Male birth control in the 31st century

[mbranesf]

I've been back to work a bit on my long-unfinished military sf novel Shame, which is set roughly a thousand years in the future. Yesterday I was adding some details to a sex scene involving a heterosexual couple, and I started to wonder whether or not I should bother mentioning if they have made provisions for birth control or disease prevention. They are both on-duty soldiers and aren't doing it for procreation (also, the kind of people who believe that the only proper role for sex is procreation have gone totally extinct by the time period of my story. Ironic, huh?). Then it occurred to me that I could make passing "futuristic" references to how STDs pretty much don't exist in their world and that birth control is pretty much foolproof by then...and perhaps even it's the case that the male partner is on some kind of hormonal birth control or has some kind of easy and reversible vasectomy technology (using, perhaps, nanotech?). 

In fact, real-world news was made recently about the imminent roll-out of a male birth control pill, which made me think that, sure, of course, a thousand years from now that will probably be standard and I was about to stick that detail into the story. But then I thought about it some more. And I concluded that I don't think that a male birth control pill is really going to fly either in the 21st century or the 31st. I think the only venue where people might opt for it and trust is within a committed relationship such as marriage where perhaps the partners don't want kids or are done having kids. If a woman were contemplating having sex with a dude with whom she were not in a very committed relationship and did not know very well, would she really be smart to trust him when he says, "Yeah, I'm on the pill. It's cool." I hate to think that a guy would lie about such a thing. But if I were a female, that possibility would certainly be in the back of my mind. Of course I am sure it has happened in history that a female has lied about being on the pill, but the stakes are a lot higher for the female since she is the one who might end up pregnant. 

Since I don't buy the premise of the male pill, I decided to drop that detail from my story and decided that talking about birth control and disease prevention probably didn't need to happen in this fictional world anyway, especially not just for the sake of making it seem "futuristic." But then I backtracked again and added in a new detail: I have the dude put on a condom. I don't know if I will leave that in there, but something amuses me about the irony of the situation that I have created in this story, a sort of good news/bad news situation.  The good news: in the 31st century, sex is positive and good, and partners enjoy it as equals...the bad news: in the 31st century, dudes will still be expected to wear rubbers! Damn!

Comments

[elorie.livejournal.com]

What makes you think that only one of them would be on hormonal BC? A man might because *he* doesn't want children yet, and regardless of the lying issue, sometimes any form of birth control can fail. If both of them are on hormonal birth control, or the 31st century equivalent, that's extra backup.

Actually, a military might require that anyone on active duty in space be on some form of contraception. We have long-term injections for that for women now.

In my own SF novel, the various agencies in charge of such things require that people who are on long-term duty in deep space be sterilized...not so much because of the pregnancy issue, as because of radiation and mutations. In vitro is pretty common, so most of them opt to bank some gametes for future children before their genes get irradiated.

[mbranesf.livejournal.com]

Yeah good thoughts. Either it being standard that everyone is on BC or even sterilization makes sense. I may even end up going with something like that. Though it seems to be the case that the people in my story are not (despite their era) a whole lot more technological with their sex than we are now and their culture might resist something like mandatory sterilization. But if I fall out of love with the idea of condoms still being necessary that far out, I may go to everyone just being on some kind of "pill."

[ph-unbalanced.livejournal.com]

I remember a story I read a long time ago where the birth control treatment included a temporary tattoo you could use to prove you had gotten the injection. (It would fade over time.) Kind of the official stamp of approval. I always thought that was a great idea.

[mbranesf.livejournal.com]

That's a very cool idea. I dig the idea of there being some kind visible "proof" of it. In another unfinished story that I was working on a couple years ago, I included a male BC method that involved some kind of injected technology that would make his sperm non-viable for a period of years, and the mark of having been so treated was a piercing in his penis with a date stamped into the metal of the jewelry.

[laurenpburka.livejournal.com]

Attention to detail is a good thing in fiction, but I've found it's best not to obsess over the realism of small things when writing sf stories. 100 years ago, no one would have imagined the birth control pill.

[laurenpburka.livejournal.com]

P.S. How about just have the men not smell attractive to women looking for sex unless they were babyproofed?

[mbranesf.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's a cool idea! Some kind of "anti-pheromone" kind of thing. And, to make it even wilder, maybe versions of it for males and females: the males would smell unattractive to females unless they were babyproofed and the males would be unable to sustain an erection around a female who was not babyproofed. Now I'm just getting silly about it.

But there's still the disease prevention thing, which is one reason why I don't think the real-life male "pill" concept is much good. Maybe in the future, however, these kinds of diseases are easier to deal with. Even now, most of them are really not as a big a deal as they used to be, so maybe viruses are pretty well licked by then.

[mbranesf.livejournal.com]

Oh one other idea: While it's not "canon" in the DUNE universe, that old book the DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA has an article that describes how Fremen males deliberately learn to practice retrograde ejaculation (releasing their semen into their bladder instead letting it out), not necessarily as a birth-control method but to conserve water, that little bit of moisture in an ejaculation being too much water to waste under the Fremen's miserly water-control standards. Indeed, according to this article, an adolescent Fremen male needs to learn this technique before he can attain true manhood. This is actually possible, but (while I will not explain WHY I know this), I can assure everyone that this is a completely unsatisfactory approach and is probably the least believable aspect of the Fremen culture. Just saying.

[kyellgold.livejournal.com]

I meant to write something about this and forgot--but I think it's not farfetched that you would have male contraceptives that would produce some kind of visible mark when taken, along the lines of the pheromones mentioned above. And guys would want to take this, knowing that women would be more inclined to sleep with someone with the visible mark. But then you'd get mimic drugs that would produce the mark without the contraceptive, so maybe the women would have something more reliable than pheromones that could test for it. Can't you see the ads? Sleazy nightclub, girl approached by handsome guy. "But...are you safe?" "Of course I am!" Then in big bold letters: "IS HE LYING? KNOW FOR SURE."

:)

[mbranesf.livejournal.com]

Yeah! For sure there could all kinds of ridiculousness with something like that, and probably no matter what the methods are, people will devise ways and reasons to not use them properly.