Smut as social barometer

[resonant]

I've read it a million times; I've written it myself: two guys are getting ready to fuck for the first time, and one says, "Do we need a condom?" and while they do that little dance of "I'm clean" and "I've been tested" and so on, I'm saying, "Noooo! It's not difficult or painful! In the time you've spent talking about it, you could have done it and gotten on with your sex scene!"

And -- I mean, now I can't believe I was surprised that people would kick up a fuss over wearing a mask, is what I'm saying.

Comments

[isis]

I wonder if those of us who came of age in the 80s have a different view? There was a great episode of the Deep Background podcast where Noah Feldman interviewed Julia Marcus, an epidemiologist who studied AIDS prevention and prophylaxis, about "how to have a life in a pandemic" - hah, yeah, there's a bit about her equivalencing masks and condoms on her Wikipedia page.

[raine]

I graduated high school in '89, so yeah - for the longest time, I had a really skewed view re: condoms and safe sex. I've bought a few fanzines dating from pre-1997 that have that shared perspective of "committed relationship/I've been tested/you're safe" that I'm not seeing in fic from the last decade. It's really interesting, too, to read say, Starsky & Hutch fanfic from pre-1997 where the condom usage can be viewed as proof that one partner played more than the other, stuff like that.

[out_there]

No, seriously?

I'm a little stunned. Honestly. And glad I'm not raeding in any fandoms set in the current-times.

[adafrog]

Good point.

[cimorene]

OMG, this is way too insightful a comparison.

And the stories from women in the wild about men's avoidance of condoms are even more telling...

[trobadora]

Haha, OMG, you definitely have a point there.

[kass]

......yeah.

[laurenthemself]

That's very insightful.