From: Condom use behaviours among 18–24 year-old urban African American males: a qualitative study
II. Condom use behaviours
General views. Most participants described the reasons for and benefits of condom use in terms of pregnancy and disease prevention. Additional pregnancy-related benefits included saving money by not having to pay for abortions, not getting ‘trapped’, and not invoking the anger of a sexual partner’s parents because of an unintended pregnancy. One participant cited condom variety as a positive thing about condom use:
… [B]eside the STDs and the baby factor, I like the fact that they make so many different types of condoms, that’s a positive because it don’t just put condoms in a box like you use this one and that’s it. You can mix it up and get your partner involved in it – strawberry, banana, vanilla, thick, you know it’ll give a variety to people who would be like ‘I’m not using that because it’s too thick,’ they got the thin ones for you, or ‘I’m not using it cause it don’t got no ridge,’ so they got the ridge one for you, you know how it is.
The issue of sexual safety was also a major theme among discussants. While some discussants believed that they could judge a potential partner’s sexual health visually, others voiced fear of the unknown as a primary reason for condom use. One participant even believed that ‘these days they got some diseases that eat through condoms … you got to be careful who you sleeping around with’. As described by a participant in another group, the major benefit of condom use was:
Just being safe from people that I don’t know. I don’t know everybody’s hygiene, how they wash their body and stuff like that and who they with, you know. People already know, you see AIDS commercials everywhere, condom commercials everywhere and they say half the population in the world is infected with AIDS.
Conflicting views. The issue of being able to visually determine a partner’s sexual health occurred in all the groups. The following exchange in one discussion group illustrates the conflicting views held by participants:
It all depends on the female, if the female’s bogus, I’m putting on a rubber you know what I’m saying, but if she’s fine I ain’t going to put on no rubber, playing it safe.
Also, another participated also stated:
My thing is like people go off how they look. Okay, they say she look good, she ain’t got nothing, so I’ll go on and hit that, but you got to look at just because she look cute, you know, she might have a nice little ass and all, fine clothes, nice little lips on her, you can’t always judge because the way she look, you know what I’m saying.
Also, reasons given for young men not using condoms included lack of interest in condom use, lack of immediate access to condoms, inconvenience, the mood-killing length of time it takes to put on a condom, and female partner’s disinterest in condom use. By far, the largest rationale was general disinterest in condom use, which was often related to disliking the feel of condoms, not knowing how to use a condom properly, and not caring about the consequences of not using a condom. Getting caught up in the moment and not wanting to spoil the mood by taking the time to retrieve and put on a condom were also cited as reasons for not always using condoms.
The most common thing that anybody would say about a condom and why they don’t like it is that you can’t feel it and it’s true, you know what I mean, it takes away all the feeling, the wetness you know, the wall, the tightness, the rubber feels that.
Relationship dynamics. Most participants explained that condoms are usually used in new relationships. As described by a participant, ‘Most condoms are used in new relationships, it’s the long relationships you gotta worry about.’ To this end, many respondents felt that condom use in a trusted or long-term relationship was not necessary because it could make one’s sexual partners suspicious about sexual fidelity. Although several participants described the issue of male infidelity as a reason for using condoms with casual sex partners, only one participant suggested the use of condoms in a trusted relationship as a means of protecting men against their girlfriend’s infidelity.
Many participants explained that the decision to discontinue condom use in serious relationships is based on the type and length of the relationship and HIV serostatus. The point in relationships where condom use is discontinued by mutual agreement usually occurs when the couple has been together for more than a few months, when both partners have been checked for HIV/STDs, or when the woman decides she wants to get pregnant. Several participants also described scenarios in which condom use was discontinued more by accident than by design.
Me personally, me and my girl have been together like for six or seven months, so we use condoms every time, but the last month, I say two months, she’s on birth controls so we haven’t being [using condoms], its like it just happened, the next time it happened, then a couple of weeks ago we put a condom on and it didn’t feel right.
Here is an excerpt from another study from The HIV Prevention Research Group (source)
Self-reported data on sexual identity (homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual) and condom use in the past three months were collected from 806 African Americans, Hispanic, Asian, and white men intercepted in public places in Houston, TX. Data indicated that condom use was lowest in African Americans and Hispanic men, bisexual men reported the highest levels of use, with heterosexual men reporting the lowest use. African Americans and Hispanic men reported generally that it was very difficult to use a condom during sexual contact, although the patterns for self-identified homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual men varied across race/ethnicity. Homosexual African American men reported the least difficulty, and white homosexual men the most difficulty compared with heterosexual and bisexual peers. For homosexually identified men, there were considerable differences across race/ethnicity in the proportion of partners who never or rarely disagreed to use condoms, with Asians disagreeing least, and African Americans most. Within racial/ethnic groups, the levels of condom use and difficulty were similar for male and female partners, suggesting that it is sexual identity, rather than partner gender, that has impacted condom-use messages. These data suggest that racial/ethnic targeting of condom use is likely to be most efficacious in increasing condom use in men.
Also, check out the following charts.
The next chart shows how Black women are getting AIDS
Note: The numbers from the chart come from the CDC [source]
Quick points -
# As I mentioned the other day, there needs to be a study that looks at the apparent ability to exercise some level of sexual self control by the majority of Black Americans versus the few who have not.
# You don’t address the AIDS issue in the Black community by assigning it a race. As the charts suggest, this disease is heaviest amongst gay Black men and women who unknowingly/knowingly have unprotected sex with them. Unless we shift more of the burden of responsibility on them instead of wasting resources by treating it as a civil rights issue, this disease will continue to plague our community.
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