We’ve all heard the reasons to have safe sex, but what about unsafe sex? Aside from getting pregnant (which in many cases is a good thing, being that humans don’t last forever and must reproduce) possibly catching your favorite local STD, and being more fun, having sex without a condom is good for your mental health, according to some Scottish guy named Stuart Brody. It turns out he’s a professor, too, at West of Scotland University. (It’s actually in Scotland as far as I know and not west of it, as the Atlantic is west of Scotland, and I don’t know of any ocean-based Universities.) Barring the possibility that he actually said something completely different and people just couldn’t decode his Scottish accent, he claims the converse as well. Namely, that heterosexual sex with a condom is associated with poorer mental health, problems dealing with stress and even conditions such as depression.
The claims were immediately criticized by sexual health campaigners, who warned that unsafe sex leads to unwanted pregnancies and diseases. Well, they’re probably right, hence the term “unsafe sex.”
You see, there’s a bit of a miscommunication here, at least from my point of view. I seriously doubt that Professor Brody is outwardly advocating rampant unprotected sex just because it improves mental health, at the risk of contracting HIV or Penicillin Resistant Gonorrhea. Though I have not interviewed the man myself, I’m willing to bet he doesn’t want a chlamydia-infested populace that, thankfully, has perfect mental health and establishes a state-of-the-art organic farming industry with the proceeds from money saved on condoms. On a hunch, I’m assuming that he’s saying when you can and it’s safe, use some other method of birth control instead of condoms. Or, better yet, get married and just have kids. Condoms aren’t really good for that sort of thing anyway.
Brody believes that mankind is biologically programmed to enjoy unprotected sex because it gives couples an evolutionary advantage and maximizes the chances of reproducing. A little evolutionary psychology for you.
“Evolution is not politically correct,” says Brody, “so of the very broad range of potential sexual behavior, there is actually only one that is consistently associated with better physical and mental health and that is the one sexual behavior that would be favored by evolution. That is not accidental.”
Brody based his conclusions on a study of the sexual behavior of 99 women and 111 men in Portugal. They filled in questionnaires about the quality of their sex lives and what kind of contraception they used.
“The more often people are using condoms independent of age, independent of the nature of their relationship, the greater use of immature defense mechanisms against stress,” Brody said.
There is only one conclusion. A class action lawsuit must immediately be launched against evolution. You file the papers.
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