It is disappointing to me that how this issue impacts men is largely brushed aside. It is well documented that testosterone levels have greatly declined in the last 100 years. If you couple these two facts, it seems impossible they are incorrect.
And when this topic comes up, the responses are generally, “who cares?” First, attention is diverted from the male to fertility, because the issue must be seen as impacting females negatively to justify any interest by society. Second, the way this impacts boys and men is entirely ignored. Responses exist like, “we just need a way to reproduce without men”, or “everyone can just use IVF and still have children”. I worry very few people respect how being wished out of existence so that females can enjoy plastics and pesticides impacts men. Very few people respect how demeaning it is for men to be infertile and how this would impact their mental health. Very few people respect how being unable to produce the hormones that allow boys to develop correctly or men to perform their biological functions impacts men. It is wholly disheartening.
If there were even the slightest indication that something similar impacted women only, I doubt we would be here discussing whether or not the effect was real, but instead, what should we do about it? Instead, since sperm count and testosterone levels are “men’s issues”, nobody cares unless it can be shown to impact the other 50% of society that apparently is the only portion deserving of any care.
Don't worry, you can find plenty of examples where society or medicine ignored the needs or voices of women.
Combative narratives are suboptimal. They are alienating to those you complain about, when obtaining their support would further your cause. It's possible, and more effective, to advance men's rights without complaining about women, or any other rights movement.
Not everything has to be Us vs Them. I'd much rather live in a world where it isn't.
This is a weird statement. His comment wasn't combatative at all, and additionally men have been very marginalized in anglophone societies (USA, UK, AUS, CAD, etc) in the past 20 years by the media (just look at those ads where the guy's only function in his family is to cook steak on the BBQs, while the woman brilliantly manages everything like a CEO :P ), while women have been celebrated. The original idea of all this when I first encountered it in the 90s was something called "equality". But it's been thrown out the window totally.
Even if you don't agree with it, people are allowed to express how they feel. Passionate reactions (and this is hardly even passionate -- it's just a statement of this person's perception of the state of things), are ok. Sometimes even needed to spark discussion. He feels things aren't equal anymore -- and they aren't. Again in anglophone societies....
I don't think parent's comment was combative at all. Simply, their opinion and/or observation.
If you don't think we live in a time when men's (white especially) interests are being attacked you're delusional. They are at the bottom of the identity politics war. Ideas of toxic masculinity, undeserved privilege, power, etc. are being touted as gospel by the educated, political class.
Maybe it's all deserved. Paying for generations of misbehavior or something. It doesn't really matter. The reality is that political popularity and public "good graces" _are_ a zero sum game. Politics are currently very much us vs them. And men are very much them right now.
> If you don't think we live in a time when men's (white especially) interests are being attacked you're delusional.
Nonsense. This is just a rhetorical technique to try to dismiss people who hold opinions that differ from yours without having to actually engage them.
It's interesting that you claim my statement is nonsense. That seems hypocritically dismissive. Ask for evidence or simply disagree. By saying nonsense are you implying that it's not possible that men's interests could be discounted by the popular opinion of today?
How about the amount of funding and attention that breast cancer gets vs prostate cancer?
Once again I'm not interested in why, just the current state.
I'll cover up their rhetorical technique with statistics:
Women have outpaced men in Bachelor's degree completions since 1981, and Master's degrees since 1986. At present they are 57.7% of Bachelor's degree recipients and 60.7% of Master's degrees [0]. You might argue that most of the advance women made was prior to the year 2000, so it isn't reflective of trends today.
Women have a "struggle for reproductive rights". Abortion and contraceptives are "critical reproductive healthcare services", according to the White House [1]. Men cannot have abortions, cannot take birth control pills, cannot receive birth control shots or implants, cannot obtain IUDs, and (mostly) cannot choose to have a child without the support of their partner. I suppose, then, men do not even have a chance at having what is a "critical reproductive healthcare service" and are thus inherently deprived.
Women are the heads of four out of five single parent households [2]. Put differently, four out of five men do not obtain custody of their children in situations where the parents do not live together.
