My vasectomy left me with life long pain and discomfort, particularly when sitting. This is after a long period of (essentially) torture that had me seriously considering how to commit suicide. The only treatment offered involves cutting holes in my abdomen to draw out and skeletonize the stalks connecting my testicles hopefully killing all nerves. It probably won't cause the testicle to die although there is a small chance the blood supply will fail. Just like there was a small chance of lightning bolts of pain shooting through to my back, warmth spreads and pins and needles down my legs and pain in my hips and lower abdomen so there was no need to impress these possibility onto me. Just the casual mention of the possibility of pain, which I figured would be occasional aching of the testicles.
It remains the worst decision I've made in my entire life.
Unnecessary to be healthy. If someone doesn't want a kid, there are other forms of birth protection available which can be relied on and they are quite effective if used as advised.
You must be joking? By your argument I should drink and drive because the probability of ending up in a wheelchair is very low, cars being so safe.
Suppose this condition came about by a disease. Suppose transmission rates were 2%. Would you have unprotected sex with someone on a 2% chance of getting this condition? Assume that it was guaranteed the girl was otherwise without infection and not fertile.
> These are rates for minor complications. The incident rate for major ones requiring post-procedure interventions is 0.1%.
What's the difference between a "minor complication" and a "major" one? Where does "life long pain and discomfort" fall? The word "requiring" seems a bit weasely (e.g. you could survive your life-long pain without surgery, so it's not required, therefor your complication is "minor" even though it significantly decreases your quality of life).
It's not weaselly. The study indicates it's chronic pain that reduced QoL.
Unbelievable pushback about vasectomy value prop, here. It's a crazy common procedure. If rates of complications that mattered were high enough to matter, we'd all know about it via high rates of anecdata indicating the risk.
Vasectomies have a lower chance of serious complication than birth control but perish the thought that men should suffer to prevent pregnancy. Like, I get it, I'm a guy. It's a risk but the alternative is that you don't take a risk. But I like my odds in a vasectomy better than my partner's during pregnancy or over a lifetime of birth control
Remember when COVID hit and some people were saying "1% chance of death isn't much" and then they had to be informed that 1% is very high and we're in serious trouble?
Why is 1% low when we're talking about lifelong pain?
Easy, because the commenter making that argument is a proponent of men getting vasectomies, and they are choosing to interpret the statistics in a way that is favorable to their position. Just like what the people you are describing were doing with covid stats. Just like what people do with statistics on gun crimes or school shootings.
To me it seems like whenever statistics get posted on HN the discussion is bound to devolve into pointless arguments. Statistics are crucial and necessary and we have to have hard data to support everything when said hard data supports MY positions, but when it supports YOURS it's obviously biased and incomplete and inaccurate and useless.
And I guess I should point out that I am in no way saying statistics shouldn't be used when making decisions. It's just that whenever I see them posted here, it means I'm not going to learn anything from that particular comment thread and it's time to move on to the next one.
In what context would it make sense to make an argument that ran counter to statistics bearing on the subject when the statistics themselves appear uncontroversial?
It seems like an empty criticism to point out that someone's cited statistics agree with their argument.
Instead, either find a problem with the argument or find a problem with the statistics.
Furthermore, I made no claim that people ought to get vasectomies.
My intention was to counterbalance anecdotal fear mongering about a procedure that is well known to be safe and effective as form of birth control.
But let's remember that the alternative is often pregnancy, and that the risk, pain and ongoing implications associated with pregnancy and childbirth are much much higher than vasectomies.
You seem to be saying "Yes, it can go bad, but suck it up guys, women might have it worse."
Why should it be anyone's responsibility to undergo a medical procedure on the off chance that someone in the future might be at risk of something completely different?
If you've been on the fence about getting this done, I highly recommend it! It's a quick procedure, you're in & out in less than an hour. Mine was so uneventful I actually took the bus back home. Back at work the next day. Slightly sore for about two weeks, then totally back to normal. Aside from the other obvious benefits, just the peace of mind is great.
Throwaway here. My vasectomy was quick and uncomplicated, but left me in constant testicular pain. Sex also became far less pleasurable. After a year and a half of no improvement, I had a reversal; this greatly improved my symptoms but I am still not as I was before.
PVPS is known to be real, but there are very few studies on it. Nobody really knows the incidence, there is no way to predict who will get it, and all of the treatment options suck. Reversal is the best, but is very expensive and often doesn't work.
