The world just doesn’t quite have enough men without any background in science explaining to women how birth control is harmful. If only we had more random dudebros researching via google and vomiting back information they can’t physically understand regarding information they’ve never studied from peer-reviewed articles they have no access to. Wouldn’t that be nice and educational? Regardless of none of these guys being able to so much as explain the difference between an atom and a molecule, somehow they’ve amazingly obtained an intricate understanding of pharmacology, physiology, neurology, endocrinology, and oncology overnight. My god, the brilliance these men must have!
Birth control can have negative side effects just like any other kind of medication. This shouldn’t be surprising. Even vitamins/supplements are responsible for over 300,000 hospitalizations annually, so it’s no wonder oral contraceptives can have side effects as well. Birth control is beneficial for some and harmful to others. That’s why it’s important to talk to a real doctor before you take any medication. Those with a family history of certain vascular disorders may be more prone to clotting, which could lead to stroke, pulmonary embolism, or DVT. You also do not want to smoke while taking most oral contraceptives. Certain medications like anticonvulsants can interfere with its metabolism. And not to sound like an ad, but free to ask your OB/GYN questions regarding what kind of birth control method you should use. That’s what they’re there for. If you experience negative side effects like depression, cramping, etc. there is absolutely nothing wrong with changing the meds, methods, or stopping the medication and sticking with condoms. I had horrible side effects with an IUD such as heavy bleeding and irritability, but the pill has worked fantastically for me. While I can definitely agree that more women should know details about the medication they’re taking (though I’ll post problems I have with our shitty sex ed another time), the fact that oral contraceptives have side effects is not a valid reason to try to eradicate them. They’re simply side effects to be aware of as a precaution, just like any other medication out there. Women are not dropping dead like flies.
Anyways, here’s part II of Darwin Award-worthy posts about how women should stop taking birth control from some guy named Matt Walsh who apparently enjoys whining a lot and posting pseudoscience as factual information.
Here’s the link to the article: Matt Walsh Tries To Explain Science
And here’s his introduction on his own page:
“The birth control pill is poison, plain and simple.”
“You sure about that?” – John Cena
They inject synthetic hormones in cows, and everyone freaks out. They prescribe it to perfectly healthy women, and we scream “liberation!” Something is wrong here.
I’ll tell you what’s wrong here: a person who doesn’t understand a single goddamn thing about medication is trying to write a post explaining how it works. He apparently thinks synthetic human estradiol and synthetic bovine somatostatin are synonymous. If he’s even talking about BST; he didn’t exactly bother specifying whether he was referring to the synthetic hormones given to beef or dairy cattle. Which one of those am I supposedly freaking out while I drink this cappuccino with 2% milk and eat this delicious burger? He said “everybody,” but I had no idea I was freaking out about it. And how on earth are hormones given to cows related to oral contraceptives to begin with? They’re not even the same fucking macromolecule, for crying out loud. One is a peptide hormone and one is a steroid. They have completely different structures and modes of metabolism. They not only affect different body organs, but affect different organs in completely different species.
There are many, many hormones in the human body, many of which have a synthetic version. And none of those involve bovine growth hormones.
“A couple of notes about this post: 1) yes, I’m a man. I can already hear the objections. “You’re a man! How can you have an opinion about birth control?” Well, because I can read. I just read a whole book last week, actually. Green Eggs and Ham. You should check it out, really dense but quite engaging. Besides, most men have opinions about the pill. It’s just that their opinion is, ‘hey, it makes my life easier, so I don’t care about the side effects.’
And here’s a couple of notes about my post that I’ll direct to Matt Walsh himself, who will probably never read this (but I’ll have fun anyways):
- I am a feminist who has respected a lot of medical information regarding my own genitalia from men, considering I had a man as my OB/GYN for years before I moved states. He was great. He had something called (and I know this may be hard for you to pronounce) a “medical degree.” So really, my whole argument is, “You couldn’t even label a diagram of my genitals or so much as tell me what cytochrome pathway Tylenol uses, so how can you call yourself qualified enough to teach women endocrine pharmacology?”
- I don’t know why your expectations of men are so disgustingly low, but I am married to a fantastic man who doesn’t treat me like a slab of meat. Yes, assholes exist. People who treat others like shit aren’t exactly limited to one gender, though. Assuming most men would willingly watch their wives suffer for the sake of their penis is beyond insulting. Believe it or not, many men care about whether or not the medication their wife/girlfriend is taking is going to give them a fucking stroke.
Here’s the problem: The “alt-right” will repeatedly tell others they need to work hard to achieve things in life. That being said, if you’re not willing to actually work hard to obtain the degrees required to educate others on how bodies work, I’ll likewise consider you a sucker of other’s resources (dendritic spines in this case). Your laziness by not going to medical, pharmacology, or graduate school isn’t my problem. You can’t just be handed free things in life, snowflake. You have to earn it.
Great, now let’s get to his main points on his actual article.
“I saw on the news last week that birth control pills are now potentially linked to brain cancer.”
Wow, you saw click-bait and clicked on it! I have long had a peeve with the media presenting scientific articles as click-bait, but I’ll save that post for another time.
