Apparently because scientists think men won't take it. According to an article in Science Progress, outdated ideas of who's responsibility birth control and contraception is, has put the burden on women's shoulders.
Let's pretend you are a straight couple, in a monogamous long-term relationship, and you don't want a kid. Consider your options: A woman can choose from 11 forms of contraception -- including barrier methods like the diaphragm, permanent sterilization, and that holy grail of the sexual revolution, the pill, and its more recent and even more foolproof sisters in hormonal birth control, the ring and injectibles. A man can choose two: condoms or a vasectomy.
Right, so according to science, if you are woman it is your problem if you get pregnant or end up with an STD, so it just makes sense if you take care of the birth control. Doesn't sound very scientific does it. Furthermore, the financial burden, time constraints and side effects of hormonal birth control on women has another implication on not only time, but unfair burden.
Via Lisa Campo-Engelstein at Science Progress
Not being responsible for some or all of these economic, health-related, and other burdens is a significant boon for men. Men typically do not have to dedicate time and energy to contraceptive care, pay out of pocket for the usually expensive and sometimes frequent (often monthly, or at least four times a year) supply of contraceptives, acquire the knowledge about contraception and reproduction needed to effectively contracept, deal with the medicalization of one's reproductive health, endure the bodily invasion of contraception, suffer the health-related side effects and the mental stress of being responsible for contraception, and face the social repercussions of their contraceptive decisions (such as whether to use a particular contraceptive or to switch contraceptives), and the moral reproach for contraceptive failures.
What both Lisa Campo-Engelstein from Science Progress and Amy Benfer at Broadsheet acknowledge is that this outdated ideology not only leads to the false belief that men wouldn't take contraception, but also leads to a disempowerment of men taking responsibility for contraception. As in, they benefit from the structural belief that it is a woman's responsibility and it is a lose-lose all around. To counter that narrative would take a leap of faith on behalf of women and an insistence by the science community around the effectiveness of male birth control and the corresponding research, development and distribution of such measures. So, it is possible, but sex education, the science community and health care providers would have to overcome the sexism endemic in the way we teach and distribute contraception.
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This makes absolutely zero sense.
I was explaining to a friend recently that something dawned on me. Back when we were teenagers, we lived in fear of our sexuality because we did not have legal autonomy over our bodies and our reproduction. We could use condoms, sure, but anything more would require a parent (birth control, abortion). Turning 18 was a *big* relief for us, because we were finally handed the keys to the kingdom as it were.
We often accuse men of "not worrying" about pregnancy. It is true to a degree--they don't have to worry about their physical bodies being hijacked by pregnancy, but for a lot of men, the legal and moral responsibility of unintentionally getting a woman pregnant is a constant weight. They never got that rite of passage of turning 18 like we did, because all they can do is put on a condom and hope it stays intact. Anything beyond that and they are completely at our mercies that we are using backup birth control or would get an abortion if there should be an accident.
If I were a man, I would be all about the male pill. Of course I'd still wear condoms for disease protection, but I would be thrilled that I was given the absolute ability to control my autonomous and financial future by guaranteeing that I wouldn't get a woman pregnant unless we wanted to.
Oh, and in the same line of thinking, why aren't the MRA's clamoring for a male pill?
Well, a quick search shows that they are at least somewhat.
Glenn Sacks
Warren Farrell
Jeffrey Leving
National Coalition for Men
Glenn Sacks (again)
They do bring up a male pill in Glenn Sacks and all of the men moan that they don't have one. The same men who think that birth control is the female's responsibility and who refuse to use condoms (decreases sensitivity, you know). And besides, WOMEN should use female condoms, according to them.
MRAs are obsessed with women who claim to be on the pill but lie so they can get pregnant and then file child support claims. Yet they won't use a condom. (Even if they did, women dive thru trash cans and take used condoms and stick them up themselves to get pregnant.)
I've seen them write that they need the male pill so they could lead on women for years and get as much sex as they could, pretending that they also wanted to have a baby.
I think men should have a pill option because I'd want it too. But I don't trust that many would remember to take it each and every day. They don't use a condom when the opportunity of sex presents itself; why would they take a pill if there's no possibility of sex in the near future? I know it's sexist, but I don't have a lot of faith that a daily pill is a viable option for most men.
I wouldn't worry about whether the guy was taking his pill or not (some will reliably, some won't). I would just consider it a back up to whatever I'm using. A reliable male pill or other option simply insures that both parties can play a role in making sure they aren't facing pregnancy when they don't wish to.
I know there are a lot of men who want more control over that and hate that the only option for them if they want children in the future is a condom.
I reread what I wrote and I probably should clarify that I meant to say that Glenn Sacks' MRA posters think some whacky things; not Glenn Sacks. I tend to lump him in with what people say on his blog, and that's not actually fair since he does differentiate himself from them and does put a disclaimer on his site saying the views of his commentators aren't his.
And I've never read the other people's views on the male BCP but I can be sure they want the option for men. I'd like it for my son.
