this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 287 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Honestly, as a dude, I'm 100% down for male birth control. Can't wait.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully it less hormonal side affects than the female pill. But yeah having an extra level of protection will be nice.

[–] [email protected] 127 points 10 months ago (5 children)

“Extra Level”? It's more about taking the burden off the women for me. Why do they, and only they, always have to mess up their bodies?

[–] [email protected] 77 points 10 months ago

Obviously it depends on the relationship and how risk averse you both are. But yeah why not both? Seems like a pretty good way to be really sure!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

What do you mean by always? The birth control makes sense because it's much harder to do it for men because sperm is constantly being produced and women only release 1 egg per month. What other ways do women have to mess up their bodies?

[–] [email protected] 77 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Oh, wow, do you come off as uninformed! Birth control for women has tons and tons of side effects, and it's in no way easier to prevent successful ovulation than it is to prevent fertile sperm production. In fact, birth control drugs for men have been repeatedly blocked by regulators for having too many side effects, while those side effects pretty closely mirror those of the pill for women. So, interfering with everything from blood pressure to appetite is acceptable when women are affected, but can't be burdened upon men?

Interrupting the ovulation cycle comes at great cost for the body. All the “non-hormonal” ways of birth control we have (except the condom) require either poisonous metals and foreign objects to be pushed inside the uterus, increasing the risk for cysts, causing pain, and regular checkups and painful procedures to be applied or fitted (diaphragm). Or toxins to be applied straight into a woman's private parts (spermicides). Calendar-based methods and “pulling out” have large margins of error, as have condoms.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Do the copper IEDs have negative side effects? I thought the objection to those was purely moral.

Edit: I meant IUD lol

[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My wife got repeated infections and had a lot of pain from the copper iud.

If you go looking for testimonials you'll find numerous people who had bad experiences with it.

Also, they really should offer anesthetic or at least a powerful painkiller for the insertion and removal procedures. Doctors act like it's no big deal, but it's very painful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Yet another case of the medical industry not caring one iota about women and women's ability to identify what is going on with their own bodies. The number of times I've heard of doctors dismissing women's pain and issues makes me want to scream.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yep.

Firstly: Disregarding the discomfort of having to see the doctor and having something shoved inside your body is a weird mistake, especially men tend to make regularly when talking about those things. Having your genitals exposed to and then painfully tampered with by what is ultimately a stranger isn't a thing most people would describe as a pleasant afternoon activity.

The side effects aren't just from hormones. Imagine having to do a prostate exam every 6 months and a metal plug shoved close to your prostate through your urethra every few years (not the same, of course, just an attempt at an analogy, since men are one hole short down there). Wouldn't you dislike that? Many women are really sensitive around their cervix and implanting the IUD can therefore be really painful.

Secondly: Period cramps increase in severity, bleeding increases for most people, and there are hints that those IUDs can increase the risk for cysts, which in turn cause issues, pain and sometimes need surgical removal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Period cramps increase in severity, bleeding increases for most people

The two women I dated that had an implanted IUD legit didn't have a period anymore. So not only was the bleeding and cramps not worse, they simply didn't exist.

You honestly seem to just trying to be pushing some agenda, possibly because you had a bad experience and you're assuming that's just the way it is for everyone, when the reality is it's pretty rare.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
  1. why is your experience the norm and what I say "pretty rare" not the other way around? Or do you consider "two women I know" a representative group? Are "two women I knew" more significant than what professionals will tell you?

Paragard side effects can include:

spotting between periods

irregular periods

heavier or longer periods

more or worse cramping during your periods

pain when your IUD is put in, and cramping or back aches for a few days after 

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/iud/iud-side-effects

  1. Was that a copper IUD (which was what I wrote about) or a hormonal IUD?
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Periods going away or getting lighter is a side affect of hormonal IUDs. Copper IUDs have no mechanism to make them go away, and seem to pretty commonly make cramps and bleeding worse. .

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I know it has many side effects. My girfriend suffered many of them when she was taking the pill and I had to beg her to stop because it just was not worth it.