“According to the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (I have a monthly subscription — got it in a package deal along with Highlights Magazine) women who took chemical birth control at any point in their lives show a 50 percent higher likelihood of developing a certain type of brain tumor. The researchers concluded that the results, though startling, shouldn’t be viewed as a reason to discontinue using the pill.
We were so close. I had a glimmer of hope when I saw him actually admit that the researchers concluded that their results shouldn’t be viewed as a reason to discontinue the pill. I physically gasped, thinking “holy crap, thank you, this guy cares about the actual research.” It truly surprised me, because even though he still added the words “though startling,” that weren’t ever mentioned, he didn’t seem the type to add a point of truth to his articles. But then he totally fucked it up in the next sentence. Sigh. So close.
“They’re right. Just those results, alone in a vacuum, would only probably be a good reason to never take an oral contraceptive. But put it in a blender and mix it with all of the other negative aspects of the pill, and you end up with one horrific smoothie.”
As a scientist myself, I know firsthand that they have to put those disclaimers in specifically so people like him don’t do exactly what he just fucking did. “Alone in a vacuum?” I seriously have no idea why he chose to make this point. “Alone in a vacuum,” though already a rather cringe-worthy physics analogy, would be the only time to actually take the research seriously, since all of the research I could find involving gliomas and oral contraceptives didn’t find a correlation. That includes the research blatantly mentioned in the original study. This study, when compared to other similar studies, gets drowned out by all of the other research contradicting it. But it is a really important subject to continue researching (at least in my opinion).
But I can imagine him saying something along the lines of: “Oh my god, you dumb feminazi baby-killer! I was talking about comparing this study with all of the other negative side effects combined!”
Which would be fallacious at best. What was presented was whether or not certain birth controls are associated with certain gliomas. And its accuracy wasn’t even determined before he decided to go ahead and compare that to other side effects, many of which also haven’t been supported, especially in people without pre-existing conditions.
We know so little about the etiology of gliomas that I would love to know whether or not hormone levels could come into play. My god, I would burn my birth control in a heartbeat if we discovered it to be a major cause. I doubt this guy even realizes how bad gliomas are. Of course, men get them too, so they obviously wouldn’t be limited to contraception and would most likely involve multiple factors in both men and women. But if we knew that one of them (or more) could truly be influenced by birth control, that would be a huge step in science and change the field of oncology. It just doesn’t actually tell us anything yet, and may never do so.
So what did this article actually conclude?
Not much, but it gives a foundation for other studies to work off of. As I previously mentioned, I think studies like this are important, and I am not throwing this out and saying “it’s all bullshit!” But any researcher out there knows you can’t just accept a study with more than a grain of salt, especially when it hasn’t been repeated. Let me elaborate: this study was only observing Danish women. That’s it. So it was mainly just the same ethnicity from the same location. Therefore, there wasn’t much variability at all. The same study mentioned finding similar results when taking socioeconomic status into effect and how it could be a confounding variable. To quote from the actual study (Anderson et al 2015), “We cannot exclude that women using hormonal contraceptives may seek medical consultation more often than women in general, leading to greater possibility of brain tumor detection in this population (surveillance bias).” It makes sense that women who have more access to medical care or are focused on preventative measures are going to be diagnosed with gliomas (aside from neuroglioblastoma, which is very fast) more frequently anyways. They continue: “Except for parity, we could not adjust for reproductive factors such as age of menarche, or for anthropometric measures, such as body mass index (BMI), because the registries do not contain this information.” This was missing a ton of information, it wasn’t a study involving following the same people over the course of their lifetimes (called a longitudinal study), nor was it experimental. Practically any human experimental studies linking gliomas to birth control would be obviously thrown out as an option to begin with, since it would be extremely unethical (“we’re just going to try to see if we can give you a horrible deadly brain cancer that will kill you in a couple months”). Obviously that isn’t an option. That being said, it’s going to take a long time to figure out if there’s a true concern, especially considering glioma rates haven’t spiked after the introduction of birth control. In actuality, there is no reason to discard one’s birth control out of fear it leads to brain cancer, as the study specifically mentioned.
Do you know what else can cause cancer? Pregnancy. I shit you not.
Obviously I would look like a moron telling women to avoid pregnancy because of cancer risk, as it is extremely rare and overall ridiculous in general to mention such a thing. I sure as hell haven’t met a single woman who ever got cancer from pregnancy. In a similar manner, telling women to avoid birth control because of a small Danish observational study about an extremely rare cancer with debatable etiology that could have also been affected by many other factors is downright laughable. If cohort studies from multiple countries support this, that changes things.
Speaking of smoothies, in a country where health food is all the rage, trans-fats are banned, cigarettes are all but banned, and sugary sodas are next on the chopping block, birth control pills would be no doubt subject to severe scrutiny if not for the fact that they are the Eucharist to liberal feminism
This is a textbook example of a tu quoque fallacy (and that’s ignoring the ad hominem regarding feminists). No, people are not somehow hypocrites because they like to eat healthy food while simultaneously liking Western medicine. Taking birth control doesn’t somehow negate one’s food preference or choice of eyebrow pencil for that matter. Not to mention it’s two years later and sugary sodas still aren’t remotely close to being banned, cigarettes aren’t banned, and practically every point he was trying to make, ignoring the fallacy it was built off of, was a theatrical attempt to mock people who simply want to have less processed food. That’s an entirely different argument. As a fan of GMOs, I think that people can be histrionic sometimes when it comes to health food, definitely. But someone’s love of organic food isn’t an actual reason to advocate against birth control. I can’t believe I’m having to explain that.
