h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry Blicky, your phrasing just sounded like a line from a bad blacksploitation movie, that's all.

I have to say Hoo, you are managing to come across like a bitter DH Laurence character who can only see sex as a battle ground between the sexes...

Adele: THANK YOU!

I had no idea we agreed so closely.

Case for the prosecution, exhibit "A": an adult female, who self identifies as "intelligent" and a "feminist".

"When the pill became generally available, I found that my right as a girl (which I was then) to decline to have sex, was gone."

Is there any clearer statement an adult could make complaining about being given choice and responsibility? Short of kneeling down and BEGGING to have their decisions made for them? "Oh no, I now have control over my fertility. Please daddy, don't make me have to think what to do with my new choices!"

As Potholer pointed out, the Pill gave your MORE rights. Along with that came the sudden responsibility to lie and deceive a little less, i.e. to be honest and say "I don't want to".

Thank you, Adele. I could not have hoped for a better demonstration of women's desire, nay, DEMAND, to be treated like irresponsible infants.

There arent any bad blaxploitation movies, are there?

Anyway for all the power struggles that exist or more often than not are blown out of all proportion by paranoid individuals and those with a vested interest who welcome them as a basic divide and conquor tool, there is a simple cure. Understanding.

I have no personal prjudices or grudges against any ethnicity, my calm and enlightened reflection on "race issues" is afforded me by my mixed ethnic heritage.

In the same way I understand maleness because I have been doing it nearly all my life. I understand women because one of my parents is a woman, both of my grandmothers were women and all of my sisters. Nearly all of my girlfriends have been women, but thats what happens if you drink far too much and start chatting to husky voiced women with big hands in dodgy Belgian pubs,

On that, we are agreed. Being on the pill doesn't mean you *have* to have sex, any more than owning an air pistol doesn't mean you have to shoot pigeons.

Hoo,
I think it's *more* a case of the stretching of the word 'rights' beyond the proper meaning. That seems to happen rather a lot these days, and is by no means confined to feminism or women.


Playing devil's advocate in one direction, I don't doubt there are/were places where 'I'm scared of getting pregnant' would be one response least likely to generate hostility in retarded males.

On the other hand, if fear of pregnancy was the apparent sole reason for refusing sex, I suppose 'That's OK, I'll use a rubber' would be a awkward reply to deal with, and if the places someone hung out were replete with undesirable males requesting sex, I assume many people would find somewhere else to hang out (maybe with more desirable and/or less sex-mad men), or choose not to hang out at all.

Mayby this makes me a bit sad, but in my experience women never have any difficulty turning men down for sex!

There is an awful lot going on in this conversation and I donät have the time to go through all the points raised so instead youäre going to get my situation... sorry

I welcome the male pill because for the first time the decision to conceive must truly be a joint decision - you take your pill, Iäll take mine - until we are ready for a family. Neither party has the sole responsibility to remember to take their pill every day, both do.

My choice is to use depo, the injectible contraceptive. I want children, as does my partner, just not right now. We decided that this would be the best method for us as it is much harder to have an accident that results in a pregnancy but it is still down to me to make the time to get injected. We try to share this a little because it is his job to remind me two weeks beforehand. Ultimately I suppose it is still down to me to make sure it happens but by giving him some small job (remind me to book an appointment) he has to think about it, he has to keep one eye on the calendar and remember when the last one was and when the next one should be. Sometimes he forgets and I point out to him what could happen if I forgot too.

With the pill it only takes one lapse of concentration (a phone call while you are getting ready in the morning for example) and you arenät protected. It isnät a perfect method, none of them are.

I really believe that men should have equal responsibilities and rights after a child is born, this will be a lot easier to achieve if they have equal rights and responsibilities before it is conceived. The grey area in between must still favour the woman right up until we can safely take an unwanted foetus out of a woman and place it in an artifical womb to gestate to term when then man wants the child but the woman doesnät. We cannot force a woman to have an abortion but if men can avoid unwanted pregnancy by taking their own pill then we must assume that if the result of sex was pregnancy then both parties colluded to bring it about.

If the man doesnät want to take actual care of the child then he must still take financial care of it, and the same applies if it is the woman that walks away.

I have to get off this pc now, or Iäd bang on for a while longer. Iäll be back, as the governor of california would say.

>>Your *right* to decline to have sex wasn't gone at all. (Indeed, I assume you still exercised it.) <<
Certainly, being honest about your feelings might well carry more risks than being diplomatically dishonest, but that's not really an issue of rights as such. Besides honesty, I'd have thought there were various other possible softer refusals still usable even once the pill had arrived.<<

Yes, I still exercised my right not to have sex - but refusal was a whole lot more difficult. I always had a problem dealing with male anger (still do, as it happens) and there are a lamentably large number of men who think they're God's gift, and therefore took a refusal as a right for *them* to go into meltdown - as they were so 'desirable' (yeah, right.) they wouldn't accept any excuse short of pregnancy, (my) mental problems (frigidity) or the dreaded period!
Boors, every one of them. When I was older, I met a better class of men, or just more grown up, although I still met the occasional boor...

