So back in the 1980s there was one of those miltary procedural / coming of age movies that was supposed to be set at an airforce base on Puget Sound. I don’t remember much about it because it was playing in the background at someone’s house while we were supposed to be doing something else like arranging the furniture. Blah blah blah…
I remember the movie for two reasons. First (since I’m starting out so boringly) if it was one of the earlier video-store rental movies I remember seeing in someone’s home. Second, though, is this ham-handed premise that sort of threads its way through the plot that starts out with the hard-bitten drill-sergeant-type guy warning all the prospective top-gun types to watch out for the local girls because, quoth he, they all want to get pregnant and force you to marry them. Unquoth. Aaannnnd sure enough, the cliché adorable-disposable sidekick buddy of… oh whoever it was, Patrick Swayze or Richard Gere, tasks up with a local girl who, sure enough, tells disposable sidekick guy she’s pregnant. So he cheerfully agrees to marry her and buys her a ring. Aaaannnnd then something pitiful and melodramatic happens and sidekick guy washes out of flight school. Aaaannnd instantly his pregnant bride to be announces that, sure enough, she was just pretending to be pregnant so she could marry a pilot, but now that he was a washout she didn’t mean it, she’s not pregnant, and here’s yer loser wedding ring back. Annnnndddd of course disposable sidekick promptly pops said wedding ring in his mouth and pitifully disposes of himself. Violins, no doubt, playing in the background. I said I was busy doing something else so I really don’t remember much else… something about Patrick/Gere guy doing a bunch of situps and yelling at hard-bitten sergeant guy. And about him having a more traditional but less “family values” type of girlfriend who knew about birth control and didn’t want to manipulate him into marriage with meaningless pregnancies. Or something accidentally progressive like that. Roll credits.
I think of that movie any time I hear someone say men would never male contraception. I think of it every time I hear some batshit anti-feminist kook say women just want to rob them of their precious bodily fluids. And I think of it any time some batshit anti-feminist male-basher buys into clichés about men and claims (or attempts to instruct) that men don’t give a crap if they “knock someone up” because they can just walk away unphased.
There’s already some evidence that men actually do care what happens to their germ plasm. There was that L Word episode where the health-looking stranger wouldn’t have sex without a condom when invited to bed by the couple who wanted a sperm donor… and who, in fact, correctly scolded them for having done so. And of course there was that disposeable-sidekick movie I saw on the VHS machine. And there’s also been that whole (ironically) unholy anti-abortion/“Men’s-Rights” alliance whereby, the argument is being made, women should be forbidden from having abortions if the nominal prospective father objects, or, conversely, that prospective fathers who don’t wish to be should be let off the child-support hook if the prospective mother refuses his demand to abort.
All charming ideas to contemplate, I’m sure, if you’re the sort of person who think it’s a shame how poor old Mussolini wound up. And a bit of a tight spot for people who would like to argue, on the one hand, for more parental involvement from men and, on the other hand, more clear autonomy for women.
One possible solution comes from Julie Shapiro of Feminist Law Professors who says at least in the case of one-night stands men should simply be denied parental rights. To be fair she advocates it in cases where either the potential father or mother wanted it. (Lest that sound draconian she’s fine if they choose to do something affirmative together, she just argues that in order to clarify the above-mentioned issues of rights the default should no paternal rights.) And while I happen to completely agree on the principle of who bears the very real biological risks I also fear it’s a huge step forward in terms of recovering male responsibility.
All very complicated, right?
Which brings me to a passionate and completely forward-thinking post by Holly of The Pervocracy who weaves all those old threads into a cool rhetorical blanket
Two men I know are in the same situation: their relationships were starting to break up, so the women they were dating secretly stopped using birth control. Two pregnancies, two sudden conversions to strict anti-abortion beliefs… two upcoming weddings. Congratulations, ladies, your gambit worked, you did make him love you forever!
It’s unbelievably disgusting. These girls, both still teenagers (17 and 19) used human life to control their boyfriends. How self-centered and short-sighted can you be? Those poor kids. Can you really devote 18 years of your life to something you did to keep your high school boyfriend from taking someone else to the prom? Maybe you can, maybe once it’s born you lose sight of the reasons and just focus on raising your child… but it’s definitely not giving your kid the best start in life.