I am not saying only liberal feminists take birth control pills. I am saying the pill is particularly crucial to liberal feminist philosophy because it’s seen as a “liberation” from their feminine biology. I’m sure some women take it and don’t see it that way. Still, it is a sacred chemical cow because of its political and social implications.
When he adds “I’m sure some women take it and don’t see it that way,” he still haven’t supported that one single woman out there thinks that way in the first place.
What he’s implying is that those we’ve seen (which is everyone for me) falls out of the realm of normal. Another fallacy. It’s as if I said, “I’m sure some guys named Matt aren’t crazy puppy killers, but the rest of them totally are!” Wow, bullshitting is easy! First support how women find it “liberation from their feminine biology” before claiming that some may not.
To continue, what on earth does “liberation from feminine biology” mean in the first place? It’s one thing if he’s talking about merely the freedom of more availability or being able to take birth control without getting arrested in the United States, but he’s making it sound as if this is all about feelings of hatred towards femininity. If taken for contraceptive reasons, women are simply using birth control to avoid unplanned pregnancy for the sake of better family planning as well as a to decrease the need for abortion. It really shouldn’t be a hard concept. Not to mention oral contraceptives work with our natural biology, and I’m not sure why I’m hearing otherwise explained to me by a guy with zero years of graduate school and zero years of one fucking college chemistry class.
If it did not have those implications — if people were as dogmatic about the pill as they are about, say, Tylenol — we’d be living in a very different culture, and I doubt that chemical birth control would be nearly as ubiquitous. (Yes, I agree “The Chemical Cows” would make a great name for an experimental indie rock band, ditto for “The Horrific Smoothies”).
Huh? Tylenol uses the cytochrome p450 system, which is the same cytochrome pathway as ethanol. Having a warning label on it that says not to take it with heavy doses of alcohol isn’t “dogmatic,” it’s just a fucking warning label just like the much longer warning label I have every goddamn month on my birth control pill container. I’m guessing this guy is probably the reason why we have weird warning labels on mattresses that say “do not attempt to swallow,” because he keeps claiming we’re not making big deals involving medication that has a warning label so long I have to physically remove it from my packet. Also, if he’s talking about freakouts over warning labels, I’ve never heard a single person bitch about Tylenol after years now of working in a hospital. There’s even a joke in Scrubs about tossing as many Tylenol at someone’s tongue that will stick- it’s a really wimpy medication in the medical field (Ibuprofen was used a different time for the same joke). The problem is liver damage with overdose or longtime use. This isn’t being dogmatic. Oral contraceptives have the complications explained all the time and Tylenol isn’t a common subject of scrutiny.
If a woman’s reproductive powers were seen as powers, rather than a disease or a burden or an oppression, I think conservatives and liberals alike could find many common reasons to reject the pill. If we could simply get past the notion that a woman must be liberated from her nature, we might all look at hormonal birth control and see it as the poison it is. And not just poison, but poison unfairly placed before women. Feminists are on a constant quest to find double standards, yet they miss the most obvious ones. Women assume the enormous risk and consequence of birth control, and men just get free sex out of the deal.
He keeps attempting to use negative emotions to draw us to the conclusion that we’re taking them for negative reasons, despite already knowing why we’re actually taking birth control. For those of you who think he is making a point, let me put it in another perspective: “If we could simply get past the notion that a man must rape someone else, we might all look at viagra and see it as the poison it is.” Obviously I would sound ridiculous, as this sentence would be purely emotion-driven and quite rude to men. My reproductive system isn’t a disease nor a power. It never was. My ovaries are merely part of my biology to the same extent as my pancreas or liver. I am simply taking some pills that are analogs of my natural hormones that bind to my natural god-given receptors that have been heavily studied in meta-analyses that have not given me negative side effects. Oral contraceptives have simply stopped me from ovulating during medical school, just like they stopped me from ovulating when I got my MS and my BS. I just want to take my own prescribed medication that I have been on for years with no adverse side effects, no matter how much that somehow bugs you. It’s not “poison,” and it’s not “unfairly placed.” It’s just my medication. Women wouldn’t need to feel liberated from something if men weren’t trying to prevent access to it.
What does “free sex out of the deal” mean? Does he normally pay for sex? Has anyone told this guy that birth control doesn’t protect people from STDs? A man should still always wear a condom for protection if he wants to sleep around, which is giving both individuals responsibilities. Sex with multiple partners is still risky. If he sleeps with someone who was diagnosed with HIV, he’s going to have to take a hardcore prophylaxis. And before I met my husband, who was my first boyfriend for that matter, I took birth control for years. I liked having a natural cycle, which birth control gave me, rather than 42-day cycles. Feminists aren’t on a “natural quest to find double standards,” and I don’t know if this guy understands what a double standard is. I don’t have time to go on quests. I just want to take my medication without an asshole who isn’t a doctor telling me not to.
1) A steady diet of potentially harmful chemicals.