Male life expectancy is more than five years less than female life expectancy in the US [3].
The bigger issue than all of this, to me, is the psychological aspect of this discussion that I cannot quantify with large-scale statistics. When men's disadvantages are brought up, society generally shouts "shut up". Since I left my original comment, I have been told that my post was a "hollow unsubstantiated rant", an "incredibly sexist framing", "disingenuous" and "not constructive", "combative" and "alienating". Can you imagine similar attacks being levied against a woman arguing in support of abortion? I sure cannot. Again, I do not know how to quantify this, but the experience of never mentioning an issue which impacts men for fear of being similarly shot down is in the back of my mind every day, and I'd imagine many men face similar thoughts. The thought police hold far more sway over my discourse than I'd like.
How long does it take to filter up? White men remain over-represented amongst the rich and powerful, and in senior positions. Is there some level in society where this flips around and suddenly white men are at the top, or is this some kind of time delay effect and in a century or so, we'll see white men at the bottom at all levels?
Meanwhile the majority of white men who are neither rich nor powerful find themselves at the bottom of the politically correct social order. Not that anyone cares anymore. /s
>White men remain over-represented amongst the rich and powerful, and in senior positions.
If you live in a majority white country, why is this a problem? Statistically it's inevitable you'll get mostly white people at the top if those are your demographics.
Also in my country women are often in top leadership positions, and out of merit, not out of some pro-feminist corporate PR agenda.
Combative narratives are unavoidable if another movement is pushing for something contradictory to your movement. Pro-choice movements are inevitably running into conflict with anti-abortion movements because their desires are directly contradictory. Likewise, a group seeking to eliminate gender discrimination is going to directly run up against a group advocating for gender quotas.
Pro-choice and anti-abortion movements are not necessarily contradictory, as there are many services and strategies that are proven to reduce abortions, aside from criminal penalties.
For example, the broad and free availability of sex education and contraception greatly reduces accidental pregnancies, which are a leading cause of elective abortions. And genetic screenings and counseling can help women identify risk factors for inheritable developmental issues and decide whether to have children, or pursue alternatives like adoption.
Sure, now ask them "should elective abortion be legal?" And then you'll immediately see the conflict between the two positions. The fact that they may both support contraception is whataboutism. The core objectives of the two groups are indeed directly contradictory.
You missed the point, which is that there is a difference between the substance of an issue and the combative political campaigns set up around an issue.
The substance is not binary; there is substantial overlap and gray areas. Most things are not zero-sum. But it’s beneficial politically to set up an “us vs them” mentality.
So yes, you’re right that the people are in conflict. But the point is, much of that is artificial.
The substances may overlap in some areas, but the defining goal of two groups are often directly contradictory. The goal of a group whose primary goal is to criminalize abortion is directly contradictory to a group that wants to make or keep abortion legal. The fact that they may both support contraceptives is missing the forest for the trees, the primary goals of the two groups are indeed directly contradictory. Achieving the goal of one necessarily means the other fails in their goal. There's nothing artificial about this.
You are correct that those two movements are not completely contradictory. First, it must not be assumed that everyone who is pro-choice will always chose abortion. Second, neither the pro-choice nor anti-abortion movements seem to have a large scale plan for the care of children born from unwanted pregnancies. So there are areas that are not contradictory.
I've been following this issue for decades and early on a lot of it was supposed to be around body image issues. It was claimed that men had these impossible beauty standards and womens issues were largely due to not living up to them. Then the internet became popular and it became possible to quantify the gender of people making these body shaming comments, turns out it's mostly other women. Online dating further proved that men are attracted to all sorts of women and while a specific man may have certain things he prefers, men in general are very forgiving, in fact it turns out women are the ones with impossible standards, they all chase after the same 1% of men.
Then there was the wage gap stuff, it was popular for a while, and as that was looked into we found women make different choices at work, they take more sick days, go on more vacations and work less overtime, not to mention they tend to choose less demanding jobs in the first place.
So now it's this undefinable and unfalsifiable "patriarchy", this new one doesn't really make specific claims but rest assured men are the source of all the worlds problems.