The reversal cost me ~$14k out of pocket. It's often not covered by insurance because it is considered elective.
I wish I had more to offer than an anecdote. There's some forums out there of people who got it much worse than me.
I was thinking about having it done. The doctor who was going to do it said that some people have pain afterwards. I asked him and he couldn't give me any stats or details on how many people or how long it lasts, etc. That made me think twice and after looking up people's stories online I decided not to do it. It seems surprisingly little studied. If it was temporary, I could deal with it, but a small yet significant chance of constant pain isn't worth it.
> Aside from the other obvious benefits, just the peace of mind is great.
To say this without even paying lip-service to the well-known and common negative side effects strikes me as incredibly disingenuous.
The few guys I've known well enough over the years to discuss such matters who had lived with vasectomies long enough all complained of testicular pain, granulomas forming, etc.
One would so consistently walk bull-legged from the pain into our shared office I basically knew whenever he got stoned with his wife the previous weekend. He wasted numerous days on doctor visits to get it checked out and see if he had developed testicular cancer, since granulomas are easily conflated with tumors, especially when the area's too tender/painful to really probe yourself.
Living with a vasectomy is not all sunshine and roses.
And I say this as someone who feels strongly about the planet being overrun by far too many homo sapiens.
> The few guys I've known well enough over the years to discuss such matters who had lived with vasectomies long enough all complained of testicular pain, granulomas forming, etc.
And of the several guys I know who had lived with vasectomies for a long time, none of them experienced any sort of long-term discomfort at all.
We have dueling anecdata here. I have not seen any information, in data or anecdotes, that would make me even a little nervous about getting a vasectomy.
However, there is risk with literally all surgical procedures, no matter how minor. Different people have different risk tolerances, and I am not diminishing your own personal risk assessment.
> We have dueling anecdata here. I have not seen any information, in data or anecdotes, that would make me even a little nervous about getting a vasectomy.
You're right, it's not like what my anecdata describes is common/confirmed by the data enough to have a medical term describing it with its own wikipedia page or anything...
Understand that I'm not saying there is zero risk with getting a vasectomy. All surgery, no matter how minor, carries risk of something going very wrong.
I'm saying that it appears to me that the risk is very small. Whether or not it's small enough to be under your threshold of acceptable risk is an individual matter. I am not saying that people who decide it's too risky are being foolish. That's a personal decision that there is no objective right or wrong answer to.
I've always wanted to get one done, but I've heard that doctors can just say no, and not let you get one. For reference, I know that I would want any of my children to be born through IVF (for genetic screening reasons), and since you can always have sperm frozen, might as well just reduce risk and get a vasectomy after having them frozen. But the only reason why I haven't yet is because I'm fairly young, and doctors don't like young people getting vasectomies for some reason.
I think this will be highly regional & medical system dependent. FWIW I got mine when I was 28 here in Minnesota, before I was married. Doctor just asked how certain I was, I said 9 or 10 out of 10, and he booked me for surgery. That was it. This was at a university-associated urology clinic.
Whenever I again consider getting one and start reading up opinions on the Internet, it is usually a mix of a lot of people who say they're absolutely OK now ... and then I run into someone who says it COMPLETELY destroyed their life and they're in pain all day every day.
Some even say they've been fine for quite a bit of time and then suddenly the pain starts.
Which in total makes me absolutely NOT want a vasectomy even though I have zero desire to reproduce.
Because it does feel plausible that it can cause trouble to lock something up in the body which is meant to be released once in a while.
I hope some day men too will have real and reliable (condoms fail a lot) self-determination in terms of reproduction, not only "suffer abstinence your whole life or risk getting financially gutted for decades."
This was my experience as well. What you don't read too much about are the moderate experiences.
Something changed for me, down there, after the procedure. My right testicle, in particular, is a lot more sensitive than it used to be. And there is the occasional pain. When that happens I feel around down there and the "tubes" (not sure of the anatomical terminology) feel like they're quite swollen.
Did it destroy me? Absolutely not.
Can I live with it? Yes.
Do I regret having the procedure? No.
But there is clearly a middle of the road scenario here. I'm never in excruciating pain. I've never needed to take pain killers for it. But every once in a while there is a mild throbbing, similar to having a mild headache and it goes away after a while. My family doctor told me that it would go away after a while but it's been 5 years since I had the procedure and it persists.
