If men got cancer from their contraception there would be a solution by now
They say it takes two to tango. But when it comes to family planning – as it is so sweetly still called – it usually involves only one taking responsibility. There are 10 types of contraceptive available (if you don’t include the withdrawal method, which absolutely nobody does), and only one requires the man to shoulder the burden. Last week we discovered that, of the remaining nine, six will increase a woman’s chances of breast cancer.
While it was previously thought that only the Combined Pill carried these possible dangers, a study by Oxford University has found that current or recent use of any form of hormonal contraception increased the risk of breast cancer by an average of 25 per cent.
“Oh well, it’s all just part and parcel of being a woman,” I thought, as I read the news. Then I caught myself and started screaming with all the rage of someone who has spent her life being buffeted by hormones so that men don’t have to put up with the inconvenience of condoms. “They are quite fiddly,” announced my first boyfriend, about six months into our relationship, “and they reduce pleasure. Perhaps you could think about going on the Pill?”
So off I went to my GP where I began taking a tablet that turned me suicidal within about a week. Genuinely, miserably, suicidal. It was terrifying. I went back to the (male) doctor, who told me that I should wait “a few months” for it to settle. I would have laughed, had I not been sobbing. I wasn’t sure I could live another day feeling like this.
I grew some balls (not literally, don’t worry), took myself off the Pill, felt a bit better. Over the years, condoms and exhaustion became my go-to forms of contraception. Then, for reasons I shan’t bore you with, it was suggested that I get a coil. It was described to me by my doctor as “easy”, and “stress-free”. With a coil, I sensed I would be like one of those women in the old tampon adverts who roller-bladed along Californian boulevards – I would be happy, active, sexy. I booked in for the procedure.
The nurse called me, to talk me through it. “We would advise that you take the day off, and that you are able to get a taxi home. You mustn’t do any exercise for a week, and you will need to take paracetamol or ibuprofen before coming in.” Gosh, this didn’t sound “easy” or “stress-free” to me. It sounded... well, quite the opposite. I googled “What’s it like to have a coil put in?” and quickly wished I hadn’t. “Pain worse than labour” wrote one woman. “I bled every day for six months straight,” wrote another. “My womb got perforated and I ended up in hospital vomiting with a fever and having to have it surgically removed,” explained one contributor, helpfully.
Reader, I shan’t detail the procedure here – even professional oversharers have their limits – but suffice to say, when I told my husband about what it involved, he went pale and left the room. Later, when we had both recovered (me from the procedure, him from hearing about it), he made a pronouncement that will stay with me for the rest of my life: “if men were made to go through that, they’d pass some law against it.”
If men had periods, there would be a weekly show on the BBC about them, probably presented by Jeremy Clarkson. If men went through menstruation, you can guarantee that the height of period technology would not be some cotton attached to a string.
If men got pregnant, they would have come up with some sort of safe, easy contraception that didn’t increase their risk of cancer. And I’m pretty certain they wouldn’t tolerate a plastic device being inserted into their body with only a Nurofen for pain relief (as it is, trials for a male hormonal pill have been cancelled because the side effects, all similar to those women experience, were deemed too severe).
To assert that women are let down again and again when it comes to healthcare is not anti-male rhetoric. It is simply fact. Thanks to Caroline Criado Perez’s excellent book, Invisible Women, we know that medical research is massively skewed towards men.
Most medical trials are done on male cells, even though female cells react differently, and when women are included, tests tend to be done at the early follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, when their hormone levels make them most like men. So perhaps we should be grateful that Oxford University was willing to do its study at all, given that it concerned female health. What to do about it? More research, more options, but maybe, just maybe, a bit less sex.
Withholding might not be a terribly fun form of contraception, but it might just get everyone to understand the seriousness of the choices women feel obligated to make every single day.
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