If you're willing to recognize that difference between Glenn Sacks and his more extreme idiot posters: Sacks is the "men's rights activist" or MRA, with some moderate ideas and others misogynistic. He's an activist. He's out there for what he believes in; not so the posters complaining from behind their computers about how women have wronged them or fear how women can wrong them. I don't consider such people MRAs.
activist
Noun
a person who works energetically to achieve political or social goals
activism n
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006
Yes, Glenn Sacks is an activist, but way more for fathers than for MRAs. I don't even think he calls himself an MRA, although he shares lots of similar beliefs; just not the crazy extreme ones. Like a lot of people agree with a bunch of feminist views but would never call themselves a feminist and would never agree to the more extreme things certain people post.
But it's easy to attribute things to a blog owner when it's really not them that's saying it or agreeing with it.
This is so stupid. As Mighty Ponygirl says I'm all about the male pill. I think it's a great idea and I'm pretty pissed off with the sexism both implying women should just have to take care of this and also implying that as a man I just don't care enough.
I have no real medical basis for this but also the fact that male sperm can be held on ice for long periods and women actually carry the child seems to make more sense to me to stop messing with the female reproductive system and instead do it for the male one which can easily be "backed-up" with a sperm donation.
Yes, a man can easily donate sperm. But how much would it cost to store your own sperm (or ova, or fetuses) long term in a certified facility, with liquid nitrogen? How much to store it yourself in a large vacuum container, with regular shipments of liquid nitrogen or dry ice?
http://www.majesticgaits.com/mve.htm
Will the cost of storage not run into the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars? That will be the true price of permanent sterilization.
No, this is one more time to question why people value perpetuating their own DNA so highly, as opposed to raising a foster child or adopting if they feel the need to have children in the future. I raised my children as my own even with the possibility (my wife has told me of two other pregnancies she terminated because she questioned who the father was) they were not fathered by myself. I would also prefer to take in a foster child in need, or adopt, rather than put my wife through pregnancy and loss of work again, IF I wanted more children.
Pardon me. Store embryos, not fetuses.
Nothing in the linked article suggests that scientists believe that men won't take birth control. That may well be true, but I think the burden should be on you to link to it. The article in fact suggested that scientists would like more funding to study it, correctly pointing out the huge disparity in research on male vs. female forms of birth control. Let's not rush in to automatically blame the scientists for a problem that reflects a larger societal bias.
This *is* really stupid. a million guys would take it, *as long as there's no cause for concern for long-term fertility*.
condoms are awful. awful awful awful. you get a disease, you take a pill, everything's fine (except AIDS, but you can play the numbers on that one). You get a woman pregnant? holy cow.
Give me the male birth control pill!
Is this a joke? "Take a pill and everything's fine?"
HPV, Herpes, and other STD's can have no cure. Plus there's the idea that you wouldn't want to pass it on to future partners. Plus the pills aren't free.
If you want the male birth control pill so STD's can spread willy-nilly then I hope it doesn't come about.
Look, my post was semi-intended as flame, but there's a more nuanced position on STIs and AIDS than the one that public health advocates pound. Birth control and STIs share a weird space that doesn't need to have as much overlap as it does, and giving men a borth control option can unpack a lot of that.
But this isn't the place to get into the liberties you can take when you're in a Privileged demographic, so I'm posting my response on my blog, and we can fight there if you want.
AND it didn't fuck with their sex drive/moods/ability to orgasm like it does ours...
> Men typically do not have to dedicate time and energy to contraceptive care, pay out of pocket for the usually expensive and sometimes frequent
I would like to see stats confirming this information. My guess is that it is usually men who buy condoms.
oswid, read the lined piece:
"According to the piece, women are responsible for contraception about 67.3 percent of the time; when one includes condoms bought by women, the rate rises to 91 percent. "
Thanks, that's gross. Damn stereotypes.
But think about this in a bigger way than how we usually think of condoms as birth control... I had the extremely uncomfortable experience of once looking for something in my parents' bedroom when I was 15 and finding a box of condoms in the nightstand (seriously? mom, get on the pill), so, if married couples are using condoms, and since we don't live in a feminist paradise yet, that probably means the wife is doing a lot of the hosuehold shopping, so she's buying the box of condoms, so that could be why that figure jumps so much, ebcause it's taking into account all the families where the wife is buying condoms when she buys tampons and milk. Also, since the women I've met and bedded have always seemed more comfortable bringing me back to their place than coming over to mine, it could also have to do with that... the guy's got a condom, but you're right next to her nightstand...
Call me overly paranoid but I also don't like using anyones condoms that aren't my own. I know what kind of temperatures and physical pressure they've been exposed to. Who knows how many times that things been bumping around in his pocket on a night out? Mine stay hanging out in my undie drawer 24/7.
i'd like to see studies on this. this one goes against that idea
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102229970.html
its just one study but i find it hard to believe women buy 91% of contraceptives, especially when adding condoms
It doesn't say "buy 91% of contraceptives", but "women are involved in almost 91 percent of all contraceptive use.". Which means 9% of birth control is vasectomies, then. (Since it's the only method where the woman is uninvolved.) 67% are some kind of female side birth control (pill, IUD, tuboligation), and the remaining 24% involve both partners (condoms, I'm guessing mostly.) That doesn't really say anything about cost, or who's paying it. (I'd guess that hormonal or IUDs are used more in the kind of relationships where money/costs aren't so well delineated anyways.