Something else that I'll say. I had children way too young. My wife and I were high school sweethearts and we got pregnant in our senior year. I love my daughters to death but fatherhood was INSANELY difficult for me. I'm pretty sure that I have Asperger syndrome and this comes with extreme noise sensitivity, freaking out when I get interrupted by anything etc. I really wish that I had understood this about myself when I was 19 years-old because I'm positive that we could have found ways to give our daughters a much easier childhood. Nevertheless, I was absolutely convinced in my 20s that I never should have had kids and that I would never want more.
Then I hit my mid to late 30s, became financially successful, way more comfortable with who and what I am as a person and suddenly felt like NOW was the time to have kids and I kind of wanted to give it another go.
People change, and while vasectomies are reversible, the advise is to consider them a permanent solution.
Just information. Everyone needs to make this extremely personal decision for themselves.
> Something else that I'll say. I had children way too young.
On the upside…you’ll have a long life together with your children (and maybe grandchildren), at an age when you are young enough to really enjoy it. I know people who waited a long time to have kids, and then by the time their kids were adults, they were in their mid-late sixties. They end up needing care as they age when their children are young, relatively poor, and with young children of their own…which can make it hard to care for their now-elderly parents.
Damn I don't know what kind of condom you've been using or if they're not your size but the only condom I have had cracking on me where bad condoms + intense sex, the kind you get in sex ed.
Don't be cheap and get some that are actually your size.
When covid first started I bought a few hundred, and I definitely managed to get a bad batch in there. 99% were fine, but one box had like 4 break. YMMV.
It's a 0.07 mm piece of plastic which has to absorb the forces caused by two moving bodies weighing > 100 kg together. Thus condoms do and will fail, even if properly fitted. The failure rate is estimated between 2% and 12% pregnancies per year.
Or to put it in more visual words:
If you had $ 200 000 in cash (that's the cost of a kid), would you secure it against theft with a 0.07 mm piece of plastic?
Even if much of the force is alleviated by that there's still enough moving kg's left to break condoms
- which we don't even have to discuss, because there is statistics about this, and their failure rate is quite high, as said between 2% and 12% (I suppose it's a range because usage errors and quality vary).
I can't alleviate your worry. I had the same fears going in, but decided the incident rate was low enough for me to "chance" it, given the benefits. It remains a decision I'm very happy to have made, but I also completely understand your position.
I hope some day men too will have real and reliable (condoms fail a lot) self-determination in terms of reproduction
Period tracking is incredibly reliable. People will tell you that women will lie about when they have their periods. However, if you can't trust a woman to tell you when she's menstruating, then that's perhaps a sign that you're not ready for sexual conduct with that woman.
The failure rate of that is in the double digits percentage AFAIK !?
Besides, as long as you are still fertile and relying upon someone else not being fertile that is not self-determination. Men can also be victims of violence.
And as soon as multiple $100k in potential alimony payment (raising a kid for 18 years costs that much!) get involved some (not all!) people will lie to your face as much as humanly possible.
Indeed, we use condoms for the danger days. We have a window of four days before and after supposed ovulation. I wonder if this is enough. Do you use any other kind of tracking like temperature monitoring ? I'd love to read any resources.
I know this isn't the best contraception but I live in a country where I have access to abortion and "tomorrow" pills.
You can get an ovulation test kit if you want to go crazy with it[0]. She can know exactly when she ovulates and you can expand/shrink your window as you feel comfortable. Pair that with a condom and pull-out and there's virtually no risk of pregnancy.
Thanks, I didn't know those existed, it's great...
Actually do you rememeber the twitter thread when someone took apart one of those test (a pregnancy test, I assume they're alike) and then you realised it's basically a small camera doing the work of your eyes on a very cheap paper test ?
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1301707401024827392
I don't want to use one or two tests like that a month, it would be too much waste. Good news is I suppose is I should be able to get my hand on a paper tests.
I've used fertility awareness (see https://www.tcoyf.com/) paired with a short course of Queen Anne's Lace tincture as a fallback if intimacy should happen during the fertile window. A fertile window for those who ovulate is usually only 2-3 days, with a couple days padded onto either side of the window for extra security. I've been using this method for five years and have avoided pregnancy thus far.
