i would just like to point out that the recent conversation surrounding the male birth control trials isn’t just “lol weak men can’t deal with side effects” it’s the fact that when they were testing hormonal birth control for women in the 50s & 60s, the side effects were much worse, and the women who participated in them, mostly in puerto rico, were not told about the side effects or that the drug was experimental
and THEN when women dropped out, they started using incarcerated women as their guinea pigs, and then despite the fact that some scientists who participated in the original trials were like “uh i don’t think this is actually good, it’s making a lot of these women sick,” the pharmaceutical industry & fda were like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and approved it for the general population anyways, without really warning women about the potential for all these negative side effects
and THEN researchers basically ceased to do any type of research on side effects like depression and decreased libido for 50 years, despite the fact that women were still complaining about them, and because there was no “hard evidence” of these side effects, a lot of doctors basically just assumed women were exaggerating or making it up. and that continued until the first major study of depression in women who take hormonal contraceptives was released just. this. year.
so yeah, the patriarchy. *waves flag*
further reading:
the puerto rico pill trials
the racist & sexist history of keeping side effects of birth controls secret
“it’s not in your head” striking new study links birth control to depression
the side effects of male birth control stopping drug trials reveals a disturbing sexism
male birth control shot prevents pregnancy, researchers call for further study to reduce risk of depression, other side effects
oh, and fun fact: even after this new study was released, a lot of the scientific community is still being like “but can we PROVE these women aren’t just depressed because they’re LOVESICK?”
edit: for those of you confused about the purpose of this post, this is not a “women had it bad 70 years ago so men deserve to have it bad now” post. this is a “wow it’s great that scientists took these men’s (very serious) side effects seriously, and it would be great if they did the same for women’s, because despite the fact that hormonal bc for women came out 70 years ago, we still have very little research on the negative mental health problems that women experience while on hormonal bc, so that when they do experience these side effects, they are often dismissed by their doctors and have very few alternative forms of bc to turn to” post
