Homebirth is often promoted as a way to save healthcare dollars. No hospital use, no medications, no doctor. Unmedicated homebirth costs a lot less than hospital birth (barring complications, of course). Treatment intensity is lower, interventions are fewer, and the mortality rate is only slightly higher.
In the same spirit of cost savings, I suggest unmedicated home vasectomy with licensed home vasectomists!
Think about it:
There are nearly 500,000 vasectomies performed in the US every year.
[pullquote align=”right” color=””]If women can be birth warriors, men can be incised scrotum warriors![/pullquote]
Is it really necessary to use hospitals, surgi-centers or doctors’ offices for a procedure that is nothing but a snip-snip?
Imagine how much money we could save by doing vasectomies at home!
Is it really necessary to use powerful pain medications and sedatives for something that takes 5 minutes? Pain medications are interventions and everyone knows that interventions are bad. Certainly if women are supposed to endure 24 hours of unmedicated labor at home, men can endure a few minutes of having their scrotums cut. If women can be birth warriors, men can be incised scrotum warriors.
Imagine how much money we could save if we just convince men that the pain of vasectomy is “good pain”!
Is it really necessary to have vasectomies done by urologists? Urologists are specialists in pathological urology conditions and men undergoing vasectomy have no urologic disease. Why not have certified lay people do the job? Vasectomies cost up to $2000. Surely certified vasectomists could do the job for $50 or less.
Imagine how much money we could save!
And what’s up with the extensive training demanded of urologists? Why bother when licensed home vasectomists can start on the job after observing 20 vasectomies performed at home on unmedicated men by other licensed home vasectomists? With such a low upfront investment in training, home vasectomists could make a good living charging only $50 per procedure.
Imagine how much money we could save!
Do we really need follow up sperm counts in order to ensure the procedure worked? A follow up sperm count is yet another intervention, and everyone knows interventions are bad. A follow up sperm count that is greater than zero will inevitably lead to a cascade of interventions to address the problem. Better not to know and just see what happens next.
Think of all the money we would save!
Wait, what?
You think it would be inhumane to snip two little cuts in a man’s scrotum without anesthesia? How can that be when a vasectomy is so much less painful than childbirth? Surely men could be taught to be empowered by the pain of vasectomy, just as women are taught to be empowered by the pain of childbirth.
You think it would be barbaric to entrust cutting into man’s scrotum to a lay person with minimal training? How can that be when vasectomy is so much simpler than childbirth and lots of people think that a lay person is an adequate attendant for birth?
You think it would be wrong to forgo a post op sperm count and risk an unwanted pregnancy? How can that be when an unwanted pregnancy is so much less serious than the death of a baby or mother in childbirth and homebirth advocates think those are acceptable since we are saving money?
Here’s what I want to know:
If no one would tolerate an unmedicated home vasectomy for men on the grounds of cost saving, why is anyone promoting unmedicated homebirth for women as a way to save money?
This is exactly the state of mind (and science, and safety, and level of regulation) behind circumcision, and precisely the reason there is no excuse for your transphobic, homophobic and antifeminist dishonesty on the subject. I know people are incapable of doing better, but that’s no excuse. Your values are correct. Fucking apply them.
Honestly, considering that the risks of vasectomy are so much lower than the risks of childbirth, I think the notion of home vasectomies is something I could more easily support. The training required would be far less than midwifery training for that matter. (I am in Canada so I mean actual medical midwifery training of course, not that DEM crap).
despite the pains of childbirth….its only the modern woman that thinks its unbearable, your grandmothers seemed to do it just fine.
Actually, my grandmother remains a huge fan of twilight sleep. She had four children this way.
I suppose I should clarify….but modern women was a reference to everything in the past 100 years which is when hospital births became a thing in America. whereas before that we had thousands and thousands of years of women giving birth the natural way and doing so quite successfully. there was obviously minimal complaining because it is because of them that we exist.
nothing about birth, across any species, is anything but painful.
And women died in pain and left their children without a mother.
I have a copy of my great grandfather’s life story written in his own words that includes the death of his first wife by home childbirth in 1927. Everything about it was painful.
“We later moved to Salt Lake and lived with Dora’s mother. Dora got pregnant again; and as the time grew near for the new arrival, we had a doctor and hospital all lined up. One weekend we decided to visit my parents in Magna. Dora brought Ronny out on the train, and I came from work to my folk’s home. We got up the next morning and all sat down for breakfast. I can remember my father and Dora joking with one another.
