Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumWomen who don’t use birth control explain why not, slut-shame those who do
Salon
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2014
Women who dont use birth control explain why not, slut-shame those who do
Hint: It's because they don't understand how birth control works
Jenny Kutner
In the aftermath of the Hobby Lobby ruling that will effectively allow corporations to prevent their female employees from accessing certain forms of contraception, BuzzFeed posted explanations from 22 of its own female employees about why they use birth control. The responses ranged from medical for my endometriosis to ethical because its none of your business to practical because condoms break sometimes. All were different, but each reflected some of the most common reasons that more than 99 percent of sexually active adult women use some form of contraception.
Well, the <1 percent of women who dont use birth control took it upon themselves to respond to BuzzFeed by explaining their own reproductive choices, listing the reasons they dont use birth control on the faith-centered blog Catholic Sistas (not a spelling error). But instead of simply offering up their logical (read: totally putative) justifications, the women also illustrated a general lack of understanding of how birth control works, as well as what it means not to try to force others to follow what we believe by sending preachy messages about the virtue of sexing to make babies.
Most of the responses can be grouped into one of three distinct categories of scary: There are those that attempt to reappropriate feminist language to make anti-feminist points (Because it perpetuates the objectification of women as worthless sexual objects, constantly at the disposal of men in our commodity driven culture); those that perpetuate medically inaccurate misconceptions about reproduction (Because I dont want to abort any of my babies, even if they are only a few days old); and those that cant see past their own religious moral objections to people consensually touching each other for non-reproductive reasons (Because if I didnt want to have a baby, I just wouldnt have sex). Others fit somewhere in between, citing unrelated concerns about the environment (Because we like our sex environmentally friendly does this have something to do with condoms?) and hormones flooding the earth (Because I like my water without other peoples estrogen in it I actually dont know what this means)...
... What most of the responses have in common is their implicit woman-shaming directed at anyone who dares have sex without being open to the possibility of becoming pregnant. As Amanda Marcotte points out at Raw Story, each of the BuzzFeed women posted an explanation for her birth control choice that was deeply personal and applied only to her; the Catholic Sistas, on the contrary, hold signs that can be summed up as, Because Im better than you stupid sluts. And its true: what else is there to be gleaned from an explanation like, Because I dont want to treat my body like a toxic waste dump when there are healthier alternatives? If youre a woman who wants to have sex but no babies, then you are disgusting and dangerous, and potentially radioactive. (Oh, and you also definitely hate babies because trying not to have a baby at any point means you never, ever want one.)....
MORE at http://www.salon.com/2014/07/22/women_who_dont_use_birth_control_explain_why_not_slut_shame_those_who_do/
niyad
(113,259 posts)theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)I'd like to think all LGBTs are my brothers and sisters but there's always some like the Log Cabin Repukelicans to remind me that it ain't necessarily so.
Kath1
(4,309 posts)These women have every right to make their own choices. I just don't want them forcing them on the rest of us.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)No one's forcing them to take birth control but they don't want anyone else to have it either.
CoffeeCat
(24,411 posts)So, these women believe that sex is only for making babies.
I feel sorry for them.
They're missing out on a lot of fun.
I mean really
isn't sex just a part of life? Why do they have to demonize what is clearly, just part of the human experience?
Nice, that they've decided this for themselves, but why do they insist that it has to apply to me???
"I can't be happy, and I WON'T be happy until all of you stop your endless boinking!"