The percentage and raw number of men who have had vasectomies is actually significant, and in the UK is comparable to the number of women who have had tubal ligation. (Reporting in the US is poor - "No formal data collection system exists in the USA to collect and collate the number of sterilisations performed annually. The last time a survey was done was in 1991. It wasn't an actual count but an extrapolation of smaller surveys.") By age 35-39, the number of men who've had vasectomies outnumber women who've had tubal ligation.
http://www.vasectomy-information.com/faq/faq2.htm
How popular is vasectomy?
The results vary from country to country. New Zealand seems to have the highest rate of vasectomised men (23%), US/Europe approx 11%, and the lowest is China and India on 7-8%.
The 2002 statistics for the UK state that some 18% of men between 16 and 69 have had a vasectomy, and that proportion has remained similar over time. A further 1% of men had become sterile as a result of another operation. Around 30% of men aged 40-64 have had a vasectomy. 30% of men aged 40-44, 32% of men aged 45-49, 30% of men aged 50-54 and 26% aged 55-64. Only 1% of men aged 16-29 had had a vasectomy. The trend is that men between 40 and 49 were 50% more likely to have a vasectomy than a woman was to have had a tubal ligation.
A recent US national survey found that 12% of married men between 20 and 39 have had a vasectomy, and of this 12%, nearly a quarter are in the 35 to 39 age group. Worldwide some 50 million men have undergone the procedure - this represents about 5% of married couples of reproductive age.
[end quote]
http://www.vasectomy-information.com/moreinfo/stats.htm
For vasectomies to be considered so obscure a procedure for men, and for the perception that men are more unwilling than women to undergo a surgical procedure to permanently affect their fertility, the fact that men are indeed getting vasectomies must be underreported. Other than my mother, I don't know any women who've deliberately been sterilized, and there is no reason for them to tell me (outside of where it might be relevant at my hospital). Why would men advertise the fact they've been sterilized any more than women?
the previous poster said 'buy' and i was responding to that
OH! OH! and ALSO with sex workers it's usually the sexworker who provides the protection, and that's a high-volume industry, so that's influencing the statistics disproportionately to what you might be thinking.
I mean, you know, not that I've visited a sex worker, but that's my understanding, and it makes sense, because it would be dumb for a sexworker to trust the protection the client wants to use.
My ex-boyfriend told me it was 'too embarrassing' to go buy condoms, so I had to before I got on the Pill. He did nothing but put it on.
Yeah, I've always bought the condoms, and I'm a woman.
I never really thought about the burden being solely on me; I just thought it'd be stupid not to do everything I could to prevent pregnancy.
Now that I'm in a committed relationship I have found that my boyfriend is completely ignorant when it comes to menstrual cycle, birth control options, etc etc. So I've drawn him into the process over time and emphasized that I want him to take a role in birth control, even if it's just talking to me about my choices and learning along the way.
Side note: I'm starting Depo-Provera in a couple of weeks. Anyone have any input on it? I hatehatehate the Ortho TriCyclen-Lo that I was on, it made me sluggish and messed with my libido. The Ortho is estrogen+progesterone while the Depo is just progesterone, which is supposed to reduce those kinds of side effects.
i love the idea of a male birth control pill... however, i'm not sure i'd trust that my guy would take it every day.
I'm sure that there are many out there that agree with you, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be an option.
Yes, but there are men that feel the same way about women. How often do we hear the "bitch said she was on the pill" complaint from guys who find themselves facing fatherhood unexpectedly?
If someone really doesn't want children, then they should take precautions, no matter what gender you are and not trust that the other person is going to shoulder the weight for you if they don't feel as you do.
That's up to you. If you don't trust you continue with female contraceptives.
Male contraceptive will be directly benefitial to men. And to women who trust their partners.
My husband can't remember to take his medicines every day already...so it would be a no-go for us. I do wish it were an option though.
My wife is not able to use contraceptives. So we use condoms. For me, female contraceptives are useless. Does it mean that whenever there is a conversation about female contraceptives I am encouraged to say "Hey, they are useless for me. But it would be good to have such option"?
annnd that's why i said specifically MY, not ALL guy(s).
I don't really know that I feel like it's a "burden" for me - I'm on the Pill whether I'm worried about BC or not, because the Pill does a hell of a lot more than prevent pregnancy for me. The quoted paragraphs seem more than a little hyperbolic - there's really no stress or time consuming energy involved, and in fact I feel MORE stressed when I'm NOT on it, wondering just how badly this month's cramps are going to incapacitate me.
I'm not really sure I understand how the excerpted quotes link up with your analysis, but even if there WAS a male pill, and my partner was taking it, I'd go right on taking mine, too. I can only guarantee that I take my pill everyday at the same time, and I'd think that a man would want the same sort of personal guarantee for himself too - he might not know whether or not I missed a pill last night, be he can be sure he took his (or can be sure he brought the condoms, whichever he chooses - and I'll agree with oswid up above - in the decade I've been sexually active, I've never once bought condoms. The guy has always done that).