I don't know if this was an extreme case of ideological battle or trolling, but either way it's against the site guidelines, so please don't do it here.
You are right that questioning the testosterone levels should be done, but the way you're framing the issue feels very disingenuous. You could be stuck in a bubble of discourse that matches what you're saying, but consider that maybe looking at the issue with the perspective "this wouldn't happen if women were affected" is not constructive.
PS. Also Scott has a good track record of revisiting articles he wrote if new elements come up from readers or specialists. Let's hope that someone out there in his subscribers list will make the same pertinent observation - reading through the comments, there are a couple of mentions already.
We are comment on an article which is built upon studies that are most definitely not brushing the issue aside and saying "who cares". I consider myself a pretty seasoned user of the internet and I have yet to stumble in online spaces that are framing the issue in terms of “we just need a way to reproduce without men”, or “everyone can just use IVF and still have children”.
Most of all I have an issue - as a male of an age where thinking about the next generation is a thing to be done - with claiming that if similar issues would happen to women they would be taken more seriously. Framing the issue as a men vs women one is not, like I said, constructive in any way.
The parent is conflating the decreasing sperm count with decreasing testosterone levels, mostly because they seem so closely related as to be the same issue - but which is not mentioned in Scott's article or in the studies he discusses, and presents that as a problem that affects young boys and prevents their development. If this is indeed the case I would like to see some substantiating to the claim.
> We are comment on an article which is built upon studies that are most definitely not brushing the issue aside and saying "who cares".
The question is: how representative are those studies? Sure they're evidence that there exists some researcher living under some academic rock who cared enough to do a study, however they're not evidence of widespread cultural concern (which is usually driven by mass-media concern).
> ...and I have yet to stumble in online spaces that are framing the issue in terms of “we just need a way to reproduce without men”, or “everyone can just use IVF and still have children”.
I've definitely seen the former. It was almost certainly half-serious nasty snark, but that doesn't mean it doesn't contribute to setting the tone, especially when it goes unchallenged by the "right" people. The later reads like textbook, "I don't want to care, so I'm going lazily think up some half-ass idea on the spot to justify not caring."
Do you feel the same about all of the coverage dedicated to issues that affect women more than men? That the framing in those cases is not constructive? Or in matters of issues presented as impacted one race more than another?
They weren’t claiming that they had an issue with the article talking about an issue that affects men. They were taking an issue with the framing of the commenter that changed the framing into a “mens issues vs womens issues” thing, which is very distinct from just talking about an issue that only affects a certain subsection of humanity.
So a popular example would be with discussion around BLM, which revolves around black people dying at the hands of police, despite the fact that far more white people are killed by police.
The argument is based on per capita vs total, and so is definitely discussed in terms of how it affects one group more than the other. You also see it around gender discussions that revolve around crime rate victimization - since men are more likely to be victims of violent crime.
The point is you see it framed that way all the time, and yet it's only an issue in instances like this. Anything that frames the wrong group as a victim is a no-no.
I don’t know if I’d describe it as disingenuous because perhaps the parent commenter sincerely believes what they said…
…but it is a ridiculous comment. There’s dozens of examples where women are disadvantaged and mistreated by healthcare systems all over the world, in ways that men don’t experience. Study after study has shown that black women are especially vulnerable to a disregard for their pain, so much so, black women have a much higher risk of death during childbirth!
I can buy in to someone being concerned about testosterone levels and the impact it’s having on men, it’s totally fair and valid, but to suggest that this is an example of men being mistreated by the healthcare system and that the healthcare system prioritises women over men doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny.
Fertility is actually a fantastic example where women are disadvantaged compared to men. Consider how harmful birth control can be, consider how menopause can be an awful experience with very little medical support available. Ask a woman how easy it is to get a hysterectomy, or their tubes tied, ask a woman how they’re treated when getting a birth control implant…
> black women have a much higher risk of death during childbirth
Found the NY Times reader.
Fwiw, that article takes a somewhat flawed study [1] and decides the only possible explanation for wealthy(!!) black women dying in childbirth at a higher rate is systemic white racism.
