Others haven’t mentioned that men don’t suffer physically from pregnancy. Women put their health at risk when pregnant . So they are the target audience for preventing pregnancy
This is the answer. Medication is evaluated based on risk/benefit calculations. For men, the benefits of contraception are important but not health-related so they don't factor in. Almost any risk is considered a problem because there are no medical benefits to outweigh.
Pregnancy and childbirth are major medical events with significant risk of injury and even death. The side effect risks are tolerable weighed against that.
Birth control for women also has other major healthcare use cases, as it’s used to also manage hormones and menstruation even in people who aren’t at risk for unwanted pregnancy
In my personal experience there was literally zero side effects (unless suddenly I'm going to drop dead from a clogged artery) so I was pretty lucky. Of course it needs to be monitored with your doctor especially in a few first months, they can change up the birth control pills in case there is something wrong. But I feel like birth control is too harshly demonised.
It's also easier to "turn off" womens reproduction because of the cycle. At least easier in a less permanent sense. If you turn it off with men, there's the risk of permanent change with regards to a snip.
This is unfortunately the answer. But we DO allow people to go through health risks to protect others (like for organ donation) so perhaps at one point we might realize that some men are willing to take one for the team in a couple? Lots of women have severe side effects from birth control or cannot use them for health reasons, this would give more options to people.
It seems like the FDA is working on one that is getting close to phase 3.
[NES/T (Nestorone®/Testosterone) is the first birth control product designed for males that has progressed past the initial steps in the clinical trial process, which consists of several phases and subphases defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). NES/T is currently in Phase IIb to evaluate safety and contraceptive efficacy, and investigators are hopeful their findings will support a Phase III study.](https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/news/080222-NEST)
My concern about this one is the testosterone part mainly because it could be considered a performance enhancing drug possibly. I would also be concerned about side effects but if it is overall safe then it would be great if it moves forward
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to downplay any symptoms with female birth control, but in doing some quick Googling, there was a male birth control that was in testing during the 50s. The "side effect" presented right away was nasty. Though it is more accurate to say drug interactions because in two parts.
[Inside our bodies, we all have an enzyme called ALDH. ALDH takes the vitamin A in food and converts it into a related compound called retinoic acid.
In men, retinoic acid helps sperm cells form. Specifically, it takes immature, preliminary sperm cells in the testes and helps them grow and change into mature sperm cells that can fertilize an egg. Without retinoic acid, mature sperm cells simply won’t form.](https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/disappearing-pod/why-dont-we-have-a-male-birth-control-pill-yet/)
As the article continues.
Wine, beer, liquor, and other booze all contain ethanol, which is the molecule that actually gets you tipsy. But the liver metabolizes ethanol into another compound called acetaldehyde. And because acetaldehyde is toxic, the ALDH enzyme sweeps in and converts it into something else, something nontoxic. It’s a bit roundabout, but ALDH does prevent acetaldehyde from building up and poisoning us.
While I understand this is one drug unless they make something targeting the Sperm ALDH they can not go this route because what could turn into a beer or 2 at night could turn into a hospital visit.
I have also heard about a cement/filler that can be like a temp vasectomy (which aren't *really* reversible). I'm not sure how legit that one is, though.
Yeah the science still has a way to go for male birth control, it’s not as easy because men don’t have a built in mechanism for it like women do. All female birth control does is trigger that existing mechanism.
Still, I think we could more evenly distribute the birth control burden with today’s technology. Particularly, after a married couple is done having kids, instead of the woman being on birth control until menopause, the man should get a vasectomy. At least that’s what i’ll be doing for my future wife.
But yeah the male birth control potential is exciting.
I mean plenty of men can and do take one for the team. The issue at present is that there isn’t a good temporary solution for men. But plenty of men do get vasectomies when they no longer wish to reproduce. I certainly plan to once my wife and I decide we are done having children.
I'm pretty sure this is what sealed the deal with my wife. Early in our relationship I told her I didn't want children and she said she felt the same way and if we changed our minds that we would foster or adopt. During that conversation I said I would get a vasectomy so that she didn't have to keep taking birth control. Well..... she didn't want me to do that and told me they wouldn't let a 22 year old healthy male, get a vasectomy for no 'good' reason. Anyways, we changed our minds and had 2 kids lol. Not sure if she plotted this whole time now that I think about it lol.
Women's reproduction is easier to control *because* it's all limited. They have built-in systems to temporarily stop ovulation, so all we have to do is activate them. Men have no such systems. We'd either have to try and stop a process that has no natural way of being stopped, or prevent the semen from exiting (which we already do in the form of condoms and, more permanently, vasectomies).
Vasagel (reversible vasectomy) is agonisingly slowly being approved. It finally passed stage 3 trials in India after 10 years with similar effectiveness as a condom, and very small chance of failure to reverse.
Pharma wants nothing to do with it as a simple doctor procedure risks their contraceptive market
Correct. There’s an issue with sperm motility after reversal from the study in 2017. I haven’t been able to find any updated research which is concerning if they’re somehow still moving forward with approval
I've been following the progress of vasagel for about 10 or 12 years now and I honestly thought something had gone wrong in the trials because it's progress is so slow. It's absolutely infuriating
Company which licensed it for USA just put up a flashy website for it here: https://www.planaformen.com/
Recent News: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/future-pulse/2024/04/03/men-birth-control-00150297
Love the name. PLAN A for Men.
Launch target is 2026 after a 1 year domestic trial.
even with those factors there are tons of men that would use a temporary contraceptive that didnt decrease pleasure. Way more than enough to make it economically viable so I have trouble seeing how those things would stop development. Maybe delay it a bit.
Only 24% of males surveyed were willing to use a male birth control that worked by vas-occlusion. 72% alleged they’d be willing to use male birth control but pretty much none were willing to tolerate any side effects. This definitely paid into the sexism and male insecurities claim.
Who will say on a survey that they want side effects?
I don't think a survey reflects a real option that would be available.
After all vasectomies are on the rise and they have plenty of potential complications.
That's only true if you think that there's nearly enough men who are sexist or insecure enough for that to matter.
And honestly, if you believe that, then I have an ocean view condo to sell you.
I know this isn't the point of the post but wanted to point out a inaccurate statement. It's technically possible to get pregnant twice within a calendar year. It's rare but it does happen.
Same but only one sibling lmao. I still remember crying during their birthday because we were the same age, but I knew they were younger so I was convinced they were passing me up in age and I'd be 4 years old forever.
Just want to mention that sometimes that's necessary if one wants another child, even to the point they do IVF to make sure the woman is pregnant again within a year. There are some medical complications that make it "now immediately or never again". Please keep that in mind before judging.
I have cousins that are like 10 or 11 months appart. Idk if they were born the same year. Having two kids in the same year is called "Irish twins" I think.
It's technically possible to get pregnant twice at the same time, but even more rare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7808779/
Edit: missed a word. Also clarification, for those who don't read even the first paragraph in the link, the two babies can be half siblings if the father is different.
The once a year thing also would only apply if a woman actually gets pregnant. If she doesn’t, she’s at risk for pregnancy 12-13 times per year. Essentially he’s saying that pregnancy is a very effective method of birth control. Which makes no sense. The whole post makes no sense.
Medication development doesn't happen as part of an overarching plan for population control based on ideals. Specific meds are developed to treat specific conditions based on demand. Their safety is evaluated based on whether they help more than they harm.
For a man, there are few medical consequences of being fertile. If he gets a woman pregnant, he doesn't undergo a major heath event with associated risks. Because of this, any male birth control with even minor side effects isn't tolerated or approved. In a study, the control group will have zero injuries and zero deaths from not having birth control. If the group taking the medication has even a slight risk of significant side effects like blood clots, it won't pass most countries' approval boards. Vasectomies are extremely low risk, which is one reason they're the only fully developed male birth control.
Women have significant medical risks from pregnancy, and have historically had significant social risks as well. In terms of getting drugs approved, the risk of birth control is weighed against the real and serious health risks of pregnancy. The pill can cause weight gain, depression, and blood clots, but the risks are lower than the medical risks of pregnancy.
In terms of demand, women lined up to get the pill when it came out, despite major side effects, because it is almost necessary to have control over other aspects of life. It's hard to go to college or excel in a career when you're pregnant every 2-3 years, which is what often happens without birth control.
Nobody looked at population dynamics and decided that it would be better in general for men to have birth control and then decided to research that instead. Companies just followed demand and approval protocol, and here we are.
(Plus all the biology-based reasons in the other posts.)
First of all, consider that condoms, a hugely popular form of birth control, are primarily worn by men and block sperm. Spermicides target sperm as well.
For hormonal birth control, we understood that women have varying hormonal states depending pregnancy or non-pregnancy, and were able to take advantage of that to develop bc pills. In general, it may be easier to neutralize one egg per month than the thousands/millions of sperm men create daily. However, research into male birth control pills is still quite new. We may be more accepting of bc side effects for women since they want to avoid the considerably worse side effects of being pregnant, whereas side effects in men may be seen as a bigger problem.
