I, as a pro-birth control/pro-choice lady, believe lady-oriented birth control has nothing to do with that (perhaps naiively).
Pregnancy, even the healthiest, safest ones, are hard on our bodies. That means that anything that prevents them is theoretically better than if we’re constantly/repeatedly pregnant. Even if its harmful for mental health or long term effects on organs. Pregnancy fucks us up outright both mentally and physically. Like day one.
Obviously I’m simplyifying a bit, but you understand the gist of my logic.
Men dont have HAVE to deal with pregnancy, period, so anything that introduces harm, even minutely, is automatically a worse quality-of-life option for them.
Am I pro-male birth control? Hell yeah I am. I just recognize that they’re giving up more than we would be to accept the same risks, given that they dont have to experience pregnancy to begin with, and I dont trust/expect them to do that.
Therefore, it makes logical sense to me that we’re the ones targeted.
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Medical science is not that black and white.
Think about birth control in terms of preventing death and disfigurement. Men don’t die from pregnancy, women do.
When women take birth control, it has the upside of not dying in pregnancy, having horrific pain in the process, or permanent changes to their body. Birth control has a lot of side effects, but at the end of the day, the maternal mortality rate of women who take birth control is far lower.
The reason why medical trials for male birth has been put on hold before, is because when weighing the side effects vs benefits of male birth control, men did not have to weight against death and suffering through pregnancy. Thus, the justification for male birth control requires a much higher bar.
While discrimination against women is prevalent in medicine, this isn’t as simple as an instance of dismissing male birth control because men didn’t like it. The process through which new modern medicines are vetted requires comparing the positive and negative outcomes of a medication, and that doesn’t necessarily take gender dynamics into account.
Formfiller@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They should have both been available a long time ago pbs.org/…/gender-bias-kill-male-birth-control
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
The fact that you think that that response was defending sexism rather proves that you are not arguing from a point of good faith.
No one is saying sexism doesn’t exist, but that’s not the point being argued here.
Formfiller@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bye
kuhli@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I’d suggest actually reading the article you’re providing as a source:
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Arguments like yours are hurting, not helping, women’s advocacy in modern medicine.
When you throw out all nuance, it opens the door for misogynists to dismiss every valid concern that women have when it comes to systemic discrimination in medicine. You are also alienating men who support male birth control in the process.
As someone who has had life threatening issues dismissed by doctors, been gaslit about the efficacy of my medications, berated for going to the ER when my doctor instructed me to, gone through an excruciating IUD insertion, trust me when I say I am the last person to defend sexism in medicine.
However, male birth control isn’t as that simple of an issue. There are legitimate scientific barriers to developing male birth control. It doesn’t erode away the slow pace and funding in developing male birth control that is made worse by sexism, but sexism isn’t the full story.