I had thought that another part of it was the levels of harm compared to the problem; getting pregnant is incredibly stressful and possibly harmful, up to and including death as a possibility. A medicine that can stop that but has side affects that are less harmful than pregnancy is a lot more palatable. Whereas, for men, the harm caused by pregnancy is zero, so any harm caused by the pill is weighed a lot heavier.
It’s really frustrating how often this gets framed as sexist, when it’s a totally different problem. I get why people would equate them but they are very different biological processes. Producing a baby is a complicated process, and there’s a lot of steps that we can intervene in to prevent it. Producing a million sperm is, maybe surprisingly, less complicated and it’s harder to target a specific thing and produce easily reversible results.
Men have had vasectomy on the table for a long time now. It’s just more serious than most forms of female birth control, in terms of implementation and recovery, still not foolproof, and not as easy to reverse.
Even more frustrating is that sexism definitely does exist and play a role. It’s just more about the human parts of the process, like dealing with medical staff, dealing with insurance, dealing with local, state, and now federal governments that want to bar access to women. Looking at the pill side is misplacing the anger.
I am pretty sure there have been attempts at temporarily blocking sperm so not having to do vasectomy for decades and it was not yet successful, it’s not like this problem is not being worked on because scientists are sexist or something
I think men should consider the potential harms to their partner in their calculus. If a man participates in causing a pregnancy that results in serious complications or death, I would sincerely hope that he would be as devastated by the loss of his partner as he would by suffering the harm himself. If men can’t empathize with their partner enough to consider the risks to her, then he shouldn’t be having sex in the first place.
I had thought that another part of it was the levels of harm compared to the problem; getting pregnant is incredibly stressful and possibly harmful, up to and including death as a possibility. A medicine that can stop that but has side affects that are less harmful than pregnancy is a lot more palatable. Whereas, for men, the harm caused by pregnancy is zero, so any harm caused by the pill is weighed a lot heavier.
It’s really frustrating how often this gets framed as sexist, when it’s a totally different problem. I get why people would equate them but they are very different biological processes. Producing a baby is a complicated process, and there’s a lot of steps that we can intervene in to prevent it. Producing a million sperm is, maybe surprisingly, less complicated and it’s harder to target a specific thing and produce easily reversible results.
Men have had vasectomy on the table for a long time now. It’s just more serious than most forms of female birth control, in terms of implementation and recovery, still not foolproof, and not as easy to reverse.
Even more frustrating is that sexism definitely does exist and play a role. It’s just more about the human parts of the process, like dealing with medical staff, dealing with insurance, dealing with local, state, and now federal governments that want to bar access to women. Looking at the pill side is misplacing the anger.
I am pretty sure there have been attempts at temporarily blocking sperm so not having to do vasectomy for decades and it was not yet successful, it’s not like this problem is not being worked on because scientists are sexist or something
Vasalgel, I was signed up for updates, but after about 10 years I gave up on that and got a traditional vasectomy.
There are also medical benefits to female hormonal birth control besides not getting pregnant.
We do have to remember that “First do no harm” is not a universal law of ethics or anything, it’s just the way the powers that be think about things.
I think men should consider the potential harms to their partner in their calculus. If a man participates in causing a pregnancy that results in serious complications or death, I would sincerely hope that he would be as devastated by the loss of his partner as he would by suffering the harm himself. If men can’t empathize with their partner enough to consider the risks to her, then he shouldn’t be having sex in the first place.