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Vonnegut exaggerates this type of morality for comic effect, suggesting that the overly-moral set has an unrealistic sense of how sex affects a person. In contrast to those good citizens who take the mandated ethical birth control, the nothingheads are described as "bombed out of their skulls with the sex madness that came from taking nothing" (33). The idea of "sex madness" is necessarily absurd, considering that sexuality is so natural.

The sexual strictures in the story are criticized not only for denying human nature, but also for working against human individuality, another central theme in Vonnegut's work. By numbing everyone's sex drive, the government has effectively equalized people, similar to the situation in "Harrison Bergeron." Taken this way, Billy the Poet becomes a powerfully rebellious leader, one whose mission is not just the reemergence of sexuality, but also of individuality.

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And yet he treats the idea of ethical birth control with the most irony here. The omniscient narrator explains that, "the pills were ethical because they didn't interfere with a person's ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex. Thus did science and morals go hand in hand" (31). Of course, Vonnegut and the reader know that science and morals have not historically gone hand in hand, but have rather almost always worked at odds in most debates. Consider Galileo or the evolution controversy, for instance. Secondly, Vonnegut expects us to know that sex without pleasure is quite unappealing. Through his use of irony, Vonnegut compels the reader to question whether the government's mandate is, in fact, more "unnatural and immoral" than the birth control itself (31). By forcing us to consider the absurdity of the government's position, Vonnegut leads us to consider the absurdity of other similarly moral strictures that we might encounter in everyday life.

Finally, the approach to the rape scene reveals the sexist misconceptions of the time in which Vonnegut wrote this story. In particular, Vonnegut's view of women is (unintentionally) patronizing. The narrator states unironically that Billy the Poet is attracted to Hostesses in Ethical Suicide Parlors, as if sexual assault were interchangeable with sexual attraction. When Nancy tells Billy the Poet that he makes her feel like an object rather than like a person, he answers that she can "thank the pills for that," as if sexism is only a problem due to the ethical birth control pills (41). After raping Nancy, just as he has raped all the other women in his gang, Billy is treated as the story's voice of reason. And when explaining that wives have always suffered a difficult wedding night, he seems to accept the patriarchal idea that a virginal women has little agency in her own sexuality. The power that Billy has over Nancy and the other Hostesses, the way that he explains the situation to her as if she is a child, and her switch from abhorrence to silent submission are not problematized here, suggesting a rather unbalanced view of sexual politics.

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