...
I’m pro-choice and I think it cuts both ways: everyone should get the right to decide whether or not they want to reproduce. We badly need a male birth control pill.
Got that? If there was a male birth control pill, and for the really (but probably unnecessarily) paranoid, a reliable method of verification, then… pretty much all the problems listed above would become pretty much moot. Not 100%, no, but pretty darn close.
The stupid 1980’s pregnancy-plot movie? It would be shortened down to something about a guy doing situps and yellling: you don’t want your partners to entrap you into marriage you take the male pill. The stupid MRA/paternity line, the equally stupid MRA/anti-abortion line, and Julie Shapiro’s somewhat drastic parental rights proposal? Take your male contraception and you shouldn’t have to worry about paternity in the first place, and if something went wrong then you’d at least have strong evidence of a good-faith effort to avoid participating in a pregnancy. And if you didn’t? Well, then however the partner who was actually pregnant chose to play it would be pretty much up to her — with the reality of male contraception in the picture you’d hardly have a legal, moral, procedural, or practical leg to stand on.
And for the nut-wise “precious bodily fluids” line? Since all good paranoids wear a belt and suspenders (not to mention a tinfoil hat) it should be no problem at all for such men to take their pills and use condoms.
Forgetting for the moment all the best qualities of real male and female respect and responsibility for a moment, in the face of all these worst qualities of the stereotypes of men and women does anyone still really believe that men would balk at the opportunity to control their own reproductive destinies? Hard to imagine.
But really, the bottom line is that unlike the present reproductive climate where women bear all the risk of pregnancy and (thanks to two profoundly sexist sets of gender assumptions) virtually all the burden of birth control, a world where men had as many meaningful and reliable ways to participate in contraception as women would be far, far more cooperative.
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-02-19 20:04.
Thank you for this. I've wondered how conscientious, responsible men feel about this sort of thing.
I actively don't want children, ever but especially now, so I treasure the peace of mind I get from having an IUD I control and knowing I'd pop off to Planned Parenthood in the unlikely event that it should fail me. It would bother me to leave it completely up to someone else, even someone I really loved and trusted. When it's that important, I want a hand in making sure it works out, you know?
[IUDs have such a two-way track record, Christina. Almost everyone I know who's mentioned having one has said they love theirs but it sounds like for a lot of other people they can be pretty uncomfortable, at least at first. I certainly wouldn't have gotten my vasectomy if there had been any other choice for men that was considered reliable *as contraception* at the time. That doesn't mean we wouldn't still use condoms, but it *does* mean we could use them *and* have a backup against *pregnancy* as well as STIs. --fl]
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-02-19 21:25.
You would think the military would be on top on it, fund research, etc., but they are still into real soldiers rape and pillage. If the message had been to take responsibility for birth control, when the draft was in force, there would certainly be more vasectomies and condom usage now; since for many men the military still sets the standard of masculinity. Their form of sex education was to scare the soldier. We have seen how well that works.
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-02-19 21:53.
PLEASE! The movie was "An Officer and a Gentleman", and it was NAVY flight training. If you can't get these essentials correct....
Air Farce! How COULD you!
:-)
More seriously, as a Naval Flight Officer myself, I can speak for many of my golden-winged brethren in assuring you that if Pfizer or Sanofi made a male contraceptive pill that worked - and without grounding side effects, such as Viagra's - the inventor would never again be able to pay for a drink at any bar in the country.
I'm in my high 50's, and we've been married for 30+ years. But after telling her for 15 years that I was going to get a vasectomy when I was 45 - and then DID so - I never came closer to losing my marriage than that day. How DARE I take control of my own fertility? She didn't want another baby right then, but perhaps she WOULD, and SHE as the WOMAN had the SOLE right to make that decision. And besides, I was informed in no uncertain terms, the only men who got vasectomies were those who wanted to be safe from surprises while stepping out! It took another 5 years of marriage counseling, and I suspect that she STILL suspects that I'm cheating - or would if I could.
Why do Men Die First?
http://www.jumbojoke.com/why_men_die_first_1365.html
Because we WANT TO!
Oh, and the "Precious Bodily Essences" line; THAT was a left-wing spoof of the Air Force; "Doctor Strangelove", where the psychotic AF general started a nuclear war to protect their "essences" from Soviet contamination.