After breakfast, my father left to go to Salt Lake on business. Shortly after he left, Dora started having severe labor pains. My mother sent me to get a doctor, and one of my sisters was sent to bring a nurse who lived nearby. The doctor had no more than arrived before the baby was born. It was boy that weighed nearly 9 pounds.
The birth caused a bad tear. It started to bleed real bad, and the doctor couldn’t stop the bleeding. As a last resort, he decided to take her to the hospital in Salt Lake. She laid in the back seat of the car, and we started for the hospital. I held her head in my lap; and after only a few miles, she showed on signs of life. I told the doctor. He stopped the car and checked her and she had passed away.
The last words she said to me was that she was going to meet her father. Her real father had been dead for several years. I have often wondered if she meant her real father. I think my whole body went numb. I know I didn’t cry. That came later. When you begin to realize what has happened, you think your world has come to an end.”
Thank you. These stories need to be told.
That is so incredibly sad. The saddest thing is that this sounds very much like all the modern home birth disasters that we have been reading except they still take them to the hospital and with a lot of intervention are still pronounced dead.
Why in heavens name would you say there was obviously minimal complaining? Simply because women had no choice and no real ability to prevent pregnancy? We do know that (1) It was universally acknowledged to be awful, even in the bible (2) women wrote their wills or letters to their families when approaching childbirth and (3) plenty of women didn’t survive or were badly injured.
I mean, c’mon, there was obviously minimal complaining about farming, war, war wounds and everything men went through. Because, hey, we exist.
Even my Grandmother had to worry about this. My dad’s mom was born with a heart defect where it was predicted if she ever got pregnant, she and the baby would likely die as her heart would give out.
She and my grandpa got married knowing this. He wasn’t sure he could have kids either since he got mumps right before he was supposed to ship out to Korea and was likely to be infertile.
Somehow my grandma made it through two pregnancies with my dad’s oldest sisters. After that though it was basically a given that another pregnancy would kill her. This was in the late 50s.
This was when heart surgery was still in its infancy. There was a procedure that may partially correct one of the defects. But this was before rib spreaders, open heart surgery, all things we take for granted. She had a 5% chance of coming out of it alive.
Basically certain death with another pregnancy or a 5% chance at life through surgery. She wrote out her will and tried to convince my grandfather to give up my two aunts for adoption so they could grow up with a mother. He was adamantly against it.
Lucky for my existence she came through. She got pregnant with my dad soon after. She had two more children after him. She had three or four (can’t remember) heart surgeries with eventually several aortic valve replacements as technology improved.
How terrifying it must have been knowing at any time she could die if she got pregnant. Not a “something might go wrong” situation but a “if you get pregnant your chance of dying increases dramatically every time.”
Umm…most animals are not mammals. Though I suppose plopping out an egg or several thousand might be painful too.
Except for the ones that died. I’m sure that was delightful to go through.
Despite the pain of unanesthetized surgery, your great-great grandfathers seemed to do it just fine.
Also, my grandmothers used anesthesia during childbirth. Just how old do you think I am?
Surgery is so unnatural. I think we should go back to the traditional Moriori way of preventing men from fathering children; crush their testes between rocks.
I dreamt that I attended a Moriari ceremony in my Lululemon’s ‘anti-ball-crushing pants’. I’m just nuts over them!
http://www.businessinsider.com/lululemons-anti-ball-crushing-pants-2015-4
I don’t understand why men need vasectomy procedures at all. Surely if they just trusted testicles more their bodies would naturally release sperm when the time is right, and not do so when it isn’t.
We have gotten so out of touch with nature it’s sad.
There are GPs and other Drs in the UK and Ireland who have been trained to do no-scalpel vasectomies under local anaesthetic. Just FYI.
They have very good outcomes, and there is no reason why a vasectomy SHOULD be done in an OR by a urologist.
Here’s the required training manual.
http://www.fsrh.org/pdfs/VasectomyLogbook.pdf
It isn’t quite “lay vasectomist”- but it certainly isn’t a urologist in an OR either.
Oh, this post and the comments are so much fun. My contribution is the natural vasectomy orgasm. That should be interesting. And the spouses mustn’t be left out. They must be invited in and encouraged to gently touch and massage the scrotum while the procedure is taking place : )
And if they don’t touch and massage it, the attending nurse will! It is what nature intended.
Nice work if you can get it…
Two important questions:
1) what are we going to encapsulate here? we need to encapsulate SOMETHING!
