Rhod Gilbert shares the emotional turmoil, theories and misconceptions about infertility in a new ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ documentary
20 January 2021
Why did you decide to do a programme on male infertility?
My wife, Siân, and I’ve been trying for a baby, but we’ve had some difficulties. She’s got endometriosis - a painful and debilitating condition that took years to diagnose and which can cause infertility problems. But when we started going to the fertility clinic, I hadn’t really given any thought as to whether I’d have fertility issues myself.
It's a sensitive subject. Why did you decide to talk openly about it?
I had some very vague information that my sperm weren’t very good, but the focus was never on me in our conversations with the various clinics we had been to. While doing a bit of research myself, I read something that really shocked me. I read that sperm counts across the entire Western world have dropped by 60% in the last 40 years. That blew my mind. It occurred to me that I had not really heard anyone talking about this, and it made me think more generally about male fertility and how men never talk about it. Not to friends, not to family, and often not even to partners. It was at that moment I pitched the idea of a documentary on the subject to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ.
Have you spoken to other men who have fertility issues?
Only for this documentary, never before. And that was kind of the point I wanted to get across. And looking into it more for the programme confirmed my suspicions. Many men don’t want to talk about fertility, don’t really think about it much, see infertility as predominantly a woman’s issue, and even if they do want to engage and talk about it, there is nowhere for them to go. There are groups to discuss fertility, online and in the real world, and there are fertility support groups all over the place, but they are largely populated with women, and men have very little to do with any of it. I think that needs to change. But there are huge obstacles, not least the stigma and embarrassment that surrounds the issue for men.
I decided to put a shout-out on social media to set up a closed confidential male fertility support group, with a view to meeting up and talking openly. Just seven men replied. We met in a pub in Cardiff (pre COVID) and it was good to chat to a group of men who’ve all been through various treatments, we all had a tale to tell and all found it enormously beneficial.
But at the moment, there’s very little conversation about this in wider society. I met performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah during the filming of the documentary. And to quote him - who himself suffers from Azoospermia (essentially meaning he is infertile) - “this culture of not talking is killing us”.
What are you hoping will change in the future?
I want to reduce the stigma and get men talking, get them to open up, and put themselves at the heart of conversations about fertility, with their friends, family, partners and to get them to engage with the subject and think about their own fertility and the many ways most men can improve it.
