Seriously guys… who do you think you’re shitting here? For the record, I also don’t believe that you’ll get blue balls and die.
If you want to tell me it’s not as good, I totally believe you. If you want to tell me it’s uncomfortable, I buy that. If you want to tell me that you can feel the cold through a wetsuit, but not a pussy through .05mm of latex, I call bullshit. I can type with leather gloves on, you can get it up with a rubber. Or not, whatever… the world is full of other men who can.
You’re kind of going off the deep end on one throwaway post (the one talking about chastity belts for teenage boys). It is completely reasonable to want both genders to take responsibility for disease and pregnancy prevention, and to do so starting at a young age. Of course chastity belts aren’t a reasonable solution; I’m not sure what the solution is, but what’s currently being done doesn’t seem to be working.
First, I find it funny that this all stemmed from a really obvious tongue-in-cheek comment about male chastity belts.
Second, I absolutely will acknowledge that “many men find that it significantly reduces their ability to enjoy sex, in some cases to the extent of impotence” and even acknowledge that “handwaving that away as unimportant doesn’t make the problem go away, it just demonstrates a disdain for males”, but you apparently have missed the multiple posts in this very thread that advocate the same damn thing you say here:
Multiple posts have mentioned mandatory birth control and other posters (talking about real-world scenarios instead of theoretical controversial opinions on what to do In Their Perfect World) do far more handwaving about hormonal birth control than the opposing handwaving about condoms.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are far more disadvantages and potential harm that can come from hormonal birth control than can come from a condom.
**
CONDOM:**
[ul]
[li]Can significantly reduce the ability to enjoy sex, perhaps even to the point of impotence[/li][/ul]
HORMONAL BIRTH CONTROL OPTIONS:
[ul]
[li]Can significantly reduce the ability to enjoy sex[/li][LIST]
[li]a very common side effect is reduced (or eliminated) libido[/li][li]others will experience vaginal dryness. Sure there’s lube, but that’s a little bit handwaving[/li][/ul]
[li]Headache, dizziness, breast tenderness that can continue for months after you start taking the bc[/li][li]Nausea and vomiting[/li][li]Breakthrough bleeding (oh joy, I get to have a constant light period! I’m sure men would really be thrilled with this, too!)[/li][li]Less common/rare side effects that are far more serious (and absolutely can be fatal[/li][ul]
[li]heart attack[/li][li]stroke[/li][li]having a blood clot in the legs, lungs, heart, or brain[/li][li]developing [/li][LIST]
[li]high blood pressure[/li][li]liver tumors[/li][li]gallstones[/li][/ul]
[li]yellowing of the skin or eyes (jaundice).[/li][/LIST]
[li]“mood swings”[/li][ul]
[li]This is, IMO, the biggest potential side effect that is handwaved away, and I include doctors in that statement. It’s seriously the same sort of understatement as “you will feel mild discomfort and pressure in childbirth”. I wrote a post here on the Dope several years back when I experienced “mood swings” on the NuvaRing. It was literally one of the worst experiences of my life (panic attack that never stopped, racing heart, unable to sleep or eat, severe horrific depression that made me suicidal, and more) and when I called the doc’s office, after she heard my racing, jagged and teary explanation, she breezily said that well, mood swings can be pretty common in birth control, though they often go away after a few months, so just hang in there! Sure, I’ll just “hang in there” for months when I felt so awful after one week that I was THIS close to going to an emergency room (my now-husband was absolutely horrified and scared because there wasn’t anything he could do).[/li][/ul]
[/LIST]
Sure, there are dozens of different hormone cocktails available, but you can’t know how you will react on one until you try it. You couldn’t pay me enough to try the NuvaRing again (and I’m not alone), while others sing its praises to the sky and haven’t had any side effects. It’s the same story for Ortho Tri Cyclen, Yasmin/Yaz (which has been under fire for having significantly larger risks of heart attack, blood clots or strokes), the mini pill, Depo Provera, Mirena (the hormonal IUD).
Hell, even Paragard (the non-hormonal IUD; just uses copper) has the risks of copper (have/develop an allergy, significantly heavier periods that literally make it difficult for some women to leave their own house because of how quickly they’ll bleed through an ultra tampon and overnight pad) and then the risks that any IUDs have (risk of expulsion or being dislodged so it’s still there but not where it should be for efficacy, higher risk of PID and/or infertility, uterine perforation) and the fact that insertion goddamn motherfucking hurts like you wouldn’t believe for many.
Some women get lucky and find a great birth control with no negative side effects (at least that show immediately; who knows if they will suddenly have a blood clot etc years after they start?) on their first try. Many (most?) aren’t that lucky, even if the side effect is relatively minor, like loss of libido. But the fact of the matter is that there are far more potentially harmful (or fatal) side effects to hormonal birth control). And forgive me if, though I acknowledge a condom’s decrease in sensation/sexual pleasure is a harmful side effect, I will fucking “handwave” that away when compared to the potential harm of hormonal birth control.
