The main article suggests that as one of the best alternatives.
And yes, they are reversible.
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This is great.
Another thing I teach in colleges is that men have the power to control their ejaculation. It requires practice, but it’s a skill that will serve them over a lifetime.
If you can control when you ejaculate, you can pull out, check the condom, and then let 'er rip.
Depending on other health factors of the patient, odds of succesful reversal can be anywhere from 40% to 90%. You can also freeze some swimmers, which I did long before my vasectomy because I figured freeze 'em while their in their prime.
So can tubal ligations. But the odds are low enough that an objective risk analysis will relegate it to relative unlikelihood. There’s no absolutely surefire birth control, but vasectomies come damn close.
Cheaper than pregnancy. IJS.
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I think you missed my point.
My point is that its not a good option for wide spread adoption. Not a good option as a default for men. And has serious drawbacks when looking at it from a population and public health standpoint. It’s not an equivilent to the pill, IUDs, implants, rings, and patches available for women.
Not that it doesnt work.
The chief drawback is that its expensive. However minor vasectomy is a surgery. It requires a doctors visit, referal, follow up visits. And periodic monitoring to check that it took and hasn’t spontaneously reversed. So functionally. You arent getting a vasectomy without deep pockets or health insurance.
And however comparatively rare failures and spontaneous reversals are. They’re difficult to detect. When a condom breaks, or you miss a pill, or your IUD expires. You know. You can pick up a morning after pill if need be. Or get that shit resituated. Unless you’re monitoring sperm count and happen to catch it. With a vasectomy your walking around fertile and don’t known it. A small chance for you as an individual. But across millions of men, a problem from the minimizing unwanted pregnancies stand point.
Deliberate reversal is enough of a “probably but not always” that this isn’t considered reversable birth control. It was never intended to be reversable, and it isnt treated as such. So the fact that we can often reverse it is more about in case you change your mind. Than it is about you should plan on it.
Any given individual can weigh the pros and cons. Shortcomings and complications against the effectiveness and their own situation. And it very well may work for them, and be a good fit.
But taken as a strategy for large groups of people to engage in that whole family planning thing. Vasectomies are of pretty limited use. Just like tubal ligation. And just about noone is gonna say “Hey men! Take responsibility for your own reproductive health. Get a vasectomy!”.
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I don’t think there is a default form of birth control for anyone. The Twitter thread though isn’t about that; it’s about straight and bi men taking responsibility for their end of sex with women and mitigating the risk of undesired pregnancy, and highlights the fact that the onus is placed almost exclusively on women.
So yeah, vasectomies aren’t one size fits all; no birth control is. But it’s a great option for a lot of men and there’s a certain amount of reductive scaremongering that goes on around it. The practical reality is that most guys aren’t deterred from getting a vasectomy by the cost.
And none here have.
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A lot of guys my age I know who don’t want any more kids got them. It seems like it’s a pretty common option, especially with the divorced ones who are dating again.
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This oversimplification is infuriating. It completely ignores all other motivations for abortion. How will pulling out cure massive birth defects or fetal demise? Or prevent women from dying from things like preeclampsia? This sort of advice just perpetuates the idiotic Conservative notion that abortions are just birth control.
Nevermind the “use a condom” advice does nothing when condoms fail.
The author should also be aware that the medical & insurance industries make it hard for adults who want to be sterilized to get it. Doctors don’t like to do a permanent sterilization on someone who is young and who has no kids. Some doctors refuse to do it outright. Some insurance companies wont cover an “elective” procedure.
Let’s face it: abortion foes aren’t really worried about saving children. They are the same people who block access to contraception, block accessibility to medical care, and de-fund programs like WIC and food stamps.a better label for them would be “anti-womens-autonomy”. How dare women decide for themselves?!
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I’ve been pointing out the short comings of its “condoms and pulling out” suggestions. And the limited options for men as goes quality birth control options. For two reasons.
First. Relying on men to bear the weight of birth control would increase the number of unwanted pregnancies. Rather than reduce them. Because birth control options for men are pretty damn limited. And have serious short comings in real world circumstances.
Second. On a personal responsibility stand front. As a dude who wants to take responsibility on this front. There’s only so far you can take it because options for men are so limited.
The thread also frames it as “eliminating abortion”. Not as men taking responsibilty for their part in this. And as many people have pointed out (myself included) people who are that sort of concerned about abortion. Arent OK with birth control either. I don’t think any of the pro choice people here would argue that eliminating abortions is the most important part of this conversation.
For women its the pill. To the point that there are many pills now. As well as methods for delivering the drugs contained there in that don’t involve any actual pills.
The guys you know. There was a point where i was detered from riding the subway because the $5 round trip was better used on food or rent.
