Alice Welbourn suddenly realised how important sex was to her when
she couldn’t get her hands on her usual protection, the female condom
The last three weeks have reminded me just how important
sex is to me: but also how much we still take for granted in Britain. Recently
I discovered that Boots had discontinued the female condom. Panic ensued.
What would I do now for protection? It seems incredible, with the nation’s
sexual health in such straits, that any leading British pharmaceutical company
could even contemplate refusing to stock female condoms.
When I contacted Boots about this, they stated: “It has proved too costly
to keep the products on the shelves and the decision has been made to halt
production.” But they are not alone. Superdrug tell me it has never
stocked the female condom. Thankfully, Boots did
eventually relent to pressure from many quarters and reversed their decision:
so two cheers for them.
‘Who cares?’ you may ask. Well, those of us who use the female
condom regularly swear by it. For starters, it’s latex-free so solves
allergy problems for many. Others testify to its ease of use and how ‘natural’
it feels.
It’s wholly ironic that we are quick to applaud the government for reducing
condom VAT rates to five per cent (why not abolish them outright as they have,
thankfully, on tampons), while so little public information is provided about
the female condom. Some of my gay friends also enjoy using it. So what’s
the attraction?
I’ve used female condoms regularly for 13 years, ever since I was diagnosed,
as my protection of choice with my husband. I’m HIV positive, he is
not. It was, and still is, crucial to me that he should stay HIV negative,
both for his own sake and the sake of our kids. It’s also crucial to
us both to have a happy, healthy and safer sex life.
Globally, most HIV positive people, when newly diagnosed, get clear messages
from society that their sex life should be over for good. This idea fails
to take in the fact that most women across the world have no choice at all
over who they have sex with, or how or when. For these women, abstaining from
sex when you don’t want to is not an option.
Dr Hanne Risør, leading light of the Danish Family Planning Association,
has a big triangle on her GP surgery wall. Three words label its corners:
physical, psychological, sexual. She encourages each client to identify where
on the triangle their problem lies. She explains how we are all sexual beings,
whether or not we have sex, and that pretending we are asexual endangers our
well-being. She reckons parents with a good sex life raise happier, better
adjusted children, and that unhappy sex is often connected to and rooted in
many other problems, such as worries about money, work, relationships, alcohol,
other drug use and so on.
What Hanne taught me is that our sexual and reproductive rights, as HIV positive
people, are not just vain and fanciful, but rather something fundamental:
a cornerstone to our self-esteem, our well-being and our ability to adjust
to the traumas of living with a virus which generates such stigma.
The World Health Organisation estimates 44 per cent of people with HIV also
experience depression. Surely, having a mutually fulfilling sex life is one
good antidote to mental trauma? It certainly beats Prozac in my book.
Female condom myths abound. But as many HIV positive women have told me, once
you get used to it, you want to stick with it. The crinkly noise it creates,
which some mock, is an added turn-on for many. And anyway, once it warms up,
the noise stops. Its size is an added turn-on for some men, especially if
told it needs to be that large to accommodate their appendages.
Its size also provides much more surface protection than the male condom can.
And, for men and women alike, it feels far less restrictive and far more like
‘the real thing’, otherwise known in Uganda as BBC (body-to-body
contact). Additionally, you don’t need an erect flagpole to hoist it
on, so you really can just get it in there, forget about it and get down to
business, cutting out all that male angst about whether they are going to
be able to get it up in order to get it on. With practise, it’s as easy
as inserting a tampon.
So thank you Boots. You’ve done the right thing. But my relief is forever
overshadowed as I remain conscious that my worries about my sex life pale
into utter insignificance compared to the enormity of the crisis facing millions
in countries where PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)
reigns.
In Uganda and Zambia, billboards and mobile theatre workshops deride condom
efficiency, and demonise their users. And condoms have vanished. Amazing what
one regime can do to unravel the hard work of 20 years in as many months.
If only PEPFAR would heed our members’ calls in those countries for
wisdom and common sense to prevail, as Boots has done here.
•Alice Welbourn, Chair, UK Board of Trustees, International Community
of Women Living With HIV/Aids (ICW), www.icw.org
