http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7857262/Scientists-invent-first-male-contraceptive-pill.html

GOOGLE, BING, SCROOGLE, YAHOO... use it, kthanks. My own boyfriend knew more about my birth control than I did, and he's a computer geek. He was able to do this through the great wonders of a search engine.

The men in this article hurt my brain, and I hope that women don't get the wrong idea that all men are like this. Additionally, I hope women don't get the idea that they are somehow better or smarter, because I don't think that's what this. When I decided to start the pill, I included my boyfriend in the process, not because his decision would rule what I did with my uterus, but because I care what he thought and I wanted him to know. Yes, a man should be inclined to want to know and ask but perhaps previous experiences have biased them. Maybe they're afraid to ask because they're afraid of prying or overstepping a boundary? Or maybe, it could be the women aren't quite sharing either as well as they should.I'm not necessarily saying it is the case either way, just playing a devil's advocate.

Ultimately, the article was cool, and I did enjoy it. I do feel that some people don't know, and it's important for men and women to both know the options. I doubt the author meant for anyone to take the connotations of which most people in the comments have got, but that tends to happen when you write about subjects like this.

The idea that 1.2 million sperm get through each time you have sex is totally flawed - when they say failure rate for condoms (which is more like 3% failure even with perfect use - holding it when he pulls out, etc) they mean that 100 women of repro. age having sex for one year, three of them will get pregnant if they're partner uses condoms.

Both stats are pretty good, but I put my money (so to speak) on the Pill.

Do you think that birth control pills are more effective if you pop four or five at a time? Do you think using two condoms protects you better than one condom? Do you think douching after sex reduces your risk of pregnancy? Do you think that you have to make your vaginal ring fit a certain way to ensure that it catches sperm? Do you think having sex while standing up helps prevent babies? Do you think missed periods are caused by magic?

If so, then you're either a. greatly increasing your risk of pregnancy, b. wasting a lot of time on needless precautions to avoid pregnancy (douching?), c. denying yourself some important options for your own sexual health (you can skip your period, and it's not magic), or d. missing out on some other sexual positions (you can lay down, too).

Our bodies are kind of gross. It's important for us to get over that, because a lack knowledge about birth control can have serious consequences.

The guy who thought the NuvaRing catches semen probably had it confused with a diaphragm or sponge.

Over the course of my sexual lifetime, I've tried two types of hormonal birth control, have had two children (both planned), and am now using a natural form of birth control in conjunction with a diaphragm (even though I never had any "bad" side effects with HBC). I'm just no longer comfortable with artificial hormones constantly running through my body (to clarify... I do not think it's wrong for OTHERS to chose it, it's just not for ME).

Deciding to no longer use hormonal birth control is what made me realize how little most men knew about it (and many women as well). I speak to girls and women every day about sex, reproduction, pregnancy, and birth control. One thing I see A LOT is men's attitude (and sometimes women's) that hormonal birth control "isn't a big deal" and don't understand why a girl doesn't want to go on the pill (or use the patch, ring, IUD, Implanon, or shot). It just baffles me that most men are not aware of the effects these hormones have on their spouses. Birth control (no matter what type; hormonal or not) is a SHARED responsibility. Both partners should be well versed in the form of birth control THEY are using. This is not just the woman's responsibility and it is not just the man's responsibility.

Equally, when I learned how to properly chart my cycles (when we were trying to conceive our second child), I learned SO much about my body that I was never taught before... even in sex ed. I then found that I was definitely not alone. Most women are not aware that 28-day cycles are not the only "normal" cycle lengths and that it's perfectly normal and healthy to have a 34 day cycle, or cycles that vary in length even within one woman. Most women I've ever spoken to had no idea that taking your waking temperature every day will tell you if/when you ovulated that cycle because the progesterone released by the corpus luteum after ovulation causes a thermal shift in your waking temperature. Most women I've ever spoken to had any idea that the fluids (mucus) they released throughout their cycles (that many women often mistake for a vaginal infection) was telling them VOLUMES about their fertility level at any point in their cycle (and is totally normal and healthy). These topics were not discussed in the little "period pamphlet" we got in 5th/6th grade. This was not discussed in biology class in high school. Most people do not know that properly charting your cycles using a sympto-thermal method is a highly effective form of birth control (and is NOT the very inaccurate "Rhythm Method").

