Review: The Female Condom

We thought that we'd push our pre-conceptions (ha) to one side and give the femidom a go... surely it can't be that bad right? I've been on several different forms of the pill, none of which seem to agree with me, so until the male pill is out and about in general use, barrier contraception is something that is really important for us. We're very happy with the condoms we use now, but that doesn't mean to say we're adverse to trying out new (or indeed old) ones on the market. 

  

She says:

One of the positive selling points of the Pasante Female Condom is that you're able to insert it a while before the fun begins, allowing you to have spur of the moment sexual encounters without having to rummage around for a condom and thereby preserving the mood. Unfortunately though, this female condom is far from discrete.   

Open the packet and you discover an object that's not too dissimilar to a lube covered, plasticy version of one of your granny's pop socks. At the bottom of the sock you will also find a clear plastic o-ring, a device that I can only asssume is designed to make it stay vaguely in place after insertion. Getting in place is fairly simple, but it does leave you with a sense of 'have I done this right?!' as there is a large part of it on show outside the body feeling rather uncomfortable, covering up your labia and generally looking pretty ugly. But to be fair to them - they are non-latex, and don't smell too bad.

During sex I found it hard to control my laughter. It feels (and sounds) like someone has shoved a carrier bag up inside of you and started fucking it. We didn't see it through to the end, the noise and the sensation were just too distracting, and my uncontrolable laughter wasn't exactly conducive with sex.  

I know you should really use something more than once to write a good review - but I just can't bear the thought of using this EVER again - it has to be one of the most off-putting, ugly, and intrusive pieces of contraception ever conceived! Almost certainly a very effective piece of contraception though - it definitely managed to put me off having sex!

He says:
This was our first foray into the world of femidoms. We both like the idea in principle. The notion that it puts the woman in control of contraception, it leaves the penis unencumbered during a sex session so it can easily be played with during intercourse, and the vague hope that the sensation would somehow be better than a condom.

Maybe it was this hope expressed above which made the experience we had with these so crushingly disappointing. I am a novelty seeker, especially when it comes to sex and toys, but his means that you have to be willing to put up with the occasional bad experience. This is easy when you go in with an open, neutral perspective, but having struggled to find (the obviously non-existent) perfect form of contraception for years, we had a forlorn hope with regards to this one.

The first thing you obviously see with these is the packaging. Personally I find this shade of vivid pink particularly offensive to the eye. I would be more than willing to forgive this if the product itself was good (if one got too upset by poor taste packaging one would have a very limited selection of sex toys to choose from).

So opening it up. Hmmm... like a condom. Only bigger. A lot bigger. Actually kind of like a condom crossed with a sandwich bag. This is deeply unattractive. But again, condoms are not designed to win beauty contests, so you don't really want to judge on this.

A really important consideration for us is that setting up contraception shouldn't interfere with the flow or mood of things too much. In theory a femidom is good for this, as one can put it in place before foreplay. Unfortunately, these are very fiddly to insert, and involve a quite uncomfortable seeming manoeuvre involving shoving it inside your partner as far as you can (not that I have a problem shoving things inside Lucy generally speaking). Even going as far as I could, the end of this still hangs horribly out of Lucy's pussy.

All the above would fade into insignificance if the sensation whilst using these was amazing. Perhaps this whole review has been building up to a dramatic volte-face, whereby I reveal that these feel impossibly good, and we now use nothing else. Of course, if you have read Lucy's review above, you know this is not the case. The primary sensation of these is quite similar to using a fairly thick latex condom (although these are not latex, they feel very similar). Added to this is then an irritating shifting about and rubbing, which rather kills the mood if you are worried about your contraception falling out (or disappearing in!). As I said at the start, these disappointed me tremendously, and not only would I not buy them again, they have sadly made me doubt the whole concept altogether.