Friends, youve been lied to.
I mean, probably in many ways, butespeciallyif you had any kind of sex-negative health classes.
Between 1996 and 2010, our federal governmentdedicated a billion and a half dollarsto sex education promoting abstinence.
But these myths were, and in some places still are, taught to kids and young adults.
Here are the facts.
(Of course, even abstinence has a failure rate.
Teens who get abstinence-only sex ed areactually more likely to get pregnantthan their peers.)
With perfect use, though,that rate is only 2 percent.
Well address the barrier question in a minute, but lets stop and talk about breakage.
Condoms break or slip offbetween 1.6 percent and 3.6 percent of the time.
That sucks when it happens, but its not the catastrophic rates that bad sex ed teachers push.
What is the rest of the failure rate about, then, if not breakage?
Mostly, its failing to actually wear a condom, and/or using it incorrectly.
Guess what, condoms dont work very well if you dont use them.
The other factors here are important, though, and they contribute to those breakage and slippage rates.
ensure youknow how to use and put on a condombefore going at it.
It does not mean that you have an 18 percent chance of getting pregnant on any given day.
This is not how getting pregnant works.
People who use condoms are80 percent less likely to contract HIVthan people who dont.
People forget to wear condoms, and people are exposed to HIV in ways other than having sex.
Nobody contracted HIV in the course of the study.
Bottom line: condoms may not be perfect, but they are very good at their job.
For HIV prevention, they are an effective (but not the only) way to protect yourself.
Condoms reallydoreduce your risk of pregnancy and of HIV transmission.
