Donald Hill's "Safe Sex" looks at casual and loveless sex. The speaker offers several conditions to have sex without, essentially, getting hurt. The tone in the poem is very detached from the speaker's emotions and really only conveys a sense of past betrayal or heartache. The title of the poem also leads the reader to a misconception that the poem is about protected sex from diseases and babies. However, the speaker instead speaks about protecting himself from hurt and being hurt by someone who he is sexually involved with because feelings and emotions inevitably come from this type of involvement unless he and his partner abide by the conditions listed at the beginning.
