Am I seriously posting about this thing again? I guess so. I've mentioned this topic a few times on social media.
Lots of articles are reporting on this drug trial where the wimpy man-things gave up on birth control because it gave them oh-so-well-known side-effects. Most of the articles and web commentary are getting it wrong because, hey, it's fun to talk trash about men. The most recent article I read gets at least 2 things absolutely wrong:
1) "96% effective" only appears to be similar to other birth control methods if your math skills are limited to addition and subtraction. It's more than twice as bad as condoms alone, where user error ruins the effectiveness significantly. Modern IUDs are almost 100% effective; when they don't work is when they fall out unnoticed. Even female hormonal birth control is more than 99% effective. This new drug was, like... 10 to 100 (maybe 1000) times more likely to mess up than those traditional methods. It is a lot harder to reduce sperm count to 0 with reasonable hormone doses than to stop ovulation. 4 couples on birth control got pregnant during the "efficacy phase" of this study! I hope they were looking to have children.
2) "The effects of injections were completely reversible..." except for the guys who say they became impotent and haven't yet recovered. Oh, and the 5% of participants whose spermatogenesis didn't return to normal for 52 weeks until the scientists stopped watching.
In the end, the female partners responded that they "wouldn't use this form of birth control again" 20% MORE frequently than the males who were actually using it. You might think that percentage would be understandably elevated by the women who got pregnant, but the study doesn't delineate which participants said what.
I wish people would stop acting like this is super-duper obvious, and start appreciating that there were 320 men who tried a new method of birth control that had seriously troubling side-effects, and 75% of them are rearing for more pain when the drug trials resume. The only thing they had to gain was taking the burden of birth control off of women, which is pretty selfless. An ounce of compassion in return, please?
The only thing that actually bothers me are the sexist, inaccurate, anti-male reports that are flooding the internet. The sarcasm, and dare I say it, the misandry... it's just plain unwarranted. Perhaps it's what increases your viewership or makes you the most money, but it's also wrong on many levels. No self-respecting feminist would give in to this kind of demeaning, hate-derived social commentary. Especially against volunteers who should be seen as pioneers.
