Declining sperm count: Much more than you wanted to know
astralcodexten.substack.com
astralcodexten.substack.com
> "After ejaculation, sperm count decreases and takes a while to build back up again; if your community’s ejaculation frequency is changing (eg people have gained access to online porn), that will change its average sperm count."
If one wanted to, one could claim that the sexually frustrated society of the 1950s was resulted in the high sperm count samples from that era, and that sexual liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in people having sex more frequently, hence the lower sperm counts in submitted samples.
Of course, there are about a half-dozen other confounders one could cherry-pick so that's not a valid conclusion either. All in all the trend doesn't seem to be very well-supported, compared to other studied trends like the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion, the decrease of oxygen in the deep ocean due to warming and fertilizer inputs, an increase in heavy metals in the environment due to centuries of coal combustion, etc.
That's why it will never work.
I looked at the paper Scott pulled it from and couldn't find the r2 value.
Perhaps someone with a better stats knowledge can help me out here in trying to interpret how the 95% CIs that are presented help relate to something like an r2 value? Is the data presented three dimensional? What's going on here?
The authors of the paper state: "These findings strongly suggest a significant decline in male reproductive health, which has serious implications beyond fertility concerns". But because of my limited stats knowledge, I'm seeing the opposite of their conclusion.
Help?
Were men sexually frustrated in the 50s? I don't know the stats, but I do know that a lot of the nostalgia about that period comes from high rates of stable marriage and a male-lead household.
At least on paper, it sounds like every man basically had an unlimited sex license.
Stable marriage certainly doesn't translate into unlimited sexual license. What's the old saying? A newly-married couple puts a marble in a jar every time they have sex during their first year of marriage. Then remove one marble every time, beginning year 2 and beyond. They never empty the jar.
That certainly doesn't line up with my experience, or the stats I've read. From what I've heard, it's pretty common for married couples to keep at it (with a slow decline, as both parties age) until they physically can't any more. And with modern technology (cialis etc.), that age keeps getting pushed further and further up.
Read the book "Countdown". The author goes into great detail all of the reasons that modern life is putting downward pressure on sperm quality and quantity. The author, Dr. Swan, is a leading expert in the field. The book is really good, and pretty scary.
What reasons would apply to you?
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/the-big-3-why-pht...
"They’ve been shown to be anti-androgenic—in other words, they decrease testosterone. In studies with rats, it’s been shown that if you dose the pregnant mother, the offspring have defects of the male reproductive tract. There have also been studies in humans that have found anti-androgenic effects on development of the male reproductive tract."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/common-chemicals-...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/phthala...
There is a mountain of research on these chemicals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873014/
"There was also a dose–response relationship between MBzP (the primary hydrolytic metabolite of BBzP) and below WHO reference value sperm concentration. In a recent follow-up study including these 168 men, plus an additional 295 men newly recruited into the study, Hauser et al. (2006) confirmed the associations between MBP and increased odds of below-reference sperm concentration and motility. "
Where the FCC said millions of dead people, many with the same name, wanted net neutrality overturned. And when caught, went ahead and overturned it anyway.
Where the CDC said that masks don't help against an airborne virus, before exaggerating their effectiveness to justify ineffective mandates and lockdowns in schools.
Where whistleblowers are smeared, jailed, and tortured.
Where environmental lawyers are disbarred and jailed by the justice system itself as recrimination for exposing corporate atrocities [3].
Where the military leaves dangerous chemicals around as a matter of routine with absolutely no consequences (other than the organ failures and cancer).
Where the tapwater around the country is hazardous to human health [4].
Where reliable numbers on something as crucial as vaccine effectiveness vs a dangerous pandemic are impossible to obtain.
Where estimates of civilian casualties in its illegal wars are off by 7 figures.
My point: You might want to take official America's numbers on anything and everything with some salt. Including sperm counts.
[0] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailm...
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/27/epa-whis...
[2] - https://www.npr.org/2017/12/14/570262688/as-fcc-prepares-net...
[3] - https://www.tbsnews.net/features/panorama/curious-case-steve...
[4] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/31/americas-tap...
Didn't claim to.
What is beyond doubt is that US chemical and agri corps have made concerted efforts over decades to infiltrate regulatory agencies, and have a long history of covering up their atrocities.
So, cast a skeptic eye on anything from them, the agencies they're in, and the scientists they fund. If there's any other reasonable take, you should post it.
