Oh, and NOT weekly. They go in every other month. Depo Provera is once every three months.
This thread has certainly been eye-opening about how little some men seem to understand about female hormonal birth control. Not passing much blame on that measure; since it’s generally considered a woman’s purview to not get pregnant there was really never any motive for men to know. I’d be delighted if we could shift the dialog on that.
Having to give myself a shot in the vajay might make me think twice, but I’d probably still do it because I consider the pill pretty much a medical necessity for myself. I do think there’s a big difference in motive between ‘‘insulin shots so you don’t die’’ and ‘‘hormone shots so you don’t get pregnant.’’ People will deal with all kinds of bullshit if they have to. The butt seems not so bad.
Every single source I’ve seen regarding this method said something different about how it was administered. Depot testosterone (and estrogen too, which some people take) is indeed given in the buttock, because it’s the body’s largest muscle.
There was another method that was tested for a while that did indeed involve regular injections into the scrotum.
Yeah. Glad to hear that the weekly groin shot is wrong. Every other month in the butt cheek isn’t any different than a Depo shot, so we can knock that of the list. No biggie.
I’ve no idea what this could possibly have meant then:
This seems an entirely balanced and agreeable stance to me.
Frankly, I don’t know that much about it any longer. I was an Ortho Novum 777 girl - and stopped 20 years ago to try to conceive. That was the dawn of Depo and Norplant. I had a two month or so flirtation with it again pre-vascetomy (see above) and haven’t seen birth control now in sixteen years.
I will, however, pass some blame. Pregnancy is something that happens when two people have sex. Babies are what happens when two people have sex, conception occurs, and the pregnancy is carried to term. Babies are little people completely dependent on adults - and as they grow into adults, they lose some - but never all, of the dependence they have on their parents. Our legal system makes you at least financially responsible for the child - and you are, ethically, emotionally responsible as well - unless adoption plans are made and carried out.
There is an internet at your fingertips so you could read about the crap your girlfriend is putting into her body to save you both from having to host princess birthday parties and put away $100,000 for college before you are ready to do so. Or you can ask her. And if you are more of a hookup kind of guy - well, don’t be shocked when the child support notice arrives.
Shots are shots are shots. Some people have needle phobias, a person in the next ER cube to me had a panic attack with full on screaming, slamming a chair into a wall and punching out the poor nurse trying to give them a shot … I have seen people fainting while getting a simple vaccination … shrug Honestly? you value your wife and she can’t do the pill, the IUD or the depo shot and has a latex allergy you can pay a fortune for nonlatex condoms or get a shot and as I said, I know tons of men who claim they hate sex with a condom and refuse to use them, and the few guys I dated that refused to use a condom [for disease prevention, I was on the pill then I had a tubal ligation] I dumped when they refused to use a condom. SO do the math. You want to be a selfish asshole, sucks to be you if you can’t keep a woman because you won’t give yourself a shot [or stick a patch to your thigh, or rub a lotion dose on your balls or however the dosing ends up being done.] Oddly enough, once you start giving injections to a specific area, the pain decreases - I have areas on my thighs, stomach and upper arms that have little to no real issue with sliding a needle in, it isn’t like you wind up and jam it in like an epi-pen … now that fucking hurts.
As I said, those of us who depend on shooting up something on a monthly, weekly, daily or multiple times daily basis have little sympathy for this viewpoint … and there are self administered injectables that aren’t a cute little lowdose syringe/microfine pen tip.
Development is not “ended” because one particular study group is ended. It’s simply one study, and a small one at that.
With due respect what we’ve got here is a combination of
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A brief, secondhand newspaper article about a scientific study, which invariably are at least partially wrong and/or leave out a bunch of facts, and
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A total ignorance of the field and practice of pharmacovigilance.
Without looking at the study details - which are, I assure you, a matter in which many of the pertinent facts remain highly confidential - there’s nothing at all unusual about a test in a small group being ended based on the facts available. 96% is highly ineffective as compared to competing treatments, which is a key factor in the study, creation, testing and approval of new drugs. If you went to any regulatory body with an NDA for a birth control method that failed once every twenty-five times it’d be rejected out of hand. So the study failed in both efficacy and had a fairly significant side effect percentage; backing off and trying again later is the standard way of going about this sort of thing.
Perhaps that it doesn’t take all men for society to be misogynist - some men can be wonderful allies, and some women can be misogynist, but society - or decisions made by “society” can still be misogynist - even when there are allies.
And perhaps that some men are ‘delicate-little-snowflakes.’ This is not news. Everyone knows some guy who calls in sick when he has the sniffles and acts like he’s about to die (women do it to). Or can’t figure out how to do a load of laundry when his wife is out of town (my own dear father - if she dies first, his daughters are going to set him up at his funeral just so he eats and has clean underwear). Certainly other men are tough he-men, independent.
Sunny Daze posted a link to the study in post 33. Its relinked to about eleven posts up from here. The study states exactly why the study was ended, they were worried about the side effects of acne, depression, and pain in the injection site - and because so many men dropped out, they didn’t have a good sample size.
