The Pill

The Feministing blog put up this request recently:

Check out this author’s query from Elaine Tyler May, amazing feminist historian and big fan of feministing. (She’s the one who wrote feminist classic Homeward Bound, that I reviewed alongside Faludi last month.) Please, please take some time and respond!

The Pill is often considered one of the most important innovations of the twentieth century. As I investigate this claim for a new book—set for release on the 50th anniversary of the Pill’s FDA approval (Basic Books, 2010)—I’m looking to include the voices and stories of real people. I hope yours will be one of them. I’m eager to hear from men as well as women, of all ages and backgrounds.
Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill? Why or why not? How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically? How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?

What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?

Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).

Anything else you think I should know?

Send me () your most richly detailed answers to any and all of these questions (and don’t forget to include your age, gender, where you live, occupation, ethnic/religious/racial background, sexual orientation, marital status, political party affiliation, or any other biographical info you think is important).

If you would like to participate in my study but would prefer to respond to a questionnaire, please let me know and I will happily send you one.

I’m interested in hearing from men and women who have used the Pill and those who have not, those who used it briefly or a long time ago, or who use it now. I am also eager to hear from people who work in fields that relate to the use and availability of the Pill (such as medicine, public health, social work, education, etc.). You will remain anonymous. I will use your contact information only to respond to you directly and to let you know when the book will be available for purchase (at a discount to contributors!).

And just one more thing. I not only want to hear your voice, but the voices of those you love, teach, preach to, learn from, and work with. Please pass this request on! The more responses I receive, and the greater the diversity of respondents, the more the book will reflect the wide range of experiences and attitudes that have shaped the Pill’s history over the last half century.

Thanks very much!
Elaine Tyler May

Elaine Tyler May grew up in Los Angeles and now teaches at the University of Minnesota. She was twelve years old in 1960 when the Pill was approved by the FDA. Although not yet old enough for the event to have any personal significance for her, she was already interested in the subject because her father was one of the clinical researchers who helped develop the Pill, and her mother was a founder of free birth control clinics in Los Angeles. In spite of her later efforts at responsible use of contraception, she is the mother of three offspring.

I intended to write up a quick response, but true to me, it went on for quite a while. I discovered that viewing my life through the lens of reproduction really put a different emphasis on things. I’m posting my response here, both because it’s like a free blog post, and to encourage others to write their own stories and send them to Elaine.

First, the demographic info:

Age: 25
Gender: Female
Location: (removed)

Occupation:  (removed)

Ethnic background: Hispanic, but I look white and was raised by the white side of my family
Religious background: My father was a recovered Catholic. My mother’s a recent born-again, but not a pushy one. I was never baptized. Not much of a religious background at all.
Racial background: Visually perceived as white, and raised as white, so pretty much white.
Sexual orientation: Bisexual
Martial status: Divorced. Currently in a heterosexual monogamous relationship.
Political party affiliation: Used to be a Democrat. Now I’m one of those people who write in “Some Other Crook.”

Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill?
I’ve been on the pill, on and off, since I was sixteen. I provided my first girlfriend with the information she needed to make a decision about birth control, and she eventually decided on the pill, mostly because it was the only option that was both fully in her control and provided the necessary excuse that it was for her cramps or complexion, so her father wouldn’t know she was having sex.

Why or why not?
I got on the pill after I had runaway from an abusive home. At that time, (state removed) did not have a parental consent law. After running away, I started to force myself to get interested in politics, which bored me to tears, because I felt it was probably a matter of life and death at this point that I understand the laws that may apply to me. At that time (name removed) was our governor, and though I can say a lot of nasty things about him, he was a stalwart protector of reproductive rights, and never missed a chance to make good on his campaign promise to veto every bill restricting abortion. He even vetoed a regular finance bill and almost shut down the entire city because there was abortion language in there. I respected the hell out of that.

But I knew as soon as he was out of office, the pendulum would swing back to conservative and a parental consent law would pass. If it passed while I was still a minor, I was terrified of the prospect of having to get my abusive father’s consent (my mother, at that time, was a drug addict, whereabouts unknown). My dad would have let me get an abortion, I knew, but to get him to sign the papers I would have had to reveal my location, and my dad had warned me that as soon as he knew where I was he was going to have me committed.