2) How much does it cost to get encapsulation, and can I pay extra for artwork?
I have some ideas, but they are too disgusting too print.
Ash, you are clearly not from Colorado. Never heard of rocky mountain oysters?
In Iran and India men who have had vasectomies are often given the severed pieces of vas in specimen jars, to take home to their wives as proof that they had the procedure.
Maybe an infusion of vas deferens pieces steeped in a healing herbal tea, or vas deferens pieces added to a strengthening bone broth?
By the time you dehydrated the tiny pieces of vas you’d have nothing left to encapsulate.
I think I’m already qualified to be a lay-vasectomist. At a previous job, one of my duties was to vasectomize mice (via cauterizing.) Of course, the mouse was under anesthesia at the time, but a human male could just take some tylenol. Anyway, mice aren’t that different from people, I bet I could cut the scrotum and find that vas loop, no problem. And no stitches–no scissors either for that matter–a proper tear (pretty easy on such thin skin) will heal faster and with less pain than a small cut made with an instrument and then stitched.
They can’t take tylenol, that’s unnatural. If they don’t feel the pain, then they are not real men.
Good point. What about willow bark tea? That’s natural if they get the bark themselves, brew it over an open fire made by rubbing 2 sticks together and drink it from a cup of hand-woven reeds?
yea, but, if they are feeling pain after their vasectomy, that’s because they are having negative thoughts and western society convinced them that it is painful. They should probably meditate or something until they realize that they are not in pain because they are vasectomy gods.
If they take anything for the pain, they can’t boast on FB about how they rocked their vasectomy. (No need to mention having to go to the hospital later for infection – that’s not part of the narrative.)
Oh that’s part of the narrative, just like the NICU stay after the “perfect” birth.
What they really need is to get themselves into a hypno-vasectomy trace. Then they won’t feel the pain, only “rushes.” They just need to pay $150 for the kit to learn how and then practice every day.
Practice “Spinning testes?”
Ah, the nacheral way of resolving a testicular torsion. None of that nasty orchidopexy stuff, that’s just a tool of the patriarchy. Clearly a sign that the man has some unresolved issues about…manliness? He should just chant some mantras and eat some testicle cupcakes washed down with a kale smoothie.
Only if they collect the willow bark two nights after the full moon.
(couldn’t resist… :))
The pain is all in their minds. If they didn’t fear the vasectomy, they wouldn’t experience pain. Better to spend the nine months prior to the procedure (experience?) doing deep soul work to remove all the baggage from childhood and former lives. Then the vasectomy experience (euphoria?) will be nothing but glorious.
I have a flint shaped, all natural stone knife and I’ve glanced at anatomy text books.
In fact I found my calling as a lay vasectomist after overhearing guys talk about them in the grocery line!
I’ll stitch up the wounds with natural flax fiber soaked in natural grain alcohol. It’ll heal much better than all those artificial fibers and dangerous antiseptics!
I am more qualified than some urologist. Their name doesn’t even have “vas” in it! How am I supposed to believe they’re qualified to do something which is obviously outside their practice that appears something to do with pee?! Trust your vas deferens! You only feel pain because you don’t trust them enough!
Stone? Obsidian is the only acceptable option for real men.
Nope! Stones for the stones! 😀
Obsidian is made from volcanoes and volcanoes aren’t nice to nature. Therefore volcanoes aren’t natural. I’m sure humans are responsible for volcanoes somehow!
And they will definitely need a doula, too. Whole new market and profession right there.
I think I qualify as a certifying instructor, as I have watched this done on pigs.
(Brilliant, Dr. Tuteur!)
Tears to the genitalia always heal better, so the homebirth enthusiasts tell us.
If when the man’s scrotum is cut, he experiences powerful waves of sensation (I won’t call it pain, because that might put negative ideas in his silly little head) then there is a simple solution. The Certified Vasectomist should touch him very gently on or around his joystick (penis) which will enable him to relax. The Certified Vasectomist can keep one hand there and busy all the time, doing whatever seems most necessary, while with the other hand he cuts the scrotum.
Blech, barf, ick, eeew. *Shivers*
And if the wife seems uncomfortable I’ll make her feel welcome by saying “You’re massive! You must please your wife endlessly!”
Also, it is important that all Certified Vasectomists be other MEN. It would be completely sexist if one was a woman.
Yes. Female urologists just want to snip a man quickly so they can get to their golf games.