As for who benefits: The polluters - big chemical, defense, agri etc; the people who we pay to regulate them (usually people from those industries); the corporate media who takes huge advertising money from those companies; the shareholders of all the above companies; and the politicans responsible for keeping the status quo going.
Take, for example, the Deepwater Horizon spill. The company paid out what, 1 billion in fines? Less than 5% of last years profits. The Obama administration helped minimize reputation damage and accountability. The media - all media - were barred from filming or investigating; not that many in corporate media tried. If shareholders had a problem with the lack of action, or the horrific decision to cover up the spill with Corexit, they were quiet as church-mice about it.
And that's one high profile example, out of hundreds, of just oil spills alone. Then there's the agricultural runoff, the pesticides, the insecticides, the food additives, the chemicals in cosmetics that are banned in other countries, the military waste, the toxins from cars and tire, the industrial accidents, the train derailments...
So... Yeah. There's some vested interests going on there, with no shortage of historical examples to draw from.
How much should they pay? 100% of profits? Whatever percent you think it should be, do you think that if you spilled a bunch of used oil on the ground should you be fined the equivalent amount of your disposable income?
>The media - all media - were barred from filming or investigating
The wikipedia article[1] for that disaster doesn't seem to have a shortage of media on that topic. There's even photos from the government itself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
Well the comment you replied to said:
> the US (obesity, pollution, circadian cycles disruptions, etc.) is also the country with the smallest measured drop
and you said that the US is known to lie (with so many examples). So for that above to be a lie, many people across different states need to work in unison, delivering false results.
Also nobody really knows if this effect is really there to begin with, let alone knowing what causes it. People lobbying so organized across the states against an unknown is very unlikely.
My point stands though. If you're swallowing any US agencies information without salt, you have an incomplete information diet.
Dow, Monsanto, DuPont etc have a long track record of getting their people into agencies via the old US politics revolving door system, and they have every reason to downplay the environmental factors that they have inflicted on the planet, especially American soil (and air and water).
Citation, please. As I understand it, polyethylene (especially LDPE) and polypropylene are flexible all by themselves and generally contain no plasticizers at all. And they are quite common.
In reality, even if it’s possible to have kids with 50% lower sperm counts, that’s not really the point. That is a huge drop, and likely indicates other changes as well. Testosterone levels are way down over the last few generations. Is that related? What about rising rates of depression among young men [1]?
Clearly something is going on here.
[1] https://i.insider.com/5c927ddd4f07ae5d161a603f?width=1000&fo...
That's the entire point of the article - that it's less clear than you might think. There are several reasons why the average sperm counts might be reported as lower than they were in the past, and it's not necessarily an indication of a society-wide problem.
(Do I think that’s likely? No, probably we’re seeing the affect of one of the many chemicals that have been introduced over the last 100 years. But it’s always worth thinking through all possibilities)
They legitimately seem to regard humans as a kind of virus (literally have had multiple people use that word exactly to me in conversation), and cheer on the reduction in the number of people. This is problematic for many reasons, but just on the surface, cheering on the sexual dysfunction of your fellow man, this is just immoral and unethical on so many levels to me.
Might that also have to do with declining crime rates?
It can be quite scary - what's the minimum population count needed to sustain colony species?
We depend on so much infrastructure to stay alive, and have so few survival skills I would guess that even quite a large population (few million) would die out if they were scattered throughout the world.
Look at how the passenger pigeon went from the most numerous bird in North America to extinct in 10 years, purely because the minimum number to keep the colony alive was breached.
What happened next can only be described as explosive growth.
Maybe, but we were, as a species, a lot less specialised, and so individuals could succeed with smaller numbers.
The other part you are missing is that we no longer have access to the low-hanging fruit in terms of natural resources.
In 1900 we could subsist because we had a lot more natural resources simply lying around, or close to the surface. We used those up. We razed down countrysides, replaced with non-fertile concrete.
We have almost nothing right now that cannot run on electricity, which requires experts in multiple fields to harvest and distribute.
The majority of humans in 1900 were mostly self-sufficient, those who weren't starved to death. The majority of humans now are clearly nowhere near to self-sufficient if infrastructure starts to decay due to insufficient experts.
Remember, I did not say it will be scary, I said it can be a scary thought.