So I went to Planned Parenthood and got on the pill. I wasn’t having sex at the time, but I wasn’t sure when I would start, and I was always concerned with rape. I had read the statistics on runaways and knew I had a pretty high chance of rape and sexual abuse.

I kept on the pill because it was easy and available, and I didn’t know very much about any other methods of birth control. What I did learn didn’t appeal to me — I didn’t like shots and I didn’t like the idea of having something implanted in me. I preferred sex without condoms, and so did my partner. And though I wasn’t able to vocalize or understand this at the time, the fact was my partner was abusive (out of the frying pan, into the fire… he wasn’t as bad as my father at first, so that’s all I really knew about relationships), and I unconsciously did not trust him enough with condoms. I wanted to have the control over my pregnancy, and he really preferred I did, too, because then he wouldn’t have to think about it.

As for my girlfriend who got on it… well, first let me explain. She was involved with me and my abusive partner. She was significantly younger than us, and had also come from an abusive past, meaning she had just as little protection and boundaries as I did. While there was initially a genuine attraction between us, after a while we were just both being abused by my boyfriend, having sex we didn’t want to keep him happy. I helped get her on the pill at my boyfriend’s behest, but I had my own reasons. Just as I knew I didn’t trust my boyfriend to be safe with me, I didn’t trust him to be safe with her. She was more vulnerable than I was, and had gone to high school during Bush’s presidency, which meant her understanding of safe sex and reproduction was just utter trash.

So I encouraged her to get on the pill, so she would be safe. Actually, I wanted her to take Depo, or Norplant, because she was sort of spacey and I was afraid she would forget her pill and get pregnant. But she couldn’t let her dad know she was having sex — he was some kind of crazy — so the pill gave her the complexion excuse. I kept fanatical track of her cycles, because at any time she might forget her pill and my boyfriend would have sex with her anyway, unless I could come in with some scientific shit about how it was this point of her cycle and he would definitely knock her up. Only then would he put on a condom, and usually only if I went to buy them. Otherwise, he’d just pull out or make her give him a blowjob instead. I remember many times literally running to the store, because I had a (very realistic) fear that if I didn’t get back with condoms fast enough, he’d just start fucking her, and she’d be too nervous and afraid to say no. I knew he’d do this to her because he did it to me, which is why I was like clockwork about my pill.

This is a really fucked-up story, sorry.

How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically?

We’ll start with physically.

At some point I switched to a new kind of pill that flipped me out completely. Just a bad combination of chemicals. I couldn’t think straight, I was always tired and overheated and on the verge of a migraine, I was retaining water like a sponge, and my emotions were just a powder keg. Because I couldn’t think very straight, it took me a while to realize these were all side effects I had read about with the pill. And because my partner was abusive, he tended to deal with my emotions by doping me up, or making fun of me for crying. So, for several months I was in too much of a haze, and too busy blaming myself, to recognize that I was having a chemical problem. When I finally realized it, I quit taking that pill immediately and turned around in about 72 hours.

I had done more research on different forms of contraception by that point — I was majoring in Women’s Studies, so I had a lot of resources available to me — and I felt comfortable enough with what I’d heard about IUDs to ask my gyno. It all sounded good, except when we got to whether or not I was in a monogamous relationship. My fiance and I had an “open” relationship, which meant he got to have sex with other women but I did not get to have sex with other men. Because the risk of STD was therefore higher, my gyno warned me of the possibility that an IUD could scar my fallopian tubes if I got an STD, and I could end up infertile.

I have never thought about things this way — in my mind, the story of how I started to move away from my abusive relationship starts much later down the road — but I can look back now and see that this conversation with my gyno provided me with some clues. I talked to her about our “in theory” system — always protection, get tested every six months — which I followed, but knew he did not. And for the first time I wondered, why doesn’t he? I was unable to perceive what he did to me as wrong, but I suddenly thought about all our potential future partners, and realized he was being enormously disrespectful to them by not following through with basic safety. It was the first time I really let myself realize that my fiance was “disrespectful,” which was the most I could really allow myself to say at the time.

