metaphor of the condom-as-killer appears to operate similarly, to invoke a (brutal) reality that should not be denied and, rhetorically, to invoke guilt (about the need for condom use, see Edwards et al., 1995, who claim the rhetorical effect of such death critiques is guilt induction). Kate’s account in Extract 5 can be interpreted as evidencing this ‘effect’ – at least in part – through her articulation of knowing what men (dis)like, and wanting to please them. 7 ‘Pleasing your male partner through very good sex’ appears in (heterosexual) women’s magazines as an important discourse, coexisting with a discourse of men as ‘naturally’ inclined to cheat if the sex is not good enough, thus rendering male sexual pleasure an important concern for heterosexual women (Farvid and Braun, 2006).
Condoms were similarly talked about as killing the ‘moment’: Extract 11 (FG5-male) François: I think it’s also back to trust, ‘cause if you gonna put a condom on, right, then you don’t trust them, ‘cause you trying to protect yourself from them, so I mean that can kill the moment, ‘hold on, we need to protect my– I need to protect myself from something you may have’, so that while they’re lying there things are running through their mind, things are running through your mind, plus the time.
Here, the ‘sexual moment’ is represented as a fragile thing, easily disruptable (see also Flood, 2003), and a moment/mood, which, it is suggested, requires a dislocation from ‘normal’ (rational) concerns and thoughts. Others similarly described a loss of desire and a disruption to a presumed trajectory for sex with the introduction of a condom: Extract 12 (FG13-male) Matt: I have this thing that I’ll be read- on to it, you know, horny and it happened today, and when I put a condom on all of a sudden I just don’t want to have sex anymore.
In Matt’s rendering, ‘not wanting to have sex’ is ambiguous, either psychological and/or physical – a lack of desire and/or of erection. But some men located the condom’s destruction of desire clearly as a penile-response issue. Responding to a question about whether ‘safe sex’ (defined within the group as condom use, for vaginal or anal intercourse) was easy, Jason responded: Extract 13 (FG7-male) Jason: I think that that it it can be in theory it’s easy and a lot of the time it can be easy and then it’s very it it’s Brandon: I don’t think in any relationship I’ve - Jason: It’s just physiologically it just kills everything. Brandon: It does. Jason: And you’re just like and the condom falls off and you’re like ‘oh okay’. (laughs) James: Got another one. Jason: (laughs) ‘I guess we’re not having sex then’.
While James posited potential for future coital activity, in Jason’s account, ‘sex’ was obliterated by the physiological actions of his (formerly erect) penis, a response he blamed on the condom (see Measor, 2006, for more on men’s stories around condom-induced erectile loss). In this account, the agency in his bodily change is given to the condom, rather than with his body, or his mind. In Extract 11, the mind and ‘conscious thought’ is located as a source of desire destruction, but activated by the condom and what it represents.
What is notable in these accounts is how fragile the supposedly robust and ever-present male sexual drive (Hollway, 1989) is. It is represented as something that can be eradicated by the mere hint of a condom (see also Vitellone, 2000). The metaphor of condom-as-killer endows the condom with agency within a sexual encounter (indeed, seemingly with more agency than the people involved, or their desires), and this agency is an ability actively to ruin a sexual encounter or experience. Rather than sexual manslaughter, this is sexual murder! The condom: tried, convicted and sentenced. As such, the metaphor works as a profoundly efficient and effective discursive resource for resisting condom use, and for perpetuating the negativity of much anti-condom discourse.
The metaphor was deployed to describe both the physical effects of a thin sheath, and also more symbolic, emotional or relational effects. For instance: Extract 14 (FG1-mixed) Stella: There can be something about sex that can be about becoming really intimate with someone and sharing something really special and when you have a piece of plastic between that, that’s lost, you don’t have that anymore, and it can also put up issues of trust. Like if you’re in relationship when you’re starting out you know, if you have to wear a condom it can be, it’s kind of like a message to say I don’t trust you, which is unhelpful.
