Chuck Ross’s GLPiggy site alerted me to a supposed trend in birth control amongst the hipster set. Because they think the pill is unnatural and condoms are a pain, they have resorted to the old standby of coitus interruptus. This has alarmed a number of feminists, including Amanda Marcotte, who called it a “worrisome” trend.
However, the kinds of women profiled probably have something else to worry about: childlessness. Sure, there’s a nod to the 15-24 age set, but when an article refers to women buying “organic kale,” you can rest assured that they are in the last trimester of their fertile years, or very close to it. Let’s say women are reliably fertile from 15 to 40 — a 25 year spread. Now go to a Whole Foods in San Francisco and take a look at the “young” women shopping there. They really aren’t very young; the median age is over 30. If we take the last trimester of fertility to be 32 to 40, most of them fall squarely in that age group.
It seems pretty clear to me that these women talking about “natural birth control” aren’t all that enthusiastic about birth control in the first place. If you’re in your early to mid 30s and still childless, and your boyfriend doesn’t want a kid, what better way to force the issue than to reject chemical birth control?
From the article Chuck linked:
It’s no coincidence that the pullout advocates I know are women who have been sleeping with the same man for years. More than any other birth-control choice, the pullout method requires women to relinquish control and put a significant amount of trust in their partner. But it also comes with the benefit of sharing the burden of preventing pregnancy. After years of being the ones who had to remember to take a pill or replace the ring, pullout puts the onus on men. A friend of mine, who’s 32, says her current partner has more reservations than she does about using the withdrawal method. “He’s like, ‘I’m nervous. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to fail at my job,’” she says, adding earnestly, “It’s a lot of pressure for them.”
She concedes that the pullout method is risky, but, she continues, “For the longest time I used the pill and condoms because I was terrified of getting pregnant. The older I get, the less scared I am. I’ve had an abortion” — when she was on the pill, actually — “and it’s not the end of the world.” These days, she’s more comfortable going condomless than her steady partner is. “The older I get, the more deserving I feel of pleasure,” she says. “When I was younger, men would be like, ‘It’s so much better to have sex without a condom!’ But it’s also more pleasurable for me. The more I connect with my sexual desire, the more I want to have sex without a condom.” And without hormones. And that means pulling out.
The reason I know this rejection of the pill is utter bullshit is that women in this demographic also happen to be the most enthusiastic consumers of fertility drugs and procedures. When it comes time to have a baby, “natural” is immediately tossed out the window in favor of “by any means possible.”
Amanda Marcotte likes to talk about the victimization of young women, but as Farrah Abraham, mentioned in my last post, demonstrates, younger women are currently not only proud of their fertility, but eagerly capitalizing on it as well.
Women want to have babies. Rejection of artificial birth control should be seen exactly for what it is: desire to be a mother.
