WhyNot
February 5, 2009, 10:49pm
362
lobotomyboy63:
But also, more advanced stuff. Like the withdrawal method—IIRC in my sexuality class, we were taught that the Cowpers Glands release some sperm to neutralize leftover urine in the urethra before the major load. It’s involuntary and the guy can’t feel it, so he’s already released some sperm into her without knowing it. The joke was, “What do you call a healthy man and woman who use the withdrawal method?”/“Mommy and Daddy.”
I think I might have to make this my sig:
Perfect use failure rate of condoms is 2 pregnancies per 100 women in one year. Perfect use failure rate of withdrawal from [wikipedia] is 4 pregnancies per 100 women in one year, but most charts I’ve seen list it at 2.
Typical use is a bit different, but not *statistically *terribly so: 14 pregnancies for couples using male condoms 19 for couples using withdrawal. Women and their partners who use nothing at all can expect 85 pregnancies (all numbers per 100 women in one year of use). I leave you to draw your own standard deviation charts, 'cause my Statistics class was 15 years ago and I’ve forgotten how.
Contraceptive failure rates.
On second thought, since we’re discussing teens, these numbers are probably better. This chart shows typical and perfect use failure rates for people using that method for their first year. As expected, the typical use failure rates are higher, possibly because people new to a method make more mistakes (or people new to sex aren’t as conscientious about using contraception every time and are present in these stats at a higher rate than the gen pop.) Among this population, condom rate is at 15 and withdrawal at 27. Nothing at all is still at 85, but I question how that number was arrived at; it’s the same theoretical number as general charts, and I would not be surprised if it should be higher for teens. Fertile little buggers.
Now, that being said, everyone should wear condoms for STI prevention whenever they’re in a nonmonogamous relationship or both partners don’t have a history of clean tests. But withdrawal as a method of contraception isn’t really as bad as it’s cracked up to be; certainly it’s not worthy of the “parents” joke. If nothing else, withdrawal is indeed quite a bit better than nothing, and it doesn’t expire and can’t be left in a warm glove box or ruined by oil based lubricant.