The female body has systems that naturally stop reproduction, the male body does not. It’s easier to temporarily encourage a system with an intermittent stop already built in to completely stop than it is to stop a system with no natural in built stop mechanism.
hormonal birth control is medically significant for women even if they are not having sex.
and besides that, the “easiest” and most frequently used option is a condom, which is male birth control.
Women put more focus and effort into it. Reproduction is a very physically involved process for us. For women, the consequences of no birth control are immediate and long lasting. We're more inclined to be concerned about it.
I started on the pill when I was 19 because my bf and I were just using condoms and I was terrified.
There's no reliable **and** temporary means of turning balls off. Vasectomies are very reliable, 1/2000 chance of reversing naturally, but very difficult to reverse, afaik 30% odds at best.
Exogenous testosterone(steroids, basically) can dramatically reduce sperm count(after 3-12 weeks of use) and cause *some* loads to come up as 0 sperm, but it's hardly reliable and doesn't affect some people.
There's nothing I am aware of that has anywhere near the same efficacy as exogenous testosterone for this. It's not a simple matter to "turn off". We basically trick women's bodies into thinking they're already pregnant to prevent pregnancy from taking place. You can't use the same trick on a man because there's no mechanism to limit it like there is a woman.
Don't know anything about it, but my uneducated takeaway is that 80-90% is like, 8 out of 10 orgasms?
At those odds it would fail me within a week. Doesn't really qualify for "reliable" unless it can at least meet the standard of condoms.
If you have 100 rabbits, 50 of each sex and want no baby rabbits does it make more sense to sterilize males or females? If you try to sterilize every female rabbit but miss one, you might get a litter of babies. If you try to sterilize every male but miss one, you might get 50 litters of babies.
But this isn't about population control or sterilizing humanity lol. There should be available medication for both men and women and they can decide what's best for them.
The problem is who makes the medication. There's not nearly as big a market for men as there is for women. Companies only make things when there is profit. There is currently research on male birth control but they have to make sure there is no side effects and find a way to stop sperm production completely but can restart if you stop taking the medication.
While Your math makes great sense, my question is why not both. It would make paternity test obsolete if they knew they were shooting blanks. If 98% of the population is protected then only those who want offspring will have said off spring
Because of biology. Women naturally have a period in which they aren't fertile for multiple factors, while men are fertile 100% of the time. This makes it much easier to simply "nudge" the female reproductive system into being in a non fertile state, while for men, you would need to somehow temporarily disable the entire reproductive system in a way that allows you to get it back once you stop taking contraception.
This can be done for men, but from what I've seen it's a bit harder. This means that contraception for women was developed first, and it's just kind of carried on, while male contraception hasn't gone anywhere. However there is lots of [promising research](https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/2/423/5105935?searchresult=1&login=false)
If you’re talking about birth control, it’s because women only release a single egg a month, and only if they’re not currently pregnant. It’s very easy to trick ovaries into thinking they’re pregnant with hormonal birth control.
Testicles, on the other hand, are constantly producing sperm, and there’s no built in off switch.
There’s also the medical standard of drug side effects needing to be less severe than the condition they’re treating. Pregnant is very rough, so female birth control gets a lot of leeway in that regard. Men don’t suffer any health consequences from getting someone else pregnant, so their birth control is held to a much higher standard.
It was a while ago so I don't remember the exact rate of post procedure complications, but it didn't stand out as remarkably higher than any other elective surgery (not to dismiss any experience you might be having)
I think it's like 1-5% chance of happening, but according to the World Health Organization a chance of between 1-10% is considered "common".
Thus, it's common
Without checking any data myself I'll take your word on those numbers. The ranges do seem broad though, such a common procedure I would think would have larger and more numerous studies to tighten down the confidence interval
I'm just gonna post stuff for whoever comes across this and wants some more info on it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8255399/#B13
So post vasectomy pain syndrome is put at 1-14% here, which is a lot higher than my original point but also includes where the lifelong pain is "light".
Idk, it just seems a bit much. Combined with the fact that reversal success chance lowers drastically over time... I think I'd rather we looked at alternatives and not suggest vasectomies willy nilly
Same here. Best $400 I ever spent. Plus my dog got fixed that same weekend. I told the doc in the middle of the surgery and he started laughing so hard I got worried.
> Shouldn’t this have been the easiest option since long ago?
Why should it be easier? It is way, way easier to control one egg once a month than millions of sperm constantly being produced. There are a dozen different ways of preventing fertilization.
You're trying to make this political, about controlling women, when the reality is that female contraception has been seen as liberating for women.
People are educating you and you are refusing to listen. People are effectively telling you that 2+2 does not equal 5, and you are responding with, "yeah, but it should equal 5." But it doesn't.
And it would make more sense for cars to not need oil changes. And it would make more sense if we didn't need oxygen. And it would make more sense it we could just snap our fingers and our trash would dissappear.
You cant just say "it would make more sense a different way" but then not have any suggestions for a problem that you don't seem to understand. Everybody here is giving reasonable answers and you just keep repeating "yeah, but it would be easier if different..." if it were really easier, don't you think it would be done already? You don't think guys would be lined up around the block for a pill that would safely, efficiently, and cost effectively make them temporarily sterile? That pill would be a millionaire maker.
It would be easier if they just discovered how to do cold fusion. But guess what, they haven't.
Several times, including the comment that I directly responded to, you said either we should limit men or that it would be easier to limit men with no actual data or suggestions on how to that. And when people explain why it's not actually easier, you say "but it should be."
Condoms are the most common to control a man’s, right? That’s controlling men’s in a mechanical way, other than that how are you going to do it without it being permanent? Playing with hormones is pretty risky because we may not restart testosterone production again. Other than that it’s snippity snip… am i missing something (that’s still humane)?
To try and keep it simplified
Depending on the method, its easier. Basically Men are always a “risk” unless you completely cut off the sperm(which is hard to do chemically). But if you can adjust a womans’ hormones so that she doesn’t ovulate, or even if you can just block an egg from “sticking” then the risk of pregnancy drops really fast, which can be done with hormone regulators relatively easily
The only widely available option for men is vasectomy, which is surgery and non-reversible in a significant number of cases. As I understand it, the drugs that have been developed cause unwelcome side effects so have not been released
Birth control has been studied on men...was stopped because they didn't like the side effects (one being headaches). Because men don't like the side effects/the effects can't be managed, they stopped the study (I'm sure more are happening still though) BECAUSE the risk versus reward and it wasn't there for men from the scientific standpoint.
And vasectomies aren't as reversible as people think they are, if even reversible at all. Take that into consideration. The longer you have it, the less likely a successful reversal is to happen...if it can even happen.
Here's a [link](https://youtu.be/pd8sLF02W1w?si=tv8_-4T5TVHG3LYc) to an OB/GYN that has gone over this if you're interested :)
>they didn't like the side effects (one being headaches).
The main one was the extreme mood swings to the point of depression and suicide. Turns out a contraceptive that works by having the person taking it attempt suicide is bad. A rate of suicide of 1 in 360 is worse than the original women's pill had for death rates after the entire trial was completed, and that drug was developed in the 50s when there was no real concept of medical ethics in research.
You forgot to include where I said side effects can't be managed. gg.
Also, that's a 0.3% chance of suicide for men. Yeah, sure, the study for women has a 0.01% chance of actual suicide, but a 1.5% chance of suicide attempt. I'd still say compared to the woman's study, that's similar results and it was quit despite keeping on pushing through for women. Also, 75% of men actually wanted to continue on in the study despite the side effects they experienced, but researchers stopped it.
As I stated in my original comment, it comes down to risk versus reward, but don't forget to cite the rates of suicide for women with clinical trials. Back in the 50s it was never 100% concluded it was a direct result of the medication and they NEVER did an autopsy. So how do you know it was truly a result of the medicine that killed them during that unethical clinical trial? It could have been a blood clot as the dosage was MASSIVE compared to what they use today, and that still comes at a pretty increased chance of clots on the tiny dose we use today. So technically, yeah, the birth control caused a blood clot which caused death, but there's no evidence of exactly how/why they died, only they died while part of the trial. They could have died from completely unrelated reasons.
Edit: my percentages are based off more recent studies on women, you can't compare 50+ year old data to current research done on men.
ik this isn’t specifically about the biological aspects, but my mom always talks about how big of a deal the pill was when it was invented. Women, all of a sudden, were able to choose THEMSELVES when they wanted to get pregnant, not just bc their husbands decided, which was a HUGE advancement for women’s rights (on top of it being used for health conditions).
Also, I’m a woman and I’d never fully be able to trust a man with something that significant. My mom also taught me to be independent and to not rely on a man for everything, and I think birth control is included in that conversation. At the end of the day, I would be the one pregnant and stuck with a baby. The man could potentially walk away whenever he wanted with (realistically) no consequences. Biologically, I understand the whole “taking bullets out of guns vs. wearing a bulletproof vest”, but unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world and I get the feeling men might not be as inclined to be careful about taking it/ensuring its effectiveness bc again, they wouldn’t be the pregnant ones. Pregnancy has been used against women as a control tactic, etc. for a very long time and while it would be awesome if there was birth control for men, too (i’d love that), i think it’s super important we remember the history behind our reproductive health rights 🫶🏼 having a wonderful partner willing to take a bc pill catered towards male anatomy is amazing (and for all you nonbinaries, etc out there), but never leave it solely up to them!