"I still exercised my right not to have sex - but refusal was a whole lot more difficult."

Welcome to life as an adult.

"I always had a problem dealing with male anger (still do, as it happens)"

Duh.

On available evidence, you have an ongoing problem dealing with *anything* prefixed by the word "male".

And you're STILL on your knees begging daddy to take your responsibility away.

H.

I really don't think you can complain about the pill in that way. If you can't find a way say no without lying then that's your own fault. If they won't leave you alone, that's their fault for harassment.

The real problems with the pill are that is affects hormone levels, and that its not completely effective, so you should really use a condom or other contraceptive as well if you're worried about kids.

If this new implant/injection method does turn out to be 100% reliable in more intensive studies then that will be a good improvement, and also an incredibly achievement. It still seems to contain hormones, however, so I am somewhat skeptical about their claims of "no side effects". Still a marked step forward however, and an attractive option. An injection every few months is not a big commitment.

BBIM, If I may call you that. I wonder where you got the information from that the pill is not 100% effective?

According to the textbooks, and what I've been taught, then the pill is nearly 100% effective IF taken properly. The problems arise when it isn't taken properly. It's actually more effective than condoms, which are 97% effective apparently if used correctly. But I'd say it's a lot easier to take the pill properly than use a condom.

It does have hormonal affects for some women, but for some others they find that their PMT improves and their periods are lighter.

Yes you should use a condom as well, to protect against, HIV, and other STDS.

it amazes me how straight people will sleep with a partner without a condom, just because they have been together for a while, in the gay communtiy (well of my friends, so the gay university students) no one has condomless sex, unless they have been for AIDs tests together.Those who are feeling cautions, including myself, think that that is too much of a risk to take.

Right, I forgot I should add my thoughts on the implant method.

What it seems to do, (according to the newspapers which isn't really a reliable source), is to cut off the supply of GnRH the hormone that tells the testes to produce both sperm and testosterone. Then they give you testosterone replacement which would mean that you would be able to feel sexually active, grow a beard, have a deep voice.

I have been on testerone replacement myself for another reason, and have had mixed results, there are two sorts 3 weekly injections, which I found quite painful, (I could hardly walk for days, until I learnt *exactly* which spot to put them in, something i could only work out because I was injecting myself by trial and error - everyone's legs are different so it would be difficult to get this if someone else was injecting).

The main disadvantage I found was that I got a peak of hormones at one stage of the week and then a trough, so guess what - it's a bit like a women's periods. Not good.

After loosiing my temper with my housemates I'm now on transdermal testerstone, like a nicotine patch but larger. It works very well, but I'm still conscious of the fact that I can control my testerstone levels. For instance if I don't want to be distracted by thinking about sex every 5 seconds.. I can leave it off! - I just know that it really affects my moods if I do, I get depressed for no reason and irrational.


I've never produced normal testerstone so I don't know what it's like, but given the choice i'd much rather produce normal testersone than do this.

It seems a lot of hassle just for a contraceptive. But then again if we were teh ones having a baby then I'm pretty sure that it would seem less hassle!

I believe you have that the wrong way round, although I could be wrong, all my information is from PSHE lessons, which I haven't had for well over a year.

From what I remember, all of the various "proper contraceptives" were from 95-99%, with properly used condoms being top at 99% effective. Which means that 1 in 100 people using them will get pregnant each year .

Anyway, there is certainly no reversible contraceptive that is 100% effective available at the moment. Best to use 2 or more methods.

Surely it means that 1 in 100 times the condom failed- ie slipped/broke, meaning that 1 in 100 of the women using them will have a *chance* of getting pregnant?

"Which means that 1 in 100 people using them will get pregnant each year"

Indeed - your maths implies they are only having sex once a year.

99% effective means they will get pregnant once in every 100 times they have sex. Not very reliable to a young couple I wouldn't have thought...

F

>> 99% effective means they will get pregnant once in every 100 times they have sex. Not very reliable to a young couple I wouldn't have thought...

Being pedantic, if we were talking 1% physical failure of a condom on a per-use basis, the pregnancy chance would be roughly 1% that of a pregnancy resulting from one instance of unprotected sex, and that's assuming the failure is catastrophic enough to let a roughly normal quantity of sperm free.

Fathom,

Well, at least nobody is saying that condoms *don't* work. I thought this link you posted on another thread might be interesting to some people here as well.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3176982.stm


az

Thanks Az,

I was wondering if I should put it on one or two other related threads. Most people who are interested in this sort of thing will probably either see it here or on 'God, fact or fiction'. I'm surprised no-one else has brought it up yet as there are a number of researchers I would expect to be 'sensitive' to this issue.

Imagine: one of the World's major religions spreading dangerous lies in a deliberate and cynical campaign.

F

The Vatican is Europes biggest and longest running deliberate and cynical lie factory.

Of course they dont believe their own speil. Obeserve one pontif in a car that has bullet proof glass, "now there's faith in action" Bill Hicks.