(no subject)
Jan. 31st, 2015 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fandomnumbergenerator“But anxiety over the increasing medicalization of certain bodies and sexualities—a preoccupation of mine—will not be so easy to quiet.Indeed, one of the more interesting genres of response I received to
my December piece was from women who shared similar critiques about the
birth control pill—which happens to be a commonly deployed analog for
Truvada and one Staley touches on in his op-ed. I heard from a number of
women who have always rejected the pill precisely because they do not
understand why their bodies should be subject to intervention when more mutually demanding options like condoms are available.” Imagining the Future of PrEP by J. Bryan Lowder
I have not done enough research on Lowder to fully critique his views, but I’ve been chewing on this quote for a while.
Condoms are an amazing tool to prevent pregnancy and SDIs, but they’re still a medical technology. Who exactly is supposed to be having all this prelapsarian non-medicalized sex (aside from maybe some particularly anti-technology religious fundamentalists)? What about lube? What about microbicidal lubes? Or sex toys? Or kegel exercisers? Or latex allergies? What kinds of sex technology are natural and what kinds are medicalized? Even something as “natural” as the rhythm method has recently been improved by new discoveries about how long sperm can remain viable in the fallopian tubes. Trying to conceive (the only time when I have forgone birth control in a premeditated way) is medicalized. And as I realized the first (and only) time I was able to donate blood, if there is a high incidence of HIV in your dating pool, there is always going to be a medicalized aspect to your sex life.
And, in what kind of weird alternate universe is it more equal for the receptive partner to be more dependent on the penetrating partner for their safety?