These days, we don’t like to eat a hamburger if we find out the cow was injected with synthetic hormones. It’s bad for the environment, we say, and probably bad for us. Give us our beef chemical-free! No more chemicals! No more hormones in our food! This is our mantra, and we are willing to assume the cost and inconvenience to be assured that our chicken nuggets and T-bone steaks are organic and natural.
Yet those convictions somehow rarely apply to the highly potent mix of synthetic hormones many women consume on a near-daily basis for years and years of their lives. There really is no way to explain this contradiction, other than to say that our “organic” enthusiasm is either a lie or severely misapplied.
I think both, to some degree. I find that, in our culture, we often stumble upon the right conclusions, and then point them in precisely the wrong directions. In this case, we’re right to fret about consuming “chemicals” and synthetic hormones, but we ought to be far less worried about the chemicals that make our beef taste delicious, and far more worried about the chemicals that fundamentally alter a woman’s physiology and screw around with her reproductive system. It seems rather silly to get worked up over genetically modified food when we are so eager to chemically modify ourselves.
Everything is a chemical. The water I’m drinking is a chemical. As I stated before, someone advocating for cows (he finally linked an article to beef cattle) to not be injected with certain growth hormones doesn’t somehow negate the birth control or hypertension medication one is taking. He says, “there is no way to explain this contradiction,” which is probably because it’s built off of an appeal to hypocrisy (tu quoque) fallacy. I think our country does truly need to start substituting additives with better options or taking certain chemicals out of products, not because I’m a Big Pharma nutbag, but because of research. Triclosan, for instance. Turns out it’s completely unnecessary in soaps, but it’s still vital to have in an operating room. It’s also really cool to have in certain plastics, as it can leak out and keep a baby’s high chair sanitary for a long period of time. It’s just unnecessary in soaps due to pointlessness (it’s soap for goodness sake) and potential for certain resistance. NIH hasn’t, however, linked birth control to being a “highly potent mix of synthetic hormones.” That came out of this guy’s ass.
And here’s the kicker: many many many medications are synthetic chemicals. Every single one of these alters our physiology, which is precisely why they’re taken. That’s why we have clinical/cohort studies. I always wonder what people like this think medication normally is, as if everyone is popping glitter and sunshine except for scary birth control.
2) Diseasing a woman’s body.
The birth control pill is a dramatic and potentially harmful “medication” designed to “cure” a natural function of a woman’s body. It seems that men who develop and push these pills are vaguely sexist and anti-woman (OK, not vaguely) because they have literally made a female’s reproductive system into a sickness.
Uh… no, birth control pills are not “dramatic,” nor intended to “cure” anything. This guy is what is dramatic. And do you know what is sexist? Assuming that men are the ones advocating and “pushing” this medication. If you look up journal articles about birth control, whether sociological or biological studies, a crap ton of researchers studying it are women for quite obvious reasons. We’re usually the ones studying anything involving women’s reproduction for that matter, since so few male researchers give a crap, to a similar extent that most OB/GYNs are women. I’m not using hyperbole here or bashing male researchers for not wanting to study vaginas more, I’m truly saying that female researchers usually end up conducting studies involving our own hormones and biology because we’re the ones who care more about that stuff. The clitoris wasn’t even mapped out until 1998, and it took a female researcher to do it. Not only is this based off of my personal experience, I also encourage anyone who wants to simply type “birth control” into google scholar and see how many of the researchers are women.
That Time article about brain cancer I linked to above reminds us in the first sentence that “taking any drug is a matter of weighing the benefits and risks.” Yes, no question, but is there any other drug where the risks include blood clots and cancer (more on that in a minute) and the primary benefit is to stymie a natural, normal, and healthy bodily function? It carries risks similar to other medications, but unlike those other medications, it wasn’t primarily designed to treat a dysfunction. It was designed instead to cause dysfunction. The pill tricks a woman’s pituitary gland into essentially “thinking” she’s pregnant all the time. It prevents ovulation and causes the cervical mucus to thicken, mimicking how a woman’s body responds to pregnancy.
I really wish I knew which synthetic hormones/contraceptives he thinks are poison and work that way specifically:
- Estradiol
- Estrogens
- Conjugated A
- Conjugated B
- Esterified
- Estropipate
- Dropirenone/estradiol
- Estradiol/Levonorgestrel
- Etonegetrel
- Levonorgestrel
- Medroxyprogesterone
- Estradiol/Norethindrone
- Estradiol/Norgestimate
- Ethinyl estradiol/desogestrel
- Ethinyl estradiol/drospirenone
- Ethinyl estradiol/Ethynodiol diacetate
- Megestrol
- Progesterone
- Norethindrone
- Danazol
- Oxandrolone
- Nandrolone
- Mestranol
- Ethinyl estradiol/levonorgestrel
- Ethinyl estradiolNorelgestromin
- Clomiphine
- Raloxifene
- Tamoxifen
- Toremiphene
- Goserelin
- Flutamide
- Nilutamide
- Dutasteride
- Finasteride
No, I’m not finished, but I think everyone gets the hint now (I’d rather not continue). My point is that there are many synthetic hormones (some of which aren’t even synthetic) consisting of many different combinations, routes of administration, effects, and overall chemical structure.