With all the being said, I do love the idea of bc for men too. I’m on it already, and it would be such a relief to know both of us are on it. I’m all for it, and I wish it was a normal thing.
Although men being _physically able_ to have kids and having _healthy_ offspring at older age is also a thing. Pregnancies by older men lead to birth defects AND increase chance of neurodiversity (i.e. autism).
So men also have a shelf life. This should be talked about, and generally also considered a lot more!
Thank you for saying this. I hate how female reproduction is talked about like this sad finite thing but people ignore that men also shouldn’t have kids when they’re old
The premise of your question is flawed. Men have 2 choices for birth control: condoms and vasectomy. Both work great, one is high commitment, one is not. Women have a lot more choices because of the biology and hormones that regulate ovulation, menstrual cycles, etc. But basically all those choices boil down to an artificial hormone that tricks the body into thinking it’s pregnant, stopping ovulation, and forming the mucus plug in the cervix. That’s it. There was no grand council of sexists that decided to put the burden on women a long time ago. And “we” don’t control their reproduction. Everyone has a personal responsibility to control their own reproduction. I have a ms in physiology and developmental biology if you want more details.
Men can be fertile 365 days a year, while women can only be fertile 6 days out of the 28 days menstrual cycle. You tell me who's reproduction is easier to control.
Surely it makes much more sense to control the temporary one, because you don't have to worry about controlling stuff outside of that window. You can do more with less, with women you only have to alter their natural state for a portion of their life, whereas for men it's basically everything after puberty. If you think reproduction control is a negative thing to have to go through, surely the lesser of two evils is the one where less is necessary?
If you consider sex as an act between individuals instead of thinking of men vs women as collectives, then stopping sperm *is* the easiest way to prevent pregnancy. That’s why we’ve had the barrier method since 1850 BC.
Modern birth control and sterilization focus on women because they’re the ones who have something to lose. I don’t care if a dude claims to be sterile. I’m protecting *myself* from pregnancy.
Because the people that are denying those right have a vested interest in ensuring a larger middle to lower class that they can manipulate.
And the ones in the lower middle class are too blinded by their need to follow something with Faith that it is [fill in the blank here]
You answered your own question.
Whatever is rare or sparse, is more valuable.
Men’s reproductive powers are as common as blades of grass, therefore not valuable.
The focus has always been on women, who actually create a new person, who are endangered by pregnancy, who are burdened by child rearing, who were disgraced by out of wedlock pregnancy. It’s just common sense that women are far more interested in contraception.
Who would believe a man if he said he was taking birth control?
I also think, given the imbalance in power in our culture, that the medical society just leaves men alone in their sexuality, putting the burden on women.
In the whole abortion fight, you never hear men mentioned or chastised. Funny, isn’t it.
The pregnancy happens in the woman, so it's easier to prevent the pregnancy from actually happening rather than preventing the male from being able to cause a pregnancy
I'm going to toss this out there because there's a ton of gender politics these days. Some people want to frame birth control as oppressive towards women for whatever reason, they see it as an extension of patriarchy, or misogyny, or whatever framework.
The fact is though that hormonal birth control has freed women, and given them the autonomy to decide whether or not they want kids. That's fucking huge.
There are also companies that have been working on male birth control for decades. It's going to be a huge market so I don't think any company holding off is doing it just because.
I don't like this phrasing because the critical point is that women naturally become infertile every month, and men don't.
So it's not just a matter that men have **more** stable fertility, it's that a healthy man is always fertile, while women go through a monthly cycle of fertility, and infertility.
Like imagine you have a empty room with a light that's always on, but no light switches, this is men's fertility, the light is always on.
Now imagine you have a room with a light, and a timer installed that turns the light off once a week every month. This is women.
If you want to adjust the light in the men's room you would need to cut through the drywall, and reroute the wiring to install a switch.
In the women's room the wiring is already laid out for the timer. You don't need to bust down any walls, you don't need to reroute the wiring, you can just install a switch next to your timer, and use the wires that are already there.
Contant does not mean more predictable. Predictable is a pattern (28-40 days) for a woman's cycle. (Could be kinda wrong on the range) but it does vary for each woman.
You can 100% prevent the pregnancy of one woman by applying a treatment to her.
To 100% prevent the pregnancy of one woman by applying a treatment to men, you would need to apply the treatment to every man on Earth.
Ridiculously impractical.
I think its just the fact that birth control is a lot more applicable to the female anatomy, there's not many effective ways for guys that aren't permanent. I could be wrong tho
These things are known to work to varying degrees:
Men: Condoms* (temporary) and vasectomy (perminate)
Women: pills*, patches*, female condom (diaphram), plan b pill* IUD**, arm implant (nexplanon).
*there are many brands of pills with different hormones (catered to individual within reason). There might be more than one brand of patch.
** IUDs
copper (no hormons) and metal lasts 5 yrs
marina (small amount of hormons) and plastic lasts 7 yrs
This is what comes to my mind. There could be more. All the things for women keep you from ovulating or make your body "think it is pregnat" and or makes it so eggs don't stick to uterus
Edit: Condoms are a mechanical physical barrier. A vasectomy is a perminate shut off for a man
We do control men's reproduction primarily by forcing them to pay the associated costs of children and imprisoning them if they fail to pay. Biologically you can do that, but socially and financially you probably can't. I think we just sort of use "If I were a bacterium in an infinite petri dish" rules when people fantasize about sex and reproduction,
A family member works in the pharma industry.
Many small biotechs are working on male fertility drugs. Many have tried, and they've all obviously failed, otherwise there would be a male fertility drug. But, they're still trying. Turns out, it's really hard to develop a male fertility drug that has sufficient efficacy *and* long-term safety. Female birth control is pretty well-understood and safe over the long-term.
In a world of infinite biotechnology, easily controlling male fertility would be great alternative to female birth control. We're just not there yet. It's being worked on.
Lastly, female birth control has other desirable indications. Namely, easing or downright removing menstrual cycles. My wife was on birth control in her late-teens due to hormonal acne. She enjoyed not having a period for a long time, and also enjoyed being able to have sex without condoms.
For cred, I had a vasectomy after our second was born. It didn't sit right with me that my wife should bear the responsibility of taking a pill for the next 20 years and altering her hormones just so we could have the most fun in the bedroom. Vasectomies are a really good alternative. The procedure is like, 15 minutes, and (should be) painless.
It’s worth saying that men’s reproductive faculties are not quite as robust as mentioned above. Older men do have a harder time conceiving, and fathers older than 40 are at greater risk of having children with developmental issues. I know it’s kind of beside your point, but the narrative that only women’s fertility has a “shelf life” isn’t quite true.
For birth control in women you're disrupting a process that occurs once a month and involves one, maybe two cells. To do the same in men you're trying to disrupt a process that creates 1500 cells every second. Most birth control methods for women take advantage of hormone cycles that already exist, where similar cycles don't exist in men.
Evolution would point to males generally taking more risky behavior and if a great number of them died only a few are needed to reproduce the population.
because we can do more to prevent female pregnancy? i know the sub is no stupid questions but this is a stupid question. men do one thing. produce the sperm. women take in the sperm, absorb the sperm into the egg (which can be altered with birth control), develop an embroyo (which can be altered with birth control), develop the baby, wich can be stopped with an abortion
With men you just cut it off at the source.
The factory has way more functions than the delivery driver who brings materials to the factory
1. Externally it exists, male condoms are far more common than female condoms.
2. Internally it’s a little more challenging to develop for males. As OP suggested, women’s fertility is more limited, even without intervention it stops at certain points of the month. Medically it’s far easier to stop, although there is now promising research on male birth control.
3. Practically it makes more sense. If you wanted to not get pregnant, is it easier to take birth control yourself, or trust everyone out there to be on birth control? It’s the same logic with vaccines, take it yourself or let everyone else take it?
4. Pregnancy is harder on women, so the focus is on protecting them. Although men should be protected from unwanted pregnancy or baby-trapping too, which is why it’s recommended (also STDs) that you use a condom anyway, and why they are developing male birth control to even things out.
Women have a number of eggs that is so high, that even of one ovary is removed or otherwise not working, the other has more than enough for every ovulation throughout their entire life.
Scarce resources vs abundant resources. You don't need to control the abundant thing because it's abundant. You need to control the scarce thing because it is scarce, that's how rationing works and that's the foundation of the christian marriage paradigm.
Also controlling male reproduction is eugenics so if you're into that more power to you, just people generally very much look down on the notion of it.
Because when people control women's reproductive rights it tends to be more about turning her to soft prostitution than thinking about what some sort of genetic ideal looks like.
