NowThis somewhat disingenuously frames endometriosis as man vs woman by comparing it to male pattern baldness

Altruistic_Emu4917 · 2026-06-21T07:50:09+00:00

The wording of the post portrays a narrative that male pattern baldness takes away from endometriosis research. When the source of both research is completely different (private vs public). Also, if they're so worried about endometriosis research, they should also talk about female beauty industry since it has much more money than baldness has.

Also the comment section was what you'd expect. Bunch of virtue signalling people. And a lot of comments about "men just have inconveniences while women die" narrative.

This kind of thing will unintended consequences where instead of genuine concern about endometriosis (which is genuinely a painful thing), it'll just cause bald men to self-flagellate for no fault of their own.

UnarmedRespite · 2026-06-21T07:16:32+00:00

Surely they’re aware the beauty industry dwarfs them both combined?

Punder_man · 2026-06-21T07:32:49+00:00

This is more than a little rich...
Breast cancer gets waaaaaaaaaay more funding than Prostate Cancer does..
Despite Prostate cancer having higher terminal rates compared to Breast Cancer no less..

And yes, i'm aware that men can also get breast cancer..

Yes, endometriosis is a serious issue and it's not right that it isn't receiving the resources and attention that it should get, but framing it this way where it becomes a man vs woman issue screams "Ulterior motive" to me. It's like they want to paint it in such a way that even superficial issues that affect men are taken more seriously than the worst issues that affect women, to... I don't know, stir up more hatred towards men because they have it too good? It frames it such that to progress for women, we have to tear men down to where they belong, after all it's what they deserve

But remember, "Equality is not a zero sum game" according to feminists...

Gnome_Child_Deluxe · 2026-06-21T08:38:17+00:00

Classic case of cherry picking. Breast cancer research gets way more funding than testicular cancer research but if you point that out you get called a misogynist.

TheDwiin · 2026-06-21T08:22:59+00:00

Alopecia treatment is primarily privately funded...

They're complaining about the equivalent of women at Starbucks aren't being paid as high as men at Microsoft...

KPplumbingBob · 2026-06-21T08:09:44+00:00

And yet women live much longer and have more favorable health outcomes overall. If what this narrative is trying to portray were really true that would never happen.

I'd really like to see these people talk about women's bodies changing as "only hurting their egos". Fucking hypocrites.

ilijadwa · 2026-06-21T11:10:05+00:00

I work in medical research and saw this the other day. Yes, it’s disingenuous. You can’t just cherry pick diseases or conditions like this and make meaningful comparisons. Endometriosis is definitely under funded, but it’s also far more complicated and less understood than male pattern baldness. Pharmaceutical companies like things that can make them easy money. Endometriosis is not easy money.

It’s sad, but true. This applies for a lot of conditions. There are other reasons I can think of that endometriosis research would be challenging to invest in but I won’t wax lyrical about them on here.

CoachDT · 2026-06-21T11:51:01+00:00

The problem with endometriosis research is that it requires women with it to step forward for rather invasive studying of their body.

There are more bald men than there are women with endo. So not only is the testing pool bigger but its also much less invasive given that a big ass head isnt as sensitive.

FourEaredFox · 2026-06-21T08:16:01+00:00

Women overwhelmingly spend more tax money than men overall, so much so that on average, men are net contributers to society and women are not.

The disengenuousness is by looking through a microscope when we should be looking at the whole system.

Jip_Jaap_Stam · 2026-06-21T11:56:03+00:00

While I'm no expert on American healthcare, isn't it unfair to compare NIH funding for endometriosis to venture funding for baldness? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't NIH funding come from the public purse, and venture funding would be donated privately?

David1393 · 2026-06-21T08:48:06+00:00

The flipped gender version of this would be comparing women's skin products to testicular cancer treatment. It's both disingenuous and outright stupid.

Beneficial_Cable3213 · 2026-06-21T09:14:07+00:00

The U.S. skincare industry is a rapidly expanding market valued in the low-to-mid $20 billion range, representing about 16% of global spending.