Fertility awareness requires a great deal of mutual trust, and a great deal of understanding of one's body. It is not 100% reliable (although the media would have you believe this method is only for religious zealots and the irresponsible, which is very much not true) -- but it's a lot less complicated than invasive surgery.
Reversibility goes down over time, and can cost $5k-$10k. You can put semen on ice with a cryostorage company for ~$1200, covering collection and some initial storage time, with cost of ongoing storage on a cadence. I recommend Reprotech, but there are several reputable providers in this space. Cheap insurance if your life changes and you change your mind.
To be fair, voluntarily surrendering the ability to procreate seems life-altering and identity-shaping enough to qualify. Not something you'd do on a whim, no? Seems worth talking about.
That's unfortunate. I've been on their mailing list since I was in my early twenties - I was married, and while I didn't particularly want more children, I would have been willing to accept the risk as part of a study to help the technology progress. I would have even been willing to participate in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study on its effectiveness, knowing that there would be a ~50% chance that I was just having completely unprotected sex.
Now I'll be 40 in a few months and it appears it's no closer to market than it was when I was 20.
> Overturning Roe v Wade has been a brutal blow for women’s rights in America. The rise in vasectomies may be one very small consolation.
What a terrible way to end the article. Especially when it has the subtitle "Brothers are doing it for themselves." It's not a consolation of any amount and calling them "solidarity snips" is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. No one gave that reason with a straight face. There's no author credited on the page, I wonder why.
> No one gave that reason with a straight face. There's no author credited on the page, I wonder why.
IIRC, it's the Economist's house style. So, if you read that magazine, you may be taking some green 20-something's pronouncements as more authoritative than they should be.
I had one done earlier this year. The doctor told me he was pretty much booked non stop since the time of that decision. I had jokingly said I missed the peak season of march madness. He said that in the past it was the peak season but times had seriously changed in the last year. He didn't bring it up specifically but he said he had around 5-7 consults a day since June of 2022, with a couple surgeries a day.
The surgeon said one of the reasons men were getting the procedure was because:
> Others, who had been considering the procedure for a while, were apparently spurred by a concern that vasectomy could be outlawed next.
Is this a common concern? The only things I've seen discussed regarding vasectomies in politics in the last few years have had to do with REQUIRING vasectomies in various situations...the exact opposite of what this surgeon says his clients are worried about.
>> Others, who had been considering the procedure for a while, were apparently spurred by a concern that vasectomy could be outlawed next.
> Is this a common concern?
Perhaps in some quarters. In our polarized times, cultivating fear is an easy and effective way to motivate "your side," and the use of fear is not limited to any particular faction. The country is full of people who have pretty irrational and unrealistic and exaggerated fears of what will happen if the "other side" wins.
And the evidence is right there in the quote "Dr Doug Stein" appears to be from Florida. Abortion isn't banned there, it's just recently been severely restricted very recently. If his patents are coming into his clinic incorrectly thinking abortion is currently banned (implied by "outlawed next"), I doubt those people are going to be able to make reasonable predictions about what will happen politically in the future.
In case anyone is curious but doesn't want to click, the link suggests the poster is concerned about a total ban on abortion. I do not see a reason to believe this commenter believes that vasectomies will be banned.
Men have no say over whether a baby is aborted or not, even if they are the father and will be responsible for child support: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22457999/
There are about 260 work days per year. Assuming 3 weeks' vacation per year, so 245 days per year, 50,000 vasectomies in 40 years is 5.1 vasectomies per day - approximately one every 94 working minutes for an entire career.
Isn't this more obvious? These are guys that don't want to 'accidently' get someone pregnant, since now there are fewer options for dealing with the 'problem'.
Paywalled so I'm not sure if it's covered but I'm curious what the demographic of the new patients are and if there was any changes in "ethics" to determine "qualifying" patients at that office.
It had nothing to do with Roe but I had one this year. I'm over 40, have 2 kids and, while my wife wasn't required to sign off on it, they did ask about it several times. Meanwhile my brother-in-law, late 30's, neither him or his wife (even later 30's) ever want kids, can't find a reliable doctor to perform one in this are (not FL).
I've seen conservatives gloat about this as a huge win.
They see it as liberal men voluntarily limiting their future contribution to the gene pool, and thereby reducing competition for their own offspring to thrive and take control of the future.