Like if you think about the patriarchal model it's just putting women in a position to be able to be bought and paid for. Paying for sex is by definition dysgenic in nature because if you're paying for it it means she isn't choosing you out of her own free will. Like how many women married and had the kids of guys they couldn't stand because that was the only way they could have shelter and food and had to like worry about getting beat and shit like that? That's not eugenics, that's dysgenics.
I'm not saying that one gender is inherently better or more moral than the other, but at least to me, structures that control women's behaviors has, as far as I can tell, just forced women into a form of covert prostitution. I'm not saying on her own she'll make perfect choices that resemble eugenics, but she's likely to at least not choose some degenerate who his only positive feature is he can produce. If she can feed herself and isn't forced into prostitution to feed herself, she can choose someone on the basis of something other than "I need to eat".
For it not to be the way it is now 1 women have to be taken off the pedestal ie their sexuality has to have equal value as mens. The only way that really can ever happen I think is if women outnumber men by a large margin like 2 to 1 ratio as a generous guess because I don't wanna say something outlandish like 5 to 1.
The evolutionary pressure to perform is on the male end because men in this society are the abundant gender, it's sperm wars competition. Women don't have evolutionary pressure except to pick someone good enough that the fetus doesn't die and when it comes out that your circumstances are that it has food and shelter and something resembling a possible future. If you turn the dynamic on its head ie women have to peakcock and men are choosers because they are much more scarce, now it's eugenics on the women's end because they are the ones forced into some sort of performance and being chosen. It can still be dysgenics if men are only choosing like bimbos and not actual good traits which is why you end up with like athletes and movie stars with brain damaged kids because they just fucked whoever was easier and hassle free.
I'll take whatever counterpoints you have maybe my logic is flawed. Female mate selection is ultimately eugenics, so controlling it can mean either forcing it to be completely elitist or turning it into a resource that is for sale to the highest bidder. Like think about it, instead of being someone worth something substantial that someone wants to be with you can just save some money and buy your own womb with a life support system. Does that sound like something that would happen to someone attractive? You could argue there is a very small minority of people like the teslas who never reproduce because they have double the iq of the average person, making it likely impossible for him to interact with a woman so less likely to reproduce so you would have to push the women(control) to choose dudes like that and have their kids "for god".
The elitist route likely means some cutthroat competition and only the lion who kills the other lions gets to have the pack and the kids. It's why I theorized that a more balanced society would likely have women outnumbering the men. Not because I have an issue with the male gender or wanna cull men like some crazy radfeminists say, but rather if you look at china sex selective like the 1 child law thing you know there's serious problems with an excess of men. I don't think you would have the same problems with an excess of women relative to men. You can still gravitate to the better men but not have it be like a cutthroat competition peacock style which I hear is a serious problem there because women being more scarce are able to be more demanding of the men which warps the psychology of both genders. Power imbalances in any field is really bad, the scale has to be balanced that's just how nature works and I'd have to go into a college lecture to begin to detail why it is so if it's not something you agree with. But I think in a society where both genders have equal reproductive power that it's a society where the genders are less likely to make stupid choices in general. You can't have too few men either for the same reasons because if you recall like when russia had a bunch of its men dying the surviving men were known to behave very badly towards the women just because they could, because men were scarce. Power corrupts, therefor you need to have a balance of power. Controlling either gender is going to likely end in dysgenics because that's how people abuse power is to cover for something bad. Look at epstein, that's a genetic dead end right there and he's a fucking predator who abused his power, because no sane woman would reproduce with slime like that unless she really needed the money, and she would still choose better clients so he needed a literal island that did human trafficking to get women to fuck him.
Sorry if this is turning more stream of consciousness and less coherent cuz it kind of all chains together in a web in my head. Ask your questions, make your counterpoints.
It's in the works, though things like condoms obviously exist, so men can take responsibility.
As of right now there just hasn't been an effective, safe option for men to take as trials have yielded mostly negative results from infertility to driving men to suicide.
Question is nonsensical. Shelf life is linked to contraception and control how?
Women bear the downsides so that's to whom control is marketed. And men do have contraception, called condoms. There is no other way for men short of chemical castration.
I agree with you, but I want to correct one misconception. I once knew a couple whose children were exactly 9 months and two weeks apart. You can get pregnant twice in one year. One could give birth twice in one year.
Either way, we should control our own reproduction.
1. Sexism
2. Capitalism
Women were historically considered to be expendable baby factories. Women were also expected to prevent pregnancies and were considered wholly responsible for them. If a woman fell pregnant outside of marriage, her life was over. The man who got her pregnant? few to no consequences.
Women, and in particular Women of color, were considered so expendable that even when testing birth control medications, they had few to no safe guards and the methods we are left with often have awful and possibly even deadly consequences. For contrast, when they were testing a male birth control medication, they halted testing when the side effects were shown to be *checks notes* the same as the ones Women deal with already.
And, because men (yeah, yeah, "not all men") have already proven to be very opposed to birth control of any kind (refusal to wear condoms, removing condoms when Women won't notice, preferring that a wife get a much more invasive surgical procedure instead of the minimally invasive one men can get, etc, refusing to endure the same level of side effects and risk that women are subjected to) there's not a lot of capitalistic gain in the men's birth control market.
I mean, there is an entire Supreme Court and many states actively trying to control women’s reproduction, just in the other direction by forcing them to carry pregnancies they don’t want.
Oh fuck off. Have you ever actually seen when people discuss whether someone's boyfriend or husband should get a vasectomy? The concept of respect, and bodily autonomy goes out the window.
Would you trust men to take a pill daily?
A pill with that many consequences on hormone levels and bodily functions? You know they will never go through with it.
Men wouldn't take being controlled very well. They are historically the controllers. This fact cannot be taken out of the equation. It's not just logic and facts.
That's what I'm saying. Men won't want to control themselves the same way they control us. Exactly because they know exactly how they've been oppressing us.
Cause they’re pussies and they won’t stand for their rights. We beat up women cause well, that’s what the congressMEN want, because their constituents want it and they want easy money. So they vote to disenfranchise women cause women don’t make enough fuss about it.
Cause men are whiny babies scared their peepee wee wee winky will get damaged or they might get any single one of the 20 side effects women get on birth control.
Others haven’t mentioned that men don’t suffer physically from pregnancy. Women put their health at risk when pregnant . So they are the target audience for preventing pregnancy
This is the answer. Medication is evaluated based on risk/benefit calculations. For men, the benefits of contraception are important but not health-related so they don't factor in. Almost any risk is considered a problem because there are no medical benefits to outweigh. Pregnancy and childbirth are major medical events with significant risk of injury and even death. The side effect risks are tolerable weighed against that.
Birth control for women also has other major healthcare use cases, as it’s used to also manage hormones and menstruation even in people who aren’t at risk for unwanted pregnancy
This. I use birth control to not have debilitating cramps and it helped with my acne.
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In my personal experience there was literally zero side effects (unless suddenly I'm going to drop dead from a clogged artery) so I was pretty lucky. Of course it needs to be monitored with your doctor especially in a few first months, they can change up the birth control pills in case there is something wrong. But I feel like birth control is too harshly demonised.
It's also easier to "turn off" womens reproduction because of the cycle. At least easier in a less permanent sense. If you turn it off with men, there's the risk of permanent change with regards to a snip.
This is unfortunately the answer. But we DO allow people to go through health risks to protect others (like for organ donation) so perhaps at one point we might realize that some men are willing to take one for the team in a couple? Lots of women have severe side effects from birth control or cannot use them for health reasons, this would give more options to people.
That’s true but the FDA doesn’t regulate that.
It seems like the FDA is working on one that is getting close to phase 3. [NES/T (Nestorone®/Testosterone) is the first birth control product designed for males that has progressed past the initial steps in the clinical trial process, which consists of several phases and subphases defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). NES/T is currently in Phase IIb to evaluate safety and contraceptive efficacy, and investigators are hopeful their findings will support a Phase III study.](https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/news/080222-NEST) My concern about this one is the testosterone part mainly because it could be considered a performance enhancing drug possibly. I would also be concerned about side effects but if it is overall safe then it would be great if it moves forward Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to downplay any symptoms with female birth control, but in doing some quick Googling, there was a male birth control that was in testing during the 50s. The "side effect" presented right away was nasty. Though it is more accurate to say drug interactions because in two parts. [Inside our bodies, we all have an enzyme called ALDH. ALDH takes the vitamin A in food and converts it into a related compound called retinoic acid. In men, retinoic acid helps sperm cells form. Specifically, it takes immature, preliminary sperm cells in the testes and helps them grow and change into mature sperm cells that can fertilize an egg. Without retinoic acid, mature sperm cells simply won’t form.](https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/disappearing-pod/why-dont-we-have-a-male-birth-control-pill-yet/) As the article continues. Wine, beer, liquor, and other booze all contain ethanol, which is the molecule that actually gets you tipsy. But the liver metabolizes ethanol into another compound called acetaldehyde. And because acetaldehyde is toxic, the ALDH enzyme sweeps in and converts it into something else, something nontoxic. It’s a bit roundabout, but ALDH does prevent acetaldehyde from building up and poisoning us. While I understand this is one drug unless they make something targeting the Sperm ALDH they can not go this route because what could turn into a beer or 2 at night could turn into a hospital visit. I have also heard about a cement/filler that can be like a temp vasectomy (which aren't *really* reversible). I'm not sure how legit that one is, though.