Stella’s construction of a condom as ‘a piece of plastic’ echoes earlier accounts of dental dams as like ‘gladwrap’ (Extract 3) or a ‘shopping bag’, and works to render in a very negative way the physical properties of a condom. Intimacy and sharing – both emotional experiences and processes – are framed as hindered by this ‘plastic’. The condom is positioned as an intimacy-killer, as well as a passion- and mood-killer. In the next extract (which follows immediately after Extract 8) Dylan claims the condom can also destroy the emotional intensity of a relationship: Extract 15 (FG7-male) Dylan: I don’t think it’s about feeling I just think it destroys the moment up to it really as well like it’s sort of like hang on a minute (laughter) it’s sort of like and especially long term relationships I think they’re almost detrimental to long term relationships long term relationships that I’ve had where you know maybe you’ve seen someone for two years and you’ve just had condom sex with a condom all the time um it’s sort of it seems to um lose something quite a lot that I’ll just comparing to previous ones you know in not in the just in a connection I dunno.
While Dylan disputes the common idea that condoms reduce sensation (see also Flood, 2003), he reiterates the metaphor of death and destruction. He draws on ideas Willig (e.g. 1995) and others (e.g. Smith et al., 2012) have demonstrated about intimacy and relationships associated with the absence of condom use. Such accounts of a lack of emotional intimacy with condoms – and a lack of ‘trust’ – also reiterate what ‘desirable’ heterosex is, through what they situate condoms in opposition to.
Alongside the explicit language and imagery of death and destruction that was prevalent in the data, the metaphor of condom-as-killer was also frequently evoked in a more ‘downgraded’ form, through the language of ‘interruption’: Extract 16 (FG1-mixed) Apollo: Yeah it interrupts the heat of the moment. You’ve got to stop and fumble around in front of her and hopefully keep going. Stella: It’s all very unromantic.
The idea of ‘the heat of the moment’, another common trope around sex, again invokes a ‘natural’ trajectory for heterosex that is linear and cumulative (Lowe, 2005). Sex involves a build-up of passion (heat), and any disruption to this is thus a disruption to sex. Such accounts work to conceptually separate condoms from ‘desirable’ sex; condoms are constructed as not synonymous with, or even oppositional to, things that sex is or should be about, such as passion, or romance: Extract 17 (FG14-female) Sally: … there’s this whole romantic thing of you know of what sex is and condoms certainly, what you are saying before, there’s nothing romantic about a condom you know.
Willig (1998) identified a discourse of romance around heterosex which works in opposition to safer-sex practices (not just condoms). This ‘romance’ discourse around sex has been analysed as a particularly gendered phenomenon, which can operate to render women ‘passive’ and thus unable or less able to ensure condoms are used in sexual encounters (Gavey and McPhillips, 1999; Willig, 1998). 8
This metaphor of condom-as-killer invokes a closely related metaphor – of war or a battle – a (very hegemonically masculine) metaphor commonly deployed across domains as diverse as disease/immunology (Martin, 1989; Sontag, 1990) and the business world (Koller, 2004). If the condom (the bad guy) is attacking sex (the good guy), they must metaphorically battle it out. This works to construct sex and condoms in opposition to each other, and there must be a winner and loser. If the condom is the winner, sex (sexual sensation, the man, and even the relationship) is the loser; if sex is the winner, the condom is the loser (one does not get used).
The use of metaphor is common within domains such as illness and health (Jasen, 2009; Lupton, 1994; Sontag, 1990), sexuality (Weatherall and Walton, 1999) and biology (Martin, 1989, 1991, 1994; Spanier, 1995), and they have been understood as producing rather than merely describing reality. Many analyses have demonstrated the ways metaphors are often profoundly gendered, and worked to (re)create gendered social realities in relation to biological or other processes, such as conception (Martin, 1991). In my data, the condom-as-killer metaphor endows the (inert) condom with traditionally masculine qualities of power, strength, aggression and agency. Its deployment within safer-sex discourse ascribes social and psychological power to the condom beyond its physical properties.
Adam, Eve, and the nature of heterosex
The metaphor of condom-as-killer and the evocation of a battle between sex and the condom construct a particular ideal form of heterosex, where sex should be a natural, continuous process, unimpeded by the ‘interruption’ of a condom, following a linear trajectory towards penetration and ultimate pleasure (orgasm). It also re-articulates a particular ‘essential’ nature of heterosex. The final section of my analysis focuses on the ‘nature’ of heterosex constructed within anti-condom discourse, and considers the implications of this.
