An opinion on male birth control trials
Fifty-six years after the birth control pill was approved for contraceptive use with women, a new study on the efficacy and safety of an injectable hormonal contraceptive for men has been making headlines.
Social media is rife with taunts that call men out for not being able to “handle” the side effects of depression, mood swings, and acne.
After putting up with the side effects of birth control for decades, women are voicing a valid frustration with what feels like yet another gender-based double standard. Side effects for women who take birth control include many of the side effects listed in the study for male birth control, but also add several more, such as blood clots and heart palpitations, to the list.
One incident related to the side effects of female birth control stands out for me in particular. The birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin were suspected in the deaths of 23 Canadian women. I remember this vividly because I had been taking Yasmin for the treatment of acne for years and complaining to my family about chest pains for months.
My family doctor had me scheduled for an EKG to monitor my heart, which failed to make a connection between the medication I was taking and my symptoms. In the middle of all of this stress and pain, my brother, a pharmacist, called me in a panic to tell me what had happened to all these women and that I had to stop taking this medication right away.
As painful and frightening as the chest pains I experienced while I was on the medication were, and as lucky as I was for it not to have been so much worse, the months that followed were a struggle as I spent two weeks feeling unreasonably euphoric, and then fell into a depression that took months to recover from.
While the western world is more understanding of mental illness, cultural moments like these show us that physical health continues to carry greater importance than mental health. I’m disappointed by the frequency with which I have seen people use the logic that “men are just experiencing depression and mood swings unlike women who face real problems like blood clots.”
Depression can lead to suicidal behaviour, which can lead to death in extreme cases. Blood clots can lead to aneurysms, heart attacks, strokes, and pulmonary embolisms, which can also lead to death. It would seem that it is in everyone’s interest to make hormonal birth control safe for both women and men, rather than point fingers at who is strong and who is weak.
Taking a closer look at the male birth control study—instead of jumping on this bandwagon of hateful rhetoric—it explains that, “An external peer-review committee, met in March 2011, reviewed the same data and determined that, for safety reasons, recruitment should be stopped and enrolled participants should discontinue receiving injections and be transitioned to the recovery phase.”
Yes, the hormonal injection was successful as a contraceptive, but if the “frequencies of mild to moderate mood disorders were relatively high,” then it was responsible to stop this study.
The criticism of men in the wake of this study is an affront to feminism for those who understand the concept. It perpetuates outdated views of masculinity that imply it is not okay for men to have feelings and that it is weak and unmanly for them to refuse taking a medication that is negatively impacting them. This ridiculous and incredibly unhelpful outcome is preventing important dialogue from developing into real change that could benefit both women and men.
I am not denying that this whole thing feels like a double standard that puts the responsibility for pregnancy on women in a way that is also outdated. I just think that we should also keep in mind that our tweet-happy smartphone era is garnering attention for this issue in a way that was unavailable when women’s birth control was being developed in the ’50s and ’60s.
Rather than focus on how this is unfair, we need to refocus the conversation to make people aware of the dangers of hormonal birth control. Rather than call men wimps, I hope women will seek out alternatives to hormonal birth control until pharmaceutical companies can develop a safer pill.
Photo courtesy of outcast104_cc-by-2-0.