Do we really need a verb form of contraception? And if we're going to back-form one, shouldn't it be "contraceive" instead of "contracept"? :)
Actually there was quite a lot of research going on for years to create a male pill. In Germany, where I lived at the time, there was quite a intense male coverage when Schering STOPPED their trials and decided not to go further with the project.
The reason is not only the difficulties in suppressing all those sperms (way easier to suppress one egg a month than millions of sperms a day), but also the psychological effects on men during the first trial period.
Schering was working with the american company Oregon and they were as far as having a first product, which they duly tested on 1500 men. As always, some of those got the real pill, and some got a placebo pill. During the trial period, most of the participants complained about unusual mood swings and emotional ups and downs, which they blamed on the contraceptive. However, as a big surprise to the scientists, these side effects were reported as much from men who took the real pill AND those that took the placebo pill!!!!
So, the reason Schering stopped the project was more based on the over emotionality of men (and the understandable fear not to be able to sell the product afterwards) than on scientific problems.
So now, whenever my husband is annoying, I just blame it on his PMS.
PS: For those who read German, here is a related newspaper article informing about the research stop: http://tinyurl.com/3r2fja
Interesting article ValeDeOro but the photo is definitely NSFW (at least not in Oklahoma). Definitely just opened that in front of my boss...
I like that -- whenever I am loopy, I can just blame it on my PMS ;)
Actually (especially based on how irritable and bloated I was during adolescence and how much better I felt upon taking Midol), my family and I used to joke that men don't have PMS because they get it all out of the way by having continuous PMS from ages 12-16.
As to the practical difficulty of male vs. female birth control: I would actually imagine it would be easier to block egg release over sperm production only if one is dealing with hormonal birth control (e.g. hormones block egg release under many circumstances without pills involved, e.g. pregnancy). OTOH, I would imagine sperm production could be blocked rather easily (and reversibly) because sperm are very specialized cells in which DNA is packaged in a very particular way (to get it so condensed in the sperm head). I should think it would be rather easy to develop a specific and powerful inhibitor of sperm maturation -- e.g. simply something that blocks the production of sperm specific amines involved in DNA packaging (only in sperm).
Actually there was quite a lot of research going on for years to create a male pill. In Germany, where I lived at the time, there was quite a intense male coverage when Schering STOPPED their trials and decided not to go further with the project.
The reason is not only the difficulties in suppressing all those sperms (way easier to suppress one egg a month than millions of sperms a day), but also the psychological effects on men during the first trial period.
Schering was working with the american company Oregon and they were as far as having a first product, which they duly tested on 1500 men. As always, some of those got the real pill, and some got a placebo pill. During the trial period, most of the participants complained about unusual mood swings and emotional ups and downs, which they blamed on the contraceptive. However, as a big surprise to the scientists, these side effects were reported as much from men who took the real pill AND those that took the placebo pill!!!!
So, the reason Schering stopped the project was more based on the over emotionality of men (and the understandable fear not to be able to sell the product afterwards) than on scientific problems.
So now, whenever my husband is annoying, I just blame it on his PMS.
PS: For those who read German, here is a related newspaper article informing about the research stop: http://tinyurl.com/3r2fja
I wonder if the German study simply caused men to tune in more to how they were feeling than they usually would.
I'd had no idea that birth control in German is "Anti-Baby-Pille"; I used to refer half-jokingly to the pill as my "anti-baby."
I can't read German, but I do appreciate the link -- that photo is really amusing.
I don't understand how Let's pretend you are a straight couple, in a monogamous long-term relationship, and you don't want a kid. Consider your options: A woman can choose from 11 forms of contraception -- including barrier methods like the diaphragm, permanent sterilization, and that holy grail of the sexual revolution, the pill, and its more recent and even more foolproof sisters in hormonal birth control, the ring and injectibles. A man can choose two: condoms or a vasectomy. means that scientists think women are responsible/to blame for everything, men wouldn't take BC, etc. Huh?
Exactly! As I commented above, nothing in the article linked suggests anything about scientists being to blame for this.
I actually do feel stressed when I'm on the pill. See I'm in college, so I'm not doing the same thing day after day, so I can't think "Oh, I'll take the pill every day @ 12 noon," because one day I'm at lunch then, the next I'm in class, so there is no visual reminder to take it, unless I set my phone for a reminder to go off, which I also have to worry about going off in class or during a call. Another burden (which I really hope gets fixed SOON) is having to take time off school or work or whatever to go make an appointment to get a pap smear done EVERY year, regardless of whether I think I need one or not, just to get the pill. I don't think the pill necessarily causes any kind of cancer down there (it's rare for that to happen, right?), so I have no idea how the pill and a pap smear go together. There is an exception. I could forgo the pap smear, but I would then only be allowed one pack of pills per month -- no buying 6 packs for 6 months and being done with it. And I do have an instance of a pap smear appointment getting in the way of my daily living. Last year I had a class where extra credit was once given for the first 5 people who submitted by email the answer to a question the teacher had posed. The class was hard and extra cred. rarely given. Guess what I had right after class? A pap smear. Cancel and reschedule, right? No, the appointment was in 10 minutes and there's a cancellation fee for people who don't give at least 2 hours notice for a no show or cancellation. You might think it's not a big deal, but just the fact that I have a vagina and it was causing me this academic problem was INFURIATING. I almost thought about explaining the situation to my bio. teacher because he seemed open-minded enough and he understood medicine, but then again it's MY VAGINA. I'm not going to talk about my pap smear to my god damn teacher, that would feel weird. Ugh.
