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Major Men’s Rights Victory: MRA causes breast cancer fundraiser to hang up on him

For the purposes of this post, let's just pretend that all MRAs are named "Frank Thompson."
For the purposes of this post, let’s just pretend that all MRAs are named “Frank Thompson.”

On the Men’s Rights subreddit yesterday, I found this inspiring report from the front lines of the Men’s Rights struggle — the struggle of MRAs to annoy pretty much everyone they ever talk to.

I was just hung up on by a breast cancer drive telemarketer (self.MensRights) submitted 17 hours ago by atheist4thecause A telemarketer for a breast cancer drive called me asking for money. I let her give her spiel, and everything about it was about the "ladies" and to give money to the "ladies". When she was done, I stated that I don't support the drive because it's sexist, and of people who get breast cancer, men actually die at a higher rate than women. The telemarketer instantly hung up. They are quick to ask for money to help women with breast cancer, but if you dare to mention male victims, they want nothing to do with you.

Yes, it is of course true that some men get breast cancer. I’m pretty sure, though, that yelling at breast cancer fundraisers isn’t the best way to help these men.

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Freemage
Freemage
8 years ago

Ellesar: He was playing deliberate games with statistics (something we frequently see when they discuss rape, too). Specifically, he was talking about the fact that men, once diagnosed, are more likely to die from the disease. As others here noted, that’s because the disease itself is so rare in men that it gets diagnosed much later–and late diagnosis is possibly one of the biggest determiners of mortality rate. The fact that the population of “men diagnosed with breast cancer” is literally one percent of “women diagnosed with breast cancer” isn’t something he wants to include in his odious little screed, because it would make it apparent that he’s dealing with a fringe case.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
8 years ago

I want to note that the statistics on breast cancer survival are skewed by early diagnosis. A lot of cancers resolve on their own, because your immune system isn’t invariably dysfunctional. When a lot of cancers are diagnosed at extremely early stages, a lot would have resolved without treatment. Then they resolve after treatment (or during watchful waiting) and are counted as though diagnosis/treatment helped.

I’m not saying that diagnosis and treatment are bad things. I’m saying that the statistics about cancer are misleading if they don’t correct for this problem (and most do not). The statistics for male breast cancer don’t have this skew, because male breast cancer is not aggressively diagnosed at very early stages and then treated the way female breast cancer is, so comparing the two is comparing apples to apple blossoms.

Blanktie
Blanktie
8 years ago

Ha. Seems like she’s familiar with his type. She skipped surprise and went straight to hanging up.

Ellesar
Ellesar
8 years ago

Freemage – but the stats are clear – men (in England anyway) are MUCH more likely to survive, later diagnosis or not.

Paradoxical Intention - Resident Cheeseburger Slut

Kootiepatra | June 14, 2016 at 7:32 am
I find it difficult to get mad at a telemarketer for failing to explicitly mention men while raising money for an overwhelmingly female affliction, when women are dying because heart attack symptoms have only really been studied in men, and drug trials are usually tailored to men, and women with chronic pain are habitually misdiagnosed and accused of exaggerating their symptoms and therefore under-treated compared to men.

That’s mostly because when doctors study the human body (and this stretches back super far in history), it’s always been a cisgendered white dude.

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Those would always be the bodies who were donated (or sometimes stolen) for science.

The problem is, we’ve never bothered to correct ourselves because we consider doctors and the accompanying science, to be correct all the time, and we hardly leave room for bias or just straight up ignorance.