It then compares white vs black rates of infant mortality, also chalking that up to so-called ”white supremacist culture”, except the research study clearly shows both Asians and Hispanics having lower infant mortality rates than whites. To give the NYT the absolute smallest bit of credit, they do briefly admit to this way down the article.
Differences in group outcomes always have to be racism/bias and can never be a result of any biological/cultural differences. Can’t discuss obesity rates, prevalence of hypertensive diseases, Vitamin D deficiency being heavily correlated with low birth weights [2] and black mothers being SIX TIMES more likely to be Vitamin D deficient at birth compared to white mothers [3] - you apparently aren’t even allowed to control for age!
And thus the NY Times tells its unquestioning readers that Systemic White Supremacy is literally killing rich black women and also mysteriously elevating the Superior Asian Baby high above the rest.
It’s nonsensical post-truth garbage that would be laughable if it weren’t being taken seriously and used as part of the rationalization superstructure used to justify increasingly ineffectual and, frankly, dangerous policies.
You've fallen for recency bias. Just because you saw the article in the New York Times today, does not mean I read the same article and based my argument on that. I'm not sure if you're challenging the New York Times article which I am not referencing, or the general belief that black women die more often in childbirth (which has been well established and reported for many, many years -- certainly not a new invention of the New York Times)?
I don't think it's fair of you to characterize my comment as "ridiculous". I'll focus on the US, specifically, since that's where I'm from and is the society I'm most familiar with.
I am glad you used the example of black women. Race is irrelevant to the conversation at hand (though I would note, lest I am called insensitive, that black individuals are disadvantaged in health). You're using race to divert attention: your statistic actually compares black vs. white and ignores men vs. women. Why don't you compare men to women, or black men to black women, or white men to white women? Is it maybe because white men (who have the highest life expectancy among men in the US) have a lower life expectancy than white women, all women, and black women [0]? And those men have a 0% risk of death during childbirth! They're making up for it by having a higher chance of dying than women, every single year of their life, up until age 80, when women outpace them because there are so few men left [1]. When you compare apples to apples, men draw the short end of the stick, in terms of life expectancy at least.
And despite the above inequity, if you go to the CDC website and look at death rates, what do you see along the sidebar [2]? "Racism and Health", "Women and Health", "Conversations in Equity", "Health Equity Matters Newsletter". At least the CDC is more interested in helping black people and women than they are men, despite that men have the disadvantage here against both categories statistically, even if they're stacked together, i.e. black women. Research into health does not need to be a black vs. white, women vs. men, issue. There is a lot of work to be done for the common good. But to say that "the healthcare system prioritises women over men doesn't stand up to any scrutiny" is false.
Fertility is actually a fantastic example where men are disadvantaged compared to women, at least with respect to birth control. Birth control is harmful. But those who use it, choose to do so. In other words, they think it is best for them, and make that decision. Women have the options of
A) not using birth control, being possibly subject to unwanted pregnancy, and not being subject to its harms
B) using birth control, avoiding unwanted pregnancy, and being subject to its harms.
Men have the options of
A) not using birth control, being possibly subject to unwanted pregnancy, and not being subject to its harms
B) not using birth control, being possibly subject to unwanted pregnancy, and not being subject to its harms.
Note that there are no options. Note that this also does not include the harms to men due to child support payments for children they had no way to prevent.
By the time the average woman experiences menopause (age 51 [3]) and has "an awful experience with very little medical support available", 8.2% of men born at the same time have already died, compared to 4.7% for women [4]. During the years surrounding menopause (45-64; I'd like to be more precise, but this is the granularity given to me), men are more than three times as likely to kill themselves [5]. The living men aren't getting the medical support they need, and the extra dead men certainly didn't.
We can also talk about other sex-related issues such as breast vs. prostate cancer, if you want. They have similar death rates of 19.6 and 18.8 percent respectively [6, 7], but breast cancer research receives twice the funding of prostate cancer research [8]. Why would this be, if our healthcare system doesn't prioritise women over men?
