Condoms Please!
Laura Barcella wrote* about another irritating skirmish in the war against conservative extremists and their encroaching prudery — they just seem to keep getting sillier and pettier and ever-more exasperating, don't they?
The war on safe sex in America just keeps heating up – to conservative Bushies' delight.
As Suz Redfearn in the Washington Post reports, almost half of the CVS pharmacy stores in Washington DC [also the most common drug store in our Maryland suburb] keep their condom supply locked behind glass cabinets:
"An informal survey found that almost half – 22 of 50 – of the District's CVS pharmacies lock up their condoms; this in a city where one in 20 residents is HIV-positive. Most of those stores are in less affluent areas where the incidence of HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy – all preventable with condoms – are highest."
But wait, it gets worse. If a poor soul actually wants to (gasp!) buy a pack, s/he must press the "Push for Assistance" button (sounding an alarm throughout the store), then wait for a salesperson to unlock the case.
She goes on to describe how this is embarrassing to the customers and is, therefore, having the desired effect of making it harder for people to get condoms. The extremists think this will encourage abstinance.
Anyway — and I'm writing now as a gay person with emotional experience of this phenomenon — shame is the reaction that makes this an effective tactic, and there is no reason for shame. As these same extremists (the ones who can't sleep at night for fear that somewhere, someone is enjoying sex) have been discovering to their dismay for the past few decades with gay people: lean hard enough on the shame button and you finally get pushed back. Now they are forced into their corner, whining about "in your face homos" — let's remember who whouldn't let whom keep quiet about it in the first place.
But that's not my point here. My point is that the shame that the extremists are exploiting is pointless, without reason, and capable of being overcome; it's a classic case where the oppressors can only win if the oppressed let them win.
Here is my suggested tactic, to be carried out as frequently as possible by as many as possible: Go to your local drugstore where the condoms are locked away, press the little red call button, and then ask for "condoms, please" as loudly as possible. Trust me: the prudes and sex-control queens tend to give up the shame tactic really fast when it's pointed back at them, and those who need to feel better about the situation will feel much, much better.
One may, optionally, request "the large size", but it's, um, icing on the cake.
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*Laura Barcella, "Barrier Methods", Comment is free…, 20 April 2006.
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on Sunday, 23 April 2006 at 02.36
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I don't think it's really an attempt to enforce the Bible thumpers' morality any more. I think it's a cynical spite job on the part of a bunch of very little people who get to feel big by exerting power over others. In this case, they do it by leaning on businesses like the pharmacy chain.
And a few steps up the ladder, people like Pat Robertson or Bill Bennett can get up at gatherings of these pygmies and proclaim how by working together they've put one over. This energizes the followers all the more.
What makes it all the more ludicrous is that these are the same people who are first to bitch and moan about the number of women with numerous offspring who are receiving public assistance. Likewise, they're the first to bemoan the incidence of abortions and cast stones at those who've contracted an STD.