I reject the feminist cant that men wouldn't take a "male contraceptive" if offered; so many of us would be sterile by choice that American society would collapse.
[While I agree there's some suspicion among feminists that men wouldn't adopt the a male "pill" I'm pretty sure that there too anti-feminists would be a far, far larger obstacle. If nothing else because they're the ones vested in convincing us to be sullen knuckledraggers. I mean if nothing else, for instance, responsible men wouldn't drink as much beer as those guys want to sell and so...! And by the way, I happen to agree that, yeah, as long as it didn't interfere with certifiability I think most military personnel would use it. The only fly in that ointment would be that a) the military generally refuses to pay for birth control of any kind and b) their on-base pay scales are so low that contraception would be pretty unaffordable otherwise. Final point, though, would be that at least in the last few years medical ethical standards have changed such that most practitioners won't do vasectomies and tubals with out at least assurances that the patient's partner knows specifically, rather than generally, that the procedure is underway. For reasons very much related to the sort of conflict you and your partner found yourselves in. Thanks, TR. --fl]
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-02-20 04:57.
I'd love to think you're right figleaf but I know too too many man who revel in birth control not being their problem and who would never put up with all the side effects that women put up with when they take birth control. However, I wonder if there was something viable on the market for men (I've heard that a male pill has been invented and may either be in trial or ready to release??) then maybe there wouldn't be as many side effects because it would be more of a priority for funding?
I guess men have the option of a vasectomy - but really that's for people who are a bit older and have had children or know they never want any! Or there's condoms. Men can insist on condoms and therefore take control in that way - of course it's not quite the same as sex without - however being on the pill for a woman is not quite the same as living a day to day existence when you're not on it. I don't actually know ANY women who haven't had some sort of issue with the pill that has affected their daily lives.
[The problems are that vasectomies are very difficult to get or reverse (he said speaking from personal experience) and the only alternative, condoms, are something that further into monogamous relationships and after screening people tend to wander away from. And so I'm even more confident than you are that *if* alternatives became available then most men would at least consider going there and, more to the point, men would tend to have no, zero, none sympathy for other men's "misfortune" in getting someone preganant if he failed to take responsibility for doing his part. In other words, availability of anything that wasn't *absolutely* dangerous would really, really shift the dynamics. Oh yeah, and also don't assume that women really wouldn't exercise choice of partners when considering alternatives, nor that they would exercise no influence in all but the most regressive relationships. Thank, M. --fl]
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-02-20 07:25.
Hi Tech Reader,
My dad is a retired Navy Captain (CB not a flight officer) and I spent my early childhood living on naval bases, so we have something in common :-). Go Navy! I'm glad to hear that most men in the military would take a male contraceptive pill and I want to tell you that I think the idea that men would not take oral contraception if offered is not a feminist cant. Speaking for myself as a feminist, I think that many men would, but I can't speak for all feminists. What really matters is whether the people who make decisions for pharmaceutical companies think they can make a profit from male oral contraception. There probably would be side effects for some men just as there are for some women. No drug is right for every person. Would men be willing to put up with side effects and risks from male oral contraception (as women do)?
I don't know why your wife feels the way she does, but my husband also had a vasectomy after we had two children and I am grateful to him for it. Before his vasectomy, I had been on pill for 10 years, I gave birth twice, and I had a diaphragm between pregnancies, so he and I agreed that it was his turn. This is a decision we made together, as I believe married people should. Call me a radical feminist :-). Another couple I know in real life had two children and did not want more, and the husband was scared to death of having a vasectomy and so the wife had a tubal ligation. I think he should have sucked it up and been a man, but that is pretty sexist of me.
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-02-20 09:46.
Okay, don't go dissing one of the most romantic movies of all time!! (Besides, Richard Gere, in or out of Navy whites!? Freakin' HOT! :) )
I find it rather amusing that we seem to have this notion in our heads that we can "control" our fertility. They call it birth "control" but the reality is... we only have a limited amount of control. And there are always consequences. Nothing is ever, ever 100% effective.
Whether or not men would take charge of their fertility, given a viable (and less permanent) option, is all conjecture at this point because there just isn't one. And I don't know that big pharm is all that interested in making it one, either.
