It was hot inside the tent. I was naked, stoned and horny. It was the summer I turned 23 and I was camping with Marek, my ex-boyfriend and intermittent playmate.

If you’ve ever been camping in the middle of nowhere, you’ll know that after the sun goes down, there are only so many things you can do to amuse yourself and so, being prepared for this, I had brought the necessary gear – beer, bug repellent, a packet of my housemate’s finest home-grown and a box of condoms.
I’m telling you I was stoned because it’s important to what happened next, and please note Minister McDowell that as the illegal substance in question had been loving tended to in my own backyard, no criminal gangs benefited. So, there we were, kissing and messing around, to the extent that clothes had been removed, when Marek announced that he’d hadn’t any condoms. Now seeing as I had an unopened pack in my bag, this shouldn’t have been an issue, but the dope had made me paranoid.
I’d brought condoms; he hadn’t – what did this mean? Did I want to sleep with him more than he did with me? Had he not planned this? What the hell did he think was going to happen 50 kilometres from the nearest town alone in a tent – we’d spend the night discussing politics? Did condoms just slip his mind as he was running around town buying camping gear that morning? Or was it indicative of something more? Did he just not bother, no matter who he was sleeping with?
We’d broken up years ago, and although we’d hooked up on a number of occasions since then, we hadn’t had sex after the end of our relationship. Perhaps he simply hadn’t expected to? Or didn’t want to be presumptuous? He’d been my first lover, so he thought I was a nice girl. If I let him know that I had been planning to sleep with him on our trip, would he change his mind about me? Would he think I was easy?
Asking him – or even saying anything at all about the situation – seemed too risky, so I kept my mouth shut. The next day we hitched into the nearest town and he asked me very nicely if I thought buying condoms was a good idea. I blushed and said yes. After that brief holiday, I went out with him again for another six months. If I’d told him I had condoms the night before, would he have still wanted to date me afterwards? I think so. How about if he’d known that these same condoms had me thinking like a crazy person less than 12 hours ago? I doubt it.
A month ago I wrote an article for this magazine on sexual etiquette. If you haven’t seen it, log onto hotpress.com – I think it’s pretty good! But the thing that struck me when I was discussing the piece on a number of radio shows in the following two weeks was that everyone picked up on the same line in the article – that smart single girls should carry condoms.
The comments coming in from listeners surprised me too. As far as I’m concerned, a girl who carries condoms is a responsible adult – but I seemed to be alone in that opinion. According to the listeners, that would make a girl easy or sexually aggressive even – not the kind of girl you’d see more than once.
Similarly, a study by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency found young Irish women were reluctant or refused to buy or carry condoms, as they feared they would be seen as ‘easy’. Apparently, this fear of gaining a bad reputation was greater than their fear of an STD or an unwanted pregnancy.
When you think about it, it’s madness. Research tells us that 62% of Irish people have had a one-night stand, and 58% of us have engaged in unprotected sex. So let me ask those readers and listeners who were against the notion of a woman carrying condoms: where’s the moral high ground in risking disease? You know that things are really messed up when having an unprotected one-night stand is seen as somehow more moral, or worthy, than carrying a condom and looking after yourself.
Having been in the situation myself, I can understand why girls may be reluctant to carry condoms. Our reputation is as important to us as a good shag – sometimes more so. But I thought that attitude had changed, particularly because of the greater emphasis on safe sex these days. I was younger – sigh — and less experienced when I took to the woods with Marek. But even then I had the right instinct. Once the safe sex message had been drummed into my head, I made sure to keep condoms handy – if not in my bag, then in my bedside drawer.
More importantly, I’ve never once been with a guy who had an issue with that.
That said, I thought I’d do my own little survey to see how the kind of people I’d fraternise with feel about the issue. The views were enlightening. A number of my female respondents felt that carrying condoms – like catching spiders – was a man’s job. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t want to carry them – they just didn’t think it was up to them. There was a no-nonsense aspect to it: we take the pill; you buy the rubbers – an equal division of labour for these supposedly egalitarian times.
My friend Ellen reckoned that if you did have a one-night stand, carrying condoms suggested that you’d gone out ‘looking for it’. But what if that had indeed been your plan for the evening, I asked. That might be so, she said, but you shouldn’t advertise the fact. Although some of my female respondents believed carrying condoms was sexy and smart, more than a few were indeed worried about how this would be perceived.
But what did the guys actually think? Not one of the men I asked had a problem with it. Most reckoned it was simply practical. My friend Gareth argued that he’d be happy to be with a woman who showed initiative, and more than one bloke thought that men were often ‘useless’ in regard to safe sex, therefore a smart woman should carry her own protection. And more than one guy mentioned that there were plenty of other things – such as public drunkenness – which they’d regard as slutty, but not carrying condoms.
I’m prepared to admit that my male friends may be more open-minded than some of the bozos that are out there. Being my mates, they’d need to be! However a few of them did say that they knew men who would indeed think less of a girl for carrying condoms. So perhaps this attitude is prevalent – but it’s still bullshit. Even the thought of it is enough to turn you into a card-carrying feminazi.
The more I ruminate on it, the more I realise that this may not be such as bad thing, after all. Very few modern women would want to date a racist, so why waste time with a sexist? I can’t help thinking that the guy who is less than impressed with your packet of Pleasuremax, is the same one who will freak if you suggest anything more adventurous than the missionary position or will expect your past to be squeaky clean. And that guy – fuck him, he’s not worth the trouble. Carry your own condoms and scare him off!
Perhaps carrying condoms can do more than protect a woman’s health – it’s a way of separating the men from the boys. What a fantastic bonus!