Cornell columnist is a misogynist, fool

So much sarcastic thanks to Tony Manfred (I hope he has a Google alert on his name) from the Cornell Daily Sun for pointing out what the real problem with sex education and contraception is: women are too well-informed.

I wouldn’t believe it if it weren’t coming from a male college journalist (and I won’t touch on what he looks like or where he goes to school or his obvious virginity), but this kid has probably the most skewed perception of what the process of getting on and being on birth control is like. I tend to agree with one of his commenters that “this is the worst article I have EVER read.”

But the question I should be asking isn’t, “Where can I get a pill that renders my sperm lame while giving me huge muscles, clear skin, and the inoffensively bland personality of a lobotomy patient?” It’s, “Why the hell do I know so much about a drug that I’m physiologically ineligible to take?”

Why should a boy know anything about birth control? It’s not like it matters to him if the girl gets pregnant, right? And it’s not like it matters to him that taking hormones to trick your body into thinking you’re pregnant isn’t all fun and games–if he thinks it is, then he’s the one being duped by commercials–as long as he can get his rocks off without a condom in his way.

We take drugs either because we are sick or we don’t want to become sick, not because a commercial was seductive enough to send us to our doctor’s office demanding medication.

Since being pregnant isn’t the same thing as being sick, I guess he’s advocating that we get rid of birth control pills altogether. Because what a fly-by-night scam this has been, over 40 years of 99% effective birth control that women only want to take because it looks like so much fun in the commercials.

Even if it means fewer girls can experience the superhuman, miraculous benefits of Yaz, at least we’ll be taking the medicine we should be.

I’m still not sure if he just hates birth control or not. I think he’d be hard-pressed to find someone who was seduced by advertising into taking Yaz or any other pill when they weren’t interested in being on birth control in the first place. And I don’t really know who he’s trying to target that doesn’t deserve to be on Yaz - girls who watch TV?

Ordinary citizens don’t have the power to prescribe themselves powerful medications for a reason. It is the burden of the doctor to examine his patient and decide which medication is best for the patient’s individual set of conditions.

After insisting that he knows so much more about birth control than he even needs to (since he’s a boy), Tony really shows what a fool he is here. No one walks into a doctor’s office and demands a prescription like that. A little bit of research, or having ever talked to a girl, and Tony would know that any sexually active woman undergoes yearly gynecological exams, after which her doctor will talk with her and recommend birth control options based on her exam and what she wants to do.

All direct-to-consumer advertising of these drugs should be outlawed in order to place the authority back with the doctor — who has decades of medical study and experience that dictates his medical recommendations, as opposed to the 30-seconds of highly focus-grouped, intentionally enticing commercial that the patient is exposed to.

I don’t think a woman going into a doctor’s office with at least a little bit of information is a bad thing, but I guess if you think decisions about women’s health should be left up to doctors (usually men), you might think so.

Hating on this kid is easy, but the real problem isn’t his article, it’s what articles like this from boys like this are symptomatic of. Too many boys don’t know enough about birth control to be sensitive about it, even though information is so accessible. They think they don’t need to care, and a lot of girls will let them get away with that. I can’t stress enough that both partners should have a say in decisions about birth control, but that requires that both partners take an active interest and know enough to make good decisions.