I asserted that nobody cared about the impacts that lower testosterone levels and sperm counts could have with respect to men, based on an article that framed it as a "societal problem" and a "fertility problem", and did not acknowledge any of the challenges this specifically poses to men, which I listed in my original post. I pointed out my opinion that society would respond differently if the issue impacted women. You responded by telling me how black women are more likely to die during childbirth than white women, that a country where women live more than 5 years longer than men [9] prioritises men's health care, and that women are at a disadvantage because they have an option they can choose to reduce their risk of unwanted pregnancy, with health tradeoffs. Please rethink whose comment, yours or mine, is ridiculous.
There's so much I could say in response to your points, but you're too deeply entrenched in your position so I'm not going to spend any time on a response other than to say reliance upon the gender-based suicide success figures is a tell for someone who is cherry-picking data: it's not an honest argument.
The difference in men and women's suicide rate is not a reflection on men being more suicidal, in fact, men attempt suicide at a lower rate than women! Men are less suicidal than women! The difference is that if a man attempts suicide, he is much more likely to succeed, whereas women are much more likely to survive. If you want to use suicide as a measure of gender-based wellbeing, success is a meaningless statistic[1], because it's a reflection of metholodgy... suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are a much better measure of wellbeing.
[1] Unless, I guess, you want to go down some sort of line of thinking where women are attempting suicide for attention and "know" they'll survive so actually it doesn't count and men's use of more violent means is actually proof that men are suffering more.
It's convenient that you ignored the majority of my post because I am "too deeply entrenched", and then cherry-picked its one weak point while claiming I am cherry-picking and dishonest. I'll try the same tactic next time I disagree with someone.
We can try a different measure of health if you'd like. Surely I cannot be cherry-picking data if the effect is visible across multiple categories, right? Going down the list of highest-cause-of-death [0], death rates per 100,000 here [1] (sorry, hard to find more up-to-date data including age-adjusted rates of death by cause and gender):
Heart Disease (23.1% of deaths): Men 298.9, Women 210.4 (men 42% more likely)
Cancer (21.0% of deaths): Men 217.5, Women 151.3 (men 44% more likely)
Accidents (6.1% of deaths): Men 55.2, Women 25.8 (men 114% more likely)
Chronic lower respiratory diseases (5.5% of deaths): Men 48.0, Women 36.0 (men 33% more likely)
Cerebrovascular disease (5.3% of deaths): Men 42.5, Women 41.3 (men 3% more likely)
Alzheimers disease (4.3% of deaths): Men 18.5, 24.9 (women 35% more likely)
Diabetes mellitus (3.1% of deaths): Men 26.4, Women 19.5 (men 35% more likely)
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (1.8% of deaths): Men 17.8, Women 12.5 (men 42% more likely)
Influenza and pneumonia (1.7% of deaths): Men 19.3, Women 14.2 (men 36% more likely)
Intentional self-harm (suicide) (1.7% of deaths): Men 18.4, Women 4.7 (men 291% more likely)
If female suicide attempts (0.6%/yr) resulted in death as often as male suicide attempts (0.4%/yr), from the above cited Figure 7, we would see an increase of 27.6 deaths per 100,000 in women. Let's look at death rates per 100,000 in 2021 [2]. Comparing people of the same race, the age-adjusted death rate per 100,000 people for men was 304.7 higher for whites, 458.3 for blacks, 187.0 for Asians, 480.9 for Native Americans, and 315.8 for Hispanics. Weighting that by demographics [4], that averages 320.4.
Let me put that statistic a few different ways for you:
If women were as effective as men at suicide, every successful female suicide would need to include her killing 10 other same-age women to equalize the age-adjusted death rate between men and women for all causes.
The difference in age-adjusted death rate between men and women is larger in magnitude than if there were a second, equally fatal, heart disease, that only impacted men.
You’re absolutely cherry picking. You’re just using whichever numbers provide surface level confirmation of your latest point, without asking the questions about why. You did it with the suicide rate and now you’re doing it with death rates. Females of almost every species of mammal have greater life expectancies than males of the same species! Death rate is a meaningless number in the context of how men are treated by the system unless you can demonstrate that the system is the cause for this higher death rate.