It would be interesting to see these rates and their political affiliation. My guess is that it would be pretty mixed. Seems the “libs sterilizing themselves” is a clear conservative cope.
I'm sure it will take a couple of years for the data to start to trickle in, but we can get a clue from the fertility rate changes between liberals and conservatives during the covid era.
That said, you can probably query the CDC Wonder dataset to see the breakdown of vasectomies by state.
I actually think overturning Roe will accelerate abortions in some regions (and completely stop others). There were previously limits on abortions based on age. In Colorado, you can now abort up to birth, for instance.
Imo this will lead to a much larger change in the fertility rates.
This sounds like an offshoot of the "quiverfull" or "replacement theory" mindset. The idea that immigrants are going to outnumber "natives" so they have to make as many babies as possible because they know how poorly they treat minorities.
That's part of it for sure. I'm the product of a Christian quiverfull family. In my case, there was never a sense of preserving racial purity, but religious purity. You had big families to ensure that the future would be full of godly Christians. It's part of the goal of making the whole world Christian, and race or nationality didn't have anything to do with it.
Of course, it didn't really work. I'm now a wayward atheist, and none of my 4 siblings seem likely at this point to reproduce themselves to continue the process.
But the fact is, if you have two populations with very different reproductive rates, the one with the higher rate (assuming it's sustained over many generations) absolutely will subsume the other given enough time. It's just math.
> But the fact is, if you have two populations with very different reproductive rates, the one with the higher rate (assuming it's sustained over many generations)
But, you don't have two different populations. Identity groups (whether socially constructed races or religions) aren't isolated lineages.
As though political opinion or ideology is informed by some genetic predisposition. I'd assume it isn't, but I wonder if there's any data anywhere to inform an opinion on this?
This is definitely a question of how much your genes affects the memes you're susceptible to. However, the ideas you are exposed to throughout your childhood are critically important to how you think as an adult. This is why so many conservatives homeschool.
It's called indoctrination, and everyone does it to their kids.
A lot of conservatives have decided they don't like the indoctrination that the state is giving to kids in public school, so they are starting to homeschool their kids to make it more likely that they are indoctrinated in the parent's memes and not the state's.
> It's called indoctrination, and everyone does it to their kids.
I'm sure everyone does it to some degree, but surely not every "indoctrination" is equal, right? If you help foster critical thinking and show proper scientific methodology incl. how to discern good and bad sources, I'd say you're doing less indoctrination than if you don't do this and e.g. just block resources you don't like.
>> It's called indoctrination, and everyone does it to their kids.
> I'm sure everyone does it to some degree, but surely not every "indoctrination" is equal, right?
Yes, but it depends on your point of view. I'm an A, so I think A-indoctrination is best, but you're a B, so you disagree think B-indoctrination is best (and perhaps that A-indoctrination is bad and I'm bad for doing it). If you think you're in a position to objectively evaluate which is better, you've just presented of an example of someone who's confused their point of view with objectivity. The "not equal" is in the sense of "not equally close to me."
That kind of ignored what I wrote earlier. If A-indoctrination means to:
> help foster critical thinking and show proper scientific methodology incl. how to discern good and bad sources
and B-indoctrination doesn't, we can still say that one is more indoctrinated than the other, since one doesn't simply follow their indoctrination, but actually has the tools to evaluate their position properly.
No, I didn't. Someone who is indoctrinated to "foster critical thinking and show proper scientific methodology" and does so is simply following their indoctrination.
There's always ideology that goes so unquestioned that it's hard to see it for what it really is, an ideology.
I think this view leads to incredibly bad comparisons. Let me try to explain using a hypothetical:
Child A is raised with homeschooling by parents that strictly believe in flat earth, reject "mainstream physics" and science in total, and Child A fully believes it all and sees conspiracies everywhere.
Child B is raised in the public school system and they have a standard science education, incl. the basics of how gravity works and so on. They also have talked in class about flat earth and disproved the theory on multiple grounds any person can try - but they have honestly tried to look into it. Child B believes in our standard models, to the best of their knowledge.
You're still not getting it. Quit looking at things from your point of view for a minute. They're both indoctrinated, and "more" in this case is simply a function of how far they are from your ideology.
You can repeat this as often as you want to, but I will not agree that we live in post-factual times and everything is fully subjective. If you give somebody the tools to find the truth themselves they will not be necessarily follow their parents indoctrination.