My husband and I have a 3 year old son and a newborn daughter. Teaching them BOTH male and female anatomy, sympto-thermal charting, and detailing all available birth control options is definitely something we will be instilling in them from an early age. My daughter isn't the only one who needs to know how her body works and the efficacy and side effects that birth control methods have... my son needs to know these things as well. Maybe if we start teaching our children proper sexual education, we won't have adults (male and female alike) that know little to nothing about their bodies, their spouse's bodies, and their birth control methods.

Just FYI. I'm sure the woman quoted wouldn't bleed everywhere, but some women certainly would. Like I said, it varies.

Otherwise, fantastic and informative article.

@Banjodavid
I hadn't heard about that, but yeah it is wierd and unfair. No one should have control over someone else's body. Fortunately that isn't the case any more, although they do still ask if your partner is aware that your getting it and has agreed. When a friend of mine went to get it and was asked that question he replied by looking the doctor in the eye and telling him it was none of hs business.

Also, I think that if you read and got something out of it, that makes you a part of the target audience :)

"Wearing two condoms only means the male feels less (which is of no importance to his female partner anyway)."

BWAHAHAHAHA... You wrote this in a post meant to show that men know enough about birth control? The irony, the irony!

On a different note, I think it makes total sense that men would be less informed about (especially hormonal) contraception. And it has nothing to do with what you learn in school - after all, you could not pay attention in class or promptly forget everything if you don't feel you need to remember it.

Quite simply, women in general tend to take responsibility for learning about and using birth control because they have more at stake. They know that if they get pregnant, they can end up as a single mother. Many men (not all!) don't worry as much about pregnancy because somewhere in the back of their mind they know than can run away from that responsibility.It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

Incidentally this is also why I think a male birth control pill would be a commercial flop anyway.

Not that all male doctors are this way -- I had one recently who was literally the best doctor I've ever seen on the subject. He was very informative and asked all the right questions. Still, it's pretty shocking that there are doctors out there with so little knowledge about this thing they're prescribing for their patients. I went out and found my own info, but if I'd been a scared 15 yr old I may have taken his misinformation to heart.

Since the NuvaRing was only approved by the FDA in 2001, your back-in-the-90s sex ed class sure was prescient. The NuvaRing: prevents ovulation AND travels through time.

so let's look at this from a numbers standpoint, the female body produces one egg every 28 days. and the pill is 99%(ish) effective. So by this reasoning one egg in almost 2 years will get by. Now lets look at this from a male perspective.

The "minimum" for purposes of fertility testing is over 20 million per millilter. "Normal" sperm counts are in the range of 60-80 million per milliliter. The average ejaculate is approximately 2 millileters, so "at one time," an average man has 120-160 million sperm

now a 99% effective rate is still very very good, but at the rate of 120 million sperm that still leaves 1.2 MILLION sperm that can get through. Not per two years, but for each time that the male ejaculates.

THAT is why male BC pills won't work, even if they didn't result in chemical castration too often enough to make them prohibitive.

I have never regretted my vasectomy, and would encourage more men to learn about birth control options, and their workings.

I have always supported abortion rights, but it can't be an easy choice for anyone to make. The emotional and physical process has to be a tough thing to go through. I lost a LOT of sleep in college, when my girlfriend had a pregnancy scare. She was just late. I am glad I never got anyone pregnant, because at a young age, I knew I never wanted to be a father. I've never changed my mind about that.

http://www.somethingawful.com/flash/shmorky/babby.swf

@Frederic Wait, that doesn't sound like the nazis at all...

(incidentally, the only reference to Karl Slotta on wiki is this article on pills for diabetics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthalin )

I think you're getting some of your facts wrong too. Your attempt to link the Pill with Nazis smells like anti-choice BS.

No! Feminist did not invent the "pill"! It was invented by men. And the first woman who used it was no other than Eva Braun Adolf Hitler's wife.
A big figure of the invention of the pill was Karl Slotta, a biochemist whose work in the 1930s helped research that led to the development of birth control pills, died on June 20, 1987. He was 92 years old.

