Male Birth Control and Why I'm Pissed
“Where the fuck were you, with your medical ethics, when women were dying”
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We're talking about it all wrong.
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The facts: a study on injectable male birth control was cut short due to side effects. The study was cut short by a third-party review team based on the results of the study, not on complaints of the participants. They collected the necessary information to move forward with the birth control before the study was cancelled. Women are pissed. Almost every woman I know is pissed. I am pissed.
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When birth control for women was developed, the possibility of male birth control was brushed to the side to preserve the better quality of life men were afforded.
When birth control for women was developed, there were not enough women willing to participate in trials, so they took it to Puerto Rico where laws were lenient, and they forced it on female inmates in America who couldn't say no. There were not enough women willing to participate until they told the women what the medication was for. Then, it was worth it for them.
It has never been worth it for men.
When birth control for women was developed, there was a lower standard for ethics in medical studies and there was a lower standard of ethical treatment of women; especially not-white women.
When the study on male birth control was halted, it was because the minor side effects that are also present in female birth control were affecting huge percentages of participants. This was a sign that the product was not ready for market. The study was halted when a man killed himself.
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Where the fuck were you, with your medical ethics, when women were dying for reproductive freedom? Where the fuck were you when it was us with alarmingly high percentages of side effects? Where the fuck were you when we needed you?
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The men in this study were not wimps. It is as harmful to gender equality to call a man a wimp as it would be to call me an angry feminist for the outburst above. And believe me, I am crying as I type it, I am internally yelling myself hoarse on the page.
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Where were you?
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Only now, are we seeing the first in-depth study of correlation between hormonal birth control and depression in women. Eighty percent of teens prescribed birth control. Eighty percent.
There are still side effects we don’t even see until they are extreme, until a woman wants to kill herself. There are still ghosts of those initial trials haunting the birth control women take every day, side effects so common place we think they’re a part of us.
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Where are you?
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The fact is that control over reproductive freedom will never be as worth it for men as it has been for women. Because, in the beginning, men decided that it was not worth it for men when women could bear the burden.
If I was in the small percentage of women who suffered suicidal ideation from my birth control, I'd say bring it on. I've dealt with that and I will take more, I will wrestle with the suicide monster indefinitely if it means I get to choose when I have a baby, if I have a baby. Rather than wrestle with the financial reality of having a child on a barista's wage. Rather than wrestle with all of the emotional and social demons that come with an abortion.
Men, do you feel that way?
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No, the men in that study were not wimps. Most, wanted to deal with the acne and mood swings and aches and pains. They were not wimps. They were just treated fairly by the medical community when women had not been.
And that's enough reason to be fucking pissed.
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Header image courtesy of Alison Antario. Visit her online, here.