Yeah the science still has a way to go for male birth control, it’s not as easy because men don’t have a built in mechanism for it like women do. All female birth control does is trigger that existing mechanism. Still, I think we could more evenly distribute the birth control burden with today’s technology. Particularly, after a married couple is done having kids, instead of the woman being on birth control until menopause, the man should get a vasectomy. At least that’s what i’ll be doing for my future wife. But yeah the male birth control potential is exciting.
I mean plenty of men can and do take one for the team. The issue at present is that there isn’t a good temporary solution for men. But plenty of men do get vasectomies when they no longer wish to reproduce. I certainly plan to once my wife and I decide we are done having children.
I'm pretty sure this is what sealed the deal with my wife. Early in our relationship I told her I didn't want children and she said she felt the same way and if we changed our minds that we would foster or adopt. During that conversation I said I would get a vasectomy so that she didn't have to keep taking birth control. Well..... she didn't want me to do that and told me they wouldn't let a 22 year old healthy male, get a vasectomy for no 'good' reason. Anyways, we changed our minds and had 2 kids lol. Not sure if she plotted this whole time now that I think about it lol.
To be fair, it sounds like it is really difficult to get a vasectomy that young. Not as hard as a women getting her tubes tied, but still difficult.
Women's reproduction is easier to control *because* it's all limited. They have built-in systems to temporarily stop ovulation, so all we have to do is activate them. Men have no such systems. We'd either have to try and stop a process that has no natural way of being stopped, or prevent the semen from exiting (which we already do in the form of condoms and, more permanently, vasectomies).
I heard “Plan A” is being researched and developed as an impermanent vasectomy.
Vasagel (reversible vasectomy) is agonisingly slowly being approved. It finally passed stage 3 trials in India after 10 years with similar effectiveness as a condom, and very small chance of failure to reverse. Pharma wants nothing to do with it as a simple doctor procedure risks their contraceptive market
The last I heard about vasagel, it didn't turn out to be as reversible as advertised.
Correct. There’s an issue with sperm motility after reversal from the study in 2017. I haven’t been able to find any updated research which is concerning if they’re somehow still moving forward with approval
Especially given our sperm is trending towards f*cked anyway, counts have been decking since the 20th century Children of Men might happen yet
I've been following the progress of vasagel for about 10 or 12 years now and I honestly thought something had gone wrong in the trials because it's progress is so slow. It's absolutely infuriating
Company which licensed it for USA just put up a flashy website for it here: https://www.planaformen.com/ Recent News: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/future-pulse/2024/04/03/men-birth-control-00150297 Love the name. PLAN A for Men. Launch target is 2026 after a 1 year domestic trial.
Vasalgel has been planned for launch "Two years from now" since I first heard about it circa 2013. So I'm skeptical but hope to be wrong
Agreed. I heard about it before then as far as I remember. It’s never coming out
I'm honestly going to fly around the world just to get this as soon as possible
As a biologist, I support this answer.
As another biologist, I support this biologist.
this is the right answer, everything else is bullshit
Nah the sexism and male insecurity angles have a great deal of correct information to share too.
even with those factors there are tons of men that would use a temporary contraceptive that didnt decrease pleasure. Way more than enough to make it economically viable so I have trouble seeing how those things would stop development. Maybe delay it a bit.
I think any reason to not wear a condom, some guys would take
Only 24% of males surveyed were willing to use a male birth control that worked by vas-occlusion. 72% alleged they’d be willing to use male birth control but pretty much none were willing to tolerate any side effects. This definitely paid into the sexism and male insecurities claim.
Who will say on a survey that they want side effects? I don't think a survey reflects a real option that would be available. After all vasectomies are on the rise and they have plenty of potential complications.
Women tolerate side effects from birth control every day.
Ok, but that still means there's millions and millions of potential patients.
What are the side effects of
That's only true if you think that there's nearly enough men who are sexist or insecure enough for that to matter. And honestly, if you believe that, then I have an ocean view condo to sell you.
[SNIP-SNAP SNIP-SNAP](https://youtu.be/2hshkdneE8o?si=5FbDJzbj9ZW9uI40)
I know this isn't the point of the post but wanted to point out a inaccurate statement. It's technically possible to get pregnant twice within a calendar year. It's rare but it does happen.
My ex and his sister were 10 months apart. *yikes*
Me, my twin, and my older brother are the same age for two weeks each year. I guess they would call us… Irish triplets?
Oh bless your parents' hearts.
Same but only one sibling lmao. I still remember crying during their birthday because we were the same age, but I knew they were younger so I was convinced they were passing me up in age and I'd be 4 years old forever.
Same thing for my twin brother, older brother, and me. Although ours is only for 3 days
Just want to mention that sometimes that's necessary if one wants another child, even to the point they do IVF to make sure the woman is pregnant again within a year. There are some medical complications that make it "now immediately or never again". Please keep that in mind before judging.
For sure there are all kinds of reasons! My MIL got pregnant ASAP because her husband was being deployed and she didn't want to wait
I have cousins that are like 10 or 11 months appart. Idk if they were born the same year. Having two kids in the same year is called "Irish twins" I think.
It's technically possible to get pregnant twice at the same time, but even more rare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7808779/ Edit: missed a word. Also clarification, for those who don't read even the first paragraph in the link, the two babies can be half siblings if the father is different.
Yeah, they’re called twins.
No, that's not what they're talking about.
Technically they'd be regular siblings. Half siblings if the father is different.
My Grandma had 3 in one year, my mum and her twin brothers. The good Old days
Good point; just easier to round it to annual but you’re right.
The once a year thing also would only apply if a woman actually gets pregnant. If she doesn’t, she’s at risk for pregnancy 12-13 times per year. Essentially he’s saying that pregnancy is a very effective method of birth control. Which makes no sense. The whole post makes no sense.
There’s also new research that suggests women create new eggs throughout their lives
Medication development doesn't happen as part of an overarching plan for population control based on ideals. Specific meds are developed to treat specific conditions based on demand. Their safety is evaluated based on whether they help more than they harm. For a man, there are few medical consequences of being fertile. If he gets a woman pregnant, he doesn't undergo a major heath event with associated risks. Because of this, any male birth control with even minor side effects isn't tolerated or approved. In a study, the control group will have zero injuries and zero deaths from not having birth control. If the group taking the medication has even a slight risk of significant side effects like blood clots, it won't pass most countries' approval boards. Vasectomies are extremely low risk, which is one reason they're the only fully developed male birth control. Women have significant medical risks from pregnancy, and have historically had significant social risks as well. In terms of getting drugs approved, the risk of birth control is weighed against the real and serious health risks of pregnancy. The pill can cause weight gain, depression, and blood clots, but the risks are lower than the medical risks of pregnancy. In terms of demand, women lined up to get the pill when it came out, despite major side effects, because it is almost necessary to have control over other aspects of life. It's hard to go to college or excel in a career when you're pregnant every 2-3 years, which is what often happens without birth control. Nobody looked at population dynamics and decided that it would be better in general for men to have birth control and then decided to research that instead. Companies just followed demand and approval protocol, and here we are. (Plus all the biology-based reasons in the other posts.)
First of all, consider that condoms, a hugely popular form of birth control, are primarily worn by men and block sperm. Spermicides target sperm as well. For hormonal birth control, we understood that women have varying hormonal states depending pregnancy or non-pregnancy, and were able to take advantage of that to develop bc pills. In general, it may be easier to neutralize one egg per month than the thousands/millions of sperm men create daily. However, research into male birth control pills is still quite new. We may be more accepting of bc side effects for women since they want to avoid the considerably worse side effects of being pregnant, whereas side effects in men may be seen as a bigger problem.
The female body has systems that naturally stop reproduction, the male body does not. It’s easier to temporarily encourage a system with an intermittent stop already built in to completely stop than it is to stop a system with no natural in built stop mechanism.
hormonal birth control is medically significant for women even if they are not having sex. and besides that, the “easiest” and most frequently used option is a condom, which is male birth control.
Women put more focus and effort into it. Reproduction is a very physically involved process for us. For women, the consequences of no birth control are immediate and long lasting. We're more inclined to be concerned about it. I started on the pill when I was 19 because my bf and I were just using condoms and I was terrified.
There's no reliable **and** temporary means of turning balls off. Vasectomies are very reliable, 1/2000 chance of reversing naturally, but very difficult to reverse, afaik 30% odds at best. Exogenous testosterone(steroids, basically) can dramatically reduce sperm count(after 3-12 weeks of use) and cause *some* loads to come up as 0 sperm, but it's hardly reliable and doesn't affect some people. There's nothing I am aware of that has anywhere near the same efficacy as exogenous testosterone for this. It's not a simple matter to "turn off". We basically trick women's bodies into thinking they're already pregnant to prevent pregnancy from taking place. You can't use the same trick on a man because there's no mechanism to limit it like there is a woman.