(This is rather a fun exercise. It’s reminding me of the Red Dwarf episode where they go to an alternate, female-dominant universe, and Arnold meets his equally horrid alternate Arlene. And Lister gets pregnant.)
Is that actually true, that vasectomy hurts less than childbirth? How are we measuring pain here?
Dunno, but I suppose we could use comparisons with other non-gender sources of pain. For example: Did it hurt as bad or worse than passing your kidney stones? we could get a rough comparison across the population.
I’ve had several cervical biopsies – bits of tissue snipped of my cervix, which is no bloody fun at all, but it’s over quickly. I’m imagining it would be a little like that?
Gallstones are worse, for sure.
My husband had an anesthesia failure during his vasectomy and he screamed so loudly I could hear him in the waiting room. OTOH, he says it was less painful than kidney stones. So there goes some anecdata.
To get further anecdata, I’m am going to have THE best game of horrified scream ridden “Would You Rather…” tonight with my husband.
I will report back with the results. If he can stop screaming long enough to give answers.
What about genital piercing? Men get Prince Alberts without anesthesia. That’s transient pain in the genitals, like a vasectomy incision.
(I am inclined to use ‘transient pain in the genitals’ to refer to people, now.)
Piercings almost never hurt as bad as you’d think, though.
My Christine (the only one that actually hurt) did hurt like a sumbitch – for just a half-second. I think the transience is key – transient pain is way easier to bear. If it had gone on like that for hours, it would have been a very, very different matter…!
I’m sure a competent high-school-educated lay vasectomist would be able to do it quickly!
It’s probably different for every people. Some people might have very quick and not that painful birth while other could have a horrible vasectomy experience. Some are very pain tolerant and some are big babies.
It also depend on what is going on around you at the moment.
I had a car accident in which I got an open fracture of my forearm. It didn’t hurt. At all. I didn’t feel a thing. Adrenaline is surprisingly a good painkiller.
Okay I’m going to google the Christine and Prince Albert now.
And if the vasectomist was competent that would be one step ahead of the homebirth midwives/doulas inflicting their ‘services’.
Pearling came up on a show I was watching and he went all deer in the headlights as soon as it was explained what that is.
A Prince Albert would probably have him screaming “Why are you even talking about this?!”
I’ve given birth vaginally without drugs (not by choice, but it was too late for drugs by the time I got to the hospital), and it was comparable to the pain I experienced the night leading up to my emergency root canal. It’s such a subjective experience, though, that it’s hard to compare experiences.
I’m not really in a position to judge, not having ever had a vasectomy or even parts to vasectomize, but the cuts are small and the procedure quick so surely it’s at least less cumulative pain, even if the immediate pain is worse.
I would have a hard time imagining it’s worse than a tear, that’s for sure.
Well a tear is no worse than carrying a roll of barbed wire with your perineum…at least that’s what it felt like to me!
I don’t remember dad’s recovery from getting a vasectomy. It didnt seem to phase him. I do know when he has kidney stones though. He gets a little moody lol.
It’s also less painful than getting electrocuted by the high line and being clinically dead three times before finally stabilizing. Ish. So his ability to compare pain is a little skewed since then. See the appendix debacle.
My Father had one in the morning and then went back to work for the afternoon but he was in the military at the time and finds it hard to say things like “I’m in pain” unless he has the flu in which case he acts like he’s dying.
I have a *very* hard time believing that the pain is *that* bad. I mean, it can’t be any worse than the pain that (some, many, most?) women experience recovering from birth whether it be CS or vaginal. When we know we are done, the spouse is getting a vasectomy. I’ve done my part for the reproducing what with being in charge of birth control, gestating babies, birthing babies both via CS and vaginally, nursing wounds from birth, dealing with constipation both during and after pregnancy, nursing with sore nipples, losing baby weight every time (almost worse than everything else), giving up foods I like because baby’s belly didn’t like them, etc.
Frankly I don’t care how bad the pain is, it’s his turn. 😉
I feel the same way! Luckily, my husband agrees that it’s his turn.
After Mom’s difficulties with me during pregnancy and labor and then nearly dying with my sister during delivery, Dad decided two children and a living wife was much better than the five kids they originally wanted and a potentially dead wife at each subsequent delivery.
He made the decision to get the vasectmy done because he didn’t want Mom to have to go through an invasive surgery after all she’d been through with my sister’s delivery and then gallbladder surgery soon after if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
Perineal tearing alone, I think, would be more painful.
