Why don't men understand conception? Why do women lie about it?

The BBQ Pit
81

Would it have been better if I had said in the thread title that some women are ignorant and some are liars? They only let your thread titles be so long, ya know. I do admit that the woman who thought she couldn’t get pregnant during her period might just have been ignorant. I’m not sure I find that ignorance particularly excusable, though. I think it’s rather deplorable, actually, on both her part and the guy’s.

I don’t know too many men who lie about women’s reproduction. They genuinely don’t know and I think they expect that a woman they are having a relationship with does know and is being honest about her reproductive capabilities. I think they are being very foolish to trust in that with such high stakes, and in no way is that an excuse for them. They are being very stupid, and I believe I said that in clear terms. Some women are ignorant, that’s true, and I apologize if it seemed I painted ALL women as liars. But I have known some who manipulate men’s ignorance to get what they want. PArt of that falls on men who live in blissful ignorance, but lying about shit like that is fucked up. I think my friend’s ex, who claimed at varying times for different reasons that she couldn’t get pregnant when she definitely could have and did, was a liar who wanted to have babies at whatever cost. She’s also just a manipulative bitch in general.

I apologize to WhyNot for calling her a bitch. I still think, however, that her assertions about conception during breast feeding are misleading. There are medical doctors who disagree with her.

82

In case anyone is interested, Toni Weschler, the author of Taking Charge of Your Fertility, has a new book out aimed specifically at teens: Cycle Savvy

83

There seems to be the idea in this thread that there is a proper method of breastfeeding that will act as guaranteed birth control. If I read it wrong, I appologize. But the only way that breastfeeding guarantees no pregnancy is if there is a taboo against having sex with a nursing mother.

Had three babies. Nursed three babies. Stay at home mother feeding on demand. Had my next period 28 days after giving birth each time. Breastfeeding is not reliable birth control. It may work for some, but you can’t know that it will work for you.

Back to the main topic.

84

If that’s what you meant, then yes, I think it would have been better if that’s what you had said.

If you want to overgeneralize a bit for the sake of a pithy thread title, I don’t mind. Just don’t get upset if somebody calls you on the overgeneralization.

85

Okay then, we cool. (And I agree with you that most men are unlikely to lie about women’s reproductive functions, though ISTM that some of them will lie about their own. Surely at least some of the guys who say “It’s okay honey, we don’t need to use a condom because I have a low sperm count!” or “We only need a condom for my first ejaculation in one night!” must be aware that it’s bullshit.)

86

While we’re at it, would there be any hope at all of getting rid of articles?

87

I guess I thought it went without saying that some people are just ignorant. If I were a guy, I’d be so wary of believing women who say they “can’t” conceive. I’d wonder if I were getting snookered. And then I went on to wonder about women who might do the snookering, NOT the women who just really didn’t know the truth. Women who are genuinely ignorant, while I think that’s rather inexcusable, were not the subject of my ire, and thus not in the thread title. I guess my mistake was assuming the 2 specific women in question were lying rather than ignorant. I still think one was, but the other, maybe not.

I think it was a pithy thread title that got misinterpreted. Maybe that’s a backpedal, but I don’t think so.

I also don’t think calling me a stupid liar was remotely accurate or warranted. WhyNot seems to think that breastfeeding can, in certain scenarios, be birth control. I don’t believe it. Too many kids born 11 months apart for that to be a hard and fast thing. Thus, her basis for casting that particular aspersion was a point she failed to make.

88

Why does the breastfeeding method need to be perfect to be applicable at all? We don’t apply this standard to other forms of birth control. If the failure rate is 2% under perfect application*, then yeah, people will get pregnant sometimes. That’s the 2%. Lots of women get pregnant using the pill, or condoms, or both. Everyone seems to know someone. I know more of these than accidental 11 month babies. Doesn’t invalidate them as birth control. I mean, it’s unfortunate for your friend, certainly, but it’s not any different from women who take a pill every day at 7:15 AM and get pregnant anyway.

*For the sake of argument, I’m going to trust the numbers from the WHO.

Yllaria, there is no method of guaranteed birth control. The only way any method (even multiple methods together) could guarantee you wouldn’t get pregnant is to have a taboo on sex (or to involve hysterectomy or castration, I suppose). There’s a doper who got pregnant through tied tubes. The only question is how good one’s odds are.

Not in any way directed at at you personally, but I think the idea that there’s anything 100% is another peice of unfortunate reproductive misinformation/ignorance. It seems really common, too. And there are lots of people out there that will use that eroneous assumption to look down on anyone who gets pregnant by accident.

89

Some women are just superfertile. I have a girlfriend who gets pregnant immediately if she tries with her husband. Breastfeeding - doesn’t matter (and she is about as LLL hippie granola about the on demand, no suppliment, as it gets). They’ve ALWAYS used two forms of birth control - ever since the first oops.

On the other hand, I have a non-birthcontrol oops - but we tried for three years and went through a year of infertility treatment. We are happy to have her, but both my husband and I were convinced we couldn’t conceive. I’m not sure if I would have told some guy I didn’t have a history with that I was safe (we don’t know if it was me or him - he wasn’t Captain Spermcount, but I wasn’t exactly Miss Stable Hormones either - however, neither was bad enough to be tagged as the cause), but WE certainly weren’t intending to conceive. And I certainly wasn’t lying to my husband about our chances.

Just a note on Taking Charge of Your Fertility - like many infertile women I’ve talked to - I hate that book. As does my Reproductive Endocronologist. Ms. Weschlers interpretations are - simplistic and optimistic. At least in the edition I have. It may work fine for not getting pregnant (not for my superfertile friend, but for normal people) but its about the most patronizing thing imaginable for people with unexplained infertility (which she doesn’t seem to “believe” in.)