If I was sleeping with another woman (which I was allowed to do, provided I tried to get them to have sex with him, too, and described to him every encounter in embarrassing detail), I knew my chances of infection were ridiculously low, but I always had dental dams and latex gloves stocked up, and always asked about STDs and talked about the possibility of using gloves or dams. I thought that was my polite responsibility as a politely responsible lover, to be prepared. Yet I knew with my fiance, we would occasionally have unsafe sex because it was easier than telling him to stop. He rested the responsibility entirely on me to explain why we should stop, how big the risk was, and if he didn’t think it was too risky, well, we were just going to go ahead and have sex. I was pretty well resigned to the idea that at some point I was going to have to abort his baby. The only thing I was really afraid of was that my girlfriend would someday have to do the same.

If I had explained all that to my gyno, she probably would have referred me somewhere shelter-y and things would have gone much differently. But I didn’t. My fiance had it worked into my head that I couldn’t talk about these things, because people would discriminate against us for being poly. Still, I did recognize that with my fiance the way he was, the chance that he could get an STD and not tell me about it was pretty high. He was certainly the sort to lie or downplay, but he was more the sort to fester in his own filth all day, so it was pretty likely that he could get an STD, have symptoms, and not bother going to the doctor until his dick exploded or something.

My priorities were pretty messed up at the time. Without an IUD or the pill, I might get pregnant AND an STD, but, as I said, I was already resigned to having to get an abortion someday, and I didn’t care very much about being infected with anything, because I didn’t care very much about myself. But I knew if I became infertile, my fiance’s interest in being with me would drop, and I would have also done something irreversible to myself. All the emotional abuse he heaped upon me, I didn’t understand how permanently disfiguring that was, too.

So I told my gyno I would think about the IUD and get back to her.

I wasn’t interested in any other method of birth control. My bad experience with the pill made me highly distrustful of any other hormonal cocktail, like Depo or Norplant. I had also added a major in African-American Studies onto my academic schedule, and after reading about the history and demographic use of Depo and Norplant, I couldn’t morally allow myself to give those companies my money.

I spent about a year off the pill, and after that time I felt okay enough about my bad experience with it to go back. That time off the pill was pretty good, I think. Since I had been on the pill since I was sixteen, and before that I had been malnourished and without my periods, I had never really been able to experience my body in adulthood without chemicals. My period became a restful state for me, where I cut myself some slack for a few days, gave myself the luxury of eating food I normally wouldn’t let myself eat, of laying down, watching a movie, reading a book, taking a bath. I never did that on the pill, because I thought, hey, I’m on the pill because I’m a woman on the go. I shouldn’t even be having these cramps or being tired. I was able to connect, much more, with what my body was telling me it needed, because there were no longer chemicals to actually obscure my needs, or my brain telling me I had chemicals in my system so I ought to ignore my needs.

During this time, my then-husband pretty much stopped having sex with me. He would have kept having sex with me, if I had kept us stocked with condoms. But after the first box ran out, it became one of those married couple passive-aggressive things. I left the empty box out in plain sight, and waited for him to go buy some for once in his goddamn life. He made hints about how much he was really thinking of sexing me the other day, but alas, no condoms. He made hints about blowjobs, but I had TMJ, which I believed to be the source of my inability to give him head without experiencing incredible pain — I know now that about 80% of that was a psychological panic button.

A few times he tried to fuck me without condoms, but by that point I had been through enough Women’s Studies courses that I could talk convincingly about my cycles and fertility. He was terrified of having a baby, and I played up his fear pretty well, with a lot of science words that I knew he’d never bother looking up. So, in the end, we just stopped having sex.

Just like I’d never had the chance to experience my adult body without chemicals, I’d never had the chance to experience my adult body without him; he had been my first lover, and my first very serious boyfriend, and I had started seeing him only months before I left home. I couldn’t really connect the dots in my head, but I did find that not having sex with my husband made me feel sexier than I ever had in my life. He frequently made comments about how I smelled, looked, felt, that I was too hairy or too fat or didn’t move around enough. Those comments washed right over me without even registering, because I was just too desensitized to emotional abuse to recognize it as hurtful anymore. So I wasn’t able to understand why a sudden prolonged abstinence made me feel so unbelieviably gorgeous and hot, but there it was.

