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Sorted for Oestrogen and Whizz? What are your contraceptive choices?

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17:36 / 05.11.02

Of course, I'm a hearty advocate of covering one's entire body in latex...

17:40 / 05.11.02

After a lifetime of condoms (ok, 15 years of condoms), I am finally condom-free and loving it. About a year into our relationship, my girlfriend went on the pill. We're monogamous, tested, and at this point in our lives (knock on wood) it wouldn't be exactly disastrous if we got pregnant (though our goal is more like a few years from now).

I have two het friends who are of the school of men that don't use condoms. They both say their willies go soft the second they're on. I don't know if that's just their excuse or some kind of psychological things. They both go to what I would consider extreme lengths to make up for it (pulling out, calendars, anal, etc.), but I have to say it worries me a bit.

17:54 / 05.11.02

If they use calendars they're idiots. Calendars are NOT safe, as any fule kno...

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:41 / 05.11.02

I'm going to call my first child hetpensex...

18:48 / 05.11.02

Even rolled up really tight, they still have a hole at both ends.

Think just about every straight couple of my acquaintance abjures the pill but not necessarily because of their love of rubber, rather because of the dangers which the female partner would be running by pumping herself full of those hormones. The morning after pill seems to grow in popularity however.

Being more of the penetrative persuasion than my partner, I would use condoms and rather like them. However, my problem with them is that the whole business of spontaneous devouring of one another has to be suspended whilst one partner suddenly gets a clear head and goes to find one of the little buggers. Tricky and not always a reliable plan. Particularly if you, like me, found having a skinful of intoxicants a necessary adjunct to getting the breeks off some lusty young buck.

In pre-Ganesh days, my observation was that the foil packets would generally be torn open with teeth and, in the absence of a water based lube, margarine or worse would be substituted. Given the desire to use condoms and their availability, most men still need to learn how to drive one.

There is also the handy information printed on many packs that the preservatif should be unfurled over the virile member before you get a stiffie. What tosh. Can't be done. Best thing, after virginity, for avoiding a lonnggg list of STD's though.

The Apple-Picker

22:46 / 05.11.02

Ignatius J, I'm just saying that getting tested before you go sans condom doesn't spare either party in a monogamous relationship of being exposed to or contracting some STDs. And, as Ganesh pointed out, condoms aren't exactly gonna keep you safe from all those STDs anyway.

You're free to make your own choice. Folks just need to know what they're really choosing, is all.

And no. I don't live in the Hudsom Valley. I live in the Miami Valley... or, I did. But why on Earth do you ask?

23:10 / 05.11.02

Yes, Apple, I agree with you. I was just curious to see if you had a different idea about when to check/go commando.

Hudson Valley because I think I remember being told "Apple-Picker" was old-fashioned NYC slang for people who live there, or at least in the lower part, on account of all the orchards.

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:23 / 06.11.02

been thinking about this alot...

Okay - medics - where do i find reasonably reliable info on the sideffects/risks of the Pill?

Scanning uninformedly around the 'net it all seems incredbily biased. This is something else that really concerns me; it seems pretty difficult to get information that's worth basing a decision on. I feel pretty strongly that the Pill is still the easy option as far as patriarchy not having to deal with fertility/reproductive sexuality is concerned. 'Here girls, pop a pill and let's get on with it' 'Sideffects? nah... don't need to worry about that, love'

I think part of my refusal to take the Pill stems from this... I've never felt like I have enough information to make an informed choice, and I'm not going to make an uninformed choice on this. There's something unpleasantly 1950s about a situation where women may well be ending up (through a slightly more subtle/mediated means) taking unneccessary risks with their bodies due to lack of information/empowerment.

Also the long-termism of it frightens me. I have plenty of friends who (in their late 20s/early 30s) been on the pill for at least half of their lives, and are likely to be on it until the menopause - a likely span of around 45 years. I just *can't* believe that altering your hormonal balances so severely for that long doesn't effect the body. And this might not be such an issue if it was the only solution/method for contraception.

I have a big problem with how in straight culture it's *still* sold as the only long-term solution, the automatic choice, in spite of the dangers associated with it, how there doesn't seem to be much (if any) discussion of the relative merits of various forms of contraception and disease control/protection.

00:51 / 07.11.02

Bengali, I see what you're saying on most points. But (and I know I'm on thin ice here because the pill has often been dishonestly touted as liberating for women) if you're on the pill, you, and only you, are in control of your reproductive destiny? Even if your partner is irresponsible or abusive?

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:50 / 07.11.02

Ig (if i may call you that) - I do take your point, thought someone would pull me on it...there *is* empowerment in technologies that allow women to take charge of their fertility... or perhaps there is the potential for empowerment, but the technology does not empower if the context within which the choice is made is disempowering. Or if there isn't a choice. Perhaps this is what I'm saying: if the Pill is presented, as I think it is, as the only real option (when it clearly isn't), there is no choice or control... And I'm beginning to think that this suits a patriarchal society down to the ground...

Sorry, woolly-headed but will come back.

16:11 / 07.11.02

I'm not sure how you get to the idea of the Pill being presented as the "only real option". For a start, clearly there's always the option not to take it, which means a level of empowerment straight off.