As I said in my original comment, there’s lots of issues that face men that are worth talking about and need to be addressed. I do not dispute that, however, I dispute that you characterise these things as in competition with issues that face women and that men are suffering more in this competition of your own invention. You can advocate for the issues you care about without the self-pitying minimisation of issues faced by others.
I can go further in justifying my position if you’d like, but I’d rather not unless you ask me to. I have no interest in explaining why I believe men have a lower life expectancy as a direct result of the system if you’re just going to tell me my points are meaningless again.
To be clear, I never said that men’s issues are in competition with women’s issues. Both genders have their own, unique issues which deserve attention. I only advocated for attention to be drawn to a men’s issue, and noted how (in my opinion) society typically places more weight on women’s issues than men’s issues. I engaged in this “competition” after you said “that the healthcare system prioritises women over men doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny”. And nowhere that I am aware of have I minimized any of the issues that others face.
You’ve made no effort to explain why these things matter: you’ve just churned out numbers. I don’t want to read more numbers, I know many of the numbers. The value you can provide in this conversation is with your understanding of the issues and your perspective on what can be done… not with NIH footnotes.
These topics have a great deal of depth, there’s many different aspects to consider — for example, life expectancy is a pretty weak measure, what about quality of life?
Go back and read your first comment. Pretend you’re coming into this topic cold: you know nothing of the subject, what do you learn from your comment?
* mens issues are brushed aside
* testosterone levels are lowest in 100 years
* people only care about men when it’s about fertility because fertility is a women’s issue
* men are being wished out of existence so women can enjoy plastics and pesticides
* nobody cares about the mental health impact of infertility in men
* low testosterone impacts men negatively
* if this was about women, people would care
* nobody cares about mens issues unless they impact women
* society thinks only women deserve care
There’s nothing in that comment except mindless complaining about men being victimised by society because they’re not women. There’s nothing of value. Then, when challenged on your statements, you’ve churned out numbers that look on the surface to show that men are suffering but actually under any scrutiny demonstrate nothing of the sort.
If you’re speaking to your personal feelings, that’s valid, if you personally feel that as a man you’re not valued, that’s something you can absolutely share insight into and it’ll be valuable for everyone here but you have to… do that. Embrace how you feel. Don’t frame your feelings as if they’re facts about the world, because then when you’re challenged on them, you’re spinning in circles posting meaningless numbers that don’t say what you think they say.
You should feel valued as a person. You should express your feelings. You should not try to justify your feelings with numbers — you don’t need to. The greatest irony (to me, anyway) is that so much of how we think about masculinity is based on intelligence and logic and rationality. You don’t need to rationalise your feelings. Feel them. Be hurt. And then you don’t need to dig deeper and deeper into numbers to support you in crafting some grand narrative about why this isn’t about feelings it’s about facts! I’m not sad, I’m intellectually perturbed!
I’m straying deep into the bowels of my own life experience now, but, why not: in my experience, the big difference between men and women is that men turn their negative feelings into narratives, and women turn their negative feelings inwards. The reason you see so many men complaining is not because men have it worse; but because of how masculinity manifests.
Even if every man on earth has a perfect life, except for you, your sadness would still be valid. Your pain would still be valid. You would still deserve kindness and respect. I categorically disagree with your absurd assertions that the male suicide rate is somehow a reflection of how men have it worse than women, but I don’t for one second think it invalidates any pain and sadness you’re feeling. They’re completely unrelated, ones a grand theory, and the other is you.
If you want to challenge my theories, I’d love to hear meaningful insight from you, I would sincerely appreciate it, but I don’t want numbers. They don’t say anything.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment and showing compassion. I appreciate it. I’ll keep what you’ve said in mind in discussions in the future and will probably be a better contributor for it. I agree with some of your comment and disagree with other parts.
I agree that it can be exhausting to conjure facts to support one’s belief. I’m a believer in what I call “n=1 statistics” - if something happens to me, or to someone else, that’s good enough and worth acting on. It doesn’t matter if a statistically significant amount of people experience the same thing. That doesn’t validate or invalidate anyone’s experience.
