By David Futrelle
Cis woman are much more likely to survive coronavirus than their male counterparts, and we don’t know why. Could if be differences in lifestyle? (Men are more prone to smoke and less prone to wash their hands.) Or could it be something more basic — like the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone — that offer cis women special protection from the deadly virus?
The New York Times reported yesterday that scientists in New York and California are testing the latter proposition, giving (consenting) male patients with coronavirus doses of estrogen or progesterone to see if this helps them survive. In the giant game of telephone that is the internet, this news quickly turned into “doctors are giving men estrogen to protest them from coronavirus,” as if this had suddenly become some sort of widespread practice.
And the people who are already obsessed with the alleged dangers of estrogen to manly men started to lose their shit.
On 4Chan’s /pol/ board, the news quickly became “Jews are injecting you with estrogen now. They don’t even hide it any more.” One anon charged that
They want [to] trivialize HRT usage, make it a regular medicine and low key put in the mind of people that masculinity is a disease. It’s no coincidence that a jewish woman is behind this.
Responding to a photo of one of the researchers, another anon wrote:
Just look at her fce, she’s a dyke who have been fantasing about feminizing men for a while and this is just an excuse.
On Twitter, meanwhile, assorted conspiracy theorists put forth similar, er, hypotheses.
You know, Q Jim, I would be surprised if that was the case. Very surprised.
It’s no shock that a Qanon conspiracist has glommed onto this news. I’m just waiting for the incels and MGTOWs to discover the story.
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OT:
Oh great when I walked to the part to burn off depression nap I saw a few people at the park, and too many people without masks. Whelp I guess that’s another reason for me to keep wearing my mask.
Floor vaxx, perhaps.
When I saw the bleach thing I was reminded of the movie Heathers! Anyone else? And horrified. Also horrified.
Here’s to hoping that the market works in this situation and estrogen does not become another of those drugs that the less needy (i.e. trans people) have to go without if this works and shortage occurs. I mean…I’m willing to make sacrifices to save lives but this would be harsh – especially for transfemme beginners and also for a lot of menopausal cis women.
> numerobis
Maybe he has confounded “Wake up sheepole” and “Make a ship hole” ?
@WWTH
That stood out to me too. I’m guessing the “reasoning” went something like, “Well, this woman is obviously a lesbian and can’t be up to any good, and I know lesbians want to make women more manly, but this one is around men for some reason, so she must be out to make men more feminine, because that’s just like making women more manly, because I’m confused about all of this and fear everything slightly complex.”
@Naglfar
I mean, they probably contracted syphilis from women, right? People knew in the 1800’s that those kinds of diseases just magically appear inside of vaginas and that’s why women are always to blame for them. This is not new information. /s
As lockdown fatigue starts to set in here it’s been interesting to compare things to 1918. This was, to me anyway, a nice bit of historical trivia…
@Ooglyboggles : they are being much more reasonable than you give them credit for. Masks are useful for infected people, or in closed space, of if you’re really close to people ; they are much less so in an open park. People don’t create plague cloud wherever they go, they create droplet that are dispersed quite quickly in good conditions.
I expect people to be *SUPER* judgemental about mask when they should check their hands and their movement pattern, because anyone can see someone and see if he or she have a mask, but they cannot check if she or he wash his or her hands. That don’t make that focus inherently a good thing however.
@Lisa
Sadly, it seems like already trans* people are gettin snubbed here in terms of in the US (where the experiments are happening) it is now legal to refuse to treat trans* patients. I’m also annoyed that cis men are receiving estrogen with no gatekeeping whatsoever while trans* women will still have to go through the motions to get it.
@Alan Robertshaw
One would think people would learn from what happened to the anti-mask leagues, but apparently not. History repeats itself.
@ naglfar
I just like the fact the main speaker didn’t turn up; that seems so typical of that sort of activism.
Must confess though, I’m a bit torn. I support the lockdown here just to protect health workers and other frontline staff in essential services that don’t have any choice but to work.
However I think we can be a bit selfish. The lockdown in rich countries is likely to double the number of starving and malnourished people in poorer countries; from around 800M to 1.6B; and kids are especially vulnerable. So we protect ourselves but at the expense of others. It’s a dilemma.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/04/16/un-coronavirus-depression-could-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-of-children-this-year/
@Alan Robertshaw
Seems quite reminiscent of MRAs, IIRC there was some MRA event a few years ago where the main speaker never showed up.
I understand the concern, but I don’t think anti lockdown protests are helping with this. The anti lockdown protests seem to mostly be entitled white people annoyed they can’t go shopping or get their hair done, with some anti vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists and science denialists thrown in. I’m not sure what the ideal solution to this issue is, but the protests aren’t helping.