Also, not to mention the problems when you don't take the pill. After only 2 or 3 hours, you get to feeling nauseous (for all who haven't taken the pill). If you DO remember to take the pill, you need to make sure you always take it on a full stomach or here comes the nausea again. It's a pain. It wouldn't be if I could take the patch, but that's expensive. So my only hope is Obama's magic health care plan that will lower the cost of meds. Crossing fingers...
Oh, P.S. forgot the social stigma of letting anyone see that you're carrying a pack of birth control pills around.
Well, pap smears are important whether you're on the pill or not. I went 7 years straight with normal results so I could possibly, in my non-medical opinion, not "need" one right now, but the one I had last month came back abnormal and now I have to have the abnormal cells removed in a couple weeks.
The idea that pap smears should be requirements to get the pill is definitely something that should be revisited by the doctors who set that rule up, since it seems more like a way for them to guarantee you'll be visiting them once a year, but I think being peeved at your doctor's appointment interfering with your school assignment is a little besides the point - we're told to get our teeth cleaned twice as often as we're told to get a pap smear, and your uncancellable appointment could have just as easily been a dentist appointment instead. In which case you'd probably have been just fine telling your teacher, "I have to go to the dentist and can't cancel without penalty, can you fudge on the extra credit rule for me?"
If you don't want to carry around the Pill pack, just pop one out each day and carry it in a pill container. I do this with my Pill, allergy meds that I take every day at the same time, vitamins, and just-in-case doses of Advil.
Many MDs will not prescribe hormonal contraception without the papinacoula test still. That restriction is ridiculous and wrong.
You want a reminder to go have one - great. Should my ability to control my fertility be limited by your need for a yearly reminder?
You may feel that having such a test is important, but I do not. Many people prefer to eschew those invasive tests regardless of their potential to identify early cancer. In fact, papinacoula tests are not particularly accurate as medical screening tests go. They are, however, a financial boon to the gynecological industry. There is a viable blood test for cervical cancer, but the gynecologists have continued to block its testing for 10 years.
/ derail
Male contraception should be commonplace.
I DID say that that requirement should be revisited, since the link between the two only seems to benefit the doctor (it guarantees that you end up in their office). I'm not sure where you're getting that I'm arguing otherwise.
More coffee might help w/ my reading skills. Thanks for clarification.
No prob, I usually can't find my way out the door without coffee.
If you have any further info on blood tests that could replace pap smears, I'd like to read about it - although when it comes to needles vs. pap smears, I'm thinking I'd fear the pap smears way less.
They need to hurry up with that DNA testing.
Since you have so many issues with the pill, choose another contractptive method. I took it in college (years ago) and had zero issues and zero problems remembering to take it (took it first thing in the morning). Taking it in the middle of the day is harder to do, I think.
So, I'm a recent college graduate, with all the same problems about classes and scheduling. But honestly, it really wasn't difficult or stressful for me. I set a phone alarm, kept my phone on vibrate (which i would have been doing in class anyway because, y'know, it's class) and quickly, quietly take my pill when it goes off. no muss, no fuss. i've also never experienced stigma for being on the pill, not that i've noticed anyway. of course mine comes with little envelopes, so youd only know what it is if you had experience with the pill in which case there's no stance to make judgments from.
the nausea issues are a different story and kind of a red flag that those pills are wrong for you. Neither I nor any of my friends gets nausea from our BCP. If you're getting nauseated, your body thinks something is very very wrong. i know it's a common side effect, but that doesn't make it acceptable.
BCP are medicine. They can hurt you. I'm on other medications and I would be concerned if my doc didn't do blood tests etc every 6ish months to make sure i'm fine. i'm guessing that's a lot of the pap smear requirement - if something has changed in your body or mental state, your doctor needs to know that before she or he can ethically prescribe to you. it's not JUST about fertility, it's about blood clots and overall health.
As for the thread topic: sure, i'd be psyched for men if they could control contraception on their end better. but in the end, i don't care that the contraceptive burden falls heavier on women for the same reason i'm pro-choice. if i'm going to be the one potentially getting pregnant, i WANT to be the person completely in charge of making that not happen. my body, my call, but also my responsibility. to me, saying contraception should be an equally shared burden because a baby is just opens the door for requiring the father's consent for an abortion (because it's his fetus too). you can't say that the man's contribution just magically vanishes from the moment of conception to the moment of birth but is SUPER DUPER important and zomg how could men not take more responsibility before and after. once it's a kicking shrieking life, then yeah totally. but i want to keep pregnancy completely my own, and to me, contraception is logically and consistently a part of that process - or in my case, non-process. i have a strict 4-prong no-babies plan.
ok, longest. post. ever. sorry, i got carried away.