I don’t even have a problem with the notion that a significantly higher proportion of men than women are delicate snowflakes - if those are the facts, then so be it.
It’s the broad-brushing that I find objectionable and unhelpful to the discussion. Sexist attitudes have hurt women for centuries and still do. I’m all for fighting that - but I don’t believe the solution is to participate in the same kind of wrong.
I guess I have a hair trigger for this particular generalisation in this specific context and should probably step out of the discussion, due to personal reasons I shan’t bore everyone about.
But it is exactly that broad brush that determines if male hormonal birth control is marketable.
If society finds it acceptable for women to continue to take all the medical risks involved in contraception - that’s misogyny on a systemic level. It will also make male birth control less marketable.
If enough men are delicate little snowflakes unwilling to get a shot every two weeks, or put up with acne that results a little less than 50% of the time, that makes the product less marketable.
If those two things are in effect, then they will continue the cycle of women having to take the risks and responsibility of sex. They are broad brush factors because commercial viability is a broad brush thing.
The CNN article from the OP said that 75% of the participants finishing the study would continue to use it - the researchers hypothesized that was because the testosterone component is great - it makes men have more energy, it helps the loose weight and build muscle mass. So what is going on when 10-20% of women on birth control go on antidepressants within a year and Depo shots also can cause severe pain in the injection site - plus the risk of hypertension, stroke, heart attack, embolism that comes with female hormonal birth control - but they went on the market and this study got stopped? That really makes it seem like women’s health and women’s lives are not as important as men’s. Doesn’t it?
(I have another guess - when women have mood swings as a result of hormonal birth control - they get bitchy and cry and shop for things they’ll never wear. Men’s mood swings may involve fewer tears and more physical violence - and if that’s the case - “this seems to work, but we are afraid that shooting guys up with testosterone might lead to more violence” - then say that - or the medical journal version of that. Because “we think they might hit their partners or bring an AK-47 to work” seems like a lot of risk. Now, there doesn’t seem to be evidence of this guess in the paper, but it would be a better reason to stop the study than “two guys out of 320 found the shot to be really painful.”)
The word “they” is doing alot of work in this post. This is just one company with just one ethics board. Maybe this one was too sensitive or maybe the others weren’t sensitive enough. Maybe they are just extra sensitive to being sued or the likely or suits has gone up dramatically since IUDs were being tested. If the boards were too permissive in the past then it is a good thing that they are less so now. Unfortunately there is no way of cutting down on too dangerous medication studies without getting rid of some promising ones at the same time. Really large studies of hormone therapy found different results and it was hard to know what to believe for a while.
I wasn’t generalizing or broad-brushing that *all *men are misogynists or delicate snowflakes, but that that seems to be the attitude of the people ending the study. Sorry if you read it that way, but that isn’t what I was saying.
If this is too dangerous to study, why is the Pill safe enough for millions of women to take. In addition to most of the side effects mentioned (the Pill does tend to HELP with acne) the Pill also rarely causes strokes, heart attacks and blot clots…i.e. it sometimes - not often - but sometimes, kills women.
And maybe those side effects are worth it if you are also treating PCOS or endometriosis, but are they worth it for mere birth control? - and if they are for women, why aren’t they for men? If women are grown up enough to decide that the small risks included in the pill are worth taking, and that if they don’t like the effects they can switch to something else (assuming, of course, they haven’t died), why aren’t men also being treated like grown ups capable of making that decision? Is “well, I tried the Pill, but the mood swings were too much for me” something only women are competent to say? Or is it simply that contraception is a woman’s responsibility, and men shouldn’t be inconvenienced by it?
And if we decide that women shouldn’t be exposed to the risks of hormonal birth control, are we ready for a world where casual sex is much more likely to result in pregnancy from an improperly placed diaphragm or a slipped condom? Its likely to mean a lot more abstinence from young women not willing to take that risk, more abortions when birth control fails.
If you can spin millions of women are prescribed hormonal birth control, which can cause DEATH, but we haven’t pulled it from the market yet and pain in the injection spot, mood swings and acne means we should stop this study in a way that neither devalues women or infantalizes men, I can’t.
Ok, thanks, and peace (I hope)
I guess it’s the anonymous internet commentors that got my hackles up, but they’re not here in this thread to argue with.
Interesting that hormonal birth control is used to* treat * some of these. I forget what percent of women are taking hormonal birth control for reasons other than contraception. I think I remember where the paper is; I’ll see what I can dig up when I’m not on my phone.
Options are good. No one method is good enough (to me) on its own. Hormonal bc isn’t a good option for all women. I suspect won’t be a good option for all men. But I look forward to something like this coming onto the market.
If 99% of men use condoms during sex and we keep the female rate constant, you would reasonably expect a different outcome with regard to STD spread than if 99% of women use condoms during sex and you keep the male rate constant. Transmission rates from male to female differ than from female to male. Not to mention male to male vs female to female. You would also have to take into account the average number of sexual partners for men vs women.
Can you explain what this means? Do you mean male condoms vs. female condoms?