Background: I’ve discussed radical feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte on many occasions–to read more, click here. Marcotte has written numerous terrible things about me, pretty much saying outright that I think it’s fine to beat women, that women should not be allowed to defend themselves, that if a man beats a woman, it’s the woman’s fault, that men should have free rein to terrorize their families, etc.
Perhaps her worst blog post is discussed here–if I’m misunderstanding her words, feel free to let me know. It was a nice payback, since I had had her on my radio show and had written about her and had always been courteous and respectful.
I was surprised and pleased by Amanda’s new column Low Expectations and Male Birth Control (AlterNet, 2/20/08). In the column, Marcotte almost sounds like she’s trying to be fair to men.
Men are still the problem, and we still benefit from a patriarchal system which privileges us at the expense of women, blah, blah, blah. Nevertheless, Marcotte actually acknowledges the possibility of “bigotry” against men. She even cautions against “generalizations and stereotypes, many of which are unfair to a large percentage of men.” Either Amanda is growing up or she has a good editor.
Amanda’s column is below. I put forth my own perspective on the male birth control pill in my column Do Women Really Want a Male Birth Control Pill? (Newsday, 4/11/05).
Low Expectations and Male Birth Control
By Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check.
February 20, 2008.
Since I can remember, we (“we” meaning the great collective of copulating Americans) have been promised that a male birth control pill is right around the corner. And for as long as I can remember, the lack of this pill on the market has caused a share of finger-pointing. It’s understood that it’s possible to develop such a pill, but not much incentive to provide the research money, because it’s believed that men aren’t interested in a birth control pill. To understand why men might not be that eager to take a birth control pill, we’re left with a set of generalizations and stereotypes, many of which are unfair to a large percentage of men:
Men think that only women can get pregnant, so unwanted pregnancy is a woman-only problem. This might be true for some men, but for a lot of men, probably most, the fear of an unwanted pregnancy haunts them as much as it does women. And unlike women, men lose control over the situation as soon as they get up out of bed. Good, decent men accept that this is only fair, but it does raise their incentives to make absolutely sure that it’s taken care of ahead of time.
Men exploit their privilege over women and assume that women should burden all the expense and risk and discomfort of contraception. In some cases, again, this is true enough. There are guys out there who automatically assume that women should be on the pill, even if any individual woman’s body can’t handle the effects of it. But to say that men don’t have any relationship to sacrifice when it comes to contraception is to ignore the proliferation of the humble condom. Many, many men have embraced their duty to both buy and wear condoms, even if they feel it would be more fun to go without. If you could find a pill that was even less trouble than condoms, some of these men would probably snatch it up. Is that a market enough to put up money for research and development? Well, I’d ask Trojan, see if they’ve been making any money lately. (Answer: yes.)
Men are careless idiots who can’t be trusted to do anything right, and so it’s pointless making something that requires them to keep a schedule. Ever notice how this sitcom stereotype doesn’t stretch to include the main part of the day where both men and women have to be on the ball, keep their appointments, and just generally display responsibility? You know, work? We expect men to show up at their jobs every day on time and perform their responsibilities competently. But for some reason (“some” meaning sexism), the expectation that men be able to handle even simple domestic responsibilities like chores or contraception is deemed too much by many.
Well, I’m not having it. Many men are perfectly competent at swallowing a pill every day on time, and plenty of them have partners who trust them to do it. No reason to employ the soft bigotry of low expectations in this case.
Not that any of this means that I don’t agree that the market for a male birth control pill might be small, but I don’t think we have to slam men to arrive at that conclusion. No, I think it’s that the burden of contraception use can already be evenly distributed between men and women in a huge percentage of cases, and that removes the need for a male birth control pill.
Read Amanda’s full column here.
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