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July 9 - September 10, 2023
We’ve put the burden of pregnancy prevention on the person who is fertile for 24 hours a month, instead of the person who is fertile 24 hours a day, every day of their life.
men and women are not two equally matched parties when it comes to fertility and potential to cause a pregnancy. One party is more fertile by orders of magnitude.
Men’s lifelong continual fertility is the central driving force behind all unwanted pregnancies.
Women don’t know when their egg is going to be fertile.
Even if cycle length can be predicted, the day of ovulation can be very variable, meaning that you cannot accurately predict the fertile phase using cycle length alone.
trying to track a woman’s fertility by watching the calendar or watching for physical signs, or using an app, is not a tenable form of birth control.
These fertility tests are designed for people who are trying for pregnancy; they are not designed, nor are they at all practical, for people trying to keep sperm away from the egg during the fertility window.
If you’re trying to avoid pregnancy, and the fertility test is positive, that means: Shoot! I sure hope you didn’t have sex for the last five days, and definitely don’t have sex for the next few days, too. Not as helpful.
We have an entire pregnancy prevention industry built around the brief, elusive period of monthly female fertility, and nothing, absolutely nothing even close to equivalent, that addresses the always persistent male fertility. We are laser-focused on the wrong thing.
We treat ejaculation as something that happens at random, that is unintentional, that is impossible to anticipate or predict. And we treat ovulation like it can be pinpointed well in advance and easily predicted. Somehow, we’ve confused the two.
Sperm fertilize. Eggs are fertilized. Ovulation is involuntary. Ejaculation is voluntary.
most everything about birth control is overly complicated and difficult, and men in power are largely responsible for these complications.
troubleshooting condoms doesn’t require multiple doctor appointments.
When used correctly, condoms are 98 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.
Women’s birth control options do not have that same STI-fighting superpower.
What condoms don’t have is a list of side effects. They
after a vasectomy you will not experience any differences in your sexual function or pleasure.
The Stanford Medical Center reports that, depending on the type of technique used, their vasectomy reversal success rate is 95 percent and makes clear that the length of time between the vasectomy and the reversal doesn’t affect that success.
Birth control options for men are very effective plus vastly easier, safer, more convenient, more accessible, and more affordable than birth control options for women.
This is serious business. I can’t mess around with someone else’s life like that.
Is this asking too much? We expect women to use their birth control perfectly, to remember to take the Pill daily, to keep up with doctor’s appointments and prescriptions. Why shouldn’t we expect men to use their birth control methods perfectly as well?
If women are expected to learn how to use their complicated birth control correctly, we can expect the same thing from men regarding their much-easier-to-use option.
Successful condom users report that once they solved the size, materials, and lubrication questions, they could barely tell a difference between sex with a condom and sex without.
if a man believes sex without condoms is a conquest, he’s not likely to talk about the benefits of condoms with other men he knows.
birth control and sterilization are considered the woman’s responsibility. But as many women will argue, and several guys have agreed with, women’s bodies have gone through plenty of trauma with childbirth, so when it comes to sterilization, it’s time for guys to take one for the team.
there has never been a documented death from a vasectomy. However, many women have died from anesthetic or surgical complications from a tubal ligation.
When the choice is between maximizing men’s pleasure or minimizing women’s pain, society will predictably choose men.
When men choose to have condom-less sex, they are putting a woman’s body, health, social status, job, economic status, relationships, and even her life, at risk in order to experience a few minutes of slightly more pleasure.
99 percent of abortions are the direct result of unwanted pregnancy. And we need to understand very clearly that women enjoying sex does not cause unwanted pregnancies and abortion. What causes unwanted pregnancies and abortion? Men enjoying sex and having irresponsible ejaculations.
Yes, an egg is necessary in order for sperm to have something to fertilize, but there’s a fundamental causal difference in the roles of the egg and sperm, and men have substantial control over where and when their sperm are released, while women have zero control over their eggs.
A woman’s consent to sex does not force a man to ejaculate in her vagina. Even if the woman says, “Pretty please have sex with me without a condom. I want you to ejaculate inside me,” the words don’t force the man to ejaculate inside her without a condom. He still has to choose. Ultimately only the man decides where his sperm ends up. Only he can choose what to do with his sperm and where it goes. A woman telling a man he doesn’t have to wear a condom doesn’t force that man to have sex with her without a condom. He has the right of refusal. If he chooses to have sex without a condom, then he
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Standing in front of a gun may be stupid, but it is not a lethal action.
her “yes” doesn’t render him physically incapable of putting on a condom, saying “no,” or getting a vasectomy.
Unprotected sex without sperm will not lead to pregnancy.
Men can easily prevent unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortion by choosing to ejaculate responsibly.
Why would a woman ever need to ask a man to wear a condom? Why wouldn’t it be the default that men should provide their own condom and put it on without a request? Who benefits if the man doesn’t wear a condom?
Men can use a condom, get a vasectomy, or decline to have unprotected sex. If he does these things, he won’t cause a pregnancy. Relying on his sexual partner to use birth control is avoiding or relinquishing his responsibility.
When asked what men can do to prevent unwanted pregnancies, if a man answers, “Well, the woman just needs to . . .” that’s a clear indication that he has no actual interest in preventing unwanted pregnancies.
If a man can easily prevent unwanted pregnancies by controlling his own actions, but he’s only interested in preventing unwanted pregnancies if women are controlling the actions, it seems like he’s much more interested in controlling women than he is in reducing unwanted pregnancies.
woman having an orgasm while a man penetrates her risks nothing and hurts no one. A man having an orgasm while he penetrates a woman risks everything—he risks her body, her health, her income, her relationships, her social status, even her life, and he also risks creating another human being.
If you actually want to reduce abortions, you need to start much earlier. Instead of focusing on abortions, you need to focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies. And to do that, you need to focus on preventing irresponsible ejaculations.
this focus on men is a practical decision. This is a one-way street, and we’ve been driving the wrong way.
Holding men accountable for their actions does not make women victims. Asking men to take some responsibility is not the same as allowing women to take no responsibility.
Barbie Movie vibes
How is a woman ever absolved of the outcome of an unwanted pregnancy? She isn’t. She can’t be.
If you think I should be holding women more accountable for preventing pregnancy, then you’re in luck: Women are already held accountable for preventing pregnancy. Women already do the vast majority of the work of pregnancy prevention. The burden of birth control, the effects of birth control, and the consequences of failed birth control are essentially entirely on women.
The imbalance only seems to strike people as out-of-whack if it’s applied to men.
30 to 35 percent of men admit they would rape if they thought they could get away with it legally.
(When you’re looking at stats, remember that coerced sex doesn’t get counted in the nonconsensual numbers.)
If the woman is impregnated and delivers a child, it means she’s now tied to her abuser by custody. It means the abused person now has a child that the abuser can also abuse.
She saves herself, gives herself to the right one, and then her virginity is lost. In this equation, there is nothing in sex that’s for her to take. Whereas he takes and scores and there is nothing in sex for him to give. When her mind is programmed to give, she struggles to say “no.” When his mind is programmed to take, he struggles to accept “no.”
