They reply by saying that they love their boyfriends and they don't want to
annoy them by making them wear condoms. They really love these guys.
There are girls whose boyfriends won't pay for their abortions, so they use
their own money to terminate unwanted pregnancies, but then stay with the same
guy after that. Other girls won't dump a guy even if they know he's cheating on
them. Some girls sell their bodies because their boyfriends have asked them to.
And yet these girls still like these guys. They tell me, 'he's really kind. He
takes me to work and picks me up when I've finished every day.' Is that really
kind?
I go around schools carrying out sex education courses. At each place I visit,
I tell the students my e-mail address and let them know they are welcome to
contact me, anonymously if they like, and I will help them, free-of-charge.
It's a shock to see how many sad letters I get from these lonely girls. They
don't feel happy at home, they're out of place at school and, though they may
put on a happy face in front of their friends, below the surface they're
hurting.
Typical among the girls contacting me are types who've always excelled at
school, take part in a lot of extracurricular activities and taken on
leadership roles amongst their friends.
They've been subjected to the heavy burden of expectation from a young age,
have given life their all but then, when they take a close look at themselves,
at times they feel that there is nobody else who really understands them.
When a guy comes along who says that he likes them, the lonely and susceptible
girls are all too willing to believe him, as well as feel that they've finally
found somebody who understands them. So, when one of these guys starts looking
for sex, the girls are only too happy to please him. Of course, the guy is
presented with a girl who will literally do anything for him, so as well as
seeking sex, he'll also be overcome with desires physically, mentally (or
perhaps just sexually) and have few qualms about doing it unprotected if they
don't have a condom handy.
The Pill is probably the only form of contraception women can take care of
entirely by themselves, particularly as far as teenage girls are concerned. I
prescribe the Pill to many girls who visit my clinic.
I always instruct them not to tell their boyfriends that they are using the
oral contraceptive. The reason I do so is that unless the boyfriend has done a
lot of study or thought a lot about what he is doing, he will regard the girl
taking the Pill as giving him free reign to have sex without using a cumbersome
condom.
While the Pill may be close to 100 percent effective as a birth control device,
it offers no protection against sexually transmitted diseases. With one in four
Japanese currently affected by some sort of STD, condom use is absolutely
vital. It's hard for many girls to tell their boyfriends to wear condoms.
They're absolutely delighted to have sex without a sheath anywhere, anytime.
Guys come up with plenty of excuses not to wear condoms -- they're too big for
regular sizes, they're allergic to condoms, whatever. Take a visit to a drug
store and check out the condoms they have in stock. They have a wide range of
sizes from SS for the most modestly endowed to LL sizes for foreign men (the
dimensions of which probably comes as a surprise for many Japanese).
Condoms are not all made of latex, either, so it should be possible for any man
to pick and choose a prophylactic to his liking.
By Dr. Shigehito Kamimura on behalf of Dr. Kunio Kitamura, special to the
Mainichi
Dr. Kunio Kitamura is head of the Japan Family Planning Association. He
specializes in dealing with issues such as sex, birth control, abortion,
puberty worries, sexually transmitted diseases, child-raising (he is a father
of five), general gynecology and domestic violence. If he cannot handle
directly a problem he has been presented with, he will draw on a wide variety
of specialists to provide assistance.
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