Are we finally ready for a male contraceptive pill? The journalist and director Billie JD Porter thinks so. Her new documentary follows the scientists pioneering the first male contraceptive and the “guinea pig” men trialling it.

It comes at a time when pill use among British women is declining in favour of the implant or coil; the number of vasectomies is dropping; and many young people are giving up on dating entirely. Porter is no exception. “After the Epstein files and the CNN rape academy investigation, my main form of contraception is just being disgusted by men,” she says.

“Unprotected sex often means that the woman is making a sacrifice to benefit both parties,” she adds, “and men need to understand that.”

The tech is pretty much here. One pill, YCT529, blocks a vitamin A receptor in the testes to stop sperm production. Another, which works within half an hour of a man taking it, disables the soluble adenylyl cyclase protein that makes his sperm swim. There is even a sperm-suppressing gel that can be applied to a man’s shoulders.

“During market research some men had indicated that they associate taking a pill with being sick… so this gel can be easily folded into a daily routine” Porter says.

Despite strong performance in trials, the progress of these products to market has been sluggish, because, Porter says, “Big Pharma currently holds a monopoly over the market for [female contraception]. Disrupting that is a huge risk, and it’s very expensive.”

Throughout history, progress in male contraception has also been scuppered by the problem that men won’t take it, and even if they would, women might not trust them to take it effectively. That comes down to the principle of reward: it’s the woman’s mess to deal with at the end.

“The current system allows men to remain somewhat detached from the whole act of pregnancy prevention,” adds Porter. “In a way, it’s no wonder that there’s so much ignorance.”

However, while manosphere influencers tell young men to show less, not more, care and responsibility for sexual partners, “It was important for me to show that there are some thoughtful men out there who are pushing for change”, she says.

In the film she meets Ryan, who is taking part in a trial for a contraceptive gel because when his wife was on the pill her “OCD was out of control”. Oh, and as Mormons, they are anti-abortion. He describes the gel as “empowering” and reports “we found out pretty quickly that it does not have lasting effects” on sperm quality.

Still, Porter’s campaign is not without opposition. “There are a bunch of men who are like, ‘I’m not f**king putting hormones in my body.’

“But they haven’t had the experience of being carted into a doctor’s office as a teenager and told, ‘We’re going to put you on this pill that could drastically impact your mood and sense of self, before your frontal lobe has finished developing.'”

Porter’s frustrations are borne of years of having to take more responsibility than her sexual partners have: “So many women have had that feeling of all-consuming dread after there’s been some kind of an accident with contraception. The anxiety of waiting to do a test after a condom has broken, or being sick with worry while you wait to find out if your morning-after pill worked.

“We hold all of that responsibility, all of that trauma after the fallout if something goes wrong, and then we’re also completely unfairly judged for the outcomes.”

For Porter, men should take up their fair share of reproductive responsibility without any accompanying martyrdom: “I don’t want men to think that they’d be doing some kind of charity work by taking contraception. The way I see it, if a woman can’t tolerate her birth control or is having unpleasant side effects, a man stepping in would be the very least he can do.

“If a woman who wants to conceive is already going to go through a nine-month pregnancy and childbirth… does it not sound at least a little bit fairer that a man would take responsibility for contraception in the meantime?”

Porter was first put on the pill when she was a “barely sexually active” 15-year-old: “I never questioned it. It was just what everyone did.”

However, just like 77 per cent of British women, according to a 2023 Savanta poll, she has experienced the pill’s negative side effects “like fast weight gain, mood swings. During my early twenties, I was trying different pill formulations while also being on antidepressants, and it became very difficult to isolate the variable that was making me feel different.”

After giving up on the pill, she tried two different IUDs, which “had quite a dramatic effect on my body and mind – my hair started falling out in clumps.”

Porter – and her documentary – dive into the chequered history of female contraception to remind viewers of the unpaid labour and risk women take on to ensure the smooth running of straight men’s sex lives. “The introduction of the pill was obviously a pivotal moment in women’s rights. I do feel that as a society we’ve somewhat skirted around some of the more unsavoury truths about its history, but there’s no question that it’s been absolutely key to our bid for freedom. I am not anti birth control whatsoever. I’m in fact so pro birth control that I’m essentially lobbying for more options.”

Porter has been living in Los Angeles for the past seven years, and argues that following the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade – the US Supreme Court judgement that had guaranteed abortion rights – access to contraception is more important than ever. “Hundreds of millions of women use birth control without unwanted side effects, and even find benefits beyond preventing pregnancy,” she says. “Obviously, right now is not the time to start boycotting your method if it works for you, and with so much misinformation online and dangerous rhetoric in American politics, I worry that women are in danger from so many different angles.”

In this “scary climate”, she even fears that while the male contraceptive could “redefine gender politics”, it could also “actually be used against us”.

That could be a way off, though. In a 2023 study by online pharmacy Zava, only 45 per cent of men said they would take a male contraceptive and just 54 per cent of women said they would trust their partner to take it.

“Whenever I speak to a woman about it,” Porter says, “one of the main concerns – which I obviously understand – is that they would not trust men to take it.”

She suggests that the male pill would be part of long-term relationships, not a failsafe for flings: “A male contraceptive doesn’t protect anyone from infections nor diseases. I’m definitely not trying to promote a future where you meet a random guy one night who’s like, ‘It’s fine, I’m on the pill!’ and you run with it.

“But I believe that in any kind of committed relationship, male contraception could be about sharing the load that women have historically been burdened with”.

She hopes her film could build a trust between the sexes, and that “a wider conversation about the demand for these products will help get them on shelves faster.”

Porter may not be dating again any time soon, but she wonders: “Imagine entering into a new relationship and being like, ‘Which one of us is going to take the birth control?’ We could be only a few years out from that reality.”

is available to stream in the UK on Kinema