I always had problems remembering to take my pill and it came to a head in college because, as you mentioned, my schedule was all over the place. That's when I switched to the Nuva Ring and I absolutely love it (been on it for over 5 years now). I don't have to even think about. In for 3 weeks, out for 1, very easy.
I agree with alixana about the pap smear stuff though. Sure, it's annoying that you have to go once a year for them to refill your BC meds (really? ugh) but for the first time in my life I just got an abnormal pap smear result back. Truth be told I'm terrified. My doc is awesome and she's explained that I'll probably just have a biopsy but still, it's scary. While the chances of cancer are unlikely I'd rather go in once a year (although I'm curious to hear more about what lauryln is talking about) for testing to catch something early than find out way way too late.
I don't get nausea when I don't take the pill at the same time. I hardly ever take it at the same time every day. I kind of take it "whenever, around the time I get up," which is around 11 or 12 or 1 on most days and then around 9ish on Saturday. I hate my schedule.
The thing that really super-hacks me off about the "hold your pills ransom til you get a pap" thing is that I'm not, nor have I ever been sexually active. I take the pill for medical issues. Chances of me having an STD or abnormal pap are REALLY low. But no, I have to do it. Because we assume anyone over 18 must be "doing it." My gyn was pretty awesome but always worded it, "Are you in a relationship?" What if I was waiting til marriage or something like that? Geez. Way to assume.
I've also heard that if you have a couple of regular paps that you should be allowed to go 2-3 years between them, but something tells me that money trumps that bit of wisdom.
"I've also heard that if you have a couple of regular paps that you should be allowed to go 2-3 years between them, but something tells me that money trumps that bit of wisdom."
See, I totally agree that mostly it's about the money, the doctors want to get you in to see them and want to get paid. But it's also very important to get these tests done yearly even if you've always had regular results in the past. I've had paps done every year since I was 16. I had all positive ones until two weeks ago. That's 9 in a row. According to your advice (or what you've heard) I should have been able to skip it this time around for 2-3 years. What if this abnormality is cervical cancer? What if I let it go for 2-3 years? Assuming everything was fine because everything had always been fine before? The good thing about paps is they find out very early if something is wrong. That's the point of getting one done every year.
I know this is a derail away from the OP but I just think it's very important.
Yeah, in my entire history, I went 4 years with normal ones, had one abnormal, and then had another 7 years of normal tests before my next abnormal one, which has me needing a colposcopy (I think I might have mangled that spelling) in 2 weeks. My doctor said that at this early stage, it's more an annoyance that requires some extra monitoring, rather than something I need to be really concerned about, and that women who do come in further down the spectrum and need more invasive treatments are ones who let it go for many years without checkups.
Part of it, from what I understand from my doctor, is that when you have HPV (she said 86% of all women do), it's kind of like a cold sore - the virus is always in you, and you might never get a flare-up, but if you get stressed or have some other trigger, then you could go many years and then suddenly have an abnormality. And after one abnormal test, you might never have another flare-up, or you could have one two years later.
I'm a pretty healthy person (knock on wood) who hasn't been to a general care practitioner in at least 7 years (knock on wood again), but I get my eyes and my cervix checked every year like clockwork.
What I REALLY wish would happen is for some of those scientists to develop some sort of sperm-blocking "IUD" (IVD?) for men - reversible, non-hormonal birth control for dudes (for the folks who are opposed to using hormonal birth control).
I'm in a committed monogamous, generally hetero relationship (yawn, I know). I got pregnant while using the diaphragm and have recently been using condoms. Barrier methods are such bummer, and both of us are conflicted about doing permanent surgical stuff (we do not want to have biological kids, but also don't want to 'alter' our functioning bodies). Friends' experiences have made me a little nervous about an IUD, and my limited insurance doesn't cover it anyway.
If the vasectomy is much easier to perform than surgical sterilization of lady-parts, I feel like a sperm-blocking "IUD" would be loads easier to install than a uterine one. Who knows... I guess that's why I'm not a scientist.
An IUD doesn't really work that way. It's a foreign object and the end result is that it makes the uterus an inhospitable place for sperm and eggs, and, should the sperm and eggs survive anyways, an inhospitable place for a fertilized egg to implant and develop. The uterus is fairly easily accessible for such an implant. A male-IUD analog would probably have to be inserted into the testes, so it inhibits the correct development of sperm, but a) that'd have to be surgical, b) there'd have to be two, and c) lots of sperm gets produced, making it sufficiently disruptive might be problematic.
Probably the best way to go would be working on more reliably reversible sterilizations.
Oh no... Well, there goes my brilliant idea. Maybe in a distant, utopian future there will be some sort of hand-held laser ball-zapper that dudes can use...
