Veronica and I are both contributors to In The Real World: Venus vs. Mars, which is a blog about relationships.  The typical format is that one man and woman pair up to write their viewpoints on a given topic, there are usually 2 pairs of posts per week.  On Monday Stupid Smart Girl wrote a woman’s perspective on the idea of an oral contraceptive for men, then on Tuesday I wrote my perspective.

[Warning, this is shaping up to be a REALLY long post.  Some of the comments have been truncated for brevity, so I'd encourage you to read the original posts and all of the comments, in case you think I may be taking anything out of context.]

Things really started to get interesting when a commenter who goes by David Edward left the following comment [I'd link to him, but I don't know if he has a blog, since his profile is private]:

Let’s have some reality here shall we -

The male pill is on it’s way, and will be with us in less than 5 years, if not from the US or Britain, then from China and India.

The pill for men will be the biggest step for freedom that men have ever had – freedom from the serfdom imposed by fatherhood. So if the present tyrannical feminist British women want their babies, they will have to offer a far better deal to men than at present.

For example -

1  The present marriage laws, and the infamous and secret ‘family courts’ will have to go, and quickly, and the dictatorial marriage and ‘common law’ marriage expectations drastically changed.

2 The constant demeaning of masculinity, particularly on TV in programs such as ‘One Foot in the Grave’, ‘Men Behaving Badly’ and the present ‘soaps’ in general, where men habitually behave in an infantile manner, and are presented in an appalling way, will have to be recognised as highly offensive to men, and dispensed with.

3  The most powerful of the British feminist weapons – the wild and malicious accusations of ‘rape’ and ‘child sex’ – will have to be brought back under civilized law where the accuser will be required to have hard evidence and be held responsible for their actions, both in the making of the accusation, and their part in the incident. The male sex drive is an extremely powerful force, and a woman who provokes it to the point where a man loses his self-control has only herself to blame. The accused will have to be considered innocent until – and if – proven guilty.

Indeed, a male oral contraceptive is one it’s way, a simple Google search will turn up posts about such a pharmaceutical being in phase 3 clinical trials.  But I’m really confused by “the serfdom imposed by fatherhood” comment.  Men have had birth control options for quite some time, this is just another one.  I don’t know the particulars of British marriage law and it’s family courts, so I have nothing to say there, nor do I know anything of British television. How the availability of another form of birth control can upset that entire apple cart is beyond my comprehension.

But then I got to his 3 point, which confused me, because I fail to see how the availability of an oral contraceptive for men has anything to do with rape.  David Edward, do you believe that such a contraceptive is akin to so-called chemical castration, which can be nothing more than administration of a Depo-Provera shot to a man?  Yes, it is used as “treatment” for rapists and other sex offenders, but the male oral contraceptives under development are designed to maintain normal sexual function, albeit without sperm production.  But my initial reaction to him was anger, leading me to leave this comment:

David Edward, are you fucking kidding me? Women provoke men beyond the point of self-control to rape them? So it’s a woman’s fault?

In general, you sure do put a lot of faith in the sociological effects of a male birth control pill.

We always enjoy new readers and commenters here, but I’d like to ask you, you misogynistic asshole, to go away and not return…

I’ll certainly admit that calling him an asshole was out of line and uncalled for, but I stand by the misogynist label, especially considering the comment in left in return:

Reply to Hubman (who is really Hubwomen)

Rape and Provocation

Thank you for your points to which I will endeavour to reply.

I believe we are debating two different things here. You are describing the emotional – the desire for power – motivations of the rapist who rapes as a control and domination technique.

I put forward the argument that men have a very strong sex drive – as in an evolutionary instinct – that is able to over-ride their rationality and self control; as many women know. I agree that the sex drive is dominant, but it dominates the male if he is provoked beyond a certain point, and he loses his ability to control and suppress his powerful sex drive, which is a natural instinct never meant to be suppressed. Quite the opposite.

Mating Rape -
The provocation can be unintentional by a woman who is unaware of the strength of the male sex drive, who has formed a ‘mating’ relationship and is exuding menstruational pheromones and responds to her own powerful maternal mating instinct by a sub-conscious mating display of facial and body language – together with her own natural sub-conscious desire, and has allowed herself to enter a situation where ‘mating’ may be expected to occur and the provocation causes the sex drive to become overwhelming for the male mate. I would expect such a woman to be young and inexperienced, clever and with a high sex drive herself – such as a college student.

Entrapment Rape -
But there is another sort of woman, lewd, of low morals, who dislikes men and enjoys sexually provoking them to a point where they are distressed, especially when they are young and vulnerable, who, in the pre-feminist age, were referred to contemptuously by men and women alike, as ‘cock teasers’. It is this sort of rape ’victim’ who caused the expression of ‘they ask for it, and sometimes, they get it’.

