Earlier this month, the country rejoiced as Florida, America’s dildo infection capitol and home of the web series Girls With Guns (pictured), was officially declared to no longer matter to national politics anymore. But that doesn’t mean that the state isn’t continuing with the sort of kooky shenanigans that earned it its reputation. The latest incredibly Florida thing to happen there — a state Department of Health-sponsored sex survey sent only to women that asks Floridettes if they’ve ever been in a relationship with someone who pokes holes in condoms, and how they felt emotionally the last time they had unprotected sex. As payment for their overshare, participants received a $10 gift card and a series of strange hang up phone calls that sound a lot like Governor Rick Scott breathing heavily on the other end of the line.*
The 46-question survey, which the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported “offended” some of the participants, cost the state $45,000 to produce and was sent out to 4,100 women between the ages of 18 and 24 back in September and October. Thus far, only 782 have been returned. The state hoped to use data collected on the survey to figure out why Florida has one of the lowest rates of contraception use in the country, but what actually happened was that A- some of the women who received the survey were under 18 and B- the women who received the survey didn’t trust that the very personal data gathered would be kept private, or that their answers would be anonymized and not, say, shredded and used as confetti in a future Miami Marlins World Series victory parade and C- some women were shocked — SHOCKED! — that the government would want to know so much about the goings on in and around their vaginas.
Some of the questions on the survey were run-of-the-mill — like the one where the state wanted to know how old respondents were the first time they had P-in-V sex with a man — but others were a little more on the risque side. Like the one that asked women if they’d ever been with a guy who poked holes in condoms or threatened to impregnate someone else if they wouldn’t willingly carry the man’s child. Another question asked participants how many men they’d slept with in the past year. Another wanted to know how much the participants weigh, or whether or not they smoked. Not really the sort of thing that would make a lady want to reach for a pen, answer candidly, and drop in the mail. This isn’t a MySpace Love Survey or a flirtatious Facebook post meant to promote awareness of some sort of sexy cancer, Florida. This is ink-on-paper shit.
As incentive, the state offered $10 CVS gift cards to women who completed the survey. Worth it!
* I should note that I was joking about Governor Rick Scott; he is not actually calling Florida women who fill out sex surveys, as far as I’m aware. I feel the need to make that distinction in light of the fact that conservative pro-family values anti-abortion rights Scott DesJarlais — who had affairs with 3 coworkers, 2 patients, 1 drug company rep, and a partridge in a pear tree while serving as chief of staff at a Tennessee hospital AND pressured his wife to have two abortions and also pressured his mistress to have an abortion — announced over Thanksgiving that he won’t resign from his post as a US Congressman, so it doesn’t seem that far-fetched that a governor would make lewd calls to 22-year-old sex survey respondents.
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