The metaphor of condom-as-killer requires not only an opponent, but one that precedes the condom – something for it to kill, destroy or maim. The metaphor only makes sense if sex is positioned as separate from, but importantly also prior to, condoms. This evokes an essence or nature for what (hetero)sex is that conceptually excludes the condom. The model of sex that participants tended to articulate was one that did indeed exclude condoms. For instance: Extract 18 (FG5-male) Oliver: It’s not like Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve didn’t use condoms.
Reference to Adam and Eve provides a lovely example of how sex and condoms were conceptually separated. Through an invocation of a biblical past, and, in biblical terms, the origin of humanity and also of sex, sex necessarily precedes condoms. Condoms can only logically follow; they become the ‘unnatural’ addition to the original (‘natural’) sexual act.
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In quite a different way, Jenna also positioned sex as naturally condomless: Extract 19 (FG6-mixed) Jenna: Yeah they’re just so annoying and like you know half the time they’re just going to like come off or like rip or something it’s just like why (laughs) if it’s going to rip we may as well just not use one anyway and just have proper sex without annoying things.
Like Stella’s earlier account of a piece of ‘plastic’ (Extract 14), the condom is here described in a way that positions it as inadequately designed for sex, and thus not really suitable for use in that context. But of primary analytic interest is Jenna’s claim around ‘proper sex’. If ‘proper sex’ is what you do without a condom, a condom can only detract from sex in its pure form; condom-sex can only be ‘not proper sex’. Such descriptions invoke a ‘natural’ state of sex that is condomless, and implicitly contrast with an ‘unnatural’ state of sex: sex that involves condoms (see also Lowe, 2005).
This idea of a pure state of sex that precedes condoms also underpinned comments that evoked the implicit ‘natural’ trajectory for sex previously discussed: Extract 20 (FG5-male) Oliver: And it’s easy I mean no one no one really enjoys like stopping to put on a condom and– Jay: No god it kills the moment. Extract 21 (FG6-mixed) Pierre: You’re all in the moment and then– Jenna: It’s like ‘I’ve got a condom’. (laughs) Pierre: It’s like woo hoo, and all it does is just ruin the moment.
To describe a condom as something that requires ‘stopping’ sex, taking the actors out of that moment, requires a conceptualisation of sexual activity (and even a sexual mood) as something separate from a condom, again as something that precedes a condom. The not-sexual status ascribed to condoms is not inherent in the object itself; condoms are, alternatively, only a sexual object, as they have no purpose beyond sex. Indeed, if sex is constructed as a build-up towards ultimate pleasure, then the putting on of a condom could be seen as ‘anticipatory to further pleasure,’ rather than ‘destroying’ the moment. But it was not. Instead, through accounts of stopping sex or killing the moment, the action of putting on a condom was framed as an essentially non-sexual event. This was vividly articulated with the use of a race analogy: Extract 22 (FG7-male) Dylan: … what I find works with the condom is just really slow slow sort of um dreamlike sex (laughs) I suppose or sort of you know so you do it that way instead of the wham bam thing and I find the wham bam thing just doesn’t work with the with the condom because it it destroys the moment you can’t you know so that those are the times that we didn’t have sex with the condoms was when it was– Brandon: Kind of like in a hundred metre sprint and when you’re getting almost to line and you go ‘oh let me put my shoes on hang on’ (laughter) kind of ruins it yeah. Dylan:It does it does you can’t you can’t have passionate like that.
Brandon’s race imagery powerfully evokes as ridiculous ‘stopping’ sex to put on a condom; again the concept of ‘stopping’ sex evokes ‘sex’ as a continuous trajectory of building desire and pleasure, towards penetration and orgasm (perhaps captured by Dylan as ‘passionate’ or ‘wham bam’ rather than ‘dreamlike’
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sex), a ‘natural’ progression that does not include the condom. This was discussed elsewhere by men in FG7: Extract 23 (FG7-male) James: But when you talk about is it easy to have safe sex um see I go back to very rarely do I use condoms um and that’s coming back to kinda if I like someone and she likes me and we’ve got this whole kind of um passion in the air thing going on you know it just kind of naturally moves into the next stage and you know having to worry about condoms - Brandon: So it’s like you’re saying you know regardless of whether you know you’re with someone whether it’s having sex or you know making love or whatever um if the reason you’re doing it with that person is because you have emotional feelings is then it’s a natural progression not to actually to you know doing it.