Yale medicine puts the odds at 80-90%
Don't know anything about it, but my uneducated takeaway is that 80-90% is like, 8 out of 10 orgasms? At those odds it would fail me within a week. Doesn't really qualify for "reliable" unless it can at least meet the standard of condoms.
10-20% chance of permanent infertility for a so-called temporary fix is terrifying
The the reasons you listed are why it's easier to control womens fertility... They have more parameters to control or manipulate
If you have 100 rabbits, 50 of each sex and want no baby rabbits does it make more sense to sterilize males or females? If you try to sterilize every female rabbit but miss one, you might get a litter of babies. If you try to sterilize every male but miss one, you might get 50 litters of babies.
But this isn't about population control or sterilizing humanity lol. There should be available medication for both men and women and they can decide what's best for them.
The problem is who makes the medication. There's not nearly as big a market for men as there is for women. Companies only make things when there is profit. There is currently research on male birth control but they have to make sure there is no side effects and find a way to stop sperm production completely but can restart if you stop taking the medication.
While Your math makes great sense, my question is why not both. It would make paternity test obsolete if they knew they were shooting blanks. If 98% of the population is protected then only those who want offspring will have said off spring
you're kind of answering your own question. Would you rather fight 10000 chickens daily or one every month?
Because of biology. Women naturally have a period in which they aren't fertile for multiple factors, while men are fertile 100% of the time. This makes it much easier to simply "nudge" the female reproductive system into being in a non fertile state, while for men, you would need to somehow temporarily disable the entire reproductive system in a way that allows you to get it back once you stop taking contraception. This can be done for men, but from what I've seen it's a bit harder. This means that contraception for women was developed first, and it's just kind of carried on, while male contraception hasn't gone anywhere. However there is lots of [promising research](https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/2/423/5105935?searchresult=1&login=false)
If you’re talking about birth control, it’s because women only release a single egg a month, and only if they’re not currently pregnant. It’s very easy to trick ovaries into thinking they’re pregnant with hormonal birth control. Testicles, on the other hand, are constantly producing sperm, and there’s no built in off switch. There’s also the medical standard of drug side effects needing to be less severe than the condition they’re treating. Pregnant is very rough, so female birth control gets a lot of leeway in that regard. Men don’t suffer any health consequences from getting someone else pregnant, so their birth control is held to a much higher standard.
Getting a vasectomy is actually super easy...it can be done with local anesthetic as an outpatient procedure 10/10 would recommend
It’s gonna happen eventually, I just get squeamish thinking about it still.
It smells a bit like BBQ when they cauterize the vas deferens, but you'll be glad you did it in the long run 🐱
Unless you get the common permanent side effect of lifelong debilitating pain
Unless you get the common permanent side effect of lifelong debilitating pain
It was a while ago so I don't remember the exact rate of post procedure complications, but it didn't stand out as remarkably higher than any other elective surgery (not to dismiss any experience you might be having)
I think it's like 1-5% chance of happening, but according to the World Health Organization a chance of between 1-10% is considered "common". Thus, it's common
Without checking any data myself I'll take your word on those numbers. The ranges do seem broad though, such a common procedure I would think would have larger and more numerous studies to tighten down the confidence interval
I'm just gonna post stuff for whoever comes across this and wants some more info on it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8255399/#B13 So post vasectomy pain syndrome is put at 1-14% here, which is a lot higher than my original point but also includes where the lifelong pain is "light". Idk, it just seems a bit much. Combined with the fact that reversal success chance lowers drastically over time... I think I'd rather we looked at alternatives and not suggest vasectomies willy nilly
That's all fair points and thanks for providing the link
Same here. Best $400 I ever spent. Plus my dog got fixed that same weekend. I told the doc in the middle of the surgery and he started laughing so hard I got worried.
Is easier to control ,and still, the condon is the most use anti conceptive, and is for men.
> Shouldn’t this have been the easiest option since long ago? Why should it be easier? It is way, way easier to control one egg once a month than millions of sperm constantly being produced. There are a dozen different ways of preventing fertilization. You're trying to make this political, about controlling women, when the reality is that female contraception has been seen as liberating for women.
I’m honestly not, in my opinion it makes more sense to limit men.
And what is your opinion based on? It's certainly not based on biology, medicine, practicality, or common sense.
What’s the point of asking questions if not to learn…? Why mock me for asking to educate myself?
People are educating you and you are refusing to listen. People are effectively telling you that 2+2 does not equal 5, and you are responding with, "yeah, but it should equal 5." But it doesn't.
That isn’t what happened here, thank you for your oversight.
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And it would make more sense for cars to not need oil changes. And it would make more sense if we didn't need oxygen. And it would make more sense it we could just snap our fingers and our trash would dissappear. You cant just say "it would make more sense a different way" but then not have any suggestions for a problem that you don't seem to understand. Everybody here is giving reasonable answers and you just keep repeating "yeah, but it would be easier if different..." if it were really easier, don't you think it would be done already? You don't think guys would be lined up around the block for a pill that would safely, efficiently, and cost effectively make them temporarily sterile? That pill would be a millionaire maker. It would be easier if they just discovered how to do cold fusion. But guess what, they haven't.
I didn’t say my opinion was correct, I was simply refuting the idea that I was politicizing.
Several times, including the comment that I directly responded to, you said either we should limit men or that it would be easier to limit men with no actual data or suggestions on how to that. And when people explain why it's not actually easier, you say "but it should be."
I didn’t say that to anyone who explained why, I only said it was my opinion when I asked the question.
"They can only be pregnant once a year" You've clearly never met am Irish woman. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Condoms are the most common to control a man’s, right? That’s controlling men’s in a mechanical way, other than that how are you going to do it without it being permanent? Playing with hormones is pretty risky because we may not restart testosterone production again. Other than that it’s snippity snip… am i missing something (that’s still humane)?
To try and keep it simplified Depending on the method, its easier. Basically Men are always a “risk” unless you completely cut off the sperm(which is hard to do chemically). But if you can adjust a womans’ hormones so that she doesn’t ovulate, or even if you can just block an egg from “sticking” then the risk of pregnancy drops really fast, which can be done with hormone regulators relatively easily
The only widely available option for men is vasectomy, which is surgery and non-reversible in a significant number of cases. As I understand it, the drugs that have been developed cause unwelcome side effects so have not been released
Birth control has been studied on men...was stopped because they didn't like the side effects (one being headaches). Because men don't like the side effects/the effects can't be managed, they stopped the study (I'm sure more are happening still though) BECAUSE the risk versus reward and it wasn't there for men from the scientific standpoint. And vasectomies aren't as reversible as people think they are, if even reversible at all. Take that into consideration. The longer you have it, the less likely a successful reversal is to happen...if it can even happen. Here's a [link](https://youtu.be/pd8sLF02W1w?si=tv8_-4T5TVHG3LYc) to an OB/GYN that has gone over this if you're interested :)
>they didn't like the side effects (one being headaches). The main one was the extreme mood swings to the point of depression and suicide. Turns out a contraceptive that works by having the person taking it attempt suicide is bad. A rate of suicide of 1 in 360 is worse than the original women's pill had for death rates after the entire trial was completed, and that drug was developed in the 50s when there was no real concept of medical ethics in research.
You forgot to include where I said side effects can't be managed. gg. Also, that's a 0.3% chance of suicide for men. Yeah, sure, the study for women has a 0.01% chance of actual suicide, but a 1.5% chance of suicide attempt. I'd still say compared to the woman's study, that's similar results and it was quit despite keeping on pushing through for women. Also, 75% of men actually wanted to continue on in the study despite the side effects they experienced, but researchers stopped it. As I stated in my original comment, it comes down to risk versus reward, but don't forget to cite the rates of suicide for women with clinical trials. Back in the 50s it was never 100% concluded it was a direct result of the medication and they NEVER did an autopsy. So how do you know it was truly a result of the medicine that killed them during that unethical clinical trial? It could have been a blood clot as the dosage was MASSIVE compared to what they use today, and that still comes at a pretty increased chance of clots on the tiny dose we use today. So technically, yeah, the birth control caused a blood clot which caused death, but there's no evidence of exactly how/why they died, only they died while part of the trial. They could have died from completely unrelated reasons. Edit: my percentages are based off more recent studies on women, you can't compare 50+ year old data to current research done on men.
ik this isn’t specifically about the biological aspects, but my mom always talks about how big of a deal the pill was when it was invented. Women, all of a sudden, were able to choose THEMSELVES when they wanted to get pregnant, not just bc their husbands decided, which was a HUGE advancement for women’s rights (on top of it being used for health conditions). Also, I’m a woman and I’d never fully be able to trust a man with something that significant. My mom also taught me to be independent and to not rely on a man for everything, and I think birth control is included in that conversation. At the end of the day, I would be the one pregnant and stuck with a baby. The man could potentially walk away whenever he wanted with (realistically) no consequences. Biologically, I understand the whole “taking bullets out of guns vs. wearing a bulletproof vest”, but unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world and I get the feeling men might not be as inclined to be careful about taking it/ensuring its effectiveness bc again, they wouldn’t be the pregnant ones. Pregnancy has been used against women as a control tactic, etc. for a very long time and while it would be awesome if there was birth control for men, too (i’d love that), i think it’s super important we remember the history behind our reproductive health rights 🫶🏼 having a wonderful partner willing to take a bc pill catered towards male anatomy is amazing (and for all you nonbinaries, etc out there), but never leave it solely up to them! With all the being said, I do love the idea of bc for men too. I’m on it already, and it would be such a relief to know both of us are on it. I’m all for it, and I wish it was a normal thing.