I disagree that statistics are nothing of value. For one, they can provide us a large-scale look at where our problems as a society are. There are problems with statistics, sure. They can’t do everything. They’re just one tool we can use in our quest to make the world a better place. Second, though they’re masked behind numbers, every statistic is a real person (in this case): the extra men who die are fathers who leave behind a spouse children. They are children whose parents lament their death. They are people who overdosed on heroin, gassed themselves out in their garage, or hung themselves in their bedrooms. They’re not just men, either; they’re the young girls who kill themselves due to social pressure or bullying, the mothers who leave children behind after a battle with breast cancer, etc.
I also disagree that life expectancy is a weak measure. In a lot of common cases, having died also probably means having had a miserable life (or part of it). Suicide is often preceded by sexual assault or depression or other psychological suffering. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and kidney issues are usually long and expensive battles that can be financially and morally debilitating to individuals and their families. Heart disease and cancer, at least, are also correlated with exposure to environmental toxins and stress. If someone is dying early from these conditions, there were probably burdens placed on them that in part caused that. I’ll concede that life expectancy is not the ultimate goal, but I think it is non-negligible when discussing outcomes between people (especially medically), given how we die.
You make an interesting point about how men and women express their frustration. Maybe that is related to why women have done a much better job raising attention regarding their issues and presenting a (mostly) unified front that has allowed for their progress. While we are busy theorycrafting, they’re busy acting and correcting.
Thanks for the well constructed rebuttal... not sure why valid discussions of men's health often disintegrate into generic race and gender whataboutism. It's like no one really listens to anyone anymore. What's so wrong about discussing men's challenges in an online forum?
Yeah we've been hearing about POOR WAMYN endlessly for the past decade. Let's just stop talking solely about women, because no, they are not the only ones disadvantaged.
Taking into account phphphphp's sibling comment, maybe disingenuous wasn't the best word to use. What would better describe my complain would be that OP takes a non-empathetic stance on the problem, and coupled with notorious social bias against women when it comes to their reproductive rights, signals to me an argumentation made in rather bad faith, therefore "disingenuous".
Bad faith and disingenuous both (as I understand it based on the definitions) mean being deceptive or dishonest. It's basically acting like you believe a thing when you don't.
I know this is off topic, and I'm not looking to be the word police or whatever, but this is one of those things that always makes me wonder if I'm crazy and I just don't know what these words mean, or if other people don't.
If you search for these terms across hn comments, you'll find they're very very common, and they're very often used to mean "I disagree" or "you're saying a thing that I find problematic". Which is a fine thing to say, but why not use those words instead?
Or maybe I have the wrong idea and just need to learn what these words actually mean.
I think that parent is *intentionally* has framed their comment as a women vs. men problem to make it sound more dramatic, conveniently disregarding the large amount of issues women have in asserting their reproductive rights. I don't just disagree with OP, I am suspicious of the fact that they omit from their reasoning a very glaring and obvious point of view. Does that clarify for you if I'm using the word right or not?
And apologies for being snippy but I believe my comments in this thread are reasonably well written, and despite the fact that English is not my first language which might lead me to miss some subtle nuances, I made myself perfectly understandable and clarified _why_ I said what I said. It's fine if you don't agree with me, but framing the issue in terms of what other commenters say and, projecting their fallacies onto my words will not lead to a good discussion.
I didn't mean to make this a "women vs. men" problem; I meant to make it a "men" problem, and I believe it would be accepted as one, if you replaced "men" with "women".
For instance, we acknowledge women suffer more than their partners during a miscarriage or a stillborn pregnancy, but both would-be parents suffer the loss of a child. We acknowledge women are affected by rape more than men, but both genders suffer from sexual assault. In this instance, where the issue negatively impacts men more than women, an article which focuses on the issue decided to focus on the common suffering and ignore the suffering that it causes men specifically, so I wanted to reframe the discussion to focus on that, and point out that society is less interested in "men's issues".