Ethically, I had a lot of seriously convoluted issues. Not having sex with my husband only made him fuck our girlfriend more often, and I was terrified for her. Luckily, she had moved out of state, so her exposure was minimized to his insistence on constant internet sex. I also felt I was being tremendously manipulative, and generally a rotten person, for not having sex with my husband. But then I’d imagine walking down to the store to buy the condoms, and how happy he’d be with me when I got home, and I just felt sick. I also had a weird feeling of being a bad feminist. I mean, women worked so hard for so long to have control over their reproduction, and here I was just kicking the pill and sex right to the goddamn curb. At this point I learned a lot outside of second-wave feminism; about the wide spectrum of reproductive issues that non-white, non-middle class women have. I developed a lot of very strong (but completely disingenous) ethical reasons that I would not take the pill, or any other form of hormonal control. Researching my fake reasons gave me a lot more understanding of the history and use (and misuse) of female-centered, physiologically-altering birth control, which today has led me to have much more genuine ethical concerns about what I put in my body, and who wants me to put it there, and who profits from my consumption of chemicals.

How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?

I guess I sort of covered that, but I’ll be more general. I do prefer the pill. I have very heavy periods when I’m not on hormonal birth control. The IUD is not recommended for those with heavy periods, and I guess I have never gotten over the fear my ex instilled in me, that anybody could turn into a fuckwad at any time and give me an STD. At this point in my life, I am not particularly concerned with infertility — I would rather adopt — but the idea of somebody physically taking something from me is horrifying.

I still have ethical problems with Norplant and Depo, and I don’t like the idea of having chemicals in me that I can’t remove at any time. I did try the Ring, but it was physically uncomfortable, very expensive, and my doctor pushed it on me, brushing aside my concerns so aggressively that I suspect she’d had a visit from an industry representative.

I am distrustful of the patch (I just know it’ll fall off), and until I’m at a point in my life where I feel I could deal with an unintended pregnancy (dealing meaning having the baby instead of aborting it), I don’t trust the success rates of the cap, diaphragm, or natural family planning. Condoms are still always a great back-up, but I really do physically prefer sex without them. And, again, because of my ex, I am uncomfortable with the idea of letting my partner control the condom. It’s like they tell you with guns: until you have visually and physically checked a gun’s chamber, always assume it’s loaded. I’m with somebody now that I trust very much to be careful, respectful, and conscientious, but I still feel sometimes like having sex with a condom is taking a blind jump off a cliff. I’m putting my life into somebody else’s hands. I’m also nervous about it falling off, getting moved, in a way that neither party can feel at the time.

So the pill is my best option, currently. Sometimes I get very frustrated, because I know there has not, in fact, been a lot of long-term research on the pill. And I resent that the most effective methods out there require women to put chemicals into their bodies. I wish I had another option. I wish my goddamn partner had an option, other than condoms or a vasectomy. I resent to the point of fuming anger sometimes that there is no male pill equivalent, or any other male alternative, when we obviously have the scientific means to do so. I resent that a Western medical structure that only started requiring women to be present in medical studies in the 70s, and that has only just now started to map out the female sexual anatomy, is the same structure that puts chemicals in my body. The Western medical structure knows SO much more about men; they have been the default subject for study. I would trust the medical industry to come up with a safe and effective means of birth control for men far more than I would trust it to do the same for women. But it won’t, because it’s a woman’s job to protect herself (with a bunch of shoddy tools).

And I resent even more that I have led a life that makes me distrustful of men, the same men I want to share the deepest intimacy with, to protect and respect my body as much as I do. That, in the end, I am only comfortable when it is my job, entirely, to protect myself. I don’t want to live in a world where sex is antagonistic, where I can open myself in the most vulnerable way while clamping down as hard as I can in another.

What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?

I guess I answered that above.

