I surveyed 6 men. The results were as follows: 2 men said they would continue with foreplay but would not have sex with the women, 3 men said that they would go get condoms and come back and have sex, and one man said he would go ahead and have sex with her regardless of contraceptive.

I think that these responses were somewhat realistic. It is easy for people in a logical frame of mind to say that they would not have sex without contraception but for some people it is very hard in the "heat of the moment" to deny their body something it so obviously wants. These people truly want to believe that this is what they would do (and some would) but I think that in that position with the right person most of them would break their rule. I think that this does represent college students in the fact that we are educated people who all know that it is dangerous to have unprotected sex. So it is no surprise that all but one person said they would not engage in this behavior.

The major issue about contraception is that our judgement gets clouded in the actual moment when we have to make that kind of decision. Logically, we would all like to protect ourselves and not put ourselves at risk. But the actuality is that college aged women are the fastest growing group being diagnosed with HIV. Obviously, men are not using that contraception like they say they would like to be.

There are many underlying issues to contraception behavior. One predisposing factor that relates to this activity is that our society instills the belief that people who by condoms are dirty or slutty, or that carrying around contraception means that you are easy or a "player". These negative attitudes about having contraception available at all times ("just in case") sets our young adults up to be put into this exact situation. Also, the knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases gives people the resources needed to make informed decisions about the risks that they want take. The most of the men surveyed obviously knew about the risks and decided it was not worth it. I think that there are enabling factor also. It is expensive to purchase condoms, but condoms are available at every convenient store and some restrooms. So this is an argument for both sides. Another enabling factor is the women in the situation. Men are traditionally the ones who make decisions in this kind of situation but women have just as much of say in this as they do. Not one person I posed the situation to said that it had anything to do with the women. Maybe they assumed that the women would do what ever they chose or maybe they thought that it was already assumed in the situation but either way I thought it was an interesting observation.