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Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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Formfiller@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They should have both been available a long time ago pbs.org/…/gender-bias-kill-male-birth-control

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- Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.
  
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- echodot@feddit.uk ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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  - Formfiller@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Bye
    
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    echodot@feddit.uk ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I wouldn’t have had to explain common sense things if you had thought about it for 10 seconds before posting your comment. So any condescending attitude you feel you experienced is entirely your own problem.
    
    The thing about logical thought is that it doesn’t actually care about your feelings. You’re the one that decided to try and couch this in terms of misogyny, but the reality is that female birth control simply developed first and had a huge impact on women as a result. And even if reliable male birth control existed (there are experiments ongoing but it’s certainly not publicly available) women would still have to take birth control themselves in order to guarantee they wouldn’t get pregnant, precisely because of the disparity of fertility mentioned in the image. So whether or not male birth control exists, basically has no bearing on women.
    
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- kuhli@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’d suggest actually reading the article you’re providing as a source:
  
  Comparing the discontinued men’s study to what we know — or don’t know — about how hormonal contraception affect women isn’t really feasible, experts said.
  
  There’s still research underway to develop a hormonal option, Colvard noted. And many researchers said this trial provides potentially helpful insight.
  
  Also encouraging: the fact that so many men said they would take the drug if it were available. Historically, the burden of controlling pregnancy has fallen on women, Breuner said. But now, the findings here show that may be shifting — and could in fact spur more interest on the part of drug developers.
  
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