Cooperative fertility is a great idea in theory... but in practice? You're still dealing with two separate people with two different ideas and wants. (Look at Techreader and his wife, above, for just one example!) Until we start reproducing asexually or soley in test tubes (or just cloning) it's always going to come down to who has control.
Which I find amusing, because control is an illusion to begin with... ;)
xoxo
Selena
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-02-20 10:20.
Selena - I have to disagree. Having a 1% chance of pregnancy versus an 85% chance is control--the fact that a margin of error exists doesn't make the whole thing an illusion. And having the possibility of a power struggle is better than having no options at all.
Something doesn't have to be perfect to be worth our while. Male birth control wouldn't need to be 100% effective or be agreed upon by every couple to still sell like hotcakes.
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-02-20 18:49.
It's a good argument, but it has one obvious flaw...men pretty much universally have the option of using condoms and still often don't. The pill we have is more expensive and has more side effects than condoms. Why would a male pill go over better?
That said, vasectomies are all the range in our friend group (mostly 25-35), I've been to several post-vasectomy celebrations, my boyfriend got one, his brother, several of my coworkers...some of them might have chosen a pharmaceutical option if it was available.
[Hi Rosa. That is a good flaw but not, I think, a fatal one. For one thing there are any number of long-term relationships where people currently rely 100% on women's contraception because, again long term, condoms are a hassle *if* you've got other reliable contraception *and* you don't have to worry so much about STIs. I really think, though, that there'd be more of a bandwagon effect that would touch more than just a) men who don't currently use condoms but b) aren't ready for a vasectomy yet either. --fl]
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-02-21 01:06.
If they come out with a male pill, I think most men will take it. I know I would, plus be feeding it to the teenage males in the house.
My high school girlfriend got pregnant due to her deciding to give the pills I was paying for to her younger sister. I don't need any other males in my family falling for the "I can't get pregnant" line.
[Which actually brings up another point, Pan, and that's that "responsibility" isn't an absolute thing that one either has or doesn't have, nor, for that matter is it the same thing as wisdom. Which is all the more reason why *two* people attempting to exercise it for themselves is always going to have more coverage against moments where your partner took more responsibility for her sister than she did for herself, or you. --fl]
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-02-21 18:04.
well, actually, big pharma is ALL KINDS of interested in a male birth control pill. pharma companies very much love long-term maintenance meds, since the money just isn't in something you take once or twice in your life for a week (see: not much in new antibiotic development). being a biomedical researcher, i can tell you tales all day about drug development.
in fact, i was blogging about all this myself a month ago. there is indeed a male birth control pill beginning clinical trials, that was, coincidentally, partially developed at the company i work for. go us!
[Yeah, I know there are at least a couple of offerings in trials around the world at the moment. Which is just one more reason to kick against the men-are-too-selfish memes. Thanks, Fireweaver. --fl]
Submitted by 1954 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-22 06:52.
I have to say sweetheart, I think you're overestimating your average man. Really, the only reason why women are any better (and many are shocking) is because there's a pretty huge vested interest there.
There certainly is a market for it. But mainstream? I don't see it going down well, and I think young guys who would be responsible would be few and far between.
That said, there's no real downside. I'd still use condoms AND the pill personally (well, I don't use condoms in my long term relationship because I fucking hate them but outside of a now-nearly-5-year monogamous relationship the peace of mind is worth the irritation), so basically (a) if they're taking it properly yay for almost nil chance of pregnancy! and (b) if they tried using that as leverage not to use condoms they're a write off as a person let alone a someone I would sleep with.
Nice post though ;)
[For what it's worth, though, I got my vasectomy in large part because I wasn't comfortable with so many partners who didn't use contraception of their own. Which meant, for me, no sex at all since I was pretty fanatic. But the point is that *if* there's something men could do (in additon to condoms, obviously) then the traditional terrain of, say, paternity claims in court (both court of law and court of opinion) is radically changed. But my main point isn't that *if* there's a pill men will use it, it's that *unless* there's a pill the whole question is moot. Oh, and finally, for people in long-term, no-longer-using-condoms relationships like yours it would be more reliable for you and your partner to team up on redundancy, and if both of you felt responsible enough it would probably be healthier if each of you could trade off giving your bodies contraceptive "vacations." Thanks, Dana. --fl]