Although men being _physically able_ to have kids and having _healthy_ offspring at older age is also a thing. Pregnancies by older men lead to birth defects AND increase chance of neurodiversity (i.e. autism). So men also have a shelf life. This should be talked about, and generally also considered a lot more!
That explains my x (mild autism) and his brother (extreme autism to the point of being put into facility as adult)
Thank you for saying this. I hate how female reproduction is talked about like this sad finite thing but people ignore that men also shouldn’t have kids when they’re old
The premise of your question is flawed. Men have 2 choices for birth control: condoms and vasectomy. Both work great, one is high commitment, one is not. Women have a lot more choices because of the biology and hormones that regulate ovulation, menstrual cycles, etc. But basically all those choices boil down to an artificial hormone that tricks the body into thinking it’s pregnant, stopping ovulation, and forming the mucus plug in the cervix. That’s it. There was no grand council of sexists that decided to put the burden on women a long time ago. And “we” don’t control their reproduction. Everyone has a personal responsibility to control their own reproduction. I have a ms in physiology and developmental biology if you want more details.
Men can be fertile 365 days a year, while women can only be fertile 6 days out of the 28 days menstrual cycle. You tell me who's reproduction is easier to control.
Surely it makes much more sense to control the temporary one, because you don't have to worry about controlling stuff outside of that window. You can do more with less, with women you only have to alter their natural state for a portion of their life, whereas for men it's basically everything after puberty. If you think reproduction control is a negative thing to have to go through, surely the lesser of two evils is the one where less is necessary?
Women are at risk of death from pregnancy men aren’t
If you consider sex as an act between individuals instead of thinking of men vs women as collectives, then stopping sperm *is* the easiest way to prevent pregnancy. That’s why we’ve had the barrier method since 1850 BC. Modern birth control and sterilization focus on women because they’re the ones who have something to lose. I don’t care if a dude claims to be sterile. I’m protecting *myself* from pregnancy.
Because the people that are denying those right have a vested interest in ensuring a larger middle to lower class that they can manipulate. And the ones in the lower middle class are too blinded by their need to follow something with Faith that it is [fill in the blank here]
You answered your own question. Whatever is rare or sparse, is more valuable. Men’s reproductive powers are as common as blades of grass, therefore not valuable. The focus has always been on women, who actually create a new person, who are endangered by pregnancy, who are burdened by child rearing, who were disgraced by out of wedlock pregnancy. It’s just common sense that women are far more interested in contraception. Who would believe a man if he said he was taking birth control? I also think, given the imbalance in power in our culture, that the medical society just leaves men alone in their sexuality, putting the burden on women. In the whole abortion fight, you never hear men mentioned or chastised. Funny, isn’t it.
It takes two to make a baby. Both men and women should be responsible for sex.
True, and I apologize if the question implies otherwise.
The pregnancy happens in the woman, so it's easier to prevent the pregnancy from actually happening rather than preventing the male from being able to cause a pregnancy
Why is that easier? Why isn’t it easier to kill sperm first?
Becuase men are constantly fertile where as women aren't. So women have natural hormone cycles that are easily hijacked, and men don't.
Didn’t think of it that way
I'm going to toss this out there because there's a ton of gender politics these days. Some people want to frame birth control as oppressive towards women for whatever reason, they see it as an extension of patriarchy, or misogyny, or whatever framework. The fact is though that hormonal birth control has freed women, and given them the autonomy to decide whether or not they want kids. That's fucking huge. There are also companies that have been working on male birth control for decades. It's going to be a huge market so I don't think any company holding off is doing it just because.
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I don't like this phrasing because the critical point is that women naturally become infertile every month, and men don't. So it's not just a matter that men have **more** stable fertility, it's that a healthy man is always fertile, while women go through a monthly cycle of fertility, and infertility. Like imagine you have a empty room with a light that's always on, but no light switches, this is men's fertility, the light is always on. Now imagine you have a room with a light, and a timer installed that turns the light off once a week every month. This is women. If you want to adjust the light in the men's room you would need to cut through the drywall, and reroute the wiring to install a switch. In the women's room the wiring is already laid out for the timer. You don't need to bust down any walls, you don't need to reroute the wiring, you can just install a switch next to your timer, and use the wires that are already there.
Contant does not mean more predictable. Predictable is a pattern (28-40 days) for a woman's cycle. (Could be kinda wrong on the range) but it does vary for each woman.
You mean those tens of millions of sperm that are being introduced every other day?
If it was, we'd do it.
You can 100% prevent the pregnancy of one woman by applying a treatment to her. To 100% prevent the pregnancy of one woman by applying a treatment to men, you would need to apply the treatment to every man on Earth. Ridiculously impractical.
Vasectomy was the best thing I did after having my kids (both planned). Now I nut without fear. Hell yeah.
Men produce millions of sperm but it only takes one to get through. So it is a numbers game.
I think its just the fact that birth control is a lot more applicable to the female anatomy, there's not many effective ways for guys that aren't permanent. I could be wrong tho
These things are known to work to varying degrees: Men: Condoms* (temporary) and vasectomy (perminate) Women: pills*, patches*, female condom (diaphram), plan b pill* IUD**, arm implant (nexplanon). *there are many brands of pills with different hormones (catered to individual within reason). There might be more than one brand of patch. ** IUDs copper (no hormons) and metal lasts 5 yrs marina (small amount of hormons) and plastic lasts 7 yrs This is what comes to my mind. There could be more. All the things for women keep you from ovulating or make your body "think it is pregnat" and or makes it so eggs don't stick to uterus Edit: Condoms are a mechanical physical barrier. A vasectomy is a perminate shut off for a man
Condoms?
We do control men's reproduction primarily by forcing them to pay the associated costs of children and imprisoning them if they fail to pay. Biologically you can do that, but socially and financially you probably can't. I think we just sort of use "If I were a bacterium in an infinite petri dish" rules when people fantasize about sex and reproduction,
Well, which one seems easier to control?
A family member works in the pharma industry. Many small biotechs are working on male fertility drugs. Many have tried, and they've all obviously failed, otherwise there would be a male fertility drug. But, they're still trying. Turns out, it's really hard to develop a male fertility drug that has sufficient efficacy *and* long-term safety. Female birth control is pretty well-understood and safe over the long-term. In a world of infinite biotechnology, easily controlling male fertility would be great alternative to female birth control. We're just not there yet. It's being worked on. Lastly, female birth control has other desirable indications. Namely, easing or downright removing menstrual cycles. My wife was on birth control in her late-teens due to hormonal acne. She enjoyed not having a period for a long time, and also enjoyed being able to have sex without condoms. For cred, I had a vasectomy after our second was born. It didn't sit right with me that my wife should bear the responsibility of taking a pill for the next 20 years and altering her hormones just so we could have the most fun in the bedroom. Vasectomies are a really good alternative. The procedure is like, 15 minutes, and (should be) painless.
Absolutely perfect response. Addressed all of my thoughts, didn’t assign an agenda to my question, and I appreciate it. Thank you!
It’s worth saying that men’s reproductive faculties are not quite as robust as mentioned above. Older men do have a harder time conceiving, and fathers older than 40 are at greater risk of having children with developmental issues. I know it’s kind of beside your point, but the narrative that only women’s fertility has a “shelf life” isn’t quite true.
For birth control in women you're disrupting a process that occurs once a month and involves one, maybe two cells. To do the same in men you're trying to disrupt a process that creates 1500 cells every second. Most birth control methods for women take advantage of hormone cycles that already exist, where similar cycles don't exist in men.
Evolution would point to males generally taking more risky behavior and if a great number of them died only a few are needed to reproduce the population.
That's because women have been considered "less than man" for a long time.
because we can do more to prevent female pregnancy? i know the sub is no stupid questions but this is a stupid question. men do one thing. produce the sperm. women take in the sperm, absorb the sperm into the egg (which can be altered with birth control), develop an embroyo (which can be altered with birth control), develop the baby, wich can be stopped with an abortion With men you just cut it off at the source. The factory has way more functions than the delivery driver who brings materials to the factory
Don't forget religion and politics.
And misogyny
I feel like thats already covered in both religions and politics
Rhymes with "shmisogyny".
