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Male Cancer Research Gets Less Money Because It's Not Fashionable
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If our social media feeds are to be believed, the boob is an endangered species. Women post the colors of their bras and flop their boobs onto random objects, while ads try to sell us "I heart boobies" bracelets and pink T-shirts, all to raise awareness of breast cancer. Hell, every October, which is breast cancer awareness month, the world looks like aisle three at the drugstore after a drunk tripped into the Pepto-Bismol display.
But do you remember the #CockInASock stunt, born to raise awareness for testicular cancer? Or how about the male version of that wacky pink merchandise, proudly proclaiming the wearer's overwhelming affinity for his nuts? Of course you don't. You almost certainly never heard about them in the first place. And that's because breasts are fun and pleasing to look at, while a hairy, flaccid cock and balls looks like someone stuffed a sausage into a tube sock and draped it over a couple of bird eggs.
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"So beautiful, so majestic," said absolutely no one.
And that's a problem, because female cancers get far more attention than male cancers, to the point where breast cancer awareness has become a marketing juggernaut. In the UK, for example, 40,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, and 10,000 die from it. Those are similar numbers to breast cancer, but breast cancer gets more than double the research dollars. It's not much different in America, with the National Cancer Institute's funding per new case of prostate cancer (NCIf/ncpc, as it's commonly known) being right around half that of breast cancer. It's even worse in Australia, where men's health research gets a measly quarter of the funding of women's.
National Football League
Despite their obsession with examining balls, the NFL won't even spare a 30-second PSA for testicular cancer.
So why the huge disparity, despite the fact that men are 16 percent more likely to get cancer than women, and 40 percent more likely to die from it? Well, it's a lot easier to get behind a campaign involving a depressing disease if attractive young women are involved. Then there's the fact that men are conditioned to "tough it out." Men often fail to go to the doctor after spotting early symptoms, because what are they, some kind of pussy? So no one wants to talk about it, which is why we don't see a lot of blue ribbons or fun runs to raise money for prostate cancer research, even though it sports as many victims as the almighty Pink.