I will say one more thing. Near the end of my marriage, when it was apparent to my husband that I would be leaving him soon, he raped and attempted to impregnate me. I had moved with him to a new city, where I had no job and no health insurance, and was unable to get the pill. At first I tried the same thing, not buying condoms, to keep him from having sex with me. It worked, until I began to talk about moving out, about couples counseling, about “a break.” He bought condoms and started having sex with me more often, sex that I never really consented to but never said no; I knew if I said no, he would fuck me anyway, and then it would be rape. So I didn’t say no, until I began to pack up boxes and say the word “divorce.” I felt that now I could legitimately say no, because now we were broken-up, he didn’t own me, I didn’t owe him sex.

Instead, he raped me. I considered fighting back, but then thought to myself, if I fight back, then it will be a violent rape. So I won’t fight back. First he went for my ass, which we had never done and which I had always expressed a major opposition to. Then, without a condom, he went regular. He said he’d put a condom on soon, then “accidentally” came. He had a very tearful talk with me about if I had to get an abortion, even though we were broken up, he’d be there for me, he’d hold my hand. Oh, and also, sorry for fucking you when you “asked me not to.”

I despise the dance I have to do as a woman. If I had taken Norplant, or the IUD, I would not have to worry about the product of rape. And in a country with the statistics we have, every woman has to worry about the product of rape. I despise my inability to access affordable birth control without a job or insurance, forcing me to rely upon a rapist to keep his condom on. I despise that if I had put Norplant or an IUD in my body, and later wanted them out, without health insurance I would be fucked. I cannot control my own body. I have to make compromises about who I let in, what I let in, the lesser evil. Would I rather chemically alter my body, or risk infertility? Would I rather this be a violent rape or just a regular rape? Being a woman in America is pretending these are choices.

And when I make these decisions, I cannot only think about myself, what is good for my body. I have to think about finding a doctor who will prescribe, a pharmacy that will dispense, a medical plan that will allow me to afford it. I have to wonder, if I put an implant in my body now, and show up at a clinic in three years to take it out, what will happen? What if it’s been three bad years? What if I’m now on welfare and suddenly look Hispanic? Will they take it out? Will they put something else in? I must make decisions not about my body and what it needs, but balance what I need with what I can get, what others will allow me to have, what others will control, and whether this option will allow me to protect myself from a partner or assailant in the worst case scenario. Rape is a part of my life now. I cannot now consider my future, and my options for birth control, without weighing that possibility.

Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).

Oh, do I!

Everything should be free or heavily subsidized, and available at all clinics. I would be willing to trade a 24 hour wait law or a modified parental consent law if teens were given free access to all kinds of birth control, and the information they need to use it.

Availability is one massive hurdle. Education is another. We can’t have one without the other. And that education has to include men and boys, and it has to include education about society. It’s not enough to learn about STDs and how to wear a condom. We should begin sex education with children, and it should begin by teaching children about gender. Taking kids at 16 and telling them all of a sudden, “By the way, you don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to,” means nothing if we haven’t taught them for the last 16 years that women and men are equal, that men have no right to intimidate women, that women are under no obligation to require male approval. That neither gender owes each other anything, except respect.

This country doesn’t respect women, and it shows, every day, in a myriad of ways. Reproductive rights, or a lack of them, is a blatant trespass against our right to call ourselves humans. A country that upheld a ban with no medical exception is a country that, fundamentally, doesn’t care whether I live or die. I have stopped waiting for a shift in administration, a new appointee, a judicial system where I’d have half a chance of reporting marital rape. I have stopped hoping for better options. I cannot help myself from noticing the ways in which I say, it’ll get better, if we just wait a little longer, if the right circumstances come along, maybe if we compromise on this we’ll get some basic dignity. I cannot help but notice these things because I said them every day in an abusive relationship. That’s what my relationship to this country is now. And, as with that relationship, my main goal these days is getting out. Another country, homesteading, something. A country that would rather see me die in childbirth than receive (professional and legal) medical care is a country that can goddamn burn for all I care.

Anything else you think I should know?

Christ, no, I talked too much already.

Thanks for this opportunity to view my story from another lens. I didn’t realize I had so much to say.