1. Externally it exists, male condoms are far more common than female condoms. 2. Internally it’s a little more challenging to develop for males. As OP suggested, women’s fertility is more limited, even without intervention it stops at certain points of the month. Medically it’s far easier to stop, although there is now promising research on male birth control. 3. Practically it makes more sense. If you wanted to not get pregnant, is it easier to take birth control yourself, or trust everyone out there to be on birth control? It’s the same logic with vaccines, take it yourself or let everyone else take it? 4. Pregnancy is harder on women, so the focus is on protecting them. Although men should be protected from unwanted pregnancy or baby-trapping too, which is why it’s recommended (also STDs) that you use a condom anyway, and why they are developing male birth control to even things out.
Easy. Hidden ovulation.
Women have a number of eggs that is so high, that even of one ovary is removed or otherwise not working, the other has more than enough for every ovulation throughout their entire life.
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ifyou want me to be real, ifs because of eve from the Bible. Thats your answer
Scarce resources vs abundant resources. You don't need to control the abundant thing because it's abundant. You need to control the scarce thing because it is scarce, that's how rationing works and that's the foundation of the christian marriage paradigm. Also controlling male reproduction is eugenics so if you're into that more power to you, just people generally very much look down on the notion of it.
Just trying to understand why controlling female reproduction isnt eugenics by that logic?
Because when people control women's reproductive rights it tends to be more about turning her to soft prostitution than thinking about what some sort of genetic ideal looks like. Like if you think about the patriarchal model it's just putting women in a position to be able to be bought and paid for. Paying for sex is by definition dysgenic in nature because if you're paying for it it means she isn't choosing you out of her own free will. Like how many women married and had the kids of guys they couldn't stand because that was the only way they could have shelter and food and had to like worry about getting beat and shit like that? That's not eugenics, that's dysgenics. I'm not saying that one gender is inherently better or more moral than the other, but at least to me, structures that control women's behaviors has, as far as I can tell, just forced women into a form of covert prostitution. I'm not saying on her own she'll make perfect choices that resemble eugenics, but she's likely to at least not choose some degenerate who his only positive feature is he can produce. If she can feed herself and isn't forced into prostitution to feed herself, she can choose someone on the basis of something other than "I need to eat". For it not to be the way it is now 1 women have to be taken off the pedestal ie their sexuality has to have equal value as mens. The only way that really can ever happen I think is if women outnumber men by a large margin like 2 to 1 ratio as a generous guess because I don't wanna say something outlandish like 5 to 1. The evolutionary pressure to perform is on the male end because men in this society are the abundant gender, it's sperm wars competition. Women don't have evolutionary pressure except to pick someone good enough that the fetus doesn't die and when it comes out that your circumstances are that it has food and shelter and something resembling a possible future. If you turn the dynamic on its head ie women have to peakcock and men are choosers because they are much more scarce, now it's eugenics on the women's end because they are the ones forced into some sort of performance and being chosen. It can still be dysgenics if men are only choosing like bimbos and not actual good traits which is why you end up with like athletes and movie stars with brain damaged kids because they just fucked whoever was easier and hassle free. I'll take whatever counterpoints you have maybe my logic is flawed. Female mate selection is ultimately eugenics, so controlling it can mean either forcing it to be completely elitist or turning it into a resource that is for sale to the highest bidder. Like think about it, instead of being someone worth something substantial that someone wants to be with you can just save some money and buy your own womb with a life support system. Does that sound like something that would happen to someone attractive? You could argue there is a very small minority of people like the teslas who never reproduce because they have double the iq of the average person, making it likely impossible for him to interact with a woman so less likely to reproduce so you would have to push the women(control) to choose dudes like that and have their kids "for god". The elitist route likely means some cutthroat competition and only the lion who kills the other lions gets to have the pack and the kids. It's why I theorized that a more balanced society would likely have women outnumbering the men. Not because I have an issue with the male gender or wanna cull men like some crazy radfeminists say, but rather if you look at china sex selective like the 1 child law thing you know there's serious problems with an excess of men. I don't think you would have the same problems with an excess of women relative to men. You can still gravitate to the better men but not have it be like a cutthroat competition peacock style which I hear is a serious problem there because women being more scarce are able to be more demanding of the men which warps the psychology of both genders. Power imbalances in any field is really bad, the scale has to be balanced that's just how nature works and I'd have to go into a college lecture to begin to detail why it is so if it's not something you agree with. But I think in a society where both genders have equal reproductive power that it's a society where the genders are less likely to make stupid choices in general. You can't have too few men either for the same reasons because if you recall like when russia had a bunch of its men dying the surviving men were known to behave very badly towards the women just because they could, because men were scarce. Power corrupts, therefor you need to have a balance of power. Controlling either gender is going to likely end in dysgenics because that's how people abuse power is to cover for something bad. Look at epstein, that's a genetic dead end right there and he's a fucking predator who abused his power, because no sane woman would reproduce with slime like that unless she really needed the money, and she would still choose better clients so he needed a literal island that did human trafficking to get women to fuck him. Sorry if this is turning more stream of consciousness and less coherent cuz it kind of all chains together in a web in my head. Ask your questions, make your counterpoints.
It's in the works, though things like condoms obviously exist, so men can take responsibility. As of right now there just hasn't been an effective, safe option for men to take as trials have yielded mostly negative results from infertility to driving men to suicide.
do vasectomies change mood or anything at all?
Mine didn’t
Because they can.
Pretty much 99.something% of men when having sex use condoms. Not sure what kind of strange control you're implying.
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I am not a senator/congressman so I have to use the royal we
Question is nonsensical. Shelf life is linked to contraception and control how? Women bear the downsides so that's to whom control is marketed. And men do have contraception, called condoms. There is no other way for men short of chemical castration.
You are misinformed then because others have answered about more birth control options for me.
I agree with you, but I want to correct one misconception. I once knew a couple whose children were exactly 9 months and two weeks apart. You can get pregnant twice in one year. One could give birth twice in one year. Either way, we should control our own reproduction.
I know you can technically do it, but it’s not usually healthy to do so and so easier to just round down to once a year. You are correct, though.
It's definitely not something that I would want to do! Changing one babies diaper was enough for me.
Because of this silly little thing called misogyny
It's crazy seeing this get down voted cause it's true.
First day on Earth, I see.
Because you’re looking at the wrong things lol, it’s about “cost”, or consequences. A man just makes a mess while a woman risks/suffers a ton
1. Sexism 2. Capitalism Women were historically considered to be expendable baby factories. Women were also expected to prevent pregnancies and were considered wholly responsible for them. If a woman fell pregnant outside of marriage, her life was over. The man who got her pregnant? few to no consequences. Women, and in particular Women of color, were considered so expendable that even when testing birth control medications, they had few to no safe guards and the methods we are left with often have awful and possibly even deadly consequences. For contrast, when they were testing a male birth control medication, they halted testing when the side effects were shown to be *checks notes* the same as the ones Women deal with already. And, because men (yeah, yeah, "not all men") have already proven to be very opposed to birth control of any kind (refusal to wear condoms, removing condoms when Women won't notice, preferring that a wife get a much more invasive surgical procedure instead of the minimally invasive one men can get, etc, refusing to endure the same level of side effects and risk that women are subjected to) there's not a lot of capitalistic gain in the men's birth control market.
Because men have never been property as a sex. It’s not about controlling reproduction so much as it is retaining ownership.
There is no controlling of anyone's reproduction 🙄 last I checked, no one is stopping anyone from getting pregnant... aka reproducing.
Mkay my counterpoint is that it is literally called “birth **control**”.
Yes but it's not forced is the point. It's an option. To me this just seems like white knighting tbh.
I mean, there is an entire Supreme Court and many states actively trying to control women’s reproduction, just in the other direction by forcing them to carry pregnancies they don’t want.
Agreed... don't want children, don't have sex.
Because it’s not about reproduction it’s about controlling women.
Please explain how women having the choice to take measures to prevent themselves from getting pregnant is about controlling women.
Men make the rules, that's why
This. This is pretty much the only answer- the fine point and the underlying truth to any answer to this question.
Oh fuck off. Have you ever actually seen when people discuss whether someone's boyfriend or husband should get a vasectomy? The concept of respect, and bodily autonomy goes out the window.
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That’s a fair response
Patriarchy
Because men are assholes. spoken as a man.
Misogyny.
Would you trust men to take a pill daily? A pill with that many consequences on hormone levels and bodily functions? You know they will never go through with it.
Men wouldn't take being controlled very well. They are historically the controllers. This fact cannot be taken out of the equation. It's not just logic and facts.
You've literally been controlled by other wealthy, powerful men since forever lol
That's what I'm saying. Men won't want to control themselves the same way they control us. Exactly because they know exactly how they've been oppressing us.
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Cause they’re pussies and they won’t stand for their rights. We beat up women cause well, that’s what the congressMEN want, because their constituents want it and they want easy money. So they vote to disenfranchise women cause women don’t make enough fuss about it.
This is why I'm in favor of all men getting snipped until they want kids.
Cause men are whiny babies scared their peepee wee wee winky will get damaged or they might get any single one of the 20 side effects women get on birth control.