Taking responsibilities and having control
I was somewhat aghast at Hadley Freeman's column today (I hope she is doing that journalistic thing of '6 people I met last week = new trend') except, you know, this is not a new thing. Even if we ignore Germaine Greer trumpeting the benefits of withdrawal c. 1980, I would not be surprised if there were not already a PhD thesis on resistant feelings around contraception in the women's post-war British novel (or maybe just the novels of Margaret Drabble would make an entirely adequate corpus for a PhD on this theme...)
Yes, I can quite see that it is a hassle to be the one expected to take responsibility: and while there is literature on men shouldering some of the hassle, my impression is that this is usually within the framework of marriage/committed relationship and enlightened self-interest ('we have 3 lovely kiddies already and my wife was really ill after the last one: I will go off to a distant chemist to purchase some condoms/have a vasectomy' - depending on the period ). Though also gather that when shotgun marriage was a thing, men possibly tended to be a bit more condom-equipped, if only because female methods tended to be difficult to access (esp for the unmarried).
And, okay, some men are terribly poor stuff, even if that was perhaps over-emphasised by the early birth control movement.
(And re masculinity, would like to point out that its fragility, and the extent of intragender policing over it, are no new thing either. Though today has been 'condemned to repeat it all round: this idea - reverse anthropology - has a lengthy history.)
But there's always the issue of who's in control.
And if you're going to say 'too much hassle, whatevs' I hope you have your supply of morning-after pills carefully stashed in an accessible place.
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