Dr. Slotta discovered the female hormone progesterone, which is released after ovulation. Studies on progesterone, which Dr. Slotta found sends chemical signals to the brain that prevent ovulation, eventually led to the development of the pill in the 1950s.

The first to have promoted the pill were the Nazis...

Uh, why don't men bother to inform themselves? Why is educating men someone else's (I'm assuming you mean women's) responsibility? Why are you assuming it's OK for men to be passive about their own sexual education? Sex and reproduction are not solitary acts. It behooves everyone to educate themselves about contraception.

A person can't help the education they were given. They CAN help the education they don't seek out for themselves. If you're putting something in your body that does something as drastic as making you infertile, why WOULDN'T you want to know exactly how that works?

I think we all need to go back to being scared of HIV/AIDS and other STIs, not just pregnancy. We should all know better by now, even those of us who haven't seen someone die of HIV/AIDS.

According to the study, a large percentage of women think the pill does not work 50% of the time and that it increases their risk for developing various diseases and health problems.

It's really great that the pill exists and I love it. But the pill actually increases the risk for thrombosis (the older the woman the greater the risk) and probably a few sorts of cancer.
Yes, women are misinformed, but health risks are not some made-up stuff. If a woman decides not to take the pill because she's not willing to take that risk, it's her decision.

However, as I stated on the other thread, the real problem is not men lacking knowledge about birth control pills, but women lacking knowledge about birth control pills. According to the study, a large percentage of women think the pill does not work 50% of the time and that it increases their risk for developing various diseases and health problems. In terms of knowledge, that level of misinformation is far more important as it could lead to women taking the pill inconsistently or not at all.

Wearing two condoms only means the male feels less (which is of no importance to his female partner anyway). Not taking the pill consistently defeats the purpose of the pill entirely.

Dorothy:
“No, most men don’t know about that. No, the article’s title is not misleading.

I wasn’t aware that 29% constituted “most”, according to every dictionary most requires greater than 50%

My post was a direct answer to Mike who assumed that 100 % men would know about the condom and in doing so would even out their non knowledge about the pill (78%). I quote Mike:
"The article title is misleading, suggesting that most men have no knowledge of contraception."

I pointed out that not 100&, but only 71% know about condoms (not counting the 28% who think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one), thus not evening out their non-knowledge about the pill, thus leading to my (I admit poorly worded) conclusion that Amanda is right, most men really don't know shit about contraception (= pill, nuvaring, condoms, diaphragm, ...).

@ Angela: No, this should be thought in schools.

Most men don't have a gynecologist to turn to when they have questions.

I don't think the problem was necessarily the idea of abstaining from sex until I was married, it was the fact that my parents used that as an excuse to never talk to me about it at all. My mom, evangelical conservative that she is, placed a book called "You, Me, He" ("He" being God) on my bookshelf when I was a teen and apparently thought that would tell me everything I ever needed to know. Yeah, I didn't read the book, which, from the cover, had obviously been written in the 60s or 70s. I also attended a private Christian high school where I needed my parents' permission to attend sex ed, and they refused to allow me to go.

This may be TMI for some, so skip it if you don't want to know, but when I was in high school, I discovered masturbation, but I didn't understand what it was. I thought I was probably somehow doing permanent damage to myself and that this might cause me to be unable to have children.

Thankfully I married a man who is much more experienced and also very patient with my questions. We've been married for over a year (and sexually involved for almost three years), and I still have to ask about some things. It definitely makes me want to do a better job of educating my children, when I have them.

Where I come from, Finland, this is covered extensively in sex ed. Both girls and boys get shown diagrams of the ovaries and other female sex organs. We get pointed out the various glands which produce all the hormones. (By this point I've forgotten most of them, as it has been about ten years.) But basically, in eighth grade biology, everybody gets taught exactly which hormones trigger the release of the ovum, what happens then, and how birth control pills affect those things.

Of course, many guys probably don't pay attention because it's "girl stuff" and as such strictly off-limits to fragile teenage boys struggling to build a masculine identity. So, ironically, geeks who pay attention in class probably know a lot more about contraception than guys who are actually likely to get laid within the next 5 years? :)

I quote the article:

“In the study, 29 percent of men and 32 percent of women reported that they know “little or nothing about condoms.””

I wasn't aware that 29% constituted "most", according to every dictionary most requires greater than 50%