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condom kittehOn a writer’s list recently, the discussion came up again – do we care if our heroes don condoms, or are we going to buy into the fantasy and not bother with them?
Contemporary romances, obviously.

Well, for me as a reader, if a man doesn’t use a condom that indicates that he sees the woman (or man) he’s having sex with as a disposable commodity, or he is so stupid he doesn’t realize that once is all it takes, whether we’re talking about pregnancy or STD’s. Once, it wasn’t quite so important, but that was a long time ago, before you could catch a disease through sex that could kill you.

If a heroine doesn’t mention protection, then she is terminally stupid or she just doesn’t care. There are some issues here – why doesn’t she care? Maybe she wants it, maybe she’s lost the will to leave, maybe her self-esteem is so low she doesn’t care. So that could be interesting, but there had better be some resolution before the end of the story.

My feelings as a reader lead directly into my feelings as a writer, and the way I use condoms in my writing. My contemporaries are all paranormals, and my paranormal beings aren’t bothered by STD’s – they’re either immune, or instantly cured. Similarly, my beings have difficulties with pregnancies – the shape-shifters only have three fertile days a month, and the vampires have a low fertility rate, so that’s not an issue with them, either. Actually, my vampires dislike using them, because they want their race to continue, but there are other things at stake.

At the beginning of “Sunfire,” Aidan, a shape-shifting firebird, is about to have sex with Corinne, a mortal/human. Now Aidan knows he can’t get her pregnant, and he can’t give or catch a disease, but this happens:Sunfire

For a second time he pulled away, leaving her gasping her need. His sudden departure pulled her out of the hot mood his seduction had drawn her into.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

For answer, he reached for his discarded jeans, delving into a pocket and bringing out a foil packet held between two fingers, one of which had just a few seconds ago been touching her. It still glistened with her juices. He waved the packet at her. “We can’t forget this.”

“I’m on the Pill,” she said.

He paused, staring. “Baby, you have to take care.” His voice softened to a low, intimate tone, caressing in its intensity.
She felt a thrill, hearing him use a word of endearment and smiled up at him. “I trust you.” She knew she shouldn’t, but when she looked into his eyes she saw honesty and concern, and she knew he wouldn’t hurt her.

He caught his breath in a sharp gasp. “You know what I am, what I’ve done? Do you trust all your lovers like this?”

“I know some of it. But no, I don’t trust ‘all my lovers’ like this.” All six of them as opposed to what-hundreds? He’d probably had a lot of women. The rock star lifestyle would see to that. She couldn’t explain why she felt this way about him, that she could trust him. It had nothing to do with her lurid fantasies about the guitarist Splinter and everything to do with a man called Aidan Hawthorne. “I’ve never trusted anyone like this before.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Tenderness replaced the faint anxiety in his amber eyes. That was the last thing she’d expected when she’d decided to let this encounter take its course. She’d expected a fierce fucking to help chase her blues away, but it seemed to be mutating into something else. Something deeper and far more unsettling.

Aidan does this because he cares about Corinne. He’s only just met her, but he wants her to know that she means something. In the story he finds her at a time of self-doubt and depression, also vulnerable, so if he’d screwed her and walked out, that would only have compounded her feelings. Instead, the condom that he doesn’t need to use makes her feel cherished and cared-for.

Now, in the interests of balance, is the other side. Some writers claim that the romance is just a fantasy, that they want to be carried away by the fantasy and the condom just takes them out of it and stops it for them. One writer I respect very much has expressed that opinion more than once. While I can understand that, I think the differences are that I want to believe in these characters and their motivations. I want to root for them, and my beliefs about responsibility in sex extend to that, too. If the story is set in a world where everybody knows STD’s are non existent or curable, or that pregnancy risks are coped with, then fair enough, but in our world, it really does trouble me to read about a hero who doesn’t use a condom.

Carried away by the moment? Maybe, in certain circumstances I can understand that, but I’d far rather the hero or heroine or both took some responsibility. Or if they don’t, that’s because of their characters or some aspect of the story.

Historicals are different, but I know a few readers who are troubled by the “rake” manslut story, where the hero has slept with oodles of women, and comes out unscathed. Jane at Dear Author brings this up in her reviews, and I know other readers who have this problem. Of course, some people love the fantasy, but when you realise that a cure for syphilis is a recent development, then you can see syphilis in historicals as the equivalent of our AIDS. It killed and it wasn’t curable, or rather, cures were very painful and very doubtful. No guarantee. And I was forced to agree that they had a point, although I hadn’t really considered it before. So when I came to rewrite “Yorkshire,” the first Richard and Rose book, I made it clear that Richard had given up his philandering ways about a year before he met and fell for Rose. Partly because of the slut problem, partly because I wanted him to give it up as part of growing up, not because of the heroine’s magic vagina. (hate those things!)
lynnec.jpgAlso, when the hero and heroine progress to not using condoms, that can signal a new level in the relationship. Trust is established, they’ve discussed birth control, diseases etc, or they’ve been together long enough to know and trust each other.
Anyway, I blogged about it here because it’s a perennial discussion in author groups and I wondered – does it actually make a difference to the average reader?

To condom or not to condom?