Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Don't Carry Condoms or You'll Be Arrested

Yup, that's right. New laws in DC, San Francisco, and New York are making it so that if you carry more than 2 condoms at a time you must be a sex worker and therefore need to be arrested.

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin or where to end. So instead I'll let the very talented Jaclyn Friedman do it:

...If you think there's a chance you're getting laid, and you're sleeping with someone who has a penis, why would you ever pack fewer than three condoms? What if one rips when you take it out of the package? What if you want to do it (*GASP*) twice? Three condoms is not a lot of condoms, people. IMHO, it's the bare minimum. I once used over a dozen in a particularly memorable weekend. And I still wasn't a sex worker.

And what if I was? As has been pointed out elsewhere, all this law (and laws like it in NYC and San Francisco) are doing is encouraging sex workers to not carry condoms. You know what that's going to do? It's not going to reduce sex trafficking. It's not going to improve the lives or working conditions of sex workers. It's not going to lock up abusers or pimps. It's going to spread disease. It's going to increase the spread of STIs (including HIV) among sex workers and their clients. And those clients will spread it even further out into the general population. And those of us who aren't sex workers but don't feel like risking arrest en route to a hot date? Some of us are going to carry fewer condoms and catch and spread more disease, too. And those of us who carry lots of condoms so we can distribute them and help other people stay safe? Well, we're obviously a criminal element, aren't we? (Read more)

Talk about some slut shaming up in here. And as one of the commenters pointed out, no one is going to arrest a man for carrying 3 or more condoms ... unless he's a gay man of color or god forbid a drag queen.

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