I think that any criminal who is convicted and who goes to prison and then serves a reduced sentence for good behaviour then is released and repeats the same crime, the person responsible for signing the early release papers should also go to prison.
Just so we’re clear: hormonal contraceptives can and do negatively impact a woman’s pleasure. Depo made me want to kill myself-- someone with literally no history of mental problems and a crazy high sex drive, and there I was, ballooned up 70 lbs, zero sex drive, hair falling out, constant migraines, and throwing up all the time. The pills I’m on now are nothing like that, but they do negatively impact my sex drive and give me headaches. I will say that they are better than the last pills I tried— Yasmine, which caused me to have near constant migraines for 3 months. But hey, I better not as you to wear a rubber, because that makes me a man-hating feminazi.
I think you guys are grossly downplaying the effects hormonal birth control can have on women. And it’s not like these effects are rare and uncommon, these are frequent problems women have to deal with in order to not get pregnant.
And that’s not even talking about the potential long term health effects of hormonal birth control on a woman’s body.
So, knowing that, are you arguing that a man’s pleasure is valued that much higher than a woman’s? I’d say we’re pretty equal in importance.
Beyond all of that though: there’s no magic pill to make sure we don’t exchange some nasty lil’ bug like, I don’t know, HIV. Only a condom can do that. I’m truly sorry if we’re hooking up and you feel decreased pleasure from that condom (I promise to do my absolute best to make up for that in any way I can), but I don’t want to die because your penis doesn’t feel 110% of my vagina. You’re still going to feel 99% and enjoy it, get off, and neither one of us is going to walk away with oozing crotch sores.
So, even though I’m on the pill- when I hooked up with guys, there was no amount of, “BUT BABY, I CAN’T FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL ANYTHING!” that would make me budge. Sorry, HPV, HIV, and god knows what else aren’t worth the dicking down. You can put your pants back on if you aren’t down, I promise I won’t hold it against you.
I think convicted child sex abusers shoudl never be allowed back into society. We know for a fact that we can’t cure them, and that the recidivism rate insanely high - and that’s just the ones who get caught.
We should treat them humanely but quarentine them like we did with typhoid and leprosy sufferers. If anything, they are more deserving of this fate.
To be clear, I don’t think those who doan’t actively harm a child should be quarantined. But I am appalled that anyone convicted of child sex abuse is ever released back into society.
Yeah, how would allowing corporations the same unfettered legal access to marijuana as everyone else cause problems? I think what you (DoctorJ) really want is for marijuana to be fully legalized, with the assurance that there will never be any regulations forcing one to have an expensive license of some sort to be allowed to grow, sell, buy, or possess it. Then you can always grow your own if you don’t want to buy it from big bad corporate America…
Girls/women are chasing and competing with each other over specific boys/men. They are usually willing to do what they have to do, in order to get the attention of specific desirable men. If that means sex without a condom, they’re down for it.
Stanley Studly can do pretty much what he wants with one of these girls. They’ll even buy him stuff, cover for him at work and in school, lie to the cops, let him smack them around.
Pointdexter, on the other hand, will have a hell of a time even getting one of these girls’ phone numbers.
I’ll start off with acknowledging I’m receiving an education on the side effects of hormonal birth control–the worst I’ve seen in someone I know personally was moderately increased period frequency.
That said, I’m also in agreement with this entire condoms-are-sucky-for-guys thing being pretty stupid. That’s simply not a valid argument.
On the other hand, again, the original idea here was that as a matter of policy, preventing teen pregnancy is what we want to do. Condoms regardless of availability can be refused, forgotten, unwanted, or incorrectly used–the same as pills, for that matter. Given that those constraints make “condoms” an unreliable solution to the “too many teen pregnancies” problem, I’m not sure why they’re even part of the discussion of a policy of requiring long-term, fire-and-forget, reversible birth control for teens since they are neither long-term nor fire-and-forget.
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Also, zweisamkeit, it’d be a lot easier to pretend it was tongue-in-cheek if she hadn’t defended it.
My underlying attitude for that opinion is not that men’s feelings simply don’t matter it’s that condoms are bar none the best protection for both parties against STDs (short of abstinence).
They have made many advances in condoms and even as a female everything does not feel the same when your partner uses one but if I am not in a long term committed relationship where both partners are known to be disease-free my partner is going to be stuck using one.
While your feelings matter to me deeply, my benefit of not contracting HIV outweighs what is, comparatively, a minor cost on your end. Maybe that makes me a selfish man hater, but I don’t think most people would say my position is unreasonable.
Sort of like how I weigh all that horrible shit hormonal BC does to me and decide that I’d rather deal with those things than a baby. We all make tradeoffs— if yours is more sensation for possible diseases, rock on. That ain’t my choice though, so the guys I sleep with need to wrap it up.