In this extract, ‘sex’ additionally was framed as an emotional process, which itself precludes condom use. In the data, condoms were located, implicitly, within the domain of the rational, the logical, the un-passionate; sex was located within the domain of the emotional, the passionate (implicitly the irrational), which itself produces another aspect of the ‘nature’ of what a sexual encounter is and should be. Thus, condoms and sex were positioned in multiple ways as inherently antithetical.
Conclusions
Those who take part in psychological and sex research are often reflective of certain aspects of the population (e.g. Boynton, 2003; Henrich et al., 2010), and my participants reflect some of these limitations. These examples of anti-condom discourse were expressed by a sample of primarily heterosexual New Zealanders, who were also mostly white, and so are not typical of the ethnic/cultural diversity of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Class identification was not directly assessed, but is also not as salient an identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand as in some other places. Despite these particularities (and limitations), the views participants expressed reflect common and widely available accounts of the negative effects of condoms on (hetero)sexual experience within, but also beyond, the western context of this project. Previous qualitative research (Flood, 2003; Lowe, 2005; Measor, 2006; Smith et al., 2012) speaks to the tenacity of these accounts across different samples and contexts. If we move beyond a realist theoretical framework, we can understand them as contributing significantly to the social and meaning-making contexts from and within which new users of condoms emerge (or emerge as non-users of condoms). For this reason, they are important to take seriously; for many people, they effectively produce the reality of condoms. As they are so tenacious, in the interests of sexual health promotion, we need to work in, and with, them, and work at unpicking their finer detail to dislodge them. However, we do need to remain attentive to the nuanced and particularised discourses and metaphors available within localised contexts, if health promotion work around condom use is to be effective.
Within my data, the central account of sex as essentially condom-less, and the metaphor of condoms-as-killer of the essence of sexual activity and pleasure, work to produce a reality whereby heterosex exists conceptually separately to condoms, and where sex and condoms are oppositional, with condomless sex as the original, the pure and ideal form of sex, and condom sex as a poor imitation. Sex was almost entirely located within a discourse of passion and pleasure, the dominant, but relatively new, western construction of (hetero)sex (D’Emilio and Freedman, 1997). In contrast, condoms were located within a discourse of sexual ‘safety’, which is effectively constructed as a discourse of displeasure. Khan et al. (2004) and others have argued for the need to reconstruct condoms as part of the domain of heterosexual ‘pleasure’ rather than ‘pain.’ How this can be done, and how safer heterosex can be eroticised, remains a crucial question (see Warr, 2001, also Allen, 2004). The tenacity of anti-condom discourse shows that challenge to be a deep one.
However, the ‘truths’ articulated by these participants are not inherent in the latex or polyurethane sheath that is a condom, or indeed even in people’s embodied experiences of them. The pleasure-reduction claim, in particular, is difficult to challenge – it invokes the authority of experience, and a physicality of sensation that is difficult to dispute. However, Flood (2003) has suggested that the experience of condoms as ‘desensitising’ is not a simple (unidirectional) outcome of physiological and pre-social sensation. Instead, fitting with a more constructionist analysis, he argues that cultural notions and metaphors assist in the constitution of men’s bodily experience. The metaphor of the condom-as-killer works to reinforce the possibility and ‘reality’ of these experiences in the future. The intersections and interplay between the ‘material’ and the ‘discursive’, and a potential move to ‘post-constructionist’ frameworks (Lykke, 2010) may be crucial for future work on condom (non) use.
What I have argued here, however, is that it is important not just to interrogate and challenge anti-condom discourse for sexual health promotion, but to start to unpack and destabilise the foundational constructions of ‘sex’ on which they rest. If we truly believe that sex is not a natural act (Tiefer, 2004), then this meaning is also up for contestation. Without contestation, it seems like that anti-condom discourse will remain entrenched.
Footnotes
Funding
This research was funded by a University of Auckland Vice Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award to Virginia Braun.