Slow_Seesaw9509 · 2026-06-21T16:35:31+00:00

The amount of funding that the NIH gives to male pattern baldness is conspicuously absent from these slides. They clearly intend to imply that it is a lot more than the agency gives to endometriosis, based on the last slide. But it never actually says that, and it's very suspicious that they would leave it out considering how central it is to their argument.

Instead of male pattern baldness, it compares NIH funding for endometriosis to NIH funding for Chrohns disease. And then it compares the private venture capital funding for male pattern baldness research to private venture capital funding for endometriosis "startups."

Reading between the lines, it seems very likely that NIH does not disproportionately fund male pattern baldness research as compared to endometriosis research, and theyre instead comparing the total amount of funding across both public and private sectors. Which is an extremely disingenuous apples-to-oranges comparison considering the largest amounts involved by far are just private companies investing in male pattern baldness research because they believe curing it will make them a lot of money.

Of course private companies are going to see curing baldness as more profitable than curing endometriosis--it affects way more people, requires a lot less substantial of an investment in R&D, and is way easier to commercialize than a theoretical treatment for endometriosis that is many years away and would almost certainly need to be administered at a hospital. The proper comparison would be to private funding for R&D for anti-aging products for women, not to private funding for curing a serious disease that we don't know much about.

naaawww · 2026-06-21T08:33:58+00:00

Really wish we were able to click “not interested” with NowThis posts on YouTube.

Powerful-Act3516 · 2026-06-21T14:48:43+00:00

I'm strongly against misusing public funds out of proportion to the public need, so I'm interested in this claim.

Last I had checked, NIH grant making for female-centric conditions (excluding pregnancy and child rearing, since all of society requires it) was many multiples of spending on male-centric conditions, per the categories on their public-facing website (before it was overhauled). So these claims are surprising.

The cited paper has some interesting features * HIV/AIDS research is the big disparity driver ($3 billion in annual funding per this paper!!!). Paper must call it "male-dominant" since government statistics say that of an estimated 31,800 new HIV infections annually, 23,500 are in males ("assigned male at birth"), breaching what appears to be a 60% threshold to categorized 100% of a condition's funding as either male- or female-dominant * The total spending between either of the male- or female-dominant categories was similar (a bit over $9 billion annually each) * There were 12 male-dominated conditions and 23 female-dominated conditions * Calculation of disability-adjusted life years for a condition. This needs scrutiny (eg, women tend to live longer, impact of self-reported disability considering different people report at different rates, etc) -- this measure is used broadly beyond this study, so the question is mostly around how well it represents the issue at hand * The male/female categories only appear to consider the prevalence of the conditions and not who actually benefits the most from the research (different people use medical services at different rates, for example) * The categories might be a little unexpected. For example Parkinson's disease is male and mental illness is female * Most of the male/female categories are "all or nothing": with enough gender imbalance in a condition's incidence or prevalence (it looks like 60%), that condition is categorized as 100% male or female for the purposes of assessing the degree of over- or under-funding for that condition (the conditions were not simply weighted/prorated based on prevalence by gender; it was "all or nothing" categorization)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8290307/

I would say we need a better study. The paper shows similar total spending between gender-imbalanced categories. We also don't know the actual impact of research dollars by gender (ideally, clinically at least). The all-or-nothing categorization with the 60% incidence threshold is particularly suspect.

Also, the very obvious and extreme outlier of HIV/AIDS research raises questions about how much of these disparities are because of the sex imbalance in disease incidence versus other factors like these diseases being the pet projects of the top staff of the NIH for decades.

The paper also doesn't try to examine or rationalize different strategies in research funding given that the same roughly $9B in funding is distributed among 12 male-dominated and 23 female-dominated conditions. Ideally we would look at what distribution strategies have the highest likelihood of success for benefiting people (ie, improving disability adjusted life years broadly in the population)

Some things that would be nice to have (not necessarily faults of this study) would include understanding why some categories are more male or female because some social condition makes that disease more prevalent in some population (like increased tuberculosis exposure due to "time spent in high-transmission venues, such as workplaces, educational facilities, prisons, social venues, and public transport")

Personally, I'm not convinced gender is the right top-level category compared to something else like socioeconomic category (eg, people who are too poor or busy working to benefit from healthcare improvements resulting from BILLIONS in research spending)

In fact, it might be better to reverse sort top causes of morbidity and mortality by negative impacts to "disability adjusted life years" and see if federal finding priorities align to the biggest harms/needs in society (same should go for the departments of Justice, education, war, etc).

