To think contraception has been a greater liberator to men than to women?

[Macrodatarefiner]

And for sure, it is a great liberator to women too. Just on balance, men seem to get the better benefit. AIBU?

Whatever works for women’s rights, men also benefit. Research has shown this. I just wish they’d all just hurry up and catch up.

Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution is brilliant on this.

As a man in his 50s yes. I've "friends" who have shagged around since they were teens, moving on when they got bored, or the woman wanted commitment. Perpetual 17 year old men have always been around but contraception has enabled them, because even when pregnancy occurs "well she can have an abortion " " why wasn't she being careful " "she did it on purpose "

Who is they?

Frankly I’m quite happy for men to also get the benefit of not having to risk having a baby every time they have sex when it primarily means I get the benefit of not having to risk having a baby every time I have sex.

Eh?

They can have sex without getting pregnant anyway

If they get someone else pregnant they can and so just bugger off

the greater benefit is mine!

Do they? In what way?

Surely having the ultimate control in terms of whether to have a baby or not lying with the woman means they have the greater benefit?

This. The effect of an unwanted pregnancy weighs far more heavily on the woman carrying and either terminating or continuing to term. I don’t think you’ve really thought this through, OP, or you’re,asking the weird assumption that women always want babies.

It also ties in with the the old stereotype that nice women don’t want or enjoy lots of sex, so any contraceptive which allows lots of sex to be enjoyed can only be to the benefit of men.

Oh this is one of those weird "feminism was bad for women, actually" goady threads.

OP I'm not sure your point is as clever as you think it is - it's rather obvious, no? The point of contraception is that people who enjoy sex are free to have more of it, and with more people, than they otherwise would. So if heterosexual women benefit than duh, yes, it follows that heterosexual men will also benefit. Those benefits are not actually in competition with each other, though - it is the same benefit, ideally enjoyed mutually - so I'm not sure why you're weighing up who gets more of it.

Not in a culture where men are no longer considered responsible. Any children are now the woman's choice

I wouldn't say it's been greater for men.

The better way to look at it, I think, is that the improvements in women's condition have been more likely to be the ones benefitting men too. It's not a coincidence that we got the ones allowing men sexual access and we still kept the unpaid caring labour.

We got the option to be freed from the unpaid caring labour. I don't do any, personally.

Also, contraception doesn't allow men sexual access - individual women still do. Contraception has allowed me to have casual sex on my terms, but it doesn't benefit "men" en masse - it benefits the men I choose.

You make it sound like it’s a bad thing that men get some benefit from it. It’s within a woman’s control, so they will only benefit if a woman makes the choice. It’s not something they can benefit from alone.

The reality is that while there have been benefits for both men and women, men are more likely to want to have sex with a variety partners and to want to have sex more often. They are therefore more likely to benefit from sexual freedom than women.

How do you get to men aren't considered responsible?

If I end up pregnant tomorrow, it is entirely my choice what happens. If I choose to terminate that is up to me; if I choose to go through with it that is my choice. My boyfriend can say if he has an opinion, but beyond that the decision is owned entirely by me. If I choose to continue, even against his wishes he is liable for maintenance. Our society does require and expect him to be responsible whether he wished it or not.

Now their may be system flaws and failures which allow me to shirk their responsibilities, and avoid them. But it is seen very much as that, because as a culture we do expect and legally require them to be responsible

But there is now a cultural expectation that women will have casual sex (because they can without risking pregnancy). This is a benefit for women who want casual sex but a disadvantage for those that don’t.

We as a cohort don't, not really. There are some women who are able to opt out of it due to some or all of luck, resources and assertiveness, which isn't the same thing. But we know what happens on a societal level.

Well, as one of the ones who was (when single) delighted to be able to have casual sex as much or as little as I liked, all I can say is that everyone has to deal with social/cultural pressures of some kind. Choice is better than no choice. Protection against pregnancy is better than none.

OK, it was ages ago, but I well remember a colleague of dh complaining to him that his relatively new girlfriend wouldn’t sleep with him. ‘It’s not as if it’s such a big thing any more!’

In other words, since The Pill, he was entitled to expect sex, and she was being unreasonable to deny him.

But it is good she gets the heads up early that he is self-entitled pig

By the same token, you might as well say that the invention of washing machines and vacuum cleaners mostly benefits men, because ultimately they freed up women’s time taken up by unpaid labour inside the home to earn money outside of it, which benefits the households of the men who live with those women. And yes, sure, men do benefit from that – but I’m pretty bloody glad I don’t spend every entire Monday up to my shoulders in a washtub and running everything through the mangle and am free to get out, earn my own money, and control my own life entirely.

It's always been like this. When 'Women's Lib' burnt their bras in the name of equality the men all responded with "oooh, look out at all those lovely jiggly tits!"

Good for the goose, good for the gander...

Oh yes absolutely, I’d love to go back to the time when the options were either abstaining from sex (not an option for most married women) or bearing six, eight, even ten or more, children. Not.
Contraception is one of the biggest benefits of the modern age, alongside antibiotics, vaccines and anaesthesia for operations.

"We as a cohort" is doing rather heavy lifting - as you point out it doesn't necessarily make sense to split this inequality down gender lines only, as wealth, education etc split women into further cohorts.

All I'm saying is that the option not to live a life of unpaid domestic labour is available to all women. We are legally emancipated from having to do it, and legally able to pursue financially independent lives of our own. Beyond that, it's a question of resisting societal pressure - which is something each of us can only do for herself. No one is going to step into resist it for you.