ESSAY: Emasculation Nation

Testosterone decline isn't happening, but here's why it's a good thing, according to Democrats

At last month’s Democratic National Convention, men lined up to have themselves sterilised outside the conference centre. You probably heard. So-called “reproductive rights” were one of the key issues of the Convention, which also had a giant inflatable IUD stationed close to the entrance, just in case attendees were in any doubt.

Planned Parenthood took an RV to the Convention and set up a mobile clinic in a parking lot nearby. On the first day of proceedings, the Monday, it offered free vasectomies, and then abortions the next day.

Luis Ayala was one of ten men who had himself sterilised that Monday. “Ayala is 28 and works as an electrician,” NPR explained. “His wife saw a social media post about a free reproductive health clinic Planned Parenthood was sponsoring in Chicago during the Democratic convention, and suggested that he sign up.”

I know we—and by “we” I mean “I”—like to say the leftist vision of politics is one of emasculation, but really, it’s a bit on the nose isn’t it? Vasectomies at the Democratic National Convention—really!?

There were signs, of course. You may remember how, in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, which repealed Roe v. Wade, there was a significant uptick in sterilisations among both sexes. Although the increase in the number of female procedures was almost double the increase in male procedures, the increase among men was still huge, and can only be explained as a response to the Supreme Court’s decision. Why? Women may have had some reason to fear losing access to their treasured reproductive rights, sure, but men’s rights weren’t affected at all. Simply put, a significant proportion of the vasectomies that took place directly after the Dobbs decision were male-feminist gestures of solidarity. How do I know this? The Guardian told me so.

“In the current climate,” John Semley writes, “a vasectomy almost seems like a political gesture. It’s a way for men to take a more active stake in big decisions about contraception and reproduction that typically fall to women.”

One man who decided to have the snip to show he’s hip was “Shawn.”

Shawn never really wanted children. A 32-year-old software engineer and amateur weightlifter living in central Florida, he had long contemplated a vasectomy. When he met his fiancee and learned that she also held no grand designs on reproduction, the matter was all but settled. He was, by his estimate, “90% certain.”

The supreme court’s recent overturning of Roe v Wade, and the nationwide convulsions over abortion access, was the final push he and his partner needed. When he read that Justice Clarence Thomas mentioned, in his opinion concurring with the controversial ruling, that the court should reconsider access to contraception, Shawn knew he had to move fast.

Shawn sees his vasectomy as “more than just a way of chipping in.” “The rolling back of abortion rights has served to strengthen his—and his fiancee’s—conviction that procreating at all in the modern US is vaguely immoral.”

According to The Guardian, daily web searches for “Where can I get a vasectomy?” increased by 850% when the draft Dobbs decision was released in May 2022.

New male contraceptive pills and treatments, which are due to hit the market soon, are also being advertised in exactly the same manner: “a way for men to take a more active stake in big decisions about contraception and reproduction that typically fall to women.” Here’s Jill Filipovic, for The Guardian again.

Among politically progressive couples especially, it’s now standard to expect that a male partner will do his fair share of the household management and childrearing (whether he actually does is a separate question, but the expectation is there). What men generally cannot do, though, is carry pregnancies and birth babies.

And so, for years, women have also been asking when modern medicine will allow men to do their part in at least planning for those babies, and preventing mistimed or unwanted pregnancies. Now that the moment seems near, a male contraceptive will be another test of whether heterosexual men are actually willing to take on the shared responsibilities of adult life, or whether they’re satisfied leaving women doing all the work of controlling when and whether to reproduce.

The arrival of the male Pill is a chance for men, at long last, to put their money where their partner’s mouth is and show they really are progressive—that they really do believe in equality.

One such drug is YCT-529, which has been undergoing clinical trials. It works by blocking the body’s access to vitamin A (a.k.a. retinol), which is essential for sperm production. No vitamin A, no sperm. Hurrah: you’re infertile. YCT-529, Filipovic assures us, has “virtually no side effects.” When it was tested on male mice it showed 99% efficacy as a contraceptive, and its effects were 100% reversible. The mice were fertile again within four to six weeks.

Frankly, I’m sceptical. If you interfere with anything as serious as the body’s metabolism of a crucial vitamin, there will be other effects. Guaranteed. In the long term—and men might be using YCT-529 for months, years or even decades, in the same way women use hormonal contraceptives—interfering with vitamin A metabolism could be a disaster. Vitamin A isn’t just involved in sperm production. Vitamin A deficiencies cause blindness, scaly skin, decreased immunity and stunted growth. Vitamin A also has a vital role to play in brain health. A recent study showed that “vitamin A deficiency contributes to the pathogenesis and progression of Alzheimer's disease,” by allowing amyloid plaques to accumulate in the brain. That’s about as bad as it gets. Unfortunately, no one will do the kind of long-term studies that would be needed to establish, conclusively, whether this drug is safe for the brain.

The market for male contraceptives stands at $200 billion a year, says a study published in the journal Current Obstetrics and Gynecology Reports. The study assumes a national market of 10 million men in the US, and a worldwide market of 50 million men. A 2021 study in the Journal of Sex Research, however, claims that between 34% and 82.3% of men might be willing to use a novel male contraceptive.

Be in no doubt: use of the male contraceptive will soon become a standard dating requirement, loudly advertised by women on apps like Bumble and Hinge. It will be just like the pandemic, when vaccination became a sine qua non for sexual access to a certain kind of liberal woman—like Jill Filipovic. Sorry, gentlemen: you’ve already had to pretend you’re vaxxed and boosted, that you give a damn about George Floyd, watch the Handmaid’s Tale, haven’t spoken to your racist uncle since he wore a MAGA hat at Thanksgiving—and now this. Another tiresome demand to look forward to.

But let’s get back to the DNC.

It would be easy to dismiss the vasectomy bus as a stunt were it not for the fact the Democrats have made emasculation an explicit part of their appeal to America’s men. The messaging from the Convention was loud and clear: Democrat men are different from Republican men. Democrat men probably have low testosterone. But that’s a good thing, of course, because it means Democrat men are more likely to support having a female leader.