My husband spent a couple of years or so of our post-college, pre-kids decade working in the New York City film industry. He was a Production Assistant on medium-budget movies which meant that he drove B+ actors to and from the set, got a lot of coffee, and tried to keep pedestrians out of the shot using the assumption of authority granted by a walkie talkie and a clipboard.
He was a grunt, got paid basically nothing, and kept bizarre hours, but he got some great stories out of it: he played the corpse of dead parole office after they wrapped the actor without getting the shot; got threatened by a random resident of Staten Island who had no respect for the authority of the clipboard (“How about I punch you in the f**king face?”); and had to run around lower Manhattan buying all of the Glad Wrap he could find to stock the fictional bodega in the we-need-to-get-laid buddy comedy Booty Call.
I confess that I have never watched the entire movie, but the plot seems pretty uncomplicated. Jamie Foxx and Tommy Davidson want to have sex and keep getting thwarted. In addition to other comedic obstacles, their paramours insist on safer sex measures. They go into the bodega first for condoms and come back at 2 a.m. for Glad Wrap where they are teased with a racially questionable rendition of “you’ve got to lick it before you stick it, you’ve got to get it soft and wet before we kick it…” performed by award-winning Jewel in the Crown actor Art Malik. Then the bodega is shot up, ruining all but one precious box of plastic wrap.
Apparently, it was supposed to be Saran Wrap, but the powers that be at SE Johnson had gotten wind of the fact that people like me—peer sex educators in the ‘90s—were suggesting their product be used in lieu of a dental dam to protect against STIs during cunnilingus. They asked to see the script and then refused to provide the product. Not only did the script link their product and oral sex, but the two main characters use it dangerously wrong. They wrap themselves from head-to-toe—including mouths and noses—rather than simply holding a small square over their partner’s vulva as any good ‘90s peer sex educator would have told them.
Why do I tell this story 25 years later, you ask?
Last week the FDA approved a new product for STI prevention during oral-genital sex on a person with a vulva or oral-anal sex on a person of any sex or gender. (We all have assholes.) It’s a pair of single-use, latex underwear called Lorals. The company has been making underwear for oral sex since 2018, but the STI-prevention version conforms to slightly stricter standards imposed by the FDA, including fitting tightly around the thighs to hold in all bodily fluids. As of now the product comes in opaque black briefs or bikini cut, all of which are lightly vanilla flavored. The company has responded to customer feedback on its other versions by adding more cornstarch to make them less sticky and cutting down on the intensity of the vanilla flavor. It says it is planning on making a see-through version soon.
Until now, safer oral sex relied on dental dams (squares of latex originally designed to block the tongue during dental procedures), a condom cut up the middle and unfurled, or the aforementioned plastic wrap used for off-label purposes. They’re all pretty unappealing as they have to be awkwardly held into place and involve licking a piece of plastic which blocks taste, smell, and possibly sensation.
Yes, there are risks with oral sex. Chlamydia or gonorrhea can infect the throat. There has been an increase of head and neck cancers in recent years that is likely caused by HPV infections transmitted through oral sex. Yet even in the ‘90s when I was telling people about Saran Wrap and warning them off of the microwavable version because it had too many holes, I knew very few would take my safer oral sex advice seriously. I don’t think that’s going to change now that there’s an underwear version.
That said, some of the client testimonials that Lorals provided to the New York Times suggest a need for this product: there’s the person who deals with their periodic herpes outbreaks by using the underwear, and there’s also the couple that got back into oral sex after surgery for tongue cancer by using Lorals.
As a sex educator interested in preventing STIs and promoting pleasure, I suppose I can’t see any downside in new safer sex options, but I also can’t see a huge market for oral sex undergarments.
Even Anti-Abortion Americans Think Birth Control
Should Be Free
An opinion poll in the wake of the Supreme Court’s leaked decision on abortion suggests that people on both sides of the issue share a desire to see birth control become more widely available.
In a nationwide survey, released by YouGov America and The Economist, 45% of respondents said they did not want the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, 32% said they would like to see Roe overturned, and 23% were unsure.
Respondents were then asked whether birth control should be made free and widely available if abortion rights were overturned: 91% of respondents who supported abortion rights said yes as did 61% of anti-abortion rights respondents.
The Affordable Care Act, the bill that governs what is colloquially known as Obamacare, requires insurers to cover some contraceptive methods at no cost to patients. This has been a huge step forward in birth control access. However, barriers still remain. A new secret shopper study by Power to Decide, for example, found that many insurers make it difficult for patients to get the method that’s best for them paid for when it’s one not typically covered by their plan. (Think: a brand name of the pill that gives them fewer side effects.)
Moreover, the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe may have implications to any access to birth control, let alone free access. As Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe told Time, “It’s absolutely clear that the Supreme Court’s decision—if it does emerge along the lines of the leaked opinion by Justice Alito—would…open the door to restrictions on birth control, same sex marriage, sexual intimacy, and other forms of intimate personal decision-making.”
Lawmakers from Arkansas to Michigan have already floated the idea of bills banning access to emergency contraception using the bogus rationale that pills or IUDs used after sex cause abortion. It wouldn’t be surprising if they come after IUDs and pills used before sex with the similar junk science. (See Hey, Ted Cruz, That’s Not How it F**king Works for an explanation of this wrong-headed thinking.)
The Supreme Court is not supposed to be swayed by public opinion, and its likely decision to overturn Roe certainly doesn’t reflect the will of the majority when it comes to abortion. State legislators, on the other hand, need the public to like them in order to stay in office. It will be interesting to see if, given poll numbers like this, they continue to trample reproductive rights or if they slow down before they come after people’s beloved birth control pills.
Freezing Testicles for Future Fertility
A new study found that testicular tissue frozen for more than 20 years can still produce viable sperm. Before you ask, this is nothing like Tucker’s Toasted Testicles saving mankind from a drop in testosterone. This is actual science.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine thawed rat stem cells that had been frozen for more than 23 years and implanted them into living rats. They then observed the ability of these stem cells to produce viable sperm, and they compared it to sperm created by implanting both fresh stem cells and stem cells that had been frozen for just a few months.
The tissue frozen for two decades was able to colonize rodent testicles and produce all of the cells needed to make sperm. The long-frozen tissue did not perform quite as well as the others, however, because it made fewer elongating spermatids, which go on to form swimming sperm. Still, the researchers believe these results are promising.
The ultimate goal of studies like this is to protect the future fertility of pre-pubescent boys who go through cancer treatment. Childhood cancer survival rates have increased significantly, but treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation may cause fertility issues when they get older. Freezing sperm before starting treatment is an option for those who have already gone through puberty. The hope is that freezing testicular tissue containing stem cells could become an option for those who haven’t.
Frozen Testicles
Martha you do a great job of making timely issues interesting and personal. Thanks so much for Sex on Wednesday!