I think men would take it if it was affordable and easily obtained. Many youth 18-30 don't have health insurance and would be less likely to pay high out of pocket expenses for a doc visit just to the Rx. Perhaps if the health department made it just as easy for men as they do for women to get contraception it might be an answer. However, I do think the primary social burden placed on women isn't so much the "don't get pregnant" side. I'm sure plenty of men feel it is entirely the woman's job to protect herself from pregnancy, but I think moreover its the fear of infertility. Men that I've known hold "shooting blanks" right up there with being a Eunuch. Its somehow emasculating for men to have low or non-existent sperm counts. I can definitely say my largest fear when taking any birth control was 1st long timer infertility and 2nd cancer from hormone control. I think this is where the undue burden is placed on women. Men still have to pay child support even if they aren't physically present as fathers and can't physically get pregnant. But women are the only ones at risk of infertility and cancer due to their contraception options. Of course vasectomy is like self-induced infertility and is usually sought when a man has NO desire to ever foster a child from that point on, its roughly equivalent to a woman having her tubes tide. Vasectomy shouldn't be lumped in the same category as condoms and the pill. Surgery or condoms? Some choice.
Add my voice to the chorus of guys who'd love a male pill ... though I still would use condoms for disease protection - as well as a backup (not averse to fatherhood in theory, but not right now). Plus I welcome every effective form of contraceptive on general principle. I've also heard some theorizing somewhere about using heated underwear to deliberately reduce a man's sperm count ... can't remember if that was "serious" speculation or just casual brainstorming, though.
Oh, borrow_tunnel, could you have referred to it as a "doctor's appointment" and left it at that? I've done the same for other embarrassing medical appointments(in my case, a psychiatrist).
Yeah I agree with the "doctor's appointment" comment. They can't ask you anything else about it, not even what kind of doctor. It's none of their business.
I think that the heated underwear thing might work... I remember reading an article once about some tribe where men would dip their testicles in scathing water - it would kill of the sperm...
http://scienceline.org/2007/08/27/ask-peck-sperm/
I've said this on other posts regarding male contraception and I'll repeat myself here. While there is sexism-a-plenty in the medical community and pharmaceuticals, the reason we don't have hormonal contraception for men has a lot more to do with biology than sociology. Women generally ovulate once a month with one egg while men release million of sperm with each ejaculation. It is far easier to create one failure, once a month, than millions or billions.
That said, I am sure the perception that men won't take birth control because it's considered a woman's responsibility does have an impact on the funding available to develop these contraceptives. I am hopeful that some day men will have a relatively low side-effect option. Not only to ease the burden on women but also to allow everyone to take better control of their own reproductive futures.
Lisa, that is a completely ignorant statement about biology. Hormonal contraception is not about blocking an egg every month or blocking sperm with every ejaculation. Hormonal contraception re-engineers the entire endocrine process which lead to the body's ability to even produce and egg or sperm. It's about the entire cycle taking place, and by the way, spermatogenesis takes about 3 months. If the guy fucks up his pills, it's not like a few sperm out of millions get through in the following days. It would be more like the usual thousands of sperm will be produced for the short period of time that an unmodified hormonal process is present, and they will exit the body a few months later assuming spermatogenesis is able to complete.
If you're going to come on so strong in criticizing the previous poster's wording then you should not say it prevents egg creation but rather prevents egg release.
You seem to be confusing ovulation with oogenesis here. The Pill blocks the former but has nothing to do with the latter. A male pill would have to do one of two things: 1) block spermatogenesis consistently - bearing in mind that spermatogenesis takes place on an ongoing, constant basis in adult males, whereas females complete oogenesis before they're viable fetuses, or 2) prevent ejaculation, which would realistically involve preventing the ongoing secretion of the components of semen, which is nowhere near being on the horizon.
I don't know if I would trust the guy I was with to take birth control every day (assuming we are talking about a pill form of BC). But that's not because he's a guy or I would think he doesn't care or is trying to screw me over, it's because I wouldn't really trust anyone with that kind of thing that would drastically effect MY body. Fuck, I couldn't even remember to take the pill form of BC everyday. So I would keep taking BC myself using my lovely Nuva Ring.
That said, I definitely think this product should be available for men. I think it would be awesome if guys had more contraceptive options. Sure, some guys wouldn't want it, some would. Just like women now with BC. Just like people now with condoms. It's not an all or nothing kind of thing.
Yeah, I think it should exist for men in situations like mine. I can't take hormone BC because of the horrific side affects it caused me (an insane leap in cholesterol and gallbladder disease). If my bf could take it (without it causing him bad side-affects) than it would be a welcome back-up. We are forced to depend on condoms and typically - we avoid intercourse when I'm ovulating, for fear of a condom breaking or being defective (which has caused us scares in the past).
I recommend reading the comments on the Broadsheet article for good insight into why, in fact, there are very basic physiological reasons why this won't work. Blocking just ovulation of just one ovum every four weeks is a million times easier than stopping spermatogenesis (a human female's oogenesis is over before she's a viable fetus) and/or ejaculation in a way that works all day, every day. (Amy Benfer, at least, seems completely unaware of a number of these issues, a sad but typical example of science reporting.) The last 35 years of contraceptive research are littered with failed attempts and wasted money: for this to work, we'd have to engineer our way around the essentials of mammalian reproduction. It isn't going to happen. It would be a far better use of resources to promote condom use and information/availability of the dozens of existing contraceptive choices on the market (and improving them) than to waste more of them tilting at this windmill.
Or how about doing research into developing a condom that doesn't suck? i don't think we're putting enough effort into that. what if there were a condom that just went on the head and left most of the shaft uncovered? that'd be better, right?
