Safety in Numbers?: Why lip balm is more important than a condom
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The tagline for a new ad campaign against HIV reads, “92% of Women Carry Lip Protection. 10% of Women Carry HIV Protection.” I’m sure you’ve seen it in The Daily and thought to yourself, “There’s no way 92% of women carry lip protection.” Or maybe “Only 92%”—depending on whether or not you understand women (I don’t). Of course, the more provocative part is the second line. Ten percent of women carry HIV protection. What does that mean? Why is it important? And what doesn’t it say?
The worst advertising gimmick, bar none, is to throw out an impressive-sounding statistic that, when considered in itself, doesn’t really mean anything important, but is intended to persuade people to follow a particular path. The premise of the ad, the implication of the comparison of these two statistics, is that carrying HIV protection is, on some level, the same as carrying lip protection. A female Stanford student might be walking along, with no big differences from other students, and suddenly have the need to protect herself from HIV. Socially, three things would be necessary for this to be remotely the case: 1) the vast majority of women must be sexually active; 2) having sex must be unpredictable, such that the only sane thing to do would be to carry around “HIV protection” at all times; 3) there is, in general, no knowledge of whether one’s sexual partner has HIV or AIDS.
I’ve never personally collected data from a randomly chosen sampling of college students. There have of course been studies done that will tell you between 60% and 80% of college-age students are sexually active, generally meaning that they have had sexual intercourse at least once in the past year, and they have no solid intention of not doing so in the future. Maybe this data is spot on, but I personally know quite a few young women who are not sexually active and do not intend to be until marriage. Their presence is often overlooked and their position even disdained at times by the seemingly ambient attitudes in favor of being sexually active. They are a group of people who have no need to carry HIV protection.
Does a person know when and with whom she is going to have sex, if she chooses to be sexually active? From those young women I know who are sexually active, it seems that much more often than not, sex is planned, or at least expected, and her sexual partner is her boyfriend. It seems prudent to say that the majority of women who are sexually active would have no reason to carry their HIV protection with them on a regular basis, in the way that lip balm is a common and useful thing to have on hand.
For those cases where this doesn’t hold true, for women who might have no idea when or where they might have sex, and with whom, is “have protection with you at all times” the right message? It seems that this really isn’t attacking the problem, just the symptom of the problem. Whatever your stance on sexual activity before marriage, you have to admit that there’s a problem with the mindset that if you go out on a Friday night to have a good time, you just might have sex. And it could be with just about anybody.
There are no courses on how best to prepare yourself for a car crash in the event that you don’t have your seatbelt on for one simple reason: cars have seatbelts, and we should wear them. Regardless of how much more fun it might be to drive down the freeway without a seatbelt on, it’s stupid. The government knows it and so they made it illegal to drive without your seatbelt on, for our own good. 92% of people know how to swing on a playground swing. 10% of people know how to brace themselves for a car crash if they aren’t wearing their seatbelt.
At the root of the HIV epidemic is a problem of attitude, not one of sanitation. Condoms (the only meaning I can gather from the reasonably-sounding “HIV protection”) are effective around 90% of the time if they’re used correctly. Abstinence (a word more dangerous than any expletive) is of course 100% effective. But 90% is pretty good, right? Suppose an individual uses a new condom every time he or she has sex, and has sex 20 times during a year. With a 90% success rate each time, there is about 12% chance that the condoms works every time, if used correctly. It’s playing with matches at a gas station. The stakes are high and we only have to lose the bet once.
Now, I’m not claiming that those who have sex carelessly deserve AIDS. I’m not even saying that we should revert to the much-criticized abstinence-only sex education programs. But if we do care about our youth, our adults, in the United States, in Africa, male, female, heterosexual and homosexual, HIV can’t be portrayed as an acceptable risk that can be lowered enough to take lightly. On this basis the argument for only having sex in a committed relationship is fairly clear. Of course, “committed relationships” are often as fragile as we hoped they wouldn’t be—I’ll testify to that one first hand. Then the only fully safe place for sex is between two people who have never had sex with anyone else. And we got there without talking about morality.
For the few of you who have disagreed with most of what I’ve said so far, but for some reason are still reading: sex isn’t an appetite or a basic need. We don’t repress some part of us by holding ourselves to a standard that isn’t as convenient in today’s world. It isn’t “just physical” and it’s not necessary to have fun in college.
Wear your seatbelt. It’s pretty simple, and you will end up gaining more than you could lose.