This thought keeps me up at night sometimes. I’m nearly 40 with no kids, nieces/nephews, and even my cousins are mostly childless.
Our eldercare models are already beginning to buckle under the strain of the retiring Boomers - and they still overwhelmingly have family/church/pensions as primary non-govt support structures.
You can’t paper over this with immigration either. There will be absolutely no political will power to saddle millions of productive first/second gen immigrants with the sort of crippling tax burden the state would need to “replace” a total loss of the family/church/pension support triad. Expecting a huge push towards “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) seems to be a safe bet.
Tl;dr: the current elder care system prioritizes “old maids” but the future system will undoubtedly be “the Olds get MAID”
Even if we successfully turn the trend around there'll still be a generational gap that will cause a series of smaller generations going forward.
So imo, it’s not 2020s grandkid-wanting Boomers/GenX going “you’re on your own, kid” so much as it’s their greedy younger selves getting manipulated into mortgaging their eventual children’s future away in the 80s and 90s.
A distinction without a difference I guess, but the root of this problem stems from the Reagan/Clinton eras and not many people seem interested in discussing how we can successfully roll back some of the more egregious anti-worker legal/regulatory changes from those days.
There's a lot to admire in the boomers I think, they had a great culture, and they contributed a massive amount of technological and scientific progress as well. But agree they never had the competition these newer generations are facing and so did not do enough to prepare their kids for a more competitive world (I mean, some did, but not enough).
Yeah it’s still not too late for this sort of thing in the West. Though the cynic in me thinks it’s very unlikely the political class travels the idealogical axis from today’s mostly explicit anti-natalism to having the political willpower necessary for implementing pro-family policies.
At least we have a chance. Places like South Korea/Japan might as well change their national mottos to “omae wa mou shindeiru”
So if people organically decide (or due to this sperm count thing are forced) to have fewer kids, this is really a brilliant thing for the planet.
This narrative has been popular, especially among wealthy, educated, people for a long long time. But most of it is hogwash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Prediction...
We can overcome problems like climate change without considering ourselves to be a virus that needs to be controlled like that.
However it's ok, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs due to automation anyway, leaving more people free for healthcare. It will not be easy but we'll cope. And we have to in order not to burn up this planet.
Not just rural or even conservative USA: my mom lives in a city that would be in the top 5 of everyone’s “Name the most liberal city in America” list.
She had major surgery right before Covid and her church had people bringing her flowers and keeping her company nearly every day while she was an inpatient - and then had a coordinated rotating list of church members bringing home cooked dinners and visiting her every day for several weeks while she recuperated at home.
I expect this sort of thing will largely die with the Boomers and we’ll join our Euro-brethren in the bubbling soup of cynicism and lowered expectations
That it'll work out badly for me, that's true but overall it's necessary.
I share your view that human populations need a natural stabilization (and we've found it, by combining urban living with available birth control).
It's been too long since I looked into this issue, and I'm at work so don't have time to do the research now, but I remember studies showing that declining sperm count is a problem across multiple species.
But you are using nalgene BPA-free water bottles (7 in triangle), have PEX pipes at home, eat meals cooked in non-sticky pans and have soy added to your food... Out of your control...
It is almost impossible to outrun our civilisation bent on self-destruction...
A standard deviation of 48.29 for total motile, and a very low positive correlation with abstinence period (R^2 of 0.082). There isn’t a discernible pattern over time yet (I’m expecting as I age for my average to decrease but I haven’t seen that yet), and I haven’t made any significant diet changes. I think my hydration level is important but I haven’t tracked that in conjunction with my tests. Also because it takes 74 days [1] for spermatogenesis, any change you make in lifestyle has to be performed for a while before it potentially can affect your sperm.
Alls that to say, I wouldn’t necessarily worry about one test being low. I’ve had some lows that initially worried me when I was first testing, and now it feels within expected variation. Though, the broader macro trend (or potential of a trend) is still concerning, so its worth it to me to keep an eye on it individually
Reference: [1] https://www.givelegacy.com/what-is-sperm/
Im always suspicious when i see someone is eating clean/healthy etc.
That's about enough to conclude all this doesn't mean much. The only way to have reliable data is to have a great sample selected at random; if the incoming data is not random, but is in fact skewed by factors relevant to the data we're looking for, there's very little value in it.
