Kenya: Mad at My Girlfriends
On two independent occasions over the last week, two women told me about men removing the condom mid-sex and then resuming intercourse like nothing happened.
They then pretended they had a condom to remove when they were done. No, they did not ask the women for permission to do this. No they were not in committed relationships with these women and no they did not discuss pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections before the act. These were casual sexual encounters so as per the sexual norms of 2012, everyone involved should have been protected. The interesting thing is that neither of these women stopped the proceedings. Rather they continued, took the morning after pill the next day and asked me to hold their hand through an HIV test. Hmmm....
I am mad at my girlfriends. Mad at their carelessness, mad at their silence, mad at having to go to VCT, mad at their choice of partner. These are not 22-year-old girls who do not know how to manage their sex lives. They aren't college kids who have not figured out how to have uncomfortable conversations around a potentially life threatening issue. They are adults approaching mid-life. So what happened?
Well girlfriend number one says that she was not entirely sure what the guy was doing until he got back in there and things felt different, then she got distracted by the feel good feeling and the next thing she knew it was over. Girlfriend number two's story is not drastically different, but her circumstances were; she says "I have just come out of a three-year relationship and every time I have had sex I haven't felt much... I was starting to think things were broken down there". So when this guy took the condom off, she was caught up in a confused moment of elation, pleasure and horror at his breach of trust.
Sex is complicated - so many feelings, so many rules, so many dangers, so many personal judgments and no instruction manual on how to go about it. It takes most of us years to learn how to be naked in front of another person, manage our feelings around sex and communicate very basic things about our pleasure to others. Hollywood and advertisers would have you believe that great sex happens to the young but those of us who are leaving our youth will tell you that sex is wasted on the young, the perky and the non-cellulitic. When your boobs drop two inches, when you get some stretch marks and a few dimples on your butt? Now, now you are ready for some good loving.
Ladies, we don't want to be 'that girl'; the one with all the rules. That one who is like a drill sergeant looking for the condom, making sure that everything is done right, dishing out instructions and making the guy feel like he has to salute when he finishes. We want to be the fun girl - the chilled out girl who is easy to be around. The sad thing is that the easy going girl, the one who doesn't ask questions, ends up being a single mother (by mistake, not design), a mistress or worse trying to live positively with HIV.
So how can you be that chick with the high standards and expectations but still be chilled out and fun? You cannot. Instead you choose the life you want to live and have the conversations that facilitate it... even if it means practising in front of the mirror before you do. You tell a man how you want to be treated. You establish your boundaries and stick to them. You buy your own condoms and insist that he wears one throughout sex. Better yet, when a man breaches your trust by taking off the condom mid-proceedings, you kick that health hazard out of your body and your house. Unprotected sex is after all an entirely different level of relationship - it entails trust, conversation, and a code of conduct. A man who barges his way into your body unprotected and without express permission is not a man you have to be nice to, easy going with or chilled out around.
