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The Pill and Feminism

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Guys and gals, I consider myself a feminist. I declare this with a bit of reluctance, because I have read so many grouchy, man-hating feminists; but I cannot deny it.

I believe in equality of the sexes. I believe that women can (and should) be teachers, prophets, scholars, preachers, engineers, police officers, doctors, CEO’s, and everything else that men can be, although I submit that men probably make better firefighters and bodybuilders on account of their superior muscle mass.* I think there are major problems with the way the church has traditionally understand man’s “headship” over woman in marriage, and I think it’s about time women had more influence in the church.

contraceptive garbageI just thought I’d clear that up after my recent posts about why I’m anti-Pill. I worry sometimes that readers will think that I am anti-feminist for having such “conservative” ideas about birth control. The Pill is generally seen as having been integral to the feminist movement and the key to sexual equality. Anyone opposed to birth control is opposed to equality, some folks assume. You can’t be pro-woman and anti-Pill. But I don’t think that’s true at all.

The thing is, I think the Pill works against women’s freedom and equality in a lot of ways.

Here are some reasons why:

1) Like I’ve discussed before, I think the Pill takes away a woman’s reproductive freedom by making her dependent on (usually male) doctors.

The medical community seems to assume that women are generally too stupid/ lazy/wimpy to keep track of their own cycles and control their own fertility, and that’s why they have to prescribe the Pill. Since women are too incompetent to take care of it themselves, they need experts to prescribe them easy-to-swallow drugs, so that they don’t have to think about their cycles at all.

The contraceptive mindset devalues education about our own bodies. It encourages us to put everything into our doctors’ hands. It encourages the “Listen to Doctor, Doctor knows best” approach to health. Knowledge about our cycles becomes irrelevant in the contraceptive climate, because Doctor can take care of everything for us. It encourages ignorance, which I think is dangerous.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: we don’t need doctors to control our fertility for us. It’s not beyond our capacity. For the most part, we can take care of it ourselves. We are competent and brave, and our bodies (for the most part) are perfectly healthy without hormonal contraceptives, and we should not fear our fertility. We should feel free to embrace our cycles and understand our bodies.

2) The Pill encourages the idea that a woman’s fertile body is dangerous and needs to be subdued.

With the Pill, the woman has to have her body unnaturally altered to prevent pregnancy while the man’s body can keep doing what it was built to do. As a consequence, she has to deal with the side effects of the Pill (like decreased libido and all kinds of health risks) while he gets off scott-free. His fertility is just fine the way it is.

My question is, why doesn’t the man have to take a drug to make him temporarily impotent until he’s ready to be a father? Why aren’t doctors working hard to develop a drug like that? After all, as Toni Weschler points out in Taking Charge of Your Fertility,** a woman is only fertile a couple days every month, and she only has a few hundred eggs in her body from the start, which eventually run out. Men, on the other hand, have millions of sperm in their bodies at any given moment, which are continuously being replaced, and men can continue to father children until death. Plus, men already tend to have a higher sex drive than most women, and could probably stand to have some decrease in libido. Shouldn’t men be held responsible for reining in their quadrillions of aggressive sperm, instead of women having to protect their few precious eggs from unwanted fertilization?

If you ask me, the current situation is unfair and goes against everything that feminists stand for. Why is my fertility considered a threat whereas a man’s is not? Why must my fertility be restrained while his is encouraged?

3. The Pill saddles women with the full responsibility of birth control.

When the Pill is used for birth control, the woman has to do everything: she pays for the drug and makes all the doctor’s appointments. She makes sure she fills her prescriptions on time. And then, if she gets pregnant, she gets the blame – it’s her fault for not taking the Pill correctly.

Toni Weschler says is best:

While the Pill was originally designed to sexually emancipate women, what also transpired was burdening the woman with the sole responsibility of birth control.

Unlike most other methods, FAM [by contrast] affords men the opportunity to lovingly and actively share in the responsibility of contraception (pp 16-17).

With FAM, yes, the woman has to keep track of her cervical fluids and whatnot, but the man takes equal responsibility in abstaining during fertile periods. It is a decision that the couple must continually make together. He becomes actively involved in the family-planning process.

This sounds to me like a much fairer arrangement.

So it is as a feminist that I reject the Pill — not as an opponent.

What are your thoughts? Does the Pill emancipate women or does it burden them — or both?

*I must clarify: I do believe that there are inherent differences between the sexes, meaning each gender has its particular strengths and weaknesses.  But gender is another topic for another blog post.
** Yup, that’s an affiliate link. Meaning I get about 53 cents if you buy the book from the link.

Photo courtesy of blmurch.

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