The rest of this (excellent) article explains why the procedures are inconsistent, geographically as well as historically, and poorly documented, etc., and lists many reasons why the various studies could be flawed. It ends without a definitive conclusion, and saying we don't quite know.
This prudence is admirable, but IMHO the anxiety about sperm count seems largely overblown. I'm not too worried.
Edit: One important thing the article doesn't talk about is how sperm is actually counted. Obviously researchers don't count all 150 to 300 million sperms per sample; they probably count a small (or very small) sub-sample and extrapolate. At least they did when they first started studying this. And maybe today some studies use machines? Or other sophisticated / more precise methods? And others don't? The evolution and diversity of the counting methods is obviously a major factor that needs to be discussed.
Looking at people who donate sperm effectively is a random sample of men unless there's a causal link between sperm count and the desire to be a donor.
You list a common confounder, then skip over the section that says 5/6 studies that have none of these confounders find a decline. That's a fairly important followup.
> However, Auger identify six (of their original seventy) studies that they say are extremely well done and suffer from none of these potential confounders. They say five of the six still show declining sperm counts, and believe that the effect might be real (they say there is no evidence it is global rather than limited to these five regions but I think if an effect happens in five regions, and there is only one region where it is not happening, it is fair to wonder whether it represents a broader trend). I interpret their conclusions as very cautiously pro-decline-hypothesis (Fisch remains against).
When you've got hundreds of millions of something distributed essentially randomly in some space, counting a subsample and extrapolating is fine.
If for example, they did rough extrapolations in the 50s, and then in the 90s they were able to do an exact and exhaustive count, it's a problem.
IDK if that's what happened, but we would want to know.
> If for example, they did rough extrapolations in the 50s, and then in the 90s they were able to do an exact and exhaustive count, it's a problem.
That's not a change that's happened, smaller volumes are still analysed, but no that's not necessarily a problem.
At such scales, "small" samples can be totally fine and have an extremely high chance of matching a complete analysis. That's why polling and sampling works.
The problem shrinks even more when you're looking at averages over groups. Smaller samples are noisy, not biased. Averaging over many doesn't lower bias but it does lower the noise.
there are a huge number of methods to test for stability of the model. Does anyone see a way to access the model data?
Beyond the model, knowing the distribution of sperm counts across men and across men of different races would be immensely informative. increasing sample sizes or simple increasing total observations could actually make it look like a change is occurring when in reality you are simply converging to the global population mean.
If you take an average in a population, and then re-arrange the population distribution to the lower-side of the step change, then take another average your result would look exactly like a decline over time, even though there's no actual ongoing component to it - the sitting population, if identified would have a lower normal rate that's not decreasing otherwise.
Which would give you a real effect on average, but not an actual trend you can extrapolate since you're just observing two averages for two population groups, where the membership of each is varying. Which again - is alluded to, but I found it weird this mechanism wasn't called out explicitly (except under the "mysteriously stops" conclusion).
https://observer.com/2022/05/the-u-s-s-low-birth-rate-means-...
[1] https://www.webmd.com/men/news/20100115/womens-scent-trigger...
Like religious people seem to have "no problem" having 5-10 kids in the US while seemingly every secular couple is going for fertility treatment.
I don't know if this is just how it seems, but it seems that way!
So you have very few fertile years left into which to fit multiple healthy children. 2.1 is needed to merely sustain a population (with all the medicine of industrialized society to keep them alive). For "wild" humans, that number would be considerably higher.
Even now, as someone who's 27 and looking to start a family before I'm 30, I'm having to be more discerning with age when picking a lifelong partner. My women friends haven't been especially supportive of this strategy, and I can see it when I introduce them to a date a few years younger than them. Call it selfishness, call it pragmatism, but when it comes to the health of my future children, I don't mind being choosy.
I think it’s a cultural thing, and personally I wouldn’t judge two of-age people making their own decisions. Really depends on your group dynamics and groupthink.
Also, not every co-ed friendship is rooted in jealousy or sexual desires.
I also find it hard to believe that sperm count should be such an important factor, there is still such a huge amount or sperms that have a chance to reach the egg.
What makes you think that?
Also, the time range of the diagrams in the article correspond to a time when the weight of an average american roughly 1.5x-ed. I'd guess that diluting the same absolute testosterone amount to 1.5x the volume will also have measurable effects.