As long as there are methods of contraception available to women, they will always be under pressure to take them to satisfy other people's demands. The Pill may be so easy to incorporate into your daily life that it's easy to persuade women to take it regularly... but that's not an argument against it. Convenience is mostly a plus point. Should contraception be made more difficult to use (like the condom)?

I find the idea of healthy people medicating themselves for half their lives worrying too, but it's not really different from, say, some people on psychiatric drugs long-term who really don't need them. I don't consider it an aspect of patriarchy.

All of the supporters I've known of pill against condom have been women, interestingly, although I can't say I've discussed that issue with a vast number of people. Men who are interested in contraception at all often mistrust the pill - or rather, they don't trust women to take it regularly, accidentally or deliberately.

16:34 / 07.11.02

Bengali> Well, if you're saying the pill is marketed to women as the ultimate solution and is parallel to, say, the dieting industry, I could agree.

But I think the only responsible way round both of these problems, like Apple-Picker said, is education -- Folks just need to know what they're really choosing. Discouraging the use of the pill on political grounds ... feeling a bit woolly myself here ... well, being pregnant is a real-world thing and all the politics in the world won't make any difference.

I think also (probably because I am a man) that, yes, the pill suits the patriarch because it shunts all the work onto the woman, but the major reason it's sold is because it makes a lot of money, every day, every week, for the drug companies, in a way that e.g. condoms and certainly non-penhetsex don't.

Goodness Gracious Meme

17:10 / 07.11.02

"Discouraging the use of the pill on political grounds ... feeling a bit woolly myself here ... well, being pregnant is a real-world thing and all the politics in the world won't make any difference."

Absolutely, you've nailed something that was making me really uncomfortable about my posts. Am a bit concerned that I sound like I want to make contraception harder to get hold of. which I really don't, no fucking way.

Will have to think about this, before I turn into barbelith's answer to Ann Widdecombe.

Tryphena Absent

17:17 / 07.11.02

You'll never be as mad as Ann Widdecombe. Very few people have the level of insanity that she does.

19:46 / 07.11.02

Bengali: am currently quite shocked at how accurate your description of the web is - the Mayo Clinic website comes up with no readable information, and the National Institutes of Health offers information, but the only user friendly pages are a bit misleading on the side effects front.
Except this one, which restores some of my faith. Some. You have to scroll down.
I'm sure magazines like Prevention have easier-to-reach overviews.

22:06 / 07.11.02

wait, 'Nesh.. aren't you a harry bastard? that whole latex thing makes me giggle.

So, how come no one's mentioned Depro Provera?
It's an injection that you get once every 3 months, and it's something like 98% effective, which is higher then the pill. Side effects, often you don't have a period. Period. When you do, it's for like 3 weeks.
When stopping taking the injections (which are done in a doctor's office) it can take up to 18 months to become pregnant. How's it work? It stops the body from sending the signal to the ovaries to release the egg once a month. Can also cause some weight gain, as I experianced when I did it first time. stopped taking it when insurance ran out at that job, been on nothing since then. Keep condoms by the bed, tho why, since it's been since april, i have no idea. anyway. i've never been on the pill, somewhat scared of the thing, frankly.
prefer non lubed condoms as don't make me all 'wierd' a few days later down yonder.
and 'Nesh...? the foreskin thing? i've heard you can get that fixed with surgery, I know someone in the UK who did that, circumsized too short as a child. however you need to not be errect for about 6 weeks, and they take the skin from you thigh to do it.
hope that 'helps' ...

20:41 / 13.03.06

Resurrecting a very old thread, because I've recently read a thread on TMO in which lots of women seemed to have trouble with the Pill and a great number of the side effects -especially the being more unhappy one -seemed be very similar to my own experiences. Until I read that thread, though, I'd never really connected the time I started taking the Pill with the time I stopped being (in my own perception at least) quite so able to deal with things. To be honest, I think I blamed it on the fact I'd stopped eating fried breakfasts every morning. I'm interested in what women on Barbelith think about this, because there seemed to be quite a number of women on TMO who had had some degree of unhappy experience with the Pill; I'd like to know how widespread that is, what other people's experiences were and how they dealt with them.

So -four years on, what are your contraceptive choices now? Has the Pill worked for you, or not?

21:15 / 13.03.06

I took the Pill for... I think it was around 6-8 months, a couple of years ago. I hated it. I had nearly every "minor" side effect possible, including weight gain (NOT a myth!), bloating, moodiness, irregular periods, breakthrough bleeding, greatly decreased sex drive, and (sorry, TMI) dryness. And this was on the mildest form of BPC available. In the first place I just wanted to give it a try, since I never had, and I was in a monogamous relationship and had had my gyn checkup, and also I was hoping to regulate my cycle... but as the months wore on the effects were just getting worse, and finally I had to ask myself why I was bothering to take a contraceptive if I never even wanted to have sex anymore, and my cycle was still irregular.

Other than that I've always gone the condom route. And to tell you the truth, it's sort of a sad 'what's wrong with the youth these days' tale, but when I was on the Pill I actually kind of missed the sensation of the old latex barrier.

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