CONDOMS: FOR HEALTH OR FOR FUN?

Both FOX News and CBS have recently refused to air condom advertisements unless they are "health related."

Why would FOX and CBS refuse to air advertisements for condoms that are not health related? The bottom line is America's prudishness about sex and our Puritanical belief that sex is for procreation and not for fun.

Superimposed over that is the political battle over who controls a woman’s fertility and fecundity. The men of both the religious and political right (what an oxymoron that is!) believe their daughters and brides must be vestal virgins. While they do not run outside the morning after consummation waiving their wife's  blood stained undergarment as proof of her virginity as do men in some Eastern Islamic cultures, you better believe they crow, "I was the first" in the locker room. I know, I’ve been there for this dubious event of male bonding.

While I do not deny there is value for both genders in coming to the marriage bed as virgins, as a counselor I also know the ensuing experience is more often than not less than satisfying for women. The fact that there is no substitute for experience is as true in the bedroom as it is in all other areas of life.

But I digress. For an ethical or moral value to be valid it must be applied universally. Consequently, if FOX and CBS choose to air condom advertisements only when they promote health then they must also air the advertisement of other sexually related products only when they promote health. Think Viagra and its cousins. Given the age of most of the men who use them are they products necessary for men's health or pleasure? Once again, I can tell you from the conversations I have heard in the men’s locker room at the YMCA where I work out from men who couldn’t but now can, they come to the “Y” for their health but have only pleasure on their mind when popping the pill.

The obvious hypocrisy is that when it comes to men's enjoyment of sex compared to protecting women against sexually transmitted diseases or an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, the choice is a foregone conclusion. The fact is the three Gs of men’s sex: get it up, get it in, get it off, are not seen as an ethical or moral issue while a woman who has sex outside of marriage violates one of America's strongest cultural moral values.

Political correctness, to say nothing about what is ethical and moral, when it comes to sex for men outside of marriage is a non-entity in America. Why? The reason is the exercise of a woman's sexuality is the last stand of our separate but unequal cultural double standard. It is the last area of the relationship between men and women where men still feel a sense of entitlement to control women. It is also the last area of relationship between men and women where men still feel a sense of entitlement to punish women who do not play by the rules set down by men for their behavior.