One is this paper's "mistakes" was to start by categorizing conditions by gender first instead of by impact on human well being (eg, disability adjusted life years)

Another note: the paper states that women's health historically has been overlooked in medical research. Recently I read a medical research article that only had male subjects (I also reached out to the correspondence author to ask why); I noticed that the author described the subjects as volunteers.

All humans deserve to have society reflect their interests fairly. But we need to understand that having more female medical research subjects might mean more aggressive tactics to acquire "volunteers" (there's a socioeconomic question here) and the need to address questions like risks of conducting medical research on people who might unknowingly be carrying a fetus or embryo (or trying to get pregnant for either sex, etc). Not easy conversations, but solvable problems as long as you understand the actual underlying causes in the first place.

You can't just notice some disparity and shout "boo, oppression!" Be a scientist. Go gather evidence to support your falsifiable hypothesis, and find a mechanism of action that explains the causal relationship. Then we can compare the impact and prevalence of the problem (to all the other broken, harmful things that need resources) and work on a fix for this issue. Otherwise, please go away and let the grown ups work.

Specific information (HIV, tuberculosis)

https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468266725001203

CZ-7000 · 2026-06-21T16:34:16+00:00

So you realise how disingenious this whole comparrison is by this simple fact.

Male Pattern Baldness is not the scientific term.

The Term is androgenetic alopcia which is a genetic Sensitivity of the Hairfollicles to DHT.

And here is the kicker: up to 80% of Men and 50% of Women are affected by the age of 70.

So it isnt a sole Male Concern and the benefits of the Funding go to Men and Women.

dsakc12 · 2026-06-21T13:08:13+00:00

Horrible comparison but what do you expect? They have to dig this deep to find a way to twist the narrative to make women the victims and men bad

Codexe- · 2026-06-21T13:10:33+00:00

It always pisses me off when they act like women get disrespected in doctors offices. As if men aren't the ones who refuse to go for that very reason.

c0q0 · 2026-06-21T17:32:01+00:00

Baldness gets a lot more private funding because there’s a lot of money to be made off of balding men. This is not public funding.
A fairer comparison is cosmetic skin care, the private funding landscape for the skincare industry is massive, operating on billions of dollars through corporate venture capital.

Trump4Prison-2024 · 2026-06-21T19:15:52+00:00

Also, their own numbers compare federal research funding to venture capital, which are in no way the same. Venture capital money goes in there because they know it will MAKE MONEY, not because it saves lives. The people putting that investment found a market and invested. That is incredibly different than federally funded research grants on endometriosis. This is feminist statistic manipulation at is finest.

_HighJack_ · 2026-06-21T10:50:36+00:00

While I do think the framing is meant to inflame for clicks, particularly bc the sources of funding are different, endometriosis research is chronically underfunded and it’s a REAL problem. Not only bc of the 10% of women with it, but also they’re finding out now that (rarely) even cis men get it, which makes it technically a female and male problem, in the same vein as breast cancer. I don’t see this underfunding changing while we still have president child rapist in office though, seeing as how he put a blanket denial on any government grants for research on groups of people he doesn’t respect.

purpleblossom · 2026-06-21T07:51:55+00:00

Pretty sure baldness effects everyone regardless of gender.

AdOtherwise3824 · 2026-06-21T23:17:38+00:00

Not to mention, they are just wrong. There's orders of magnitude more studies on endometriosis than on any phrasing of male pattern baldness (like androgenic alopecia).

Studies that claim NIH overfunds diseases diseases predominantly affecting men tend to do a really slick trick. They weigh the funding by "burden." There's a ton of different ways of doing this (comparing death rates, incidence rates, etc). But the thing is, with every single one of these, there's choices being made that clearly bias the weighting to make it look like male centered diseases are over funded. I remember one such study characterized diabetes as a male focused disease.

