How I Respond to Hate for Being a Man in Women's Health

I have been working in women’s health for 14 years, ever since I was 23 years old. 

My mom, an OBGYN, invented this product that truly helps women with important but embarrassing issues like menopausal dryness, painful sex, bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, chronic UTIs, incontinence.

When I started, I was embarrassed to tell people about what I did. My friends laughed at me or cracked weird sexual jokes.

It hurt my feelings but I tolerated it. 

Because every day we would get heartfelt thank you letters from women.

One of our earliest thank you letters from 2013.

Another one of our earliest thank you letters from 2015.

Over the past 14 years, we have helped over 200,000 women, inventing and making all the products ourselves with our own hands.

From the beginning, women would pay us extra money, telling us they wanted to keep us alive as a company because our products were saving their lives and their marriages.

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I recently began creating videos trying to teach people what I know about women’s health.

And in my first video, I received tons of hateful comments.

Here's a few of them:

 

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Here’s my response to the haters:

Picture a 1940’s baseball team or basketball team with only white people against a modern team where all races are included. 

Who wins?

Picture Nazi Germany’s code-breaking and mathematics department. Picture their physics department. 

Now picture the code-breaking and physics department of the Allies, who had Navajos, Gay people like Alan Turing, Jewish people like Albert Einstein helping.

Who won World War II?

Here's My Response to Hate Comments Attacking Me, a Man in Women’s Health:

Sexist attitudes like yours are what has been holding women's health progress back.

You want progress. You want breakthroughs?

But you want to exclude half of all the smartest scientists and engineers from helping?

Make that make sense to me.

 

In the medical field:

• Men make up 40% of the scientists. 
• Men are 80% of the engineers. 
• Men write 65% of the journal articles. 
• Men invent 80% of the inventions.

Your sexism is to BLAME for why women’s health is lagging. Your sexism is causing the other women to suffer. 

And that’s not right.

I hear you and I have decided: I will not be apologizing for my gender. 

And I will not be apologizing for helping hundreds of thousands of women. 

I am here to stay, so get used to it.

Kevin Tao,

Cofounder at NeuEve