Someone Who Actually Used The Female Condom!

A reader over at Dan Savage's column in The Stranger recently linked to this IBWMW reader letter. Upon re-reading it, I loved it again so much that here is it again, showing up at your doorstep, no worse for the long trip. Take it in and give it a good home will you?

Not only is this letter about the female condom, which as faithful readers will recall, I am unduly obsessed with, but it is also stunningly well-written. (Also, non-irrelevantly, I am home with a sick child today and can't be sitting around writing about wieners all day.)

The reader, let's call him B, was good enough to report back to us on his experience with the female condom. I love it especially because he uses the phrase "from a purely penile perspective." Writes B:

"With a regular condom, men lose all the direct friction on the penis, which is, of course, why so many guys hate using them. With the female condom, all the friction and sensation comes back (for the male), but the feeling is still very different from regular no-condom sex, because of what the penis is actually rubbing against: a urethane sheath. Urethane feels nothing like skin, and is also very different from latex… more Saran Wrappy, really.

Maneuvering the penis through the ring-opening is fun, like an accuracy game, and it requires the help of fingers, which most people will probably find lacking in the romance department. But hey, when there’s a plastic ring dangling out of a person’s vagina, it ain't gonna be a scene outta Jane Austen.

Note: Not a scene from
"Pride and Prejudice"

Once the penis is safely inside, a lot of the things you’ve grown to expect from penetration are the same: the pressure and the warmth are as they should be. But then there’s this strange, unfamiliar texture, like your penis is now gripped by something that’s smoother and more plastic than you're used to. From a purely penile perspective, it’s a bit like having sex with a warm, tight sandwich bag. But that’s just a best guess, of course. I’ve never gotten it on with food wrapping, honestly.

I will admit that the sensation was actually exciting as a novelty. Everything else about my girlfriend was the same, but her vagina felt noticeably different. She was 98% human and 2% love doll, and that was a bit of a turn-on, as if she’d swapped out her sex part for something new… not better, but at least different and maybe a tad futuristic.

Blame it on all those nerve endings that make intercourse so penis-centric for guys, but even with all the other stuff that’s going on during sex, there’s no disguising that what you’re feeling down in the thrusting zone isn’t really an au- natural vagina, but something “other.”

So, yeah. Warm, tight, and plasticky.

It’s not a feeling I’d want every time, and it would definitely get to be a drag if it was the default birth control method. But as a one-off experiment, it was enjoyable and memorable."