Thread: Women + Birth Control - Men = ?????!!!!!!!

It can be difficult to know sometimes what is true but I've read more than one source, that have seemed to be authoratative, that there is a "slant" to BC research. It is essentially driven by religious/cultural imperatives which still hold a belief and stigma regarding women's sexuality and reproductive freedom. This has been suspected of creating a sort hidden agenda, an attitude that BC and sex shouldn't be carefree and easy. There have been reports of meetings in the Pharma companies with individuals working on this research stating that it goes against their personal beliefs. If the people developing the product have conflicting goals; one being to create money making drugs, the other being religious conviction that restricting conception or having non-marital sex is wrong, it isn't too far fetched to believe they would have a leaning toward products with less than optimum comfort to use. Given the movement of doctors and pharamacists (in the US) who started refusing to prescribe or dispense the MAP to anyone and in some cases BC to single women, it isn't much of a mental leap to assume the same attitude exsists in research.

Historically this attitude has greatly affected the approach to childbirth, gynecology and women's health. If you'd like a real low down on this read Mary Daly's, Gyn-Ecology and Jessica Mitford's, The American Way of Birth. Giving birth laying on your back creates muscle, nerve and tissue damage (this is why so many women have trouble with incontience and urinary urgency) and puts baby and mother at higher risk, yet we continue this practice routinely because it allows greater ease of use for various monitors and machines, most of which are rarely actually needed but rack up the dollars. The bible states that women should give birth in pain and suffering and this forms an underlying premise, conscious or not, for many working in this field.

The attitudes go beyond reproductive health, for all we hear about breast cancer (until recently that research was done on men) heart disease kills far more women. Yet even today many health care givers who can readily recite the signs of a heart attack in men, cannot tell you the different symptoms that a woman will exhibit.

We need more women and men in all phases of these sciences, who are not tainted by this kind of thinking. And we need a great attitude of responsibilty and accountablity. Both genders have a vested interest in preventing unplanned pregnancy there are men who and women who are careless about this and there are those who actually undermine efforts to prevent pregnancy. There are women who get pregnant hoping to entrap a man into committing to them. There are men who view getting a woman pregnant as some sort of badge of manhood - unfortunately they seem to be the least likely to view raising and supporting a child as badge of manhood. We need reliable methods of conception control for both genders, with the clear understanding that killing your sexual desire in the process is not an acceptable "method". You can bet that if a BC for men came out with half the side effects women deal with, it would be a flop. But then if women started refusing to use anything that had objectionable effects and said "no nookie until I get something that does the job right" we might see some real speedy results?