I am not looking to go back-and-forth on reproductive rights, since it is not related to my original post, but since you mentioned it, I would like to point out that while women are "[having issues] asserting their reproductive rights", men have no reproductive rights to assert. Women are struggling to obtain or retain access to abortion, and men have no such recourse. Women are struggling to obtain access to birth control, and men have no such recourse. Women can choose to have babies that their partners might not want, and men have no such recourse. The extent of reproductive rights for men is "put on a condom and pray". The "reproductive rights" battle that women are fighting is not about equality, but about getting or staying ahead.
Nicotine is a drug like any other and has all kinds of side effects, some that can be seen as beneficial. Like, if you think you're going to get shot in the next 3 hours, yeah, you should probably smoke a cigarette. Otherwise, stay away from the stuff.
> nobody cares unless it can be shown to impact the other 50% of society that apparently is the only portion deserving of any care
I guess no one informed the author of this article, or the numerous studies cited here.
Please refrain from hollow unsubstantiated rants on HN. Someone can point to your copypasta comment and say "see, another one of those 'men's rights' loonies!"; you're only hurting men. Men and women's issues are not a zero-sum game.
>And when this topic comes up, the responses are generally, “who cares?”
>because the issue must be seen as impacting females negatively to justify any interest by society
Huge cognitive leap between these two sentences. My response is closer to "who cares?" than panic. My reasoning has nothing to do with women. Are men with lower (but functional) testosterone less capable of happy, productive lives? I haven't seen any evidence to support that thesis. Therefore, who cares. Is sperm production a major bottleneck in human reproduction? I haven't seen any evidence to support that. Therefore, who cares.
Fluctuation within the very wide ranges of "enough sperm" and "enough testosterone" doesn't really matter.
Low testosterone levels in men is correlated with depression and anxiety; inversely, testosterone replacement therapies are correlated with reduction of symptoms of depression and anxiety.
You seem to be upset about identity politics, but then proceed to make an argument about identity and social acceptance. None of these details you mention are relevant to the actual problem.
Anyway, there's much clearer evidence supporting the idea that poor mental health (anxiety, depression, etc.) can cause infertility in men due to elevated levels of cortisol, and you sound very stressed out.
I don't think it's necessarily a sexist phenomenon.
A lot of our cultural leaders generally seem to be pushing us toward a weird and sterile (literally and figuratively) existence. Men are encouraged to be less masculine, and women less feminine, and everyone discouraged from having children. More comfort and less creation.
I get what your saying but I don't think you actually want what you're asking for. What would this 'caring' even be good for? Because I don't get the impression that it would actually solve anything right now and only serve to infect the male demographic with the all-to-common victim mentality.
From an individual perspective if testosterone is such a concern you can do trt and remove yourself from this issue. And while ivf isn't ideal and I'm not currently in the market to have children right now, I don't see that route as causing existential stress in me personally or calling my masculinity into question in any meaningful way.
Did we read the same comment? He uses the words men, women, males, and females.
edit: the comment I originally replied to said something like "he uses the word females instead of women, that's a red flag". It's since been updated to just say he sounds like an MRA (why?) and I guess we're supposed to interpret that as a bad thing (because... why?)
Any proof for this assertion? Given that the majority of people in power (i.e, the actual decision makers) are men I'm pretty sure they would be happy to act in their self interest.
And when this topic comes up, the responses are generally, “who cares?” First, attention is diverted from the male to fertility, because the issue must be seen as impacting females negatively to justify any interest by society. Second, the way this impacts boys and men is entirely ignored. Responses exist like, “we just need a way to reproduce without men”, or “everyone can just use IVF and still have children”. I worry very few people respect how being wished out of existence so that females can enjoy plastics and pesticides impacts men. Very few people respect how demeaning it is for men to be infertile and how this would impact their mental health. Very few people respect how being unable to produce the hormones that allow boys to develop correctly or men to perform their biological functions impacts men. It is wholly disheartening.
If there were even the slightest indication that something similar impacted women only, I doubt we would be here discussing whether or not the effect was real, but instead, what should we do about it? Instead, since sperm count and testosterone levels are “men’s issues”, nobody cares unless it can be shown to impact the other 50% of society that apparently is the only portion deserving of any care.