Which ones are you referring to, Matty? Please draw out the ways you think they affect women negatively on a biochemical level.
I highly doubt he’d ever read this post. Darn, I would have really loved to see his response. What people like him need to take into consideration is the fact that we have actual PharmD’s studying details about pharmacology for 4+ years and creating the drugs. We have endocrinologist Ph.D.’s studying them. We have endocrinology MDs and OB/GYNs seeing the direct effects of them. We have other researchers looking specifically for certain risk factors. Birth control is not thrown out there by random dude-bros who created it in their neighbor’s meth lab. It has taken decades of research from multiple branches of science, and that research is continually growing.
DVT risk is blatantly stated on the insert of the birth control I’m taking, and the risk of DVT/stroke is there because of women who have genetic vascular disorders, which I don’t have. Regardless, I am aware that it is a potential side effect. Everyone should be aware of that. The cancer risk, the actual cancer risks (not the brain cancer that hasn’t been supported yet) are about six of one, half-dozen of another. It seems to reduce endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal cancers and increase chances of breast cancer. As for the increase in breast cancer, risk seems to decrease when women stop taking the medication, it is localized to the breast, and the increase is very small to begin with (especially in OCs containing lower doses of estrogen). In fact, when it comes to birth control and mortality, It very well may increase life expectancy.
In a giant meta-analyses made into a giant manuscript covering many peer-reviewed journals, these researchers expressed that it may be used as a prophylaxis to protect women from getting cancer. Again: It may save women’s lives.
“Oh, so you’re just going to ignore all of the evidence that points to it potentially causing cancer?”
Definitely not. That’s why I already blatantly stated it, and I’ll further elaborate. The one cancer it is actually shown to be associated with oral contraceptives is called hepatocellular adenoma, which is a benign tumor (it’s not malignant). And yes, I’m aware that nobody wants any form of cancer at all. I’m just explaining that this is a tad different than claiming it causes neuroglioblastoma. Birth control and cancer is still a highly debated subject in the research field. That being said, even someone with a BRCA mutation doesn’t necessarily have a higher risk. It will still need to be mentioned to a physician, though. Others may not have an underlying predisposition, but may want to take the precaution by checking for lumps/breast changes. This is always a good idea and highly recommended for any woman out there.
Also, birth control doesn’t “trick the body” into thinking it’s pregnant. Just because a person is not ovulating doesn’t mean her body is mimicking pregnancy. I think this started off as merely an analogy for the purpose of explaining why one’s body isn’t ovulating that has turned into an overused statement that isn’t actually medically accurate. Thicker mucus caused by progestin isn’t comparable to slowly developing a mucus plug. Instead, oral contraceptives keep estrogen and progesterone at their baseline levels. Its effect on leutinizing hormone is indirect as a result of the prevention of the estrogen surge. LH is merely responding to that estrogen surge every cycle, and doesn’t sit around worrying if it doesn’t get it.
Here’s a nice little overview of its mechanism
Yes, there are other medications that cause what this guy refers to as “dysfunction.” I say “this guy,” because all medications are going to be affecting the body’s natural function in some way (which is the entire purpose of taking it). Here he’s referring to stopping something that is functioning fine naturally. Other meds like that exist. Hair loss pills (male pattern baldness is simply due to a guy’s own hormones and isn’t a dysfunction), Botox affecting the Ach receptors, the list goes on. But from a histological perspective, the endometrial lining undergoes hypertrophy and hyperplasia when pregnant (which isn’t the case with birth control). It’s totally natural and a part of our biology, but hyperplasia in many other locations would be seen as concerning and indicative of a problem. What I’m saying is that even our natural biology could be argued as “dysfunctional” if observing it at a single point of time instead of a form of cellular adaptation for an overall purpose. Bashing medication for “causing dysfunction” in the same area in which it seems to prevent cancer is a rather strange thing to claim.
“They” also didn’t “literally” make women’s reproduction into a sickness, because it wouldn’t have been approved by the FDA if that was the case. Instead, a woman’s reproductive cycle will go back to normal right after stopping the medication as if nothing happened. All it simply does it put estrogen and progesterone on their baseline level.
If this happened on its own, without the pill and without actually being pregnant, a woman would go to the doctor and be diagnosed with some kind of disease or disorder. It seems odd, then, that she might also go to the doctor and be prescribed medication to cause the thing that would be considered an illness if it happened without the medicine. In every situation where birth control pills are not concerned, we generally recognize that our bodies are supposed to work a certain way, and we shouldn’t do things to seriously hinder those processes for extended periods of time.
No, she wouldn’t inevitably be diagnosed with an disease, and he would probably know that already if he actually went to medical school. Altering one’s cycle can either be indicative of an underlying problem (which would usually appear with more symptoms than just changes in cycle), or be caused by many other factors such as being an athlete. No, an athlete wouldn’t be diagnosed with a disease. They also wouldn’t decide to stop their dreams of going to the Olympics because some guy on the internet thought they should be bleeding monthly. As long as they’re taking care of themselves, nothing is wrong with them. If their body thinks they’re in an environment that involves running their ass off, their body isn’t going to think it’s a good time to breed. Welcome to biology.