Needless to say, the entire argument is just shit.

horrorfan12 · 2026-06-22T21:32:02+00:00

As someone who has a severe case of endometriosis that was only recently officially diagnosed (doctor suspected it before now, it’s bad enough to have caused cysts) I’m very confused. Should endometriosis get more funding? Yes, especially so that people can get diagnosed before needing surgery to remove a cyst. What does that have to do with male pattern baldness? The only thing I can think of is that they think the funding for male pattern baldness should go to endometriosis, and that just seems…I don’t know the right word to use here, but it seems like they think that the only reason it’s not going to endometriosis is cause people decided male pattern baldness is more important, and I would think it’s a little more complicated than that. Why aren’t they going after cancer then? That gets a lot of funding. Why are they only going after male pattern baldness?

comradeautie · 2026-06-21T13:10:52+00:00

As it should. How many people are affected by endometriosis vs MPB?

The_0bserver · 2026-06-21T15:12:04+00:00

I wonder how much boob surgeries dwarf that.

Langland88 · 2026-06-21T15:02:22+00:00

This way they frame it seems to be on Par for something that NowThis would post. They're one of the mamy news outlets that were created from the same vein as other outlets such as Vice, Buzzfeed, and the Huffington Post to name a few examples.

vintagebutterfly_ · 2026-06-22T11:38:26+00:00

I think you can get a cheek swap for endometriosis now?

Also please note the switch from NIH funding to private funding.

Chupadedo · 2026-06-22T14:06:54+00:00

Let's compare women's cancer research vs men's. That will tell you the truth. This is cherry picking.

Knight_Owl18 · 2026-06-22T20:11:05+00:00

Dawg, everything turns fucking Pink in October for breast cancer. (Yes I know men can get breast cancer) Don't see anything like that for men.

NatriumHyacinth · 2026-06-23T16:40:10+00:00

If it came out that there was more investment is shaving than in prostate cancer, Feminists would conclude it was because women are so oppressed that they have more need for a comfortable shave than men have for to survive.

Cobbljock · 2026-06-23T21:27:01+00:00

It conveniently doesn’t emphasize that endometriosis gets NIH funding (so taxpayer dollars), whereas male-pattern baldness gets it from venture capitalists (to read their text without assumption, all of it is privately-funded, since they make no mention of government funding). Another way of reading this is “why does endometriosis receive so much taxpayer money, while male-pattern baldness has to get all of its funding from venture capitalists?”
I’m not saying funding endometriosis research is wrong; I think it’s definitely worthy of research. But I object to the twisting of the narrative, make equal things that are not, just to put blame on men (yet again).

Sleeksnail · 2026-06-25T17:22:33+00:00

Wow, they're really going to present "venture funding" as though it's tax dollars?

Yet again, the problem is capitalism. Not men.

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NatriumHyacinth · 2026-06-23T16:25:17+00:00

And makeup testing receives far more funding than treatments for endometriosis and baldness combined. If only we stopped funding cosmetic research, baldness or makeup, and divided their budget equally between men’s and women’s health, then the men‘s health budget would double several times over and the women’s health budget would also increase moderately.

Metallic_Madness · 2026-06-23T20:34:05+00:00

This is funny considering there is a drug being researched for both endometriosis and alopecia

Happy-Pirate733 · 2026-06-23T22:22:03+00:00

This is simply a matter of number of people that are afflicted by a condition and how much they’re willing to pay to fix it. If as many women had endometriosis as men have male pattern baldness then I’m sure endometriosis would have far more funding.

Global_Estimate7021 · 2026-06-24T15:31:42+00:00

Key here is that male baldness is a COSMETIC procedure. You could do the same calculation for prostate cancer getting $250 million for research (NIH) vs breast enhancement surgery which is a $3 billion industry.

Focus here, as per what concerns men, is that the baldness industry is extremely exploitative but almost no one talks about it as damaging to the self-esteem of men or that it promotes unhealthy beauty standards.

shalala_baby · 2026-06-26T02:30:28+00:00

> “It's like they want to paint it in such a way that even superficial issues that affect men are taken more seriously than the worst issues that affect women”

yes, i agree that that seems to be the message they’re going for.