> Obesity and bad diets can impact sperm count. But the US, a world center of obesity, seems to be doing better than many less obese countries, and countries like China and France that have maintained relatively low rates of obesity and overweight seem heavily affected. If modern diets are the problem, then it has to be something more insidious than obvious you-are-very-fat obesity - unless you want to use the “all regional comparisons are too low sample size for us to care” card.
> "it'll likely create a different level of optical stimulation"
...is a hilariously politique way of phrasing finding someone hot.
And when this topic comes up, the responses are generally, “who cares?” First, attention is diverted from the male to fertility, because the issue must be seen as impacting females negatively to justify any interest by society. Second, the way this impacts boys and men is entirely ignored. Responses exist like, “we just need a way to reproduce without men”, or “everyone can just use IVF and still have children”. I worry very few people respect how being wished out of existence so that females can enjoy plastics and pesticides impacts men. Very few people respect how demeaning it is for men to be infertile and how this would impact their mental health. Very few people respect how being unable to produce the hormones that allow boys to develop correctly or men to perform their biological functions impacts men. It is wholly disheartening.
If there were even the slightest indication that something similar impacted women only, I doubt we would be here discussing whether or not the effect was real, but instead, what should we do about it? Instead, since sperm count and testosterone levels are “men’s issues”, nobody cares unless it can be shown to impact the other 50% of society that apparently is the only portion deserving of any care.
PS. Also Scott has a good track record of revisiting articles he wrote if new elements come up from readers or specialists. Let's hope that someone out there in his subscribers list will make the same pertinent observation - reading through the comments, there are a couple of mentions already.
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.
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.
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."
…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…
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.
[0]: https://cfpub.epa.gov/roe/indicator.cfm?i=70
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/gmwk310.htm
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/lcod/men/2018/index.html
[3]: https://www.everydayhealth.com/menopause/at-what-age-will-yo...
[4]: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
[5]: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide
[6]: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html
[7]: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/prost.html
[8]: https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/budget/fact-book/data/resea...
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.
See Figure 7 on your own link: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide
[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.
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.
Do you still think I am cherry-picking?
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-09-508.pdf
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_WorkTable293...
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456-tables.pdf#2
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://matthewgreen.substack.com/p/nyt-article-says-that-la...
I know this is off topic, and I'm not looking to be the word police or whatever, but this is one of those things that always makes me wonder if I'm crazy and I just don't know what these words mean, or if other people don't.
If you search for these terms across hn comments, you'll find they're very very common, and they're very often used to mean "I disagree" or "you're saying a thing that I find problematic". Which is a fine thing to say, but why not use those words instead?
Or maybe I have the wrong idea and just need to learn what these words actually mean.
And apologies for being snippy but I believe my comments in this thread are reasonably well written, and despite the fact that English is not my first language which might lead me to miss some subtle nuances, I made myself perfectly understandable and clarified _why_ I said what I said. It's fine if you don't agree with me, but framing the issue in terms of what other commenters say and, projecting their fallacies onto my words will not lead to a good discussion.
And you clearly have a strong command of english, it never crossed my mind that it might not be your first language. Apologies for any offense there.
This was mostly for my own sanity. Seeing these terms used on hn makes me question my own grasp of the language.
For instance, we acknowledge women suffer more than their partners during a miscarriage or a stillborn pregnancy, but both would-be parents suffer the loss of a child. We acknowledge women are affected by rape more than men, but both genders suffer from sexual assault. In this instance, where the issue negatively impacts men more than women, an article which focuses on the issue decided to focus on the common suffering and ignore the suffering that it causes men specifically, so I wanted to reframe the discussion to focus on that, and point out that society is less interested in "men's issues".
I am not looking to go back-and-forth on reproductive rights, since it is not related to my original post, but since you mentioned it, I would like to point out that while women are "[having issues] asserting their reproductive rights", men have no reproductive rights to assert. Women are struggling to obtain or retain access to abortion, and men have no such recourse. Women are struggling to obtain access to birth control, and men have no such recourse. Women can choose to have babies that their partners might not want, and men have no such recourse. The extent of reproductive rights for men is "put on a condom and pray". The "reproductive rights" battle that women are fighting is not about equality, but about getting or staying ahead.
Combative narratives are suboptimal. They are alienating to those you complain about, when obtaining their support would further your cause. It's possible, and more effective, to advance men's rights without complaining about women, or any other rights movement.