Also, the female condom's worse. you might as well use a ziplock bag.
That would suck for disease prevention.
There's the liquid condom, which is said to work for STIprevention, and useful for communities/cultures where men empirically cannot be expected to participate in that or birth control.
Have any of the authors of these articles actually looked at the side effect of the the drugs? Or are they all simply philosophers who deal with what they feel should be possible rather than what is. The pill functions through replicating a natural biological process to prevent fertilization, almost all of the proposed methods for men seek to work through attempting to replicate medical problems, it isn't hard to see why there might be undesirable side effects from such an approach.
I personally don't think the idea of atrophying my testicles with artificial testosterone (and all the side effects that it carries) in combination with being unable to compete in an sporting event, feeling like I'm hitting puberty in addition to the veritable cocktail of other hormones which they've suggested adding to the drug?
Other than the hormone method, there is the option of a reversible vasectomy or a host of failed drugs which have massive negative side effects (e.g. renal failure, no adrenaline, muscle and liver problems).
So yes, it'd be nice, but considering all the side effects the drug companies are right that in their current states they likely couldn't get FDA approval much less compete with condoms.
Perhaps the way to go then is a procedure that resembles vasectomy but uses a device that can later be removed when the man wants to start his family.
That certainly seems the most promising of the technologies, but then it's basically just an improvement on a vasectomy, and you might see the same market.
Why don't we hear more about RISUG? Is it because it's being developed in India, not by a big lab in the US or Europe?
According to Wikipedia, for what that's worth, it's because "In March 2006, the ICMR announced that Phase III trials of RISUG could resume... [but] little progress has been made since [then]. The research centers do not have enough of the RISUG compound to move forward with the trial. Marksans, the pharmaceutical company which has a manufacturing agreement with the inventor and the government, is now over a year past its initial April 2005 product delivery estimate. It is not clear why the delay continues." The developer does have a U.S. patent and major backers. The trouble might be that there's not much wide-scale, well-controlled independent evidence for its safety and efficacy - the site from your link is a (well-designed) promotional one from the financial stakeholders, and the research presented is their own rather than externally controlled.
Well, it presumes that all men are irresponsible, particularly regarding sex, first of all. I'd have no problem with taking birth control, especially since being a parent is such a HUGE responsibility and it's not like you can give them back once you've got them. Not only that, condoms are not always reliable and I personally am always afraid they're going to burst or leak.
I'm also reminded of the statistics regarding the female condom and openly wondering why so few women use them. I remember I asked one partner why she wouldn't consider using one herself and her answer was "because it's your responsibility to wear a condom, not mine". A valid point, particularly when the assumption is that women have to pick up all the slack when it comes down to responsible contraception use, but it makes me wonder if other women think the same way.
I think it's both people's responsibility to use birth control. She might not have any clue what a female condom is or how it works (I don't). Maybe buy one and test it out. I know nothing about them but I can't imagine it would make much of a difference to a female. I've heard males like them better, although it seems like it would be pretty much the same to them.
When people talk about using things like the rhythm method of birth control, it's always assumed that it's 100% woman-controlled. If a guy pretty much knows what his female partner's menstrual cycle is, he's just as free to say "It's probably not a good idea tonight. I don't really trust a condom at this time of the month."
I guess this has to do with the gatekeeper myth, where a woman in a straight couple is assumed to be the one deciding when sex happens and the man is assumed to always want to have sex but only get it when his partner allows him to have it. Also, it's pretty rare for a guy to know that much about any woman's menstrual cycle. But that doesn't stop MRA whiners from making a best-guess and opting out of sex during times when he suspects his partner is likely to be ovulating.
From my understanding of the rhythm method it involves more then just a calender type system but taking various measurements, checking for signs etc. At some point in order for a guy to get a complete picture he would need to rely mostly on information from the woman... Making not an issue of a gatekeeper effect, but an issue that the it is the woman's reproductive system which is being monitored.
There is a long history to this issue, described by Nellie Oudshoorn in her book, _The Male Pill_ (Duke University Press, 2003). You can see a limited preview on Google Books.
There is a long history to this issue, described by Nellie Oudshoorn in her book, _The Male Pill_ (Duke University Press, 2003). You can see a limited preview on Google Books. Briefly, her argument is that there are both biological and sociological reasons behind the failure to find and market a male pill.
I should add that the gender asymmetry in contraceptive technology is rooted partly in Margaret Sanger's quest for a female controlled form of contraception. It was her activism, and financial backing from her close friend Katherine McCormack, that were instrumental in funding the basic research that led to the development of the first contraceptive pill.
Finally, much of the recent history of reproductive health for men has been shaped by the gay rights movement, which of course has been focused on disease prevention.
I can't remember where I heard this but I makes sense in my mind, I is much more complicated to create a hormone based birth control for men because in women you only have to prevent the release of an egg or such once a month where as with a man you need to stop many many sperm. and if even a few get by it makes the treatment pointless. Not saying that the lack of research is unjustified but perfecting the simplest method seems like a logical place to spend money rather than taking a really long time and lots of money to create a product that might not work.