By Sadie Gonsalves
British Condoms has developed a new “smart condom” that they tout as the “future of wearable technology in the bedroom”. The pre-order website for i.Con Smart Condom says that the product, which costs $74, will measure girth, the velocity and frequency of thrusts, number of calories burned during intercourse, number of different positions used in a period of time, and will also somehow tell you how your sex stacks up to other people’s sex around the world.
It’s actually not a condom, more a ring that fits around a regular condom, and it comes with a micro-USB charging port (one full charge lasts up to 8 hours, which to me sounds a bit wasteful, you know, considering…). It uses a Nano-chip and sensors, is adjustable for size, gives you the option of keeping your sex data private or sharing with friends and family, and comes with a one-year warranty.
Waow such technology! It blows my mind to think that someone in a board room somewhere decided that this was a good idea worth allocating research and development funds and manpower (hehe) to, or that there are men out there willing to shell out $74 to measure the velocity of their strokes. My friend says she’s sure that as soon as the product rolls out, all of the posts we see on social media about how many calories people burned in this morning’s workout will be replaced by men telling us how many sex positions they conquered last night. I, for one, will leave Facebook the day this starts happening.
I personally also find it super interesting in a nauseating way how preoccupied men are with aspects of sex that hold no interest to me. I can’t ever imagine caring about the velocity of my sex strokes, and I know it isn’t something that makes a huge difference to my sex life, but I think it’s so funny and kind of sad that the product developers over at British Condoms thought this was something a significant percentage of rich male condom buyers would want to know.
But seriously though, this reminds me of what Gloria Steinem said in her piece If Men Could Menstruate: that if men were the ones who had periods, “doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps”. Time, money and energy could be spent so much more usefully on developing products that could have real health benefits (or any benefits at all), like devices that women could use to alleviate menstrual cramps and keep track of menstrual flow.
By the way, the smart condom does one single useful thing: it can tell you if you have syphilis or chlamydia. Gents, please file your comments about how women should go invent things and stop complaining about everything below.