Word: condomize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years sexually active women have taken on the primary responsibility for contraception, mainly by using birth-control pills, diaphragms or IUDs. Now increasing numbers of women are also stocking up on the old-fashioned male condom, both to avoid pregnancy and to protect themselves against rampant sexually transmitted diseases, particularly chlamydia, herpes and AIDS. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization based in Manhattan, reports in a new study that the number of unmarried women making use of condoms almost doubled between 1982 and 1987 to 2.2 million, or about 16% of the sexually active, fertile female population...
Since the AIDS crisis surfaced in the early 1980s, American women have had plenty of reason to encourage their sexual partners to use condoms. U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop calls them "the best protection against AIDS infection right now, barring abstinence." Condom manufacturers have aimed aggressive advertising campaigns at women, emphasizing fear of infection rather than the usual male-oriented message about sexual pleasure. Until recently, women bought only a "small percentage" of condoms; now, an industry spokesman estimates, they represent some 40% of the $200 million U.S. market. "The 'C' word has come out of the closet," observes...
Although breaking the bias against condom ads in magazine advertising was rough going at first, the pages of Ms., Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle, among others, regularly feature attractive models asking female readers, "Would you ( buy a condom for this man?" or "Why take your fears to bed?" Purrs one ad: "When you place a new Trojan for Women in his hands, it will show you're thinking about his health...
Health-care professionals applaud the feminization of the condom, though they warn it is not 100% effective in preventing either pregnancy or sexual diseases. Declares Dr. David Grimes, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Medicine: "Women's health is much too important to subcontract out to men." Still, cautions Dr. Eric Berger of the American Council on Science and Health in New York City, "if a condom is being touted as something that prevents AIDS transmission, its use alone is not enough...
...sweetest phrases in the language, now suggests a cause of death. Still, the world is sharply divided into the sick and the well, and AIDS can be something of a lark if you are a robust heterosexual college student at a safe-sex lecture where the instructor demonstrates condom use on a cucumber. Only 4% of adult cases are known to have been caused through heterosexual contact. But for homosexual and bisexual males, who account for 63% of the cases, AIDS is nature's own genocide...