While this is all very admirable, am I completely alone in thinking this probably belongs under
Safe sex? The possibility for the list of comparatives reaching absurdist proportions are there as the various adherents outline their postulations:
e.g. Safe sex --> Safer sex --> Even Safer sex --> Foolproof sex --> Completely foolproof sex etc, etc
ad infinitum. Of course it could get worse. It could be going in the other direction.
sjc
- I think it's an American thing to placate their religious conservatives who scream and yell about condoms letting HIV through the rubber. Whilst they are accurate in pointing out that no sexual act is completely safe (for that matter, I've known a few people who've caught glandular fever, probably from kissing), calling these activities "safe" is a reasonable approximation, considering that the statistics indicate that the risk of catching HIV through sex whilst using condoms is really quite low. --Robert Merkel
- sjc, I don't understand your complaint here. (Possibly I agree with you, not sure)
- I am sjc and the point I was making (really) was that this is an absurd nomenclature which really lends itself to further acts of absurdity. Language is like currency: bad usage drives out good. For my two groats worth, it would have been better left resting under Safe sex. The chances of people who need to know this sort of stuff finding it are more likely if it was put there, for starters...
- I don't speak for sjc, but from my perspective "safer sex" is a propaganda term for latter-day puritans, er, abstinence campaigners like [this one]. As I've said, statistically safe sex *is* pretty safe, so I don't see the need for the qualification. --Robert Merkel
- All the sites I've been finding that use this term look to me like anti- puritan sites. As far as I can tell, the "pro-abstinence" folks and the "pro-safer-sex" folks are generally on opposite sides.
- "As I've said, statistically safe sex *is* pretty safe" -- I think people use the term "safer sex" with exactly your meaning here -- to emphasize the "pretty safe" aspect.
- (Rather than "Safe. Period.")
- If that's the case, by all means use safer sex. I don't like the term, because nothing is perfectly safe (read 1984 for a good thesis on the dangers of too many people not getting enough), but who
- we're here to reflect usage, not define it for ourselves. --Robert Merkel
- I, most unfortunately, sat thru many faculty-meetings-with-the-social-worker back in my high school teacher days (late 80s to mid 90s), and 'safer' was the locution of choice. And this was in CDCville (a.k.a. Atlanta). --MichaelTinkler
Okay, well I'm in Australia and all I've ever heard used is "safe sex", not "safer sex". -- SJK
- Well, how about this then. I'd agree with SJK that "safe sex" is the term used in Australia, whilst it seems that "safer sex" is more common in America. They are talking about the same practices, essentially, though in Oz the idea of abstinence until marriage is pretty much dead :)I think we can speculate that "safer sex" is preferred in the US as a nod to people who claim the only truly safe alternative is not to have sex at all outside marriage, but it'd be nice to have some historical reference to establish exactly where the preferred terminology came from. --Robert Merkel.
IMHO effective discussion and modifications to the entry. Wikipedia working as it should. :-)
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