I NEED people to understand that condoms aren’t free because “MEN like
to FUCK lol,” they’re free because thirteen thousand people die from
AIDS every year in the US alone.Stop framing free menstrual products as more essential than free
condoms. They should BOTH be free.This post is going around again, and I feel the need to finally make an addition that adds some context, because the notes keep picking up comments along the lines of “who cares if it’s just because people want to fuck? Fucking is great! Why are menstrual products even being brought up?”
Yes. Fucking is great. I enjoy it myself on occasion. But condoms are not free just because people enjoy fucking. Condoms used to be much, much, much harder to come by, and they were significantly more expensive. Many humans have always enjoyed fucking, but condoms have not always been available, much less for free.
This post was originally made in September of 2020. It was made after I got into a pitched argument with a straight cisgender woman, who argued that free condoms are actually oppressive in a society where free menstrual products are hard to come by. Her argument was that it is an act of violent misogyny for free condoms to be available anywhere when menstrual products are not, and that the prevalence of free condoms is clearly due to male privilege.
That is not why condoms are free, and if you think free condoms are in any way oppressive, you need to get your head out of your ass. You cannot drag free condoms into the conversation about free menstrual products without acknowledging the massive, grueling efforts of queer activists and allies–including WOMEN–that brought condoms into wider use.
Condoms are often free because AIDS activists put endless amounts of effort into education and distribution of resources for safe sex. Condoms are free because they keep everyone safer, not just the people (NOT JUST MEN!) who use them.
Free condoms are not patriarchal, and they benefit everyone. Please read up on the history of AIDS activists. There’s even a convenient Wikipedia page all about HIV/AIDS activism.
And since I didn’t include a source link in my original post (nor do I remember where I got that number by this point), here is some updated, properly sourced data on global HIV/AIDS infection rates, courtesy of unaids.org:
- 39.9 million [36.1 million–44.6 million] people globally were living with HIV in 2023.
- 1.3 million [1 million–1.7 million] people became newly infected with HIV in 2023.
- 630 000 [500 000–820 000] people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2023.
- 30.7 million people [27–31.9 million] were accessing antiretroviral therapy in 2023.
- 88.4 million [71.3 million–112.8 million] people have become infected with HIV since the start of the epidemic.
- 42.3 million [35.7 million–51.1 million] people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic
Griswold v Connecticut is 60 years old this year. (Please tolerate weird Oyez link; some legal archive sites do not have fancy embed features.)
That’s only 60 years of “condoms are legal FOR MARRIED PEOPLE, WITH ADVICE FROM A DOCTOR.”
…Several people on the current SCOTUS are trying to figure out how to overturn Griswold.
That right got extended to unmarried people in 1972, with Eisenstadt v Baird.
Condoms used to be a felony. And then they were a felony for unmarried people. And even after that, they carried a lot of stigma – why would you need a condom, unless you were being promiscuous?
AIDS activists fought hard for access to condoms as a public health issue, not as “a way for sluts to keep being slutty.” Free condoms save lives.
amhrancas 