National Condom Week is Here

Every year during Valentine's Day week, organizations across the country from Planned Parenthood to Advocates for Youth celebrate National Condom Week.

This week long event got it's start at the University of California, Berkley in the 1970's and has now expanded nationwide to promote safer sex.

Why promote safer sex? Well, as Emma McGowan wrote in her latest article for Bustle, "the CDC estimates that undiagnosed STIs are responsible for infertility in over 20,000 women each year." That's a crazy high number! We know there are dozens of other benefits to using a condom too. Here are some examples:

• Prevents a messy cleanup
• Helps to prevent an unplanned pregnancy
• Allows you to reduce the "risk" factor when engaging in promiscuous behavior
• Great for the casual water ballon fight

We've known for quite some time, 1000's and 1,000's of years ago (some same 15,000 BC), that condoms are an effective method to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STI/STDS. Back in those days, condoms were made from a variety of materials ranging from sheep or lamb intestines (imagine getting these through the TSA), to oiled silk paper. The invention of latex in the 1920's allowed for the condoms we're familiar with using today to be brought to market.

Photo Credit: A Voice For Men

Nowadays, condoms come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They even have condoms designed for a woman to wear instead of a man. One of our goals at Say It With A Condom is to decrease the stigma around wearing condoms by using them as a tool to start a conversation.

Ending the stigma around condom usage or just plain old carrying a condom around has gotten easier over the years, but there is still a fight to be had in some of our local communities. We are proud to work with peer educators, prevention coordinators, sexual wellness counselors, volunteers, and 100's of other people with different job titles to distribute condoms to start a conversation.

We know from the 100,000's of conversations that we have been part of, that if we can put a condom with a message into someones hands, then that condom becomes all the more powerful because a message has been delivered without any room for misinterpretation (those aren't our words, but those of hundreds of our clients).

Having been in the condom business for nearly a decade, we are thankful to the people who have been promoting National Condom Week since the 70's. For without them, perhaps we might not have been able to start Say It With A Condom. We are thankful that our clients choose us to be a part of normalizing condom usage in their communities (or to promote their brand, product, service or event because condoms also make an AWESOME promo item). We're looking forward to serving everyone for years to come. Happy National Condom Week!