Ejaculate Responsibly

Great read, especially now that roe v wade has been overturned and our rights our bodies. I learned a lot from this too and can better define the conversation men should be having with abortions and responsibilities too.

I like how the author has had kids of her own, this really proves to me hiw everyone can be understanding on this issue. Not like folks who choose to be child free (like myself) have any less say over their lives.

I knocked it down a star because I wanted to review the citations at the back...but like she just references a website where they can all be found. This takes away a bit for me.

Let me start by saying I fully agree with everything shared in this book and would agree with making this required reading for all humans who want to or already engage in sex.

However, this is the kind of book that continues to prove that not all good articles need to become books. For such a short book, it often felt repetitive. Maybe I felt this way because I didn't need convincing; someone with a more hesitant opinion might benefit from looking at the same argument from 3 different perspectives.

It's a good & quick read. It presents its points clearly and in an accessible way. The main takeaway is: men should take responsibility for their ejaculations and the prevention of unplanned pregnancies said ejaculations cause. Agreed.

I think every person should read this book. A simple, if a little repetitive, set of arguments explaining why men need to take responsibility for their contribution to pregnancy. And for the anti-choicers, you especially should read this and redirect your efforts toward enforcing men to ejaculate responsibly.

I vividly remember writing something on Facebook (of all places) like a decade ago - it was around the time Wendy Davis in her pink sneakers was filibustering in the Texas Senate to block an abortion ban - about how the government was going about attempting to reduce abortions all wrong. I wrote impassionedly about how better sex education was key, and if the government was serious about reducing abortions (which, sidebar, we all know they're not), they needed to make better, comprehensive sex education a priority.

In Ejaculate Responsibly it was so refreshing to finally, finally see someone else talking about this issue from another perspective, one that doesn't penalize and punish women* (and only women) for the fact they had the audacity to have sex.

This tiny book has short, clear chapters that walk step by step through women's fertility, men being the cause of pregnancy through ejaculation, and how women have historically been made to bear the brunt of pregnancy prevention, despite birth control for women being harder to access and more difficult on the user than birth control options for men. Then, of course, women being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies despite the risks to the woman's health, life and livelihood, even though that ends well for absolutely no one, when the solution is so simple - men need to take more responsibility for their bodies and their bodily fluids and where they put those fluids. A reduction in unwanted pregnancies will, obviously, result in a reduction in abortions.

What a concept!

I thought this was excellent, and wish everyone would read it, though I know the ones who most need to will not. I was thrilled, and then worked my way into anger and grief, and finally, optimism again because there are next steps at the end of the book.

(Also, I looked up the PDF of sources on the publisher's website during a conversation with Matt about this book, and seriously there are over 100 pages of source notes, which is impressive. The book is only like 140 pages long!)

*Blair notes early on in the book that for the sake of reducing confusion, she used the terms women and men throughout, though acknowledged that people who do not identify as women can still get pregnant, and people who do not identify as men can still ejaculate.

I remember the author's viral tweet thread about this topic, and this book is basically a bit of expansion. While some of the conclusions/solutions she mentions may feel outlandish, it also shows how easy it can be for men to be responsible in preventing unwanted pregnancies if only they decided to do so. This book is short, accessible, informative and important - but I also don't think it's easy to get to the place where men take more responsibility in this matter than the women. Because most of the issues highlighted in the book and the undue burden placed on the women is due to patriarchy, misogyny and societal conditioning and that will take a long time to change.

I wont consider this book any kind of authoritative material on the topic because this is strictly from a cis straight perspective. Glad that the author mentions this upfront and it would definitely be more helpful to have a book that deals with the specific issues related to the LGBTQ community written by someone well researched on the matter from the community's perspective, especially in these times of increasing homophobia and transphobia. I know the author is a Mormon and this might have been a factor in her not taking any pro-choice/pro-life stand in the book (also maybe hoping for a wider audience), but I think in our current post-Roe world, it's important to take a stand for the woman's right to choose and at the same time expecting men to take more responsibility in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Whatever the misgivings I may have with this book, I would still recommend because it offers lots of thought provoking points that need to be talked about and discussed and understood.

Rating: 4 stars of 5

Ejaculate Responsibly is a quick read about the author???s position on this relevant topic. She uses short, readable chapters to present data to back up her position - one that posits that we are really focusing on the wrong thing as society debates and legislates and makes abortion the prominent factor of discussion when there are other things that are playing a larger role in the issue but that go ignored.

I agreed with most of what she said. Many of her arguments are completely logical, and I liked that she shared facts rather than just her own opinion to back them up.

There were a few places, though, where I thought she used overgeneralizing language (a pet peeve of mine, as such language rarely accounts for the nuances of real life with very different humans involved), where editing errors distracted from the text, where she was noticeably repetitive, where something she said was questionably accurate or where a comparison she was making did not represent a true contrast. There was also an instance in which she was recommending sperm banking prior to vasectomy (just in case), which is fine, except that she had been previously making the argument that a vasectomy is cheaper than female sterilization. The cost of sperm retrieval and continuous storage costs can be quite expensive, too, which negated her previous point a bit (the comparison of the risks of each procedure are still fair, however).

There were also a couple of decisions, which I presume to have been made by the publisher and not the author, that I found off-putting.

The first is that each page of the book has red ink printed along its inner side where it meets the spine. It appears to have been done on purpose as a design choice, but it bothered my eyes as I was reading. I would probably not purchase another physical book with this ???design feature.???

Secondly, I did not like the choice to not print the citations within the book block. The first note I made to myself as I was reading was that there appeared to be no citations for referenced material (studies, etc.), which really bothered me. I was incredulous that, even in places where she was directly quoting a scientific paper, there was no reference to the source material provided within the text. When I checked the back of the book where I would expect to see a list of references, it was not there. I later realized (as I finished the book), that there is a note on page 129, just before the author???s acknowledgements, that all of the citations are instead available online. I did not like this choice (again, I presume it to have been made by the publisher) to not print the citations within the book. I like to check citations as I read and make notes about things I???d like to look up and read for myself, and I do not like to have to sit with a screen up whilst I read to check citations elsewhere. Additionally, for someone who does not have regular access to the internet, this would make the reader???s verifying of the information presented more difficult. If there are problems with the internet in the future and the list becomes inaccessible, the book has virtually no cited references available to reinforce its claims. I hope this is not going to become common practice with publishers.

Overall, I would recommend reading this book. It offers a valid and useful perspective. If there is a future edition, I hope the publisher will print the citations within it rather than solely making them available online.