@Ohlmann:
Like when visiting the Mayo Clinic, for example.
Hey Pence had a reason. He wanted to look the doctors in the eye. Because he sees with his lips apparently.
@Lisa
I highly doubt it. In addition to Naglfar’s point, which is the result of a terribly fascist world, this neoliberal world will only allow people to exist as long as they can make money, which is in itself a form of fascism.
I would wager that they believe transgender people are an affront to socially conservative values (for social conservatives) and they either do not see proof of it or something else is going on with what they think.
I’m not into CT, but why is it that approximately zero of these rich white politicians who mingle with carriers at SuperPAC events and walk around maskless in COVID-19 wards ever seem to succumb to the virus? Have their veins been drained and filled with bleach?
The GOP’s arrogance in the face of death is really unsettling. Dying is for the little people, apparently. And they’ll make sure to hasten it by any means possible.
Sounds like it’s already inside this guy’s mind.
Heaven forbid that women be allowed to have a slight evolutionary advantage in immunity, one that could potentially be leveraged to help protect others. No, the real explanation must be that women are freakish deviations from men and it’s all a giant conspiracy to cuck the alphas. Surviving COVID-19 is a soy trap! Don’t fall for it!
@Buttercup
Unsettling, but not surprising. And millions seem to have bought into the power fantasy, not realizing they are among the expendables.
Dying of COVID-19 to own the libs seems to have been an idea among that set since the virus began. Just yesterday Candace Owens declared that she will refuse any coronavirus vaccine no matter what. If they were only harming themselves, I wouldn’t care as much; if they want to deny themselves medical treatment that’s one thing, but the fact that they will be spreading it to others concerns me far more as those others didn’t choose it.
In the thread I linked above, Julia Serano made an interesting point about this. She pointed out that it seems the default medical assumption was that immunity must lie in what women have that men don’t (more estrogen) rather than in the absence of something men do have (more testosterone), which frames women as other and as deviations, while positioning men as the norm.
I’m in Ohio and mask wearing seems to be dividing us further. I’ve been making them and wearing one for weeks now. More folks are wearing them but still a trip to Lowes or a grocery store has me dismayed at the willful ignorance and lack of consideration for others. These are folk who are white, look like they have plenty of resources, and smirk at folks wearing masks. There was even one older white guy in full Trump/Pence 2020 gear- no mask of course, hanging out at Lowes. He did seem to be keeping his distance though.
It’s been calming to make the masks, lots of pretty fabric! I even iron them after I wash them, and I never iron anything. (Both iron and hair dryer live with the craft supplies in my house.)
There is comfort for me in wearing a fresh clean cotton mask, and I’m going to take any comfort I can these days.
@Buttercup:
I’ll bet Boris Johnson is wondering the same. “Guys? Is there something you’re not telling me? I thought I was in your club!”
@Moggie
He must have lost favor with the secret conspiracy.
@ buttercup
What’s CT?
(I obviously know, but there may be some people who don’t and are embarrassed to ask)
Spain trying to out-Trump Trump with the bleach thing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52471208?
@Alan Robertshaw
Conspiracy theories? I’m not sure but that’s what I thought it was.
@ naglfar
Ah, that makes perfect sense; thank you.
Er, on behalf of the people who didn’t know.
@Buttercup:
Of course, one likely answer is that some of them probably are coming down with it (there was a bit of a scare going around the last CPAC, as I recall) but many of them have enough money to get private health care that won’t talk about it.
@Laserqueen:
I will admit I don’t wear a mask, but then again, I’m not outside often, and I’m pretty blatantly respectful of social distancing when I am.
I’m also in Ontario, and while it hasn’t been perfect in its handling of the situation (there still isn’t enough testing capability up here either, though they’re getting there) our own Trump-wannabe has been taking this remarkably seriously, to the point of calling the local anti-lockdown protestors ‘a bunch of yahoos’.
(The fact that Queen’s Park, the grounds of the Provincial Parliament buildings, is just across the street from ‘hospital row’ in Toronto may have some impact on that, as the people protesting in front of the Parliament buildings were also effectively protesting within view of the hospitals. I call it ‘hospital row’ because those two blocks of Avenue Road contain Toronto General Hospital, The Hospital for Sick Children, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Mount Sinai Hospital, and one of the branches of Toronto Rehab. And yes, there is a road in Toronto called ‘Avenue Road’.)
That must be why he presses his lips together when he disapproves of something! He’s narrowing his eyes!