Sat, 2008-07-12 19:24

Commons
Photo by Flickr user Thomas Hawk. Used under a Creative Commons license.

I just wanted to follow up a bit on what I mean when I say that magazines like Details (for men) and Cosmopolitan (for women) are meticulously careful to *dis*serve their reader’s best interests in order to keep them a) increasingly dissatisfied with their situation, b) irretrievably stuck in their situation with advise that sabotages their efforts to get ahead so that c) they’ll continue to purchase the magazine and at least aspire to own the advertiser’s products.

Take the egregiously self-centered, misogynistic article about men who get vasectomies so that unscrupulous women can’t dun them for child support.

First clue? While ostensibly a pean to the virtues of vasectomies the rhetoric employed is almost entirely discouraging. Consider the second paragraph:

About a hundred years ago, slash and yanks—so called because the original method involved cutting the scrotum and pulling out as much of the vas deferens tubing as possible before stitching it back up…

First of all, I’ve had two vasectomies with a reversal in between. I know tons of urologists as friends and, for almost 30 years now, as a patient. I’ve been interested in the history of contraception for years. And yet… and yet…?

I’ve never heard that anyone, anywhere has ever referred to vasectomies as “slash and yanks.” That’s not saying no one ever has, just that you’d have to look long and hard. (Oh, unless it, like the Details article, was trying to scare people out of actually having the procedure.)

Another sign of “encouragement?”

Before the procedure, patients go through a rigorous consultation, most of which consists of warnings. Warning: You’ll have an ice pack on your balls for 24 hours. Warning: You also must wear a “scrotal supporter” for 48 hours. Warning: Your first postoperative ejaculations might be bloody. Warning: There may be heavy bruising and/or swelling. Warning: You will not be sterile right afterward; it takes 6 to 12 weeks or 15 to 20 ejaculations to clear out old sperm.

All true. Although after my first vasectomy, when I was 21, I wound up having to ride the bus standing up (the procedure was in Brighton, Mass., and I was staying way out on Mass. Ave in Lexington.) I also wound up moments from intercourse that evening with a friend I was staying with before thinking better of it (I was a little sore and hadn’t been using much ice.) And that was the old-style bigger-incision with lots of stitches method. After my second, “stitchless method” vasectomy I was able to comfortably drive home and then I sat around, with an ice-pack and some Tylenol sure, but watching videos with my two-year-old son and two-week-old daughter.

No bloody ejaculations. Some bruising. “Whitey-tighty” underwear counts as a “scrotal supporter.” It does not take six to twelve weeks to ejaculate “15 to 20” times. Also the actual number is probably closer to 8-12 ejaculations.

The point being that vasectomies aren’t a walk in the park… in fact unlike me you’ll probably recover more quickly if you don’t walk in the park for 24 hours after yours. But that’s true of any procedure that breaks tissue integrity including body piercings and tattoos.

And therefore WTF does the author and/or his editors have in mind for dwelling on “yank and slash” type rhetoric? They’re no more serious about their readers either protecting or “protecting” themselves contraceptively than their readers are. The whole article is designed to both offer and withhold a solution to… what at the end of the day is a substantially made-up problem anyway.

A couple of other issues: The article says an Illinois student had to pay $850 for a vasectomy. They cite another doctor who charges $2500! All well and good but almost anywhere in America you can find one for less. (And almost anywhere else they’re covered by either private or National health insurance.) But not for Details readers, who’s advertisers don’t want them getting the idea of bargain hunting… or even paying plain-old everyday low prices.

Further discouragement comes towards the end where, after warning you about regrets, “scrotal support,” and ice packs, they say mysterious doctors in China are working on something involving reversible blocks.

The whole upshot of the article is that, sort of like a 1970s situation comedy, meticulous care is taken to insure that no matter how many conniptions and convolutions take place in the mean time, by the end of the episode everything is returned to it’s exact, unchanged original condition, ready for the next exciting… or not so exciting… episode.

Another point? Not to push too hard on the learned taught helplessness of the magazine but…

“A guy can tell an angry grandfather-to-be ‘Look, here’s money to take care of this at the clinic right now instead of dealing with this mistake for 18 years,’” says Doug Stein, a doctor in Florida who has performed more than 17,000 vasectomies over the past 30 years.

Riiiggghhttt. You’re supposed to go to her father and get him to pay for your vasectomy? So you won’t get his daughter pregnant?

We’re talking grown-ups here, dudes. Adult men. One guy they interview is 23. Another is 34! But, talk about learned taught helplessness, the 23-year-old thought he had to lie about his age! (He “says he walked into a doctor’s office, told the receptionist he was 30.”)

I dunno. Maybe it takes them six to twelve weeks to have 15 ejaculations because their moms still wash their sheets and underwear? Again, I dunno.

Oh yeah, see also grown-up language like

“Now I can never have a girl say I made her pregnant,” Whitlock says. “I don’t have to worry about being tricked.”

Or “oopsed,” as some advocates of vasectomy put it—as in “Oops, I guess that was a breath mint, not a birth-control pill.”

...

Tim Vass, a 34-year-old technical writer in Florida, got snipped in May 2007 after a half-dozen pregnancy scares, including what he says were two attempted oopsings.

Yeah, “oopsed.” The gerund for which would be “oopsing.” (The word is used in the context of pregnancy outside of the article. 92 whole times according to Google!)

What. Ever.

I’m just saying that, unlike the situation comedies I mentioned above, anyone who takes articles like these to heart is likely to put the article down knowing less useful information than whatever they started with. Not to mention a) gaining a falsely lower impression of women and b) giving women a legitimately lower impression of themselves. Nobody wins from this. Everyone loses. Except perhaps Details advertisers. It’s a real shame.

—-

P.S. To seal the deal check out the links at the end of the article

Is Being Well Hung the Key to Happiness?
Some guys never seem to worry. The reason for that is probably in their pants.

How Far Would You Go to Get Taller?
Why an increasing number of vertically challenged men are subjecting themselves to excruciatingly painful leg-lengthening surgery.

Look Who’s Sleeping With Your Wife
It isn’t just the tennis pro—there’s a whole new crop of predators after her.

I gotta say I love that last line. “It isn’t just the tennis pro…” So many invalid assumptions to unpack, so little time.