So you are equally sympathetic of women who are getting a flu jab and women who are getting a hysterectomy? Or do you differentiate between medical procedures?
I genuinely have no idea where you are going with this. But yes, of course I would differentiate. Although it entirely depends around which aspect of the procedure their worries were stemming from. The procedure itself? The permanence? The after-effects and the downtime? The pain during? The post-op pain and potential complications? Being conscious throughout? Fear of not being conscious? What exactly?
Neither a flu jab nor a hysterectomy are comparable to the procedure and experience of a vasectomy in any way whatsoever, so I am not sure why you are making this comparison.
But since you asked, a woman who was seriously needle phobic just wouldn't get the flu jab and no-one could make her. A flu jab is advisable but not essential. A woman who wasn't needle phobic wouldn't need sympathy or understanding for undergoing a 3 second, virtually painless thing.
A hysterectomy is obviously more serious medically, probably essential and unavoidable, but anything done under GA is not scary or painful at the time, due to being under GA. I think most people's anxiety over medical procedures comes from being fully conscious during them - I know mine does. I am sure many more men would be more comfortable with a vasectomy if it was under GA.
So unless hysterectomy woman's fear was of the GA itself and either a) it not working properly, causing total paralysis and the inability to speak but still being able to feel all the pain of the surgery, or b) the fear that she'll die under GA, then of course I'd be equally sympathetic to her as to the woman with the severe needle phobia.
Neither fear is particularly rational or proportionate, but that's not the point. Fears are not always rational of proportionate.
Show me the double standard. Show me where the people who tell the OP to take responsibility for his own fertility would not have said that to a woman.
They probably would say that to a woman in the same circumstances. The difference is that a woman can take better control of her fertility without having to resort to anything quite as extreme or permanent as a vasectomy. She has a range of choices that are mostly painless and pretty non-invasive that a man does not. Even full sterilisation is usually done under a GA whereas vasectomy isn't. That may mean the procedure is sold as 'easy and straightforward' for the doctor to perform, but that doesn't necessarily translate to easy and strightforward for the patient to cope with in terms of their anxiety levels.
Condoms are allegedly unreliable even when used properly and consistently (although not half as unreliable as anecdotally we are led to believe, if you ask me) and vasectomies are to be entered into with the view that they are permanent and irreversible. There can be attempts at reversal but it's not easy or guaranteed.
The procedure is surgically invasive and conducted while fully conscious, involving a local anaesthetic injection into the scrotum. It is not surprising that many men feel super anxious about that. I would be equally anxious if someone wanted to inject deep into my breast, or take a biopsy of it, or inject or cut into my vagina while I was awake. Suffice to say I would not opt to do that unless my health or my life depended on it.
Many invasive procedures under just LA are really unpleasant but we have little choice over if we want to be cured of illnesses/injury or have our infected teeth sorted out with a root canal, for example. So we get on with it stoically. Something like vasectomy is not triggered by pain or illness and there is no urgency, no threat to life or health so it's easy to avoid it forever if the prospect induces huge anxiety.
If I had huge anxiety over the procedure a breast biopsy for example, (the procedure itself, not the added fear that I may have cancer) I'd expect my partner and friends to be supportive and sympathetic. Whereas with men and vasectomies there is often an eye-rolling and from women and a 'stop making a fuss and get on with it' sort of attitude.
There is plenty of justification for why women women might think a man should be just be brave, pull himself together and do it, but that doesn't change the fact that he may not be very anxious and avoidant, however irrational his wife may find that, given that she's had 2 episiotomies, an emergency C section and a ton of stitches getting his kids out. So yes, there is a double standard, albeit a slightly understandable one.