As my husband cringes at the sight of a needle, and even alluding to anything sharp getting near his “fun bits” he turns green and starts looking like he’s going to hurl, I’d say my husband will have more pain during his future V than I had during childbirth.
Well, it’s like Grantly Dick(tee hee)-Read says — pain is just nature’s punishment for having internalized society’s messages about putting your genitals through a tough day (or 5).
Well you know only Western women find childbirth painful, because they’ve been told it is. [sarcasm]
Have you seen this? Incredibly poor taste. What does she crochet for boys?
https://www.etsy.com/il-en/listing/241273624/vagina-kippah-birth-set?ref=shop_home_active_1
Wow. That’s just not funny.
I would seriously be angry if someone showed up at synagogue with that. Really, seriously, ANGRY.
I’m not Jewish–closest I’ve come would be attending my childhood best friend’s bat mitzvah–so please do pardon me if I’m incorrect about this, but it just seems…rude. Also crude. And rather disrespectful.
Ewww. Maybe that guy could convince people its actually the Eye of Sauron.
Or he could crochet his own.
Some linked to those on FB the other day and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out *why* someone would want to wear one. Of course, I also don’t really get vagina/ birth art at all anyway…
I don’t get how it is feminist to have a vagina on your head. Would we think it is empowering if a man had a penis one? When I see trucks with the balls on the end of it, I don’t think that is empowering. They look like complete a-holes to me. I feel the same way about this. At least when people do this, it is an outward sign to keep far far away from them.
300 shekels! I used to be a really fast croqueter I should open an etsy shop. I’d make a mint.
crocheter* haha. Though I’m not a bad croquet player either!
LOL
I ust realized that the hole in the back is the anus. No daughter of mine is going to read from the Hebrew Bible with an asshole on her head!
Still way too high tech. Real, empowered, natural, organic, non GMO, warrior men will turn to the ancient, mystical, practiced on livestock since the dawn of time, no medical text required method of just tying a tight string around the top of the scrotum until the scrotum gently releases itself (much like a lotus birth placenta).
That’s Natural Sperm Control©.
I was going to *slow clap* this piece from Dr T, but I will now also have to do the same to this comment. After all, tears heal better than cuts, so how much better must necrotic sloughing be?
If it’s good enough for domestic goats and wild coyotes…
Hahahaha! Awesome. I would add that warrior men might benefit from a vasectomy doula, especially if the warrior’s wife is trying to insist on a doctor doing the job at a medical facility. I mean,those facilities are just INFESTED with GMOs.
You are aware, I assume that among some MTF transgender groups, lay orchiectomy is indeed practiced. It is a technically simple procedure….
I had not heard of that, but I can’t say I endorse it (not denying a right to choose, but disagreeing with an unnecessarily dangerous choice). Good, safe medical care is important for everyone. What drives the practice? Ritual/culture? Lack of insurance coverage/funding? Lack of supportive medical staff?
My source for this was an article in Philadelphia Magazine about a sort of shady doctor who did orchiectomies in his office. I’m sorry, I don’t have a link. Anyway, the article talked about MTF people choosing to do this for each other. Cost was an issue, as was personal empowerment. As long as a modicum of cleanliness is practiced and the artery in question is adequately ligated, it is apparently a simple procedure. If you have the cojones….literally
Ah. Found it. It was Felix Spector.
citypaper.net/2006-04-06/cover.shtml
Edited to add that the link doesn’t seem to work. I found it by googling ‘office orchiectomy philadelphia magazine’
Wow. Just wow.
Good, safe healthcare is important for everyone.
Veterinarians do it all the time.
What about using a set of clamps that crushes the vas defens and surrounding blood vessels?
It doesn’t seem to hurt the steers (well, much….), there’s no open wound, training is really easy compared to rubber banding, and the testicles and scrotum eventually reabsorb. Guys don’t really need testes if women don’t need care for vaginal tearing after birth.
The fact the clamps are called emasculators may need to be withheld or renamed, but that’s easy enough to do. We can call them “Freedom Clamps” or “Manly Bits Squishers”
“Freedom Clamps” is fantastic. They’d have to be wood or stone, hand-carved, with strings of amber beads festooning the handles, of course.
The Moriori used to crush the testes between two stones. That’s the ancient traditional way!
We have a winner…exotic culture to blindly appropriate, no fancy tools, appeal to tradition regardless of original context…this is how it should be done.
I could mention the context…they lived on the Chatham Islands and therefore had to strictly control their population to within manageable limits…but you’re right, original context is irrelevant when it’s Tradition!