Many things our body does would only be considered concerning if the reasonings behind it were unknown. Losing/gaining weight without changing one’s habits is concerning. Losing/gaining weight through diet and exercise wouldn’t be concerning. Growing hair randomly would be concerning. Growing hair after taking steroids would be normal. Having a negligible small sperm count would be concerning. Having a negligible sperm count after a vasectomy would not be concerning.
3) Cancer and blood clots
We’ve already discussed brain cancer. There is also surely a link between hormonal contraceptives and breast cancer. There just is. Not a surprising turn of events when you consider that doctors are prescribing a Class-1 carcinogen to treat something that isn’t an illness. There are a lot of people either financially or ideologically invested in pretending that taking a medically unnecessary carcinogenic substance for decades has no chance of causing your body any harm, but these people are liars.
As I previously stated, OCs with a high level of estrogen seem to be correlated with breast cancer to a similar extent as soy products. There also seems to be an increased risk with the triphasic pill. OCs with a low amount of estrogen are not correlated with breast cancer according to most studies (including this one, which found no statistical significance). As this study states: “Our results suggest that recent use of contemporary oral contraceptives is associated with an increased breast cancer risk, which may vary by formulation. If confirmed, consideration of the breast cancer risk associated with different oral contraceptive types could impact discussions weighing recognized health benefits and potential risks.” I don’t think he actually reads these studies he posts.
And I wish he would stop and think for a second that maybe we’re not getting a secret payout by the Feminist Illuminati, we are just taking our damn prescribed medication. I’m also taking other prescribed medications for other health conditions I’d be way more concerned about in the long-run than OCs.
Blood clots are another serious risk inherent to hormonal birth control usage. You should read some of the stories of women who’ve been harmed by the pill, and then consider that they suffered these side effects because they were told that the natural workings of the female body should be treated like an affliction.
When the “Father of the Birth Control Pill” (now there’s an ironic title) died last week, I read several articles eulogizing him as a “liberator” of women. He liberated females from themselves, we’re told, and this is supposed to be a pro-woman sentiment?
It’s ridiculous. And dangerous.
It is a pretty well-known concept that one should avoid taking OCs if they have a history of blood clots or cancer. Thankfully, I already explained both of these. I would pay this guy money if he ever found a single woman who was told that her body should be treated like an affliction that also didn’t have a hardcore religious upbringing. This is, of course, in reference to menstruation being mentioned as unclean and deserving of a sacrifice (two turtle doves and two pigeons, to be precise). I was told it was a literal curse brought on me by Eve’s sin, and that my biology was actually a punishment by God. But sure, tell me how feminism is teaching me that my own biology I began embracing after years spent in the church is somehow teaching me that menstruation is an affliction. It isn’t. And I’d also like to hear your interpretation of how some feminists also practice free bleeding in public if they also somehow believe their natural biology is an affliction. Now I’m not one to do something like that, but even the “extremists” among us are spreading the counter-opposite of what he is implying.
How exactly did he liberate women from themselves? Because it reduced the teen pregnancy/abortion rates as well as helped bring about better family planning and additional protection with sex? I’m sure introducing birth control was very liberating for women who didn’t have any other options. It’s not ridiculous, it’s not dangerous for most individuals without pre-existing conditions, and it’s a great option for whoever wants to take them.
All of the lawsuits against birth control drug manufacturers should tell you just how dangerous. Johnson and Johnson recently paid out $ 68 million to women hurt by their birth control products. Over 10,000 women filed suit against Yaz after suffering blood clots, strokes, and other life threatening complications.
Okay, so nothing about all of the other shitty products they produced? Matt doesn’t also seem to be out fighting against Risperdal, Xarelto, and vaginal mesh implants. Huh, that’s strange. The lawsuits involved the actual FDA, who cracked down on some of their crappy medication they liked to promote. In a rather humorous way, this guy seems to be accidentally attacking capitalism instead of a particular medication (and no, I am not hinting at that either). The recent payouts actually mainly involved antipsychotics along with Yaz (the birth control he’s referring to). I don’t know about this guy, but I think anti-psychotics are quite important, and so is birth control. The lesson we should learn here is that Johnson&Johnson should probably just stick to baby shampoo from now on.
These side effects are all listed upfront, along with things like chronic migraines, blurred vision, and depression, but the risks are often understated. And now that we’re getting girls started on the pill at younger and younger ages, it’s hard to believe they appreciate the severity of their decision.
You know what is ridiculous? People who fight against sex ed being taught in schools who then get annoyed at the lack of sex ed. NO KIDDING! This is exactly why so many people have been trying to fight for information regarding reproductive anatomy and contraceptives to be specifically taught in high school. Yes, I wish too that parents wouldn’t protest every goddamn time a public school wants to teach teens about the side effects of birth control or how their own reproductive system works. But since people like Matt Walsh speak out against sex education (apparently he thinks it’s up to my pastor parents to teach me details about birth control’s effects on cervical mucus), we have to resort to getting our information from other sources, such as our OB/GYN, from asking questions from others who have taken it, and from researching it ourselves. And somehow this guy thinks that the total 45 minutes he spent (though I’m just guessing) online looking specifically for negative aspects of birth control somehow equates to long articles written by actual doctors.
Does this guy think women are lazy or just stupid in general?