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Do men still say, “Don’t worry baby, it’s okay, I’m sterile”? Way back in the day that used to be pretty common.

91

And there’s the opposite–the man who told my sister that yes, he wanted a child, too…and neglected to tell her about his past vasectomy.

Sex=lies a lot of the time.

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Actually, perfect use of the pill is a .3%chance of getting pregnant. Those are some good odds, I’d say. I’ve been on the pill for many years and never had a pregnancy or a scare, and you can bet that, in that time, there have been occasions of imperfect use on my part. Not too many, though. I’m paranoid about having an unplanned pregnancy. That’s some damned good birth control, the best there is after the Mirena IUD, which I’d get if I wasn’t planning on having a kid in less than 2 years. I don’t understand why people take birth control so casually.

I think a lot of women who get pregnant on the Pill aren’t diligent about it, or have a drug interaction, or something. See my cite about the stats on perfect use. My friend actually figured out that she got pregnant on the Pill because she left them, uncovered, under a very hot, bright desk lamp almost continuously. She thinks she denatured them. Shit like that can happen and it ain’t the Pill’s fault.

Perfect use with the Pill is much, much easier than what WhyNot is suggesting, which is that a woman be home and breast feeding continuously for 6 months. The woman in my OP was NOT DOING THAT, nor can most working women. Also, this woman used the “I’m breast feeding” excuse for about 2 years (and I don’t know if she was even breast feeding that long anyway), so there goes THAT one, right out the window. The woman in my OP just did not fucking want to use birth control and had multiple flimsy reasons why not to. Is that not possible? Is that not fucked up?

Here’s the problem I saw with that-- lactation can only be used as a method of birth control if a woman is amenorrhic. The second she has a period, she finds out she’s not amenorrhic… possibly too late. That means that she could be ovulating and not know it because she hasn’t been menstruating for months, and won’t know she if she is fertile again until after she already is. Put it this way-- I wouldn’t trust it.

There are accidents and then there are “accidents.” If you don’t think some women bullshit their men so they can get knocked up, you’re kidding yourself. We all know some of those, too, I’m sure. I dared to say it and then I was accused of all sorts of anti-woman sentiment, excusing men, and called a stupid liar. But it happens. All the time. Not backing down from that either.

I wish there was a Pill men could take. That would level the playing field right out.

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Wait, what? I genuinely thought women could not get pregnant from a sexual act done during the period. The way I learned the whole cycle thing is that it starts from ovulation. The egg comes down mr. tube, and sits in El Uterus for 20ish days, and then… the cleansing. During this time of bleeding and cramping, I thought there was no egg in the uterus for the sperm legion to impregnate.

I know sperm are resilient suckers and that if sex is done during the period and then the shiny new egg comes a few days later, the woman can get pregnant… oh wait, I just answered my own fucking question.

I’ll be over in the dunce corner now.

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Every time I go to the ObGyn I get a different one (or so it seems). Every time, they see that I have juvenile acne (juvenile my 39yo ass) and say “it gets worse around your period, right?” “No, actually: when I look in the mirror and see perfect skin, I know it’s about to come.” " :confused: Sorry?" “The acne gets less bad during my period.” “No way.” “shrug I’ve been living with my zits and my periods for over 20 years, I’d say I know when I have which.”

For some reason, this has several times led to them going over the whole list… cramps, mood swings, painful breasts… “and you’re more excited midway between periods, right?” “No, when I’m having my period.” " :dubious: No way." etc etc

From. The. Freaking. ObGyn. Who have all been female except for that gorilla I got when I was 15.

If OBGYNs can be so mistaken about how female bodies work (mostly because, like my SiL the GP, they conflate “the average” with “the only possible value”), why does anybody expect a regular woman to know better?

95

I did the exact same thing, and was thinking, “OW!”

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It’s OK Baby, I’m on the Pill… (yeah that won’t work either)

97

Or your own question about fucking. :stuck_out_tongue:

Actually, you scenario is highly unlikely, although I won’t claim it impossible. With the downward flow of Aunt Flo, the sperm would almost certainly be ejected along with the menstrual fluid. Also, sperm only live inside the woman for days IF she’s at a fertile part of her cycle where there is nourishing cervical fluid present. Y’know how men make a bunch of stuff besides sperm in their semen? We make something similar for a few days a month, and it provides a nice slippery race track and the perfect pH environment to keep the sperm alive for a few days until the egg shows up. The rest of the month, including at menstruation, that isn’t there, and the sperm can only live a few hours in a very hostile environment. The same pH that kills most bacteria before they can get up into the uterus kills most sperm before they can get up into the uterus - unless that cervical fluid is there to neutralize it.

See Post 52 in this thread for the Straight Dope on getting pregnant during your “period”. (Short version: it looks and feels like a period, but it isn’t and you can ovulate at any time during it.)

98

Reminds me of a friend I had in college. He was an aerospace engineer, but an idiot as well (not all rocket scientists are rocket scientists). His girlfriend had more than one abortion because they were using the rhythm method. Not that reliable to start with, but they were doing it EXACTLY OPPOSITE. They were only having sex at her most fertile times. Damn, but he was a dim bulb.

99

Dang, the X-Men writers are really starting to reach, aren’t they?

100

When I was a “first-time sufferer” of a yeast infection and didn’t know what was going on, my period was a relief because the YI symptoms would subside. And yeah, I was hornier around then too.