Bully Rape -
I understand and fully support the totally unacceptability of rape as a cowering and subjugation – bully – technique, and support a harsh deterrent punish for this particularly disgusting crime.

Mitigating Circumstances –
But rape as an uncontrollable release of sex drive urge in response to provocation that has gone too far is another matter altogether, and these different types of rape should not be regard in the same way.

So David Edward, is your basic point that women who are raped ask for it in most cases?   And I wasn’t debating anything with you, I was simply calling you out for the stupidity of your “they asked for it” comment, so I’m befuddled as to where you got the idea that I was referring to the emotional motivations of a rapist.  Your notion that women who are raped ask for it is so contemptuous that I’m even going to waste the words attempting to dissuade you of that notion.

I have a question for my readers- was I wrong to interpret his comments as indicating that women ask for it, to be raped?  I’m asking because a woman I know disagrees with me and is defending his point of view, which befuddles me to no end.

I figured it really wasn’t worth the effort to comment any more, as we were veering off-topic quite a bit, so I let it go.

==============================================================================

But then Tuesday came, it was my turn to post about the male oral contraceptive, and he was back.  In addition to misogynistic, he’s terribly misinformed:

Today’s male contraception consists of the condom, the timing, and vasectomy. The first two are highly unreliable and open to deliberate prevention by women. i.e. the condom can be pulled off by the vaginal sphincter muscle during intercourse, and forgotten or neglected altogether in ’spontaneous’ sex; and the timing is open to error and deceit.

The vasectomy consists of surgical mutilation with serious short and long term health implications, and it appears to me that it has been quietly abandoned by a medical profession anxious to avoid litigation. The main health implications consist of inflammation of the scrotum due to decomposition of the deposited semen, and due to this, a restriction in the regular milking of the prostrate, which is necessary because of the constant exposure and stimulation that all men receive from the pheromones of menstruating women. It is highly unlikely that a man can pass a single day without this exposure unless he lives a monk like existence! Thus the prostrate is constantly irritated by inflammation of un-discharged ’male milk’ (there appears to be no medical term for this – an indication of the disregard for male conditions) which increases the likelihood of eventual prostrate cancer… which is bad news for you hubman huh!

Correct David, those are the choices available to men, though when properly used are actually fairly reliable.  Your comment indicates a basic distrust of women, that they are somehow out to get us, which I fail to understand.  But then you completely lose me with your comments about vasectomies. If you care to consider elective surgery ‘mutilation’, so be it, though I strongly disagree with that characterization.

Decomposition of semen? Yes, that occurs.  But you know what?  It happens everywhere in the body, every day, cells are constantly dying and being disposed off (it’s a highly regulated process called apoptosis), so yes, while some men may develop sperm granulomas, it’s treatable.  Considering that the prostate gland is downstream of the testes and unaffected, I have no idea what you’re referring to with your “milking of the prostate comment”- semen is still normally produced, in part by the prostate and by the seminal vesicles, and ejaculated as before a vasectomy.  As far as prostate cancer, the National Cancer Institute reports that while there are some studies to suggest an association between a vasectomy and prostate cancer, there is no proposed mechanism linking the two.  Remember, correlation (and a weak one that may be incorrect at that!) does not mean causation!  Before I got a vasectomy about 2 yrs ago, I researched the procedure and decided that I was comfortable with the risks in light of the benefits.  Had I been uncomfortable with the risks, my wife and I would have discussed other options and made a decision together.

I decided to respond by telling him that I had too much to say for a comment and would reply in full on my own blog, hence this post.  Which elicited this reply:

On your own blog, where you can block me – you coward!

Be a Man and do it here in front of everybody, where I can confront you with truth and facts.

So now in addition to being ‘hubwoman’, I’m also a coward!  He also accused me of blocking his comments:

I bet my last two comments get deleted to protect the sensitive hubwoman.

This is soooo unfaaaaair!

And this, via e-mail to Shelle, which she shared with me.

“I see my last two posts have been blocked. In it I answer fully both hub(wo)man’s and cheekofgod very weak replies.

As these guys haven’t the courage to stand up to an open debate I’ll go elsewhere Don’t worry, the Brits viewpoint will be heard, but not on this sissy site. Males like this deserve the contempt of their womenfolk.”

Hubman likes to give it out but he doesn’t like getting it back – how weak!

For one, David, while I’m a contributor to that blog, I’m not an administrator and cannot block comments, even if I knew how.  Secondly, I have no desire to block your comments, and welcome you to defend your comments here.

You can even continue to refer to me as hubwoman if it’ll make you happy