Let’s resort to google autofill and start asking concerned-sounding questions ( I’m making my point sarcastically):
But I am really glad this guy is the first ever to tell women about the side effects of birth control, as women obviously aren’t concerned about their health to do that themselves long before he ever did. There’s entire organizations dedicated to sharing detailed information and access to birth control. Women have cared about the side effects for a very, very long time.
They are introducing synthetic hormones into their bodies. They are imposing on their physiology a carcinogen listed in the same category as neutron radiation and plutonium. They don’t just have increased rates of breast and brain cancer to worry about, but liver and cervical cancer as well.
Have these facts been loudly emphasized for all of these girls?
Do they all completely understand what they’re doing?
I have my doubts
That category also includes mineral oil, processed meats, and THE SUN. UV rays lead to the dimerization of pyrimidines (they screw with your DNA), but people who need to be concerned are those with xeroderma pigementosum. Then you have people like me who don’t have a genetic disorder, but I still need to take extra precautions because skin cancer runs in my family. Likewise, people who have been previously diagnosed or have a predisposition to certain conditions should avoid taking birth control.
Yes, there also seems to be an increased risk of cervical cancer, but specifically in those with HPV. Good thing I got my Gardasil vaccine he fights against (because why would we want a vaccine specifically designed to prevent cervical cancer)! What is hypothesized with OCs and cervical cancer is that they may make HPV more likely to infect the cervix in the first place. Use protection and get vaccinated. I shit you not, this guy is anti-vaccine. Then he later wrote a second post trying to explain to people he’s not anti-vaccine because he vaccinated his own kids, but then explains that his child got the flu from the flu shot (which is impossible), and how 95% of the kids in DisneyLand who got the measles were vaccinated (I’m guessing math isn’t a strength of his). Wanting vaccines to be a personal choice isn’t pro-vaccine. He’s freaking out about cervical cancer when there is a FUCKING VACCINE THAT DIRECTLY PREVENTS PEOPLE FROM GETTING THAT EXACT CANCER. You’d think he’d care a tad more about something that is a legitimate causation. But really, let’s blame birth control instead.
4) Confusion and divorce.
There’s been a lot of research done about how hormonal birth control has changed women’s taste in men. It’s a fascinating and morbid subject, and I encourage you to read up on it if you haven’t. To summarize and simplify, women on the pill tend to gravitate towards men who are more feminine. This might explain, in part, the pop culture devolution from Frank Sinatra to Justin Bieber, John Wayne to Zach Efron, and so forth, but the implications run much deeper. The pill, being a chemical substance that so profoundly messes with a woman’s biology, creates confusion and pulls her towards men she wouldn’t otherwise find attractive. To think that this couldn’t harm relationships is naive.
Aside from all of the physical side effects, it’s scary to think that any drug could wreak this kind of psychological havoc.
This is one, though not the only, reason why the rates of birth control usage and divorce track almost identically. As the pill gained prevalence, so did divorce. That doesn’t necessarily prove anything, and you certainly can’t blame a pill for your decision to get divorced, but it’s a correlation that no honest person can ignore.
Here’s another interesting correlation: among couples who use natural family planning, the divorce rate is less than 3 percent. Again, does that prove something? No, not on its own, but it gives us something to think about.
Let me refer everyone to more examples of actual peer-reviewed science that has made it to scientific journals:
Promiscuous Squirrel Masturbation
Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List
Why Nurses Are Important During a Zombie Apocalypse
Predicting the Distribution of Sasquatch
Here’s a nice little picture included in that last study, too:
Journalists covering a scientific article they found interesting doesn’t count as evidence, especially considering one scientific study that wasn’t a meta-analysis means very little in the first place. And this is coming from someone who conducts those studies. Peer-reviewed science is the best we have in terms of evidence to support a hypothesis (so it’s better than random links to news sites), but single studies that weren’t repeated should still always be taken with a grain of salt.
Let me state specific problems with the “research” he provided:
- The first link he provided was a very short Scientific American article that backed up Matt’s point with “recent research shows.” It was a short article with little to support it. It was obviously designed to grab attention. Normally I would find an article like this really fun to read if it wasn’t for people like Matt Walsh who accept it as fact from the get-go
- The second link he provided was a link to a science news service, not a peer-reviewed journal.
- The third was a link to LiveScience that was also written about the first one he provided. So two journalists thought one scientific article was interesting. Neato.
- The fourth link he provided is the same as the second link. Literally the same exact link to the exact same webpage.
- The fifth link actually completely crashed Google Chrome for me. It’s not an actual scientific article, and the graphs were created in Microsoft Excel. I’m like 90% sure I just downloaded malware.
I’m not sure how often I have to repeat this in the science field to where now the statement is borderline platitudinous, but correlation doesn’t equal causation. If that was the case, I’m expecting him to one day write an article about the dangers of margarine:
[sharequote align=”center”]Maybe natural family planning requires trust and self-control. Maybe marriage requires that, too. [/sharequote]
Maybe natural family planning requires trust, discipline, and self-control, and maybe marriage requires all of that, too. And maybe we should bring into our sex lives all of the things that should be brought into our marriage as a whole. And maybe the more we do that, the more we protect ourselves from divorce. And maybe treating sex like something purely recreational ultimately weakens its significance, which weakens our marriage, which weakens us, which is all very fortunate for divorce attorneys
Let’s just repeat that Pulitzer Prize-worthy quote: “Maybe natural family planning requires trust and self-control. Maybe marriage requires that, too.”
