In a country like Malawi where, in 2003, the HIV infection rate was more than 14%, giving women options is incredibly important. Interestingly enough, the female condom was never particularly popular in the U.S. But why is it that most American women — including all but one of your Jezebel writers— have never used one? The Jezebel who has used them (me) answers that after the jump.

First off, they're not easy to insert. If you're a diaphragm, cervical cap or NuvaRing user, or even an OB or Instead affcianado, then you already have some familiarity with sticking your fingers way on up in your vagina, but if you use a cervical cap, diaphragm or NuvaRing, you might not be using condoms.

But if you don't regularly stick your fingers way on up in there to stick something in or get something out, this might be more difficult to manage. As an IUD-user, I don't spend a lot of time digging around up in there with anything other than my vibrator, so putting it in was tricky at best. Basically, my boyfriend at the time ended up doing it for me, which negates the purpose of being about to do it yourself even if it was more fun for me personally.

Unfortunately, one of the few exquisitely sensitive parts of your actual vagina is the entrance, which is then covered by the female condom, so using it I got a sense of what men had always tried to (and still try to) say — that using a regular condom reduces sensation. I mean, a male condom is not as fun as condomless for the woman, either, but babies and diseases are way less fun so, dude, you're keeping it wrapped up. That said, it was definitely less sensational with a female condom than with a male.

Luckily, my fellow researcher was my very long term boyfriend at the time (and I had an IUD), so neither disease nor babies was at issue with the condom usage. But, being relatively frugal people, he'd shelled out for them and had heard about an alternate usage method that we decided to try. So we put it on him and went back to work. It wasn't quite as weird as fucking with a baggie on his dick in terms of the noise level, but almost and if that ring on the end never slams into my cervix again I won't be terribly disappointed. That said, I'd take the alternate method — or a regular condom — any day of the week.

By the way, a non-profit research company is currently seeking FDA and WHO approval for a redesigned female condom that eliminates the internal ring, is easier to insert and, apparently, moves with your vagina during sex. Of course, it wouldn't need FDA approval if the FDA had classified female condoms as a Class 2 medical device the way they did male condoms, but the FDA classified the female condom as a Class 3 medical device (like breast implants, pacemakers and the like). So the redesigned female condom's manufacturers get to wait through a complex and lengthy approval process once they finish multi-million dollar clinical trials. I'm happy to volunteer to help with the latter, though — at least once.

Female Condom Introduced In Malawi [AfricaNews]
Redesigning A Condom So Women Will Use It [NY Times]

See, I never even made out in public in high school (parents, if you want to keep your kids from parking, my dad highly recommends letting them drive nothing but a tiny 2-door stick shift car; worked wonders for him). Of course, I made out in my basement, or my boyfriend's bedroom, or his attic, his bathroom, on a friend's couch, my bedroom... but never in a car. I was always terrified of getting caught and at least by doing it in our houses we were limiting who might catch us.

Then I went to college on an urban campus — no cars, no private spots. My sophomore year, I visited a boyfriend at his college and we made out in his car just so I could say I'd made out in a car, but it was February in upstate New York and we were in a well-lit parking lot, so no clothes were coming off. The closest I came to doing it in a car was in Germany when I studied abroad — with no where else to go, we parked in a remote spot on campus but, without a condom, we alternated oral (on me) and manual (on him) and neither of us got naked. Twice since I've gone manual with guys in cars — in parking garages, after hours, God bless a man with good fingers — but I've never done anything in a bathroom, an office building, on a beach, in a park, basically, nowhere fun or naughty or exciting. I don't consider myself a particularly prudish person, but I feel like the fear of getting caught wouldn't heighten the thrill of having sex, it would just be something I wouldn't be able to get off my mind long enough to orgasm well.

Obviously, exhibitionists are a different story, so I understand the thrill there is not the possibility of getting caught as much as actually getting caught. But, I'm hard-pressed to believe that 22 percent of people in that big a survey are straight-out exhibitionists dying to perform before an audience. So, what am I missing... or, at 30, have I already missed it?

Single Shot: Why Do People Have Sex In Public Places? [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Gloucester's a town where the main jobs are either in the fishing or tourism industry, where the median household income is well below the state as a whole. Almost 12 percent of those under 18 live below the poverty line. It's also 20 miles from the nearest women's health clinic, so students without cars either have to bum rides, get there on public transportation or walk, which is why Daly and Orr suggested providing such services at the school.

Four pregnancies a year in a school of 1,200 students means that everyone knows who the moms are, and the school makes an effort to make sure that those students stay in school and finish their educations. Time magazine characterizes this as "The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers," which is such bullshit I don't even know where to start except to say: yes, God forbid students be exposed to the consequences of other people's life choices with which they may or may not disagree while at school, and God forbid students who have plenty of other consequences with which to deal be offered the opportunity to finish their high school educations at a school that doesn't judge them for their choices.

Anyway, moving on, the story also points out that sex ed stops freshman year and that the girls involved in the pact thought it was soooo cool that a senior with a baby had someone to love her unconditionally, to which she responded, "it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.," not that the other girls apparently cared. The head of the school, Christopher Farmer, says "Many of our young people are growing up directionless," because of divorce and a bad economy.

Before the school year starts anew, the school committee is going to vote whether to provide contraception at the school. Would it have helped in this case? Maybe. But it seems like the school system should be debating more than just whether to hand out condoms or provide birth control. Comprehensive sex education, including information on birth control, disease, pregnancy, legal consequences for both parties, age of consent and what parenting entails, should probably be on the agenda as well (let alone appropriate parental involvement with their kids), but that's probably more difficult to get for these students — male and female — than rubbers and pharmaceuticals, so I guess they'll take what they can get.

GHS Clinic Chiefs Quit Over Contraception Fight [Gloucester Daily Times]
Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High [Time]

Can you go out to get drunk for the purpose of getting laid and then regret it? Sure. Maybe you end up sexually assaulted (a consequence not addressed by the study). Maybe the guy sucks in bed and you regret leaving the other guy behind at the bar. Maybe you're drunk enough you forgo the use of birth control (a risk cited by the study) and end up with an STI or pregnant. Maybe you drink to repress the acknowledgment of your own ethics about having drunken one-night stands, in which case you should probably stop drinking and having one-night stands and get thee to a good therapist. Regret comes in a myriad of forms, but the report on this study makes it sound as though most people (or, the implication is, most women) regret having a drunken one-night stand despite the actual results of the study:

Yet despite the negative consequences, we found many are deliberately taking these substances to achieve quite specific sexual effects.

Europeans Get Drunk 'To Have Sex' [BBC]