Not to incite the ire of another New York media institution, but why would BoingBoing write the headline “New Studies show evidence of Long Covid Penis Problems”? It’s disrespectful to those born with external genitalia who deal with “the presence of the COVID-19 virus in the penis long after the initial infection in humans,” as originally reported in the newsletter The Why Axis. Plus, it’s not even good wordplay, and call me a puritanical woman blogger, but that offends me even more. If I were to write that headline, which I swear I would never, it would say “Scientists Show and Grow Concern Over Long Covid Penis Problems.”
Is Long Covid Penis Problems even a pun? I mean, it’s certainly innuendo, which I find extremely lazy. But words matter. Words wreck lives and hobble penises. This is why, if I ever stooped to creative wordplay while talking about a pandemic that has killed 616,459 Americans, I would’ve called Long Covid Penis Problems something austere such as Aerosol Particulate-Induced Sustained Penile Impotence or Schlong Covid or Covid NinePeen.
But this is nothing to joke about. The American Society of Andrology and European Academy of Andrology found that over 25 percent of penis-havers who once tested positive for coronavirus still experience erectile dysfunction, compared to just nine percent in the control group.
Oh my god, the published paper is called “Mask up to keep it up”: Preliminary evidence of the association between erectile dysfunction and Covid 19. Can the American and European andrologists of the world unite to grow the fuck up?
And now I’m seeing this infographic on The Why Axis elucidating this information.
This is sickening. I don’t care much for these sorts of jokes. But I could do so much better.
