Danielle Lapierre: Hi, I am Danielle Lapierre. I am the Coordinator of Health Education at George Mason University, part of the Office of Alcohol, Drug and Health Education. Today, we will be talking about safer sex, specifically related to the female condom. So, this is what a female condom looks like in the package. You can get this at your local pharmacy or department store. They are fairly expensive, because they are made out of polyurethane. What a female condom is used for is to protect against sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. There is always the expiration date on the back. We are good to go.
You also want to make sure that you store this at room temperature. The reason for that is because heat can break down polyurethane. Polyurethane is a thin plastic. It is a little bit stronger than latex but it is thinner than latex as well. Also if you are allergic to latex, this would be a great product for you. So, when you remove the condom, you want to make sure that you move to the side, you open the package like so, very gently. This is what it looks like when it comes out. It's very lubricated. So, this is the female condom.
For the sake of this demonstration, I am going to be using an un-lubricated one that I washed out before because it's really messy. Here is my un-lubricated condom. Like I said it's a little bit bigger than the male condom. It's nothing to be afraid of. There is ring on the outside and there is a ring on the inside. The way that you use this is that you pinch the inner ring. I am going to take my plastic vagina which is not to scale. So, I will explain why that's important to consider in about two seconds. So, you pinch it and you insert it in. The way that it will look on a vagina -- that's normal, is that it will look like this on the outside. If you notice the outer ring is specifically placed right here. The great thing about the female condom is that if you see right here, it provide extra clitoral simulation and if you have a sexually transmitted infection that's on the surface such as herpes or genital warts. It also provides a little bit of extra protection on the outside, not for every where, but just that specific location.
The way that it works is, the penis would be inserted inside of the female condom. You want to make sure that you put it on the inside as opposed to the side, because it will really defeat the purpose. The way that you remove it, is that you twist the outer ring and remove ever so gently. The reason why you twist this, so that nothing leaks out, because there is a little extra space. But the female condom does come lubricated. It also comes with extra lubrication, which you would want to use. The reason for that is that it will increase pleasure of course and it will decrease noise. Some people say that because of the size of this, it kind of sounds like a plastic baggy. But with time and extra lube and maybe turning up the music a little bit louder, you won't hear that noise so much.
So that was the female condom. You want to make sure that you use water-based or oil-based lube for the female condom. The reason for that is because plastic is a little bit stronger than latex. So you can use oil-based lube and what we will be talking about next is sexually transmitted infection and testing.
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