Maybe the willow tree smiles in the sunshine.
He just starts throwing in random positive words. Trust, discipline, self-control. It sounds like a poorly-written company ad. I truly don’t have to break this apart, because he’s just throwing random thoughts out. Maybe America requires family. Maybe freedom reins when the eagle is respected. Maybe I’m just typing this out and hoping you’ll associate positive words with my opinion. Maybe only having sex for procreation reasons leads to higher rates of stress, which leads to higher rates of fights, which ultimately leads to human spontaneous combustion.
5) Commodification.
You probably hear the term “commodification” a lot. Well, if you hang around recent college graduates then you probably hear it. It’s a Marxist term (hence the college graduates) referring to how ideas and people can be turned into commodities in the capitalist system. Fair enough. There’s certainly a lot of commodificationalizing going on nowadays (hey, if Marx can make up words then so can I).
The birth control pill is Exhibit A.
No, I don’t ever hear that word, and that’s coming from someone who graduated undergrad in 2013. Maybe I live under a rock.
Proponents of the pill degrade women by tying their human worth to their economic worth. They say that women must sterilize themselves, whether permanently or temporarily, in order to “succeed” in the business world. Her value as a woman, as a human being, is placed below her value as an employee or a consumer. I am rarely one to play the “S” Card, but perhaps this is where we ought to be looking in search of workplace sexism. I can tell you this: if scientists ever develop a birth control pill for men that renders them impotent, potentially causes cancer, requires them to take a dose every day, and makes their testicles shrivel, I can guarantee that drug would not be among Rite Aid’s best sellers. Even the men who love the female birth control pill would suddenly find the whole idea rather distasteful and degrading.
I am a proponent of oral contraceptives, in the medical field, and have never so much as heard a person hint at reducing women to their “economic worth.” I think I may need to break this down for people like Matt:
- Birth control doesn’t sterilize. People who have taken birth control for years are able to get pregnant after stopping the medication and choose to take that medication themselves. My sister got pregnant literally two months after stopping the pill. Women go back to ovulating as usual after taking birth control.
- A major reason women may personally find themselves wanting to not get pregnant to protect their career is because guys like him have written whiny articles telling women that their jobs shouldn’t accommodate pregnant women . And I quote from his other post: “Should employers be legally forced to ‘accommodate’ pregnant employees? No. I’m as pro-life and pro-pregnancy as they come, but these sorts of regulations and impositions on employers have gotten completely out of hand” It’s like he sets himself up to get publically dragged from his own contradictions. I would love to see this guy now wriggle his way out of explaining how women shouldn’t get accommodations but also shouldn’t avoid pregnancy. Matt Walsh IS the guy who is doing everything he just claimed. He is telling women that maternity leave, which values her as a woman and as a human being (allowing her to take the time to heal), is harmful to their careers.
- Men get vasectomies all the time. Does Matt not know this? Not only does it make them infertile (though reversible) by snipping right at the Vas Deferens, it hurts like hell. I can’t say the same about my oral contraceptives. Some studies have also linked it to Prostate cancer. Here’s another. Except it’s still frequently debated and probably doesn’t actually cause cancer. That’s why it’s important to not just copy and paste articles from journalists talking about interesting conclusions in science journals.
- Not all birth control requires a daily pill. I wish my IUD worked well for me, but I had side effects with it. Now I take a daily pill, but I take daily medications anyways. A lot of people do.
- The female equivalent of the testicles is the ovaries. Ovaries don’t shrivel with birth control. Unless you meant the scrotum, which is the equivalent of the labia majora. Again, nothing shrivels.
I know I certainly would. And if I worked at a place where I thought my chemically imposed impotence was the only way to get ahead, I’d quit and find an employer who won’t expect me to sacrifice my manhood for his sake. But then, I guess it’s OK for me to feel that way because that’s how I feel about the female version of this.
That’s the pill for you. It always sounds terrible when put it in any other context.
But, ultimately, everyone has to make their own decisions. Hopefully, if I’ve been able to accomplish anything, I’ve at least demonstrated that the decision is more complicated than we pretend.
Or maybe it’s not very complicated at all.
And now we’re going to post another quote by Matt Walsh: “Consider the consequences here. If you force employees to treat pregnancy like a disability, you have also forced them to be very wary of hiring any woman of childbearing age.”
He’s pretty much saying “You shouldn’t be hired by people who want you to sacrifice your biology, but most companies wouldn’t want to hire you anyways because of your biology.” Oh, but don’t ask for changes, because he’s also against the Women’s March. Let’s repeat his quote, shall we? “I’d quit and find an employer who won’t expect me to sacrifice my manhood for his sake.” And women do just that and sue/protest/quit, he chastises them for it. Really, we should probably just focus on the word “manhood” here.
Birth control has been studied extensively for years by many fields. Women are not morons and do not need to be told why they shouldn’t take them from a man without a science degree. There are pros and cons to taking birth control, and it is up to the individual whether or not those pros outweigh the cons.
NSFW Biology 