And fuck off of course it's easier to stop ovulation than sperm production. It's a numbers game. Also not like I fucking made hormonal birth control. What we have now is bad and you can go ahead and find a better alternative with less side effects. That does not mean the new birth control should also have side effects. Take issue with the people that approved the current ones.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A “numbers game”? Do you think there are little men in your balls, strangulating every sperm cell when it's formed? Or… do you think the pill works by somehow interfering with the ovum itself?

Because it doesn't. Quite the opposite. Just as male contraception methods don't try to kill sperm, but to shut down the factory. Besides: You cannot measure the difficulty or complexity of medical procedures by how many cells are affected. By that logic, brain surgery would be way easier to do than amputating a leg.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (5 children)

What I meant is that it's easier to ensure it works being a numbers game. If you constantly have new sperm being made it's way harder to shut that down consistently than to stop one egg releasing once per month.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Honestly, as glad as this article makes me, I'd still like to see a perfect birth control for women. Periods seem like they must be the worst part of being a woman (biologically, not socially). Having a temporary, reversible way to stop ovulation without fucking up a dozen related systems and causing physical and mental anguish would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

This is a really dumb take. The onus of birth control should not be only on the women.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Condoms don't work for everyone's body.

Edit: to be clear I'm saying it's not that simple. There should be more options for anyone with a penis to be able to handle this important implication of having sex. For anyone in general, more options are always good.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Calling someone dumb isn't a good way to start a discussion. When men wear condoms how can you claim the onus is on women? My wife didn't want to take hormones so I wore condoms, every couple has that option.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I didn't call them dumb, I called the statement a really dumb take, not the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Forgetting about pregnancy and childbirth perhaps? I take it that they meant those things fuck up women's bodies pretty severely sometimes. It's a tough struggle to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, and some never do.

But apart from that, birth control should be an equal burden, IMO.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

we can finally share the load and mess up everyone because of not affording babies!

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

yeah, not wanting 10 children is a matter of cost, of course. It's baffling to me how unreflected and naive opinions regarding reproduction still are...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Right? I'm at the point where I can't possibly fathom the thought process of bringing a child into this world.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

I've got one, but I wouldn't want another one every year, and I certainly would not want to stop having fun times with the wife either...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

i was half joking but i use contraceptives because i cant afford one.

i'm not even thinking about 10 and never will.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

share the load

Sorry. I’m a child.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

The hippocratic oath, in this case. Medicine is all about risk management, the worse the "disease," the more tolerant we are of side effects for the cure. Pregnancy and birth are still pretty traumatic events that, while much safer than they used to be, are still dangerous. Female BC just has to be less risky than that. Male BC on the other hand, has to be as low the risk for a man impregnating a woman, which is to say, almost zero. Pretty much any negative side effect is worse than that, so it's very difficult to pass. I would gladly take one with comparable side effects to female BC, but sometimes unflinching ethics are inconvenient. Better than the alternative, but still.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Somehow, we manage to accept organ transplants despite it hurting one healthy person a little to help an unhealthy person a lot. What's stopping us from treating birth control the same way?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It's medical ethics, not the Hippocratic Oath. Most doctors swear to an ethical standard. Besides, "first, do no harm" is a bit unhelpful if you're a surgeon.

Otherwise you're right, the risks of pregnancy outweigh the side effects of birth control, which is why birth control for women doesn't have as high a standard for mitigating other consequences.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The Hippocratic oath is not a thing in most countries and not applicable anyway. If it was, kidney transplants would be done without a doctor present (in the US that is, don't overestimate your little made up oath ritual internationally)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Hippocrates wasn't American and the oath was made sometime around the 4th century BCE. It's been part of medical tradition since then (at least if you follow ancient Greek tradition)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Same. I've always preferred to be in full control of my own contraception, mostly because I just don't trust anyone else with something that consequential

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Will definitely be awesome when all parties have comfortable, reliable, safe options to protect themselves

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