Condom fatigue is a term used by medical professionals and safer sex educators to refer to the phenomenon of decreased condom use. "Condom fatigue" can also be used to describe a general weariness of and decreased effectiveness of safer sex messages. (This is sometimes called "prevention fatigue.")

The term has particularly been used to describe men who have sex with men

Men who have sex with men

Men who have sex with men are male persons who engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, regardless of how they identify themselves; many men choose not to accept sexual identities of homosexual or bisexual...

, though the term applies to people of all gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

s and sexual orientation

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...

s. Condom fatigue has been partially blamed for an increase in HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

infection rates, though this has not been substantiated in any study.

External links

• N.I.C.E article on HIV transmission and Condom fatigue