Play and Incongruity: Framing Safe-Sex Talk

Abstract

In this article the author argues that play and humorous discourse can relieve the tension inherent in the practice of safe sex. The mythology of sex maintains that the act is spontaneous natural and private--an idea reinforced by the advertising and entertainment industry. But the AIDS epidemic has raised the need for caution. Safe sex however is marked by cognitive incongruity: the tension that arises out of the need to balance abandonment and caution. But as the author explains the incongruities of safe sex can be resolved through the use of play and humor verbal and nonverbal communication that evokes laughter or releases tension. The author reviews theories of play as well as Goffmans notion of framing in order to show that playful communication can diffuse psychological relational and practical tensions. The author goes on to examine the specific function of play within sexual episodes by analyzing realistic role-playing transcripts of couples initiating the topic of condom usage prior to a sexual encounter. In the transcripts a couple playfully discuss sex and agree to have intercourse. When the woman suggests the need to use a condom the man uses humor to ease the awkwardness of the situation and the woman joins in the play. The author suggests that the humor and play in the episode accomplish 3 things: they ease the tension raised by the subject of safe sex they diffuse the embarrassment about the condom itself and actually turn the condom from an object of tension into an object of pleasure. The author concludes that because its unstructured improvisational quality more closely resembles spontaneous sex play can serve as a more useful metaphor for safe sex than the usual metaphor of negotiation.