Not everything has to be Us vs Them. I'd much rather live in a world where it isn't.
Maybe it's all deserved. Paying for generations of misbehavior or something. It doesn't really matter. The reality is that political popularity and public "good graces" _are_ a zero sum game. Politics are currently very much us vs them. And men are very much them right now.
If you live in a majority white country, why is this a problem? Statistically it's inevitable you'll get mostly white people at the top if those are your demographics.
Also in my country women are often in top leadership positions, and out of merit, not out of some pro-feminist corporate PR agenda.
Nonsense. This is just a rhetorical technique to try to dismiss people who hold opinions that differ from yours without having to actually engage them.
I wasn't commenting on your opinion about men one way or the other.
Women have outpaced men in Bachelor's degree completions since 1981, and Master's degrees since 1986. At present they are 57.7% of Bachelor's degree recipients and 60.7% of Master's degrees [0]. You might argue that most of the advance women made was prior to the year 2000, so it isn't reflective of trends today.
Women have a "struggle for reproductive rights". Abortion and contraceptives are "critical reproductive healthcare services", according to the White House [1]. Men cannot have abortions, cannot take birth control pills, cannot receive birth control shots or implants, cannot obtain IUDs, and (mostly) cannot choose to have a child without the support of their partner. I suppose, then, men do not even have a chance at having what is a "critical reproductive healthcare service" and are thus inherently deprived.
Women are the heads of four out of five single parent households [2]. Put differently, four out of five men do not obtain custody of their children in situations where the parents do not live together.
Male life expectancy is more than five years less than female life expectancy in the US [3].
The bigger issue than all of this, to me, is the psychological aspect of this discussion that I cannot quantify with large-scale statistics. When men's disadvantages are brought up, society generally shouts "shut up". Since I left my original comment, I have been told that my post was a "hollow unsubstantiated rant", an "incredibly sexist framing", "disingenuous" and "not constructive", "combative" and "alienating". Can you imagine similar attacks being levied against a woman arguing in support of abortion? I sure cannot. Again, I do not know how to quantify this, but the experience of never mentioning an issue which impacts men for fear of being similarly shot down is in the back of my mind every day, and I'd imagine many men face similar thoughts. The thought police hold far more sway over my discourse than I'd like.
[0]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.10.a...
[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...
[2]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr71/nvsr71-01.pdf
Even if you don't agree with it, people are allowed to express how they feel. Passionate reactions (and this is hardly even passionate -- it's just a statement of this person's perception of the state of things), are ok. Sometimes even needed to spark discussion. He feels things aren't equal anymore -- and they aren't. Again in anglophone societies....
For example, the broad and free availability of sex education and contraception greatly reduces accidental pregnancies, which are a leading cause of elective abortions. And genetic screenings and counseling can help women identify risk factors for inheritable developmental issues and decide whether to have children, or pursue alternatives like adoption.
The substance is not binary; there is substantial overlap and gray areas. Most things are not zero-sum. But it’s beneficial politically to set up an “us vs them” mentality.
So yes, you’re right that the people are in conflict. But the point is, much of that is artificial.
One factor is the decline in smoking. Nicotine raises testosterone levels.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17163954/
Nicotine is a drug like any other and has all kinds of side effects, some that can be seen as beneficial. Like, if you think you're going to get shot in the next 3 hours, yeah, you should probably smoke a cigarette. Otherwise, stay away from the stuff.
This is an incredibly sexist framing. No person “enjoys” industrial pollution.
I guess no one informed the author of this article, or the numerous studies cited here.
Please refrain from hollow unsubstantiated rants on HN. Someone can point to your copypasta comment and say "see, another one of those 'men's rights' loonies!"; you're only hurting men. Men and women's issues are not a zero-sum game.
>because the issue must be seen as impacting females negatively to justify any interest by society
Huge cognitive leap between these two sentences. My response is closer to "who cares?" than panic. My reasoning has nothing to do with women. Are men with lower (but functional) testosterone less capable of happy, productive lives? I haven't seen any evidence to support that thesis. Therefore, who cares. Is sperm production a major bottleneck in human reproduction? I haven't seen any evidence to support that. Therefore, who cares.
Fluctuation within the very wide ranges of "enough sperm" and "enough testosterone" doesn't really matter.