Try to consider whether you really wish to treat every single viewpoint as equal.
> You can repeat this as often as you want to, but I will not agree that we live in post-factual times and everything is fully subjective.
I figured as much. It's hard to believe you're not at the center of the universe.
> If you give somebody the tools to find the truth themselves they will not be necessarily follow their parents indoctrination.
You have to indoctrinate someone with the doctrine that "the truth" as the output of those tools. The problem you're having is you refuse to acknowledge that, and arbitrarily redefine certain kinds of indoctrination as not-indoctrination.
It's probably because you need to feel that indoctrination is something that only the other guys do, because you've labeled indoctrination as bad thing done by baddies, and think of yourself as a goodie.
> Try to consider whether you really wish to treat every single viewpoint as equal.
I obviously don't. I have by own viewpoint that I prioritize over others because it's mine. I just don't lie to myself pretend that preference has a faux "objectivity."
> I figured as much. It's hard to believe you're not at the center of the universe.
Funnily enough that's what you're arguing - there is no truth, all knowledge is indoctrination, the only important thing is what you believe. I think that there is knowledge beyond humanity, and we are able to explore and discover more and more through scientific processes. We're not at the center, we're outside looking in.
> You have to indoctrinate someone with the doctrine that "the truth" as the output of those tools. The problem you're having is you refuse to acknowledge that, and arbitrarily redefine certain kinds of indoctrination as not-indoctrination.
No, I'm following commonly accepted epistemological frameworks. You're on the other hand re-defining "indoctrination" to mean "passing any kind of knowledge and opinion", which coincidentally means you don't really have to evaluate what you pass on - it's all indoctrination anyway!
> It's probably because you need to feel that indoctrination is something that only the other guys do, because you've labeled indoctrination as bad thing done by baddies, and think of yourself as a goodie.
Is your moral framework really this shallow? I simply acknowledge that I am fallible, and most of my knowledge is wrong. So instead of focussing on passing on my knowledge and opinions, I focus on fostering the ability to gain knowledge. But obviously there is no way someone else is doing something better than you! After all, you're at the center of the universe. You know how everything works, and what all things are. So of course you know there can't be any difference between what I do and what you do.
> I obviously don't. I have by own viewpoint that I prioritize over others because it's mine. I just don't lie to myself pretend that preference has a faux "objectivity."
You should really, really look into epistemology. There is a lot more to this world than "I thought of it, so it's what I think" - people have spent a lot of time thinking about how knowledge works, how you can gain it, and how you can differentiate truth from untruth. It seems you've either read a lot and rejected all of it, or you haven't read anything - in both cases you should give it another go, there might be interesting thoughts in there for you which you didn't come up with yourself!
> No, I'm following commonly accepted epistemological frameworks.
Another term for those? Doctrine.
> You're on the other hand re-defining "indoctrination" to mean "passing any kind of knowledge and opinion"
That's not a redefinition, btw. Look it up.
> which coincidentally means you don't really have to evaluate what you pass on - it's all indoctrination anyway!
You seem to be overreacting.
> So instead of focussing [sic] on passing on my knowledge and opinions, I focus on fostering the ability to gain knowledge.
That's an artificial distinction, which is really the only point I've been trying to communicate throughout this whole discussion. What you call "the ability to gain knowledge" is still a collection of "knowledge and opinions," but perhaps obscured and not always clearly labeled as such. Obscuring doctrine like that is actually characteristic of deep and thorough indoctrination.
Your doctrine isn't privileged such that training someone in it is somehow not indoctrination or less so than training other doctrines.
> You should really, really look into epistemology.
you show that there is literally no sense in attempting to convince you. You divide everything into black and white, where seemingly any kind of knowledge is automatically doctrine. If I bring up ways to analyze how we attain knowledge and how we can make sure knowledge follows "facts" in a philosophical sense, you just declare that to be doctrine too. You're not responding to any arguments or thoughts beyond automatically declaring them doctrine.
> That's not a redefinition, btw. Look it up.
Sure, let's do it! Cambridge says: "the process of repeating an idea or belief to someone until they accept it without criticism or question"
Dictionary.com says: "the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view"
So your definition is completely different from the first (since I mentioned critical examination), and it falls under one specific part of the second (but fails the others completely). So sure, if you completely ignore the other - more commonly known - definition, you are technically correct. If you accept the word as it is commonly used (we don't want to put you at the center of the universe, do we?) suddenly your rants are pretty baseless.
