In some of the wealthiest neighbourhoods of the United States, a growing number of wealthy men are taking drastic measures.
A recent New York Post story – “Hamptons bachelors are getting vasectomies so gold diggers can’t trap them” – takes all we deem true about reproductive power – that women ultimately hold all the aces – and blows it out of the water.
It tells the calculated tales of four men – including a wealthy, promiscuous real estate developer who claims he caught a woman trying to inseminate herself from a condom she’d offered to flush away. “The vasectomy is insurance,” he says.
Dr. David Shusterman, a New York urologist who performs the procedures, explains: “There’s a spike in single guys who get the procedure in spring and early summer.
“This extortion happens all the time. Women come after them. They get pregnant and want a ransom payment.
“Some guys do an analysis of the cost. For three days of discomfort, it’s worth millions of dollars to them. I never see a poor guy asking for a vasectomy. Rich guys are a population that’s abused a lot”.
While a vasectomy might seem drastic, it is actually, erm, a snip compared with 21 years’ child maintenance payments that can total over $2 million for a man earning $1million per year.
For most American men, child support is 17% of the father’s salary up to $400,000.
Meanwhile, as a vasectomy is typically covered by insurance, or costs $1,000. For men who want to remain childless, this is a no-brainer.
You might dismiss these stories as urban myths.
But those of us who follow the men’s rights scene have heard such tales for years.
Since the advent of the Pill in the 1960s, many men feel the reproductive game is stacked against them. The pre-emptive vasectomy is that game’s dramatic finale.
“Factual feminist” Christie Hoff Sommers gave these men a voice in her classic book The War Against Boys.
Milo Yiannopoulos took this further with his essay “The Sexodus” that told of thousands of men globally “checking out” of relationships and sex, retreating into porn and video games.
When I infiltrated the MGTOW – Men Going Their Own Way – scene in the UK for The Sunday Times, I discovered a world of men who not only reject sex, but fear it.
However, among those who still want no-strings sex, pre-emptive vasectomies were routinely discussed on MGTOW forums.
On Reddit men’s rights forums, you can easily find droves of men who’ve had defensive vasectomies. This is happening.
Ironically, this notion – of privileged white men taking control of their reproductive destinies – has given some feminists the willies.
Why? After all, you could argue these men are taking the central feminist doctrine of “my body, my choice” and making it their own.
Taking control of your fertility is rightly seen as empowering when it’s a woman’s choice. Yet in doing the same these men are being ridiculed as pathetic, and were widely mocked on social media.
Get sports car out of storage ✔️
Have summer home cleaned ✔️
Get vasectomy ✔️Ready for summer in the Hamptons.
— Sean Agnew (@seanagnew) May 28, 2017
In response to the Post article, psychologist and best-selling author Dr Wednesday Martin saltily scoffed: “if these men are having vasectomies, it’s a good thing for the gene pool”.
Reared on the notion that postponing childbearing was solely a woman’s privilege, now the boot’s on the other foot, and the Sex & The City generation don’t like it up ‘em.
These voices aren’t just peeved by the notion of wealthy men ring-fencing their assets, privilege and power.
They detest the core notion that perhaps men don’t want sex to be about procreation, but merely recreation.
Moreover, these men aren’t just making financial decisions. Many of them have seen other men, and especially their fathers or friends’ fathers, nailed to the floor by punitive family, divorce and child custody courts. It’s left them scared.
Worse, some have experienced father figures committing suicide under the strain of it all (divorced men in their 40s are the largest drivers of the boom in male suicide, which kills more men under 50 than anything else).
These men don’t want to walk in their father’s shoes; to dress in dead men’s suits. They want to stand alone, as masters of their own destinies.
Driven by feminist-leaning ideologists, this is the bed the liberal West made. Why are we so surprised that an increasing number of men simply don’t want to lie in it?