[Today's guest post written by Cato]
The manosphere is rife with advice for men these days. Don’t get married. Don’t have children. Don’t trust women. Fairly decent advice in today’s world, but I suspect that many men out there aren’t sure how this applies to their daily lives. Some men do want to get married, eventually, to the right person; others would dearly love to have children someday, either through a paid surrogate or with that one magic person they trust to stay with them for the long term. Others aren’t willing to be celibate, and risk their future every time they get frisky. The problem seems to be that there aren’t any clear, concise instructions on how to dodge the landmines of this dangerous modern world, written for the men who need that advice the most.
Hence this article.
First, some relevant information about the author. I am currently divorced, with one child just over ten years old that I rarely get to see. My child’s mother is not my ex-wife; rather, she is an ex-friend who was strongly attracted to me back in the day. Even though I told her, honestly and directly, that I did not want to sleep with her, for fear of unwanted pregnancy, she got hold of me after a night of hard drinking and made me an offer that I should have, but did not, refuse (she was damn good at oral sex). A few months later I got the call: she was pregnant, she was keeping it, and she wanted money for the medical bills from her prenatal appointments. Things went downhill pretty quickly after that. All the rest of this sad story, issues with her family, the ridiculous bureaucracy of her state trying to administer their child support program, is fodder for another time. Simply understand that I currently pay just under $900 a month for a child I wasn’t ready for, and that I got sniped before I made anything remotely resembling decent money.
So, on with the advice:
The two most common threats to men in today’s world, in my humblest of opinions, are marriage and unexpected pregnancy. Marriage I leave to each individual man: consider staying single first, consider cohabitation second, be together for a few years at least, get a pre-nup, and don’t go through with it unless you are absolutely sure you trust the person in question. Pretty simple.
Pregnancy is another beast entirely. Reproductive control is almost exclusively a woman’s prerogative in today’s world; no offense to our female readership, but let’s be blunt: if a woman decides it’s her “time” to get pregnant, then barring any medical issues, she will. Pills can be missed, condoms can be pinholed; the truly determined (or desperate) can acquire sperm through oral sex, then visit the restroom to “spit it out,” while not letting on that it’s going to be a mouth-to-vagina transfer. At the most nefarious end of the scale are the scheming women who will slyly become pregnant with another man, and then attempt to convince their provider-type boyfriend that it is his child. Many states limit paternity challenges with specific time windows and other restrictions, making this disgusting tactic a viable one for the maternally obsessed woman.
Thus the question: how do we, as men, prevent unwanted pregnancy? Modern birth control is, frankly, woefully inadequate; condoms have a dismayingly significant failure rate, and all other common methods (save abstinence, of course) rely on female cooperation, and are therefore, for the purposes of this article, untrustworthy. All methods, that is, except for one: surgical vasectomy.
“Oh my God!” I hear some readers thinking. “A knife to the nutsack!? This guy is insane!” Could be, I suppose, but then, I’ve had it done already, and I know it’s not that bad. About three days recovery time, and you’re back on your…um…feet. “Ah, but I may want kids someday! So this solution won’t work for me!” Actually, it will; all you need for kids is sperm, and there’s an alternative to constantly pumping out your own: freeze some choice swimmers now, while you’re (definitely) younger and (probably) healthier than you will be down the road when you decide you want kids. Yes, I did this too, just on the off chance I meet that magic someone someday.
So I offered some clear, concise instructions up above, and without further ado or discussion, here it is. A simple guide that could really be the best information some young man out there ever gets his hands on.
1. STOP HAVING SEX. Can’t emphasize this enough. You can easily defeat your own efforts if you don’t adhere to a strict no sex policy until you’re done with the whole list. It doesn’t make much sense to put in the time, money, and aggravation required by this guide, just to conceive a child in the middle of your efforts.
2. FIND A CRYO BANK. Use the internet to locate a reputable cryogenic storage facility in your area. For me, it was Fairfax Cryo; your mileage may vary.
3. GO THERE. Schedule an initial interview. You’ll sign a contract for storage (mine was about $1700 for a five year contract) and provide a sample for screening and reviving testing – where they’ll freeze a sample, give them a day or so, then thaw them to make sure they’re still wiggling after the thaw. You get these results back in a few days.
4. GO THERE AGAIN. AND AGAIN, AS NECESSARY. After the initial appointment, make further appointments to provide samples for freezing. Plan on at least two, and possibly as many as four, donation appointments. I produced an average of ten vials of sperm per appointment; it takes two vials to attempt a pregnancy. If you want to be sure you’ve got enough juice for the future, so to speak, make four trips.
5. GET CUT. Ah yes, the centerpiece of this whole strategy for male reproductive control. Find a reputable urology clinic and schedule a vasectomy. You’ll need a friend to drive you; you won’t feel much like driving afterward (it is simple outpatient surgery, with local anesthetic).
6. CLEAR THE PIPES. Even after you get cut, you can still knock someone up. It takes about two weeks or fifteen ejaculations (if I recall correctly) for the viable sperm already in the hopper to filter out.
7. GET TESTED. Return to the urology clinic, and provide a semen sample for testing. They should call back within a day or so and let you know if you’re clear.
8. SCHEDULE FOLLOW UP TESTING. Go back to the urology clinic every six months or so and get tested again, just to stay on the safe side.
9. ENJOY! Do whatever and whoever you like, however you like, without fear of unexpected pregnancy. You should still use condoms, to protect yourself from STDs, but that choice is up to each of us individually.
There it is. That’s it. Once you’ve completed this list, you should be incapable of getting anyone pregnant. Total bill for my process was just shy of $2500, since, while my medical plan covered vasectomy, I had a five hundred dollar deductible I had to wade through. While I realize this is quite a bit of money, especially for young men just starting out, I’d like to point out that $2500 doesn’t quite cover three months of my child support; and my child was conceived before I ever had an idea that I’d be making decent money someday. By the time I’m done paying child support, I’ll have spent well over a hundred grand over eighteen years – to my mind, that makes $2500 a superb investment for today’s men. Also, bear in mind that if I had actually found that magic someone over the past ten years (or if I should find them in the next eight), that money I’m paying to my child’s mother is money that I wouldn’t (or won’t) have available to support the family that I choose to have – the family that I would actually get to be a real part of.
I hope someone out there finds this article useful, and worth the read. If this article is enough to persuade just one man out there that it is worth doing, just to be safe, then it is worth the time it took to write it. Smart men learn from their mistakes; wise men learn from the mistakes of other men.