See, we don't reproduce via genes, we reproduce thanks to ducked up nuclear families whose founders are controlling/abusive.
The future of reproduction is conversion and we don't have to raise a finger for it to happen.
This how I imagined the joke in my head: Conservative men think liberal men won't contribute to the gene pool and are happy that their kind will dominate but in the end since they are terrible people their kids end up being liberal anyways.
Make more sense ?
These are the same conservatives who complain that they ain't getting sex any more, and women are too up-tight. Espousing conservative talking points is like socially castrating yourself. 2/3rds of women won't have anything to do with you.
Getting laid all the time is quite worthless in judging an individual's evolutionary success if they are infertile and fail to ever pass on their genes to new individuals.
My consideration is here is how this might effect larger societal moves as the balance of how reproduces and who does not changes.
Sure, but I think it's silly to suggest that conservative men aren't getting laid en masse. They're quite successful, which is reflected in the fact that red states have a measurable fertility advantage over blue states.
>> I've seen conservatives gloat about this as a huge win.
>> They see it as liberal men voluntarily limiting their future contribution to the gene pool, and thereby reducing competition for their own offspring to thrive and take control of the future.
> These are the same conservatives who complain that they ain't getting sex any more, and women are too up-tight.
Chances are you're just failing to differentiate the different members/factions of a loose grouping, so trading in useless stereotypes.
Or you might have data showing the same individuals are making all these claims and they comprise a significant portion of the "conservative" population. But if that's the case, show us.
> They see it as liberal men voluntarily limiting their future contribution to the gene pool
There is some truth in that.
Almost all religions place emphasis on progeny. So religious conservatives tend to procreate more.
Hedonists don't follow any such strictures. They tend towards seeking of pleasure in the here and the now, and avoiding multi-decade responsibilities that accompany child-birth. Which means their contribution to the future of humanity will be zero.
While passing on your genes is incredibly important and powerful, so is passing on memes. And a person who doesn't get caught up in the sacrifice of child rearing may be much more likely to study and develop novel ideas that spread and infect many minds.
A teacher is in some ways more influential on the future than a single parent, because the teacher influences hundreds of children's minds over a career, while a parent only creates a handful of children.
This is also why conservatives are increasingly concerned about putting their kids in public school which is seeding their minds with memes that they don't like.
The conservatives even commenting on this phenomenon mostly champion personal responsibility. ie. they would prefer you act responsibly before you require an abortion.
They like that people are taking more personal responsibility to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, and therefore not committing what they believe to be murder in the form of abortion.
They also like that liberal minded people who consider abortion an option for an unwanted pregnancy are now increasing their rates of voluntary sterilization, thereby decreasing their future contribution to the gene pool.
This could be some side-effect, but your political ideology is not genetic and therefore self-sterilization has zero impact on the country's future political makeup. Anyone making that argument fundamentally does not understand genetics and child raising. Even within families, children will often hold wildly different political views from each other, let alone their parents.
In conservative circles, it's become a sort of meme. People running out and deciding to become responsible after the "safety net" was removed in some select areas. It should be noted that repealing of Roe had zero impact on significant portions of this country - making the meme even more funny within conservative circles.
From some conservative's perspective, sure, no abortion is permissible. But that is a hard-liner's perspective, and just like the Democrat party has shifted enormously over the past few decades, so is the Republican party.
There are fewer and fewer hard-liners, and more and more folks that just think abortion is supposed to be a last resort - not the first resort.
To that end, this was a clear win for that perspective. I think more of us can agree on this perspective than we would think...
Gay people, trans people, and liberal folks who do stuff like this, are significantly less likely to reproduce.
I wonder if after a generation of this we’ll see a drop in liberalism. Kind of seems like we will.
You can already see some examples of it in Europe. Europeans are not reproducing, Islamic folks are moving in and bringing their own form of conservativism with them.
I don't understand US political cohorts, but wouldn't the "libs" who were against this ruling be more incentivized to resist the new order and not get a vasectomy, since you shouldn't have to?
I can assure you the conservative circles are openly laughing at the idea of people becoming responsible after Roe was repealed - instead of relying on abortion as a defacto contraceptive.