A few sources (many more out there and easy to find): [1]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.0006... [2]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... [3]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24047633/
You can find similar studies showing the same correlation in adolescent males.
Anyway, there's much clearer evidence supporting the idea that poor mental health (anxiety, depression, etc.) can cause infertility in men due to elevated levels of cortisol, and you sound very stressed out.
A lot of our cultural leaders generally seem to be pushing us toward a weird and sterile (literally and figuratively) existence. Men are encouraged to be less masculine, and women less feminine, and everyone discouraged from having children. More comfort and less creation.
From an individual perspective if testosterone is such a concern you can do trt and remove yourself from this issue. And while ivf isn't ideal and I'm not currently in the market to have children right now, I don't see that route as causing existential stress in me personally or calling my masculinity into question in any meaningful way.
and also I saw this kit from the healthcare division of tenga a mens sextoy company.
I'd go so far as to consider compelling samples - seems shocking but actually much less intrusive than a draft and probably more likely to protect mankind.
Eg: last week’s Pew relationship survey had the “not in a relationship” age <29 cohort breaking roughly 60/30 male/female.
Barring an extreme misunderstanding of the definition of “relationship”, this seems to indicate most peak reproductive ability men aren’t even getting on the court to shoot their shot, so to speak.
Endocrine Disruptors - Common Chemicals that alter your hormones
It looks like we're heading for collapse eventually and there's very little we can do about it if it is to believed this is mostly caused by environmental pollution.
These types of pollution are everywhere and line our infrastructure is ways most people can't fathom.
So, this was understood in the bio scenes in the mid 2000s, during the financial collapse, my professor in bio-statistics (a class I loathed wit a professor I detested even more for various reasons) and fave me 2 very strong revelations in my sort lived scientific career built on the following premises: statistics are a poor way to prove anything in the Health Sciences (for or against) and just because someone is an absolute reprehensible person doesn't mean they can't offer insight in a much larger problem tat even they don't seem to grasp despite having a PhD.
is research was on the effects of BPA was having on local male frogs, production of non-viable eggs, and got lots of grant money for it. This was wen BPA was all the rage and being pulled from containers and china was caught selling poison baby formula. I asked him if the implications were longer lasting and if manufacturing SOPs from the 80-2000s could result in a large shift in cultural norms in a country like Japan, where it had shifted desires in the female population in one generation to want a largely androgynous male--albeit wit heavy feminine features--amongst the young females, making female voyeurism of male homosexuality a massive genre, a large uptick in herbivore men, low fertility rates (they were now starting to show how bad they were after the bubble collapsed).
And could that be correlated due Japan having to re-industrialize at all costs post WWII and become a main export economy (and all that entails including contamination). He almost felt offended by my inquiry as I was trying to take credit for is work, and quickly reverted back to showing pictures of the stuff he got from an EPA grant or something.
Something most wont know, unless you did sperm based cryogenics during COVID, women were paying large premiums on viable sperm as many sought to have children on their own and even took to advertising it on social media [0].
Its been a crisis for some time, in fact I was born in late 80s and my parents ad many issues back then. Its only gotten worse, and this may be the larger contributor why the population will likely have peaked at 8 billion more than anything else, thou economics plays a large part, too.
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/business/sperm-donors-fac...
There are lots of things to suggest a correlation (e.g. microplastics) but nothing concrete has ever really been proposed as being the cause.
For all we know, we're better hydrated than ever before and that's what's throwing off our sperm 'density' (I hate the word count because it's a per volume thing).
It's extremely difficult to avoid this stuff.
I hope that's due to lifestyle changes rather than with the start of atmospheric nuclear testing.
In contrast nuclear tests and power are usually well contained exactly because of the high risks. And if some of the few accidents had any widespread long-term effect there would probably be a visible bump in the statistics.
I was thinking more of the open air tests undertaken around the world - for example Castle Bravo in the Pacific where "The fallout spread traces of radioactive material as far as Australia, India and Japan, and even the United States and parts of Europe".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo
The increase in Carbon-14 in the atmosphere due to nuclear tests is large enough to be detected in all living organisms:
Can you name any other time natural selection has optimised for the pleasure of a mammal at the explicit expense of reproduction?
Evolution is simply the differential survival of individuals with different genetic makeup, survival of the fittest. What counts as fittest depends on both the general environment and on the interactions with other members of the same species.
And, of course, without pregnancy there can be no evolution at all.