> “to... I don't know, stir up more hatred towards men because they have it too good? It frames it such that to progress for women, we have to tear men down to where they belong”

i don’t think it’s about tearing men down in order to achieve progress for women per se, i think it’s more that the comparison communicates the reason for the lack of research, which is misogyny. if they just presented the data about endometriosis research you wouldn’t really have anything to compare it to, but putting it next to data of a less severe but more male-impacted problem shows how big the gap is.

recognising the privileges one has as a man compared to discrimination faced by a woman doesn’t mean men don’t deserve those privileges, it more just highlights that women deserve them too (unless said privilege is, like, getting away with rape. no one deserves that one lol). this post does seem to have an angry undertone to it, which might be what you’re picking up on, and from my perspective i think that anger is directed at the systems that neglect reproductive care rather than at men who have it good. men should continue to have it good, and women should get to have it good too.

that’s what i got from it, but i know perspectives will vary

r_szepasszony · 2026-07-05T00:40:35+00:00

I'd argue that it is underhanded to make this about you, and your belief that everything that points out the ways women's health research is often underfunded is an excuse to make you the victim, rather than those who suffer form a chronic, incredibly painful and debilitating disease. They don't say that evil men did this. They point out that it happened. If you see everything that happens under patriarchy as due to men, that's on you. If you think women don't uphold patriarchy (or blame women for patriarchy because this happens), that's on you. And as of right now, all NIH funding to women's issues of health is in question, as 'women', female', were words that are used to deny funding in the recent DOGE cuts, but not man, or male. I don't know how it can get more blatantly sexist than this, but I imagine the concern on this forum will be 'but women talking about how new grants that look at anything to do with women are singled out as DEI' is actually attacking THEM.

But if we are going to play the oppression Olympics, check my math:

Most
Important: people suffering from endometriosis, a serious, painful, disease that can lead to severe disability. Trans men can suffer from endo.

Less important: people suffering from baldness, which is embarrassing, but not painful and does not physically disable anyone. Trans women, as well as cis women can have male pattern baldness too, it is just much rarer for cis women. I would wager it is much more devastating for trans women.

Least important: people who claim to suffer emotional distress from feeling personally attacked by an ad that points out that we should probably fund endometriosis research more than male pattern baldness research.

Presumably because they think male pattern baldness is more important than endometriosis but don't think that's wrong? I don't get how anyone but people who deny grants for horrifically sexist reasons would feel personally attacked by this tbh. More likely you feel emotional distress due to being presented with an example of systemic sexism against women, endo being a flagrant example of how women's pain and health is often dismissed, denied, treated as 'in our heads', and you needed to find some reason to ignore it, and so you came here for reassurance that patriarchy is a lie, feminists are evil, and you are always the only victim of anything, ever.

BTW a better dodge would be to point out that the only purpose this ad really serves is to point this fact out to people who deny medical sexism is a problem, and does not actually do anything for endo funding. Though perhaps the fact that many people still are so upset by confronted by the reality of systemic sexism, it is effective? If there was a more frivolous thing that women have funded that they could have used, perhaps they would have. Like the study that measured how attractive sufferers of endo are. Seriously, that is a thing. So even when we get the funding, it can be wasted on sexist BS.

(and if you are an anti-capitalist, I fail to see how 'but it's private research because a balding cure would be more profitable than an endo cure! is a convincing argument for any reason other than being very emotionally motivated to believe as such)

bigdipboy · 2026-06-21T10:31:31+00:00

Cruel twist - the only current cure for baldness causes impotence.

Title	NowThis somewhat disingenuously frames endometriosis as man vs woman by comparing it to male pattern baldness
Author	_vertig0
Upvotes	252
Comments	130
Date	June 21, 2026 6:20 AM UTC (1 month ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1ubijxu/nowthis_somewhat_disingenuously_frames/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/nowthis-somewhat-disingenuously-frames.1583297 https://theredarchive.com/post/1583297

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