A hormonal contraceptive pill for men is currently being developed right here in spunkphobic Seattle. Most of the discussion around the pill centers on whether or not straight men will take a daily contraceptive pill—a pill that would prevent the production of sperm but not of semen, rendering men sterile for as long as they took it. Most of discussion boils down to this: Can women trust men—even men that don’t want to get anyone pregnant—to the (male) pill?

No, in my opinion, they can’t. And even if some men would take the pill, a woman would have to be a fool to believe a man—particularly a one-night stand—who claimed to be on the pill. Remember, ladies, we’re talking about the same people you can’t trust to keep a condom on during sex.

The reason men won’t take a sterility-inducing contraceptive is this: Straight men like to think of their semen as potent and dangerous. Come is powerful magic, thanks to it’s ability to knock women up, create life, and create havoc. Straight men—and, yes, some gay men—find their spunk thrilling precisely because they view it as potent, dangerous stuff, creator and destroyer of lives. (Creates babies; destroys lives with deadly STDs.) Men get off on the idea that the post-orgasm contents of that condom, diaphragm, vaginal canal, throat, or anal canal has to be handled with care.

A pill that permanently diminishes the erotic toxicity of spunk? A castration pill? Straight men aren’t gonna take it. Spunk that doesn’t have sperm just isn’t as thrilling, it isn’t as erotically charged. It’s just not spunk.

So I clicked right through the link on Drudge today about a different male contraceptive pill. This new pill, researchers theorize, is one that men would willingly take. Why? Because it doesn’t have to be taken every day, and its effects are temporary.

British scientists have developed a revolutionary pill that men could take as a one-off contraceptive just before a date. The tablet would prevent a man from being able to impregnate a woman, but within a few hours his fertility would return to normal.

Sounds great! Sounds like a pill that more men—not all, but certainly more—would take. And since a woman could observe the guy in the act of swallowing this one-off pill (she could even hand him a pill from her own stash), it would be easier for her to trust-but-verify a one-night stand’s temporary sterility! Everybody wins!

But keep reading the story and you discover that this new male pill…

…contains chemicals that prevent ejaculation. Sexual satisfaction is not affected and the absence of hormones [from the new pill] means that a man’s fertility should return to normal within hours of stopping the treatment.

The contraceptive was inspired by the observation that some drugs used to treat schizophrenia and high blood pressure also prevent ejaculation.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no way in hell that any man on earth is going to take this pill. Moving from a pill that results in spunk-without-sperm to one that results in no-spunk-at-all is not going to be seen by men as some sort of improvement.

Newsflash, researchers: Men like to ejaculate. What’s more, they associate ejaculation—quantity, force, speed, distance—with sexual satisfaction. Additionally, straight men enjoy ejaculating on women as much as they enjoy ejaculating in them. Faces, butts, tits, hair, elbows, foreheads, ears, ankles, knees, toes—you name it, straight guys want to come on it. So even if this new, improved pill allows men to feel as if they’re coming but without actually ejaculating, that empty condom, diaphragm, vaginal canal, throat, or rectum, to say nothing of that splatter-free face, butt, tit, ankle, etc., is going to be seen by all men everywhere as a major buzzkill.

Head back to the lab, British researchers, because your new male pill isn’t going anywhere.