What's your method of choice? Are you frustrated by what's available? Did you mourn the loss of the Sponge?

Both the Sponge and condoms with spermicide make me itch something awful. I guess I'm allergic to nonoxynol-9. I'm on the pill now because if I'm not on the pill I miss two days of work during my period due to an inability to walk upright, but I've never found any method that I considered ideal or even good.

What's your experience?

-- Beth (xeney@xeney.com), April 28, 2001

Answers

I bet this is one of those threads that gets eighty responses, and seventy of them from women. I had no idea that birth control inflicted so many costs, Beth -- I don't think it's so difficult for men. Condoms are cheap and simple, and work well enough that I don't have any complaints (or unexpected heirs). Condoms are certainly better than the only other male birth control methods that I know -- vasectomy and abstinence.

BTW, there was a big article in last week's New Yorker about the Pill and how its inventor made a mistake when he decided to keep the 28 day cycle. The article suggests that 20th century women have three times as many cycles as pre-modern women of similar age, and the cellular aging caused by menstruation and the Pill's hormones actually raise the risk of cancers of the ovary, uterus and breast. The article suggests that a new Pill, with different hormones, used so that the body experiences menstruation three times a year, may actually reduce cancer risks, as well as prevent pregnancy.

-- Tom Dean (tdean@haese.com), April 28, 2001.

Y'know, sometimes I read something I wrote two months ago and it doesn't even sound like me. Is that post above really my post, or is it a clever "forgery" by the forum host? No way to tell, I guess.

-- Tom Dean (tsd@ogk.com), June 12, 2001.

Tom: you actually wrote that. I was going to recreate that thread over here after xeney deleted it, but I realized it would be far too much work.

Darn it.

-- Dave Van (davevan01@hotmail.com), June 13, 2001.