I can shout “public health” and “across populations” a few more times if you like. But vasectomies have a rather high buy in, comparatively. However much that cost is spread out over many years of “use”. And big chunks of the population simply don’t have the funds for it. Even if its cheaper in the long run than a child. Because big chunks of the population arent in an “in the long run” ecconomic situation.
Of course they haven’t. I’m just trying to find a simple way to demonstrate where vasectomies sit in the hirearchy of birth control.
People say “just get the pill” and “just go pickup some condoms” all the time when this subject comes up.
Shit like vasectomies simply don’t sit in the same tier.
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As @mysterr pointed out early in the thread, the satire of Swiftian hyperbole is lost in the angst-ridden earnestness of the Internet. One could say Swift goes woosh.
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Your giving it a bit to much credit. Its a twitter “hot take” on the commonly pointed out fact that men make bullshit excuses about condoms combined with a mischaracterization of one of the factual arguments from the pro choice movement.
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I had a vasectomy, and had none of those things. I went to go to a specialist, signed a form that I understood that it’s sterilisation, suffered the needles of a couple of local anesthetics (administered by the specialist) in the nutsack, watched my balls get shaved, lay back and thought of England, then walked around carefully for a few days. That was basically it.
Single payer healthcare is fucking awesome.
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Well even when some one else is paying. Its relatively expensive to conduct.
So in terms of how to allocate public/donation dollars its usually not high on the list. Condoms are cheap as hell, but have those reliabiloty issues. The pill is relatively cheap per dose, but its a continual expense, and comes with the added expense of maintaining a script. And has compliance and side effect issues. The gold standard on that front is IUDs. They can have a high initial price (though lower than surgeries), especially in the US where they’re harder to come by. But they’re semi-perminant, fully reversible, require zero attention from the user, and Have very low rates of complications or side effects. Womens and public health groups seem to moving towards IUDs over handing out condoms and setting people up with low cost pills.
Fwiw, I (cis straight dude here) have had multiple partners tell me that sex without a condom feels better for them, too. Not just for me.
Not something we’ve done without taking other precautions. Or, you know, alternately when in the process of deliberate babymaking.
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This cannot be so, unless such a ridiculous regulation is completely unenforced.
I discovered condoms are available in many sizes when I was over 30 (but I made sure my son knew by the time he was 20).
Annoyingly, the sizes have little to do with the labeling. 
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I dunno about you. But when I go shopping for condoms I notice a curious lack of sizing statements on the boxes.
With the notable exception of one or two brands like Trojan Magnums which explictly call themselves XL or Large. Theres also a lack of sizing options within a given type. You’re not going to find Bonerz Extra Feels in small medium and large. You can’t go find a size 23 condom in your prefered brand and model.
That’s part of why there are so many different styles in each brand. With effectively one size per style, and no way to guage what the size is from packaging. Siizing statements tend to be pretty vague like “snug fit”. If you look up the actual dimensions of the damn things they’re all within about 5mm of each other.
I can’t seem to track it down right now but way back there was Savage Love column on the subject. Apparently (at least at the time) there was some sort of base line standard for an average penis all condoms are supposed to fit. Since its based on the mandrel used to make then manufacturers can make a condom bigger or smaller than that by manipulating shape and manufacturing methods so the condoms are a bit bigger or smaller than that base line, even as the madrel isn’t. But they’re not all that different from one another. Your Magnum has to be just as capable of fitting the average hooha as your Ultra Snug.
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This place sells samplers which is one of the few ways to easily find something to fit one’s particular, um, needs. Yeah, needs, that’s exactly the word I was looking for.
Yeah. I don’t need advice for my personal… needs. But look at your own link. Its the retailer grading them by size. And if you click the “small”, its mostly Japanese condoms. From what I understand Asian and European condoms do (at least some times) come in sizes, and there’s a lot more variance along the range of large and small ones. Least ways “look for imported condoms” seems to be the common advice for people who can’t find US brands that work.
US condoms are different sizes. From brand to brand, from label to label. But US condoms do not come in sizes.
You can find charts of the actual dimensions across US condom brands and styles. The spread in terms of width is about 1/2 to 1/3 of an inch. Length varies more but is less pertinent since that shit rolls. Condoms stretch of course so they’ll cover a wider band of… needs than the “unladen” measures. But its still a pretty narrow set of sizes.
Here’s one from your own site, it seems to have some errors in it though.
https://www.condomdepot.com/condom-information/condom-size-chart/
Imagine if pants only came in one fixed size per brand, and all of them were somewhere around 34w x 34l, but with an elastic waistband.
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Obligatory, and.to end the derail:
Just look at it.
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