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.
