Amayzine

Is having sex without a condom the new trend?

Condoms. The damn things ruin the atmosphere, are expensive, and they constrict things (apparently). A time without one can't hurt, right? Recent research shows that about 55 percent of Dutch women do not use a condom during a one night stand. This is evident from figures in the report Sexual Health in the Netherlands 2017. For this, 17,000 Dutch people aged between 18 and 80 filled out an extensive questionnaire.

Despite the fact that we know very well that the chance of a STI or, even worse, an HIV infection significantly increases if you don't use a condom, we massively leave the miserable rubber behind, even when we don't know the person lying next to us in bed at all. As people get older, condom use even decreases. Lead researcher Hanneke de Graaf calls the results concerning. “Protection against an STI is apparently not seen as a priority,” she says in an interview with the NRC. About 63 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds use the pill. Many young women probably think they are sufficiently protected and that at least a pregnancy is ruled out.

Another shocking discovery is that young people today know much less about condoms and STIs compared to five years ago. For example, 44 percent of boys in 2017 think that you have less chance of contracting an STI if you wash yourself well after sex. In 2012, that was still 37 percent.

I am shocked by this. Very much so. Because why do we exercise ourselves to exhaustion, grab for greens, run to the doctor when we feel a pain we don't know the source of, and fight against burnouts, but are we not careful with our bodies when it comes to sex? Where does it go wrong?

Some facts in a row:

  • Chlamydia is the most common STI. The increase in the number of positive tests for chlamydia is a trend that has been observed since 2013.
  • The total number of diagnoses of gonorrhea rose in 2017 by 131% to no less than 6000 diagnoses.
  • We also see a significant increase in the number of diagnoses of gonorrhea among men.
  • 241% of men between the ages of 18 and 80 have been tested for an STI compared to 32 percent of women.
  • 181% of women between the ages of 18 and 24 say they always use a condom compared to 26 percent of men.
  • 631% of sexually active women between the ages of 18 and 24 in the Netherlands use a contraceptive pill.
  • In the Netherlands, an estimated 22,900 people live with HIV. 881% of them are actively treated.

Source: Sexual Health Netherlands 2017