A few months, ago a friend of mine came off the pill for the first time in 7 years. ‘I can’t believe how much I’ve been missing out on! I’m never going back on it again!’ She enthused to me.
I totally understood where she was coming from. You see, I haven’t taken female contraception for nearly 10 years. And what with us settled into our 30’s, the alleged age when women hit their sexual peak (I can confirm its true and only gets better!) there was seriously a lot she was missing out on!
This week I read the following Article in The Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/29/young-women-going-off-pill-contraception-birth-control?CMP=twt_gu
I began thinking of my own views and experience of female contraception.
So you already know that I’m one of those women who refuse to use female contraception. It feels liberating! And I know I’m not the only woman who feels this way!
There we go, my admissions on the table. Judge me people! Go on I know you want to! Done?
If I’m honest I don’t totally remember the background as to why I decided to give up on female contraception. The horrendous periods were a factor. I can’t say weight gain was a factor because straight up, I eat too much and can’t blame that on anything but myself! I had been on the pill or hormone shots from the ages of 16 to 24 and had somehow managed to get pregnant, twice! (No that isn’t a misprint!) So I had a 1 year old and a 2 year old and decided to come off the pill, which seeing it in writing sounds absolutely crazy! But, within a few months I felt for the first time in my life, in control of my body. I began to have regular periods and the older I got, the more able I felt I was to determine when I was fertile and more likely to get pregnant.
Now I would like to point out that if I was in a casual relationship, there is no way on earth I would have sex with the person without using a condom. Do I think I should have to pump myself full of artificial hormones to satisfy a mans desire to go ‘bare back’? Hell no! At the end of the day, where has he been? Sexual health and the increasing spread of STI’s for me comes primary before getting pregnant. And as long as that is the main concern then there should be little to no chance of an accidental or unwanted pregnancy.
So in my ‘secure’ relationship (inverted commas as there’s a bigger story to that which we’ll save for another day!) we weren’t using contraception and was using the withdrawal method, or voodoo as described in the article and it did work. 5 years passed and all was fine. But then, to put a bit of a clinical spin on it, the conditions were right and low and behold after six weeks of sun, sea and sangria, oh and a fair amount of sex I came back to England with a bun in the oven! This is what happens when you have a lot of idol time on your hands, sperm decides to shake the game up a bit!
So here I am now, 4 years later with the most beautiful surprise baby. Have I learnt from my lesson? Yes, but I’m still not going on the pill, ever. Maybe that means I haven’t learnt anything from my experience!
Anyway, I began to think of Catholic/Latin American/Patriarchal concepts of women, La Malinche, Marianismo, the Madonna versus the whore. I even went up to the gigantic box hidden away in my room to see if any of my old uni books had anything on the subject but couldn’t be bothered to search hard enough! So in the end I just sat and thought a bit more and these are the questions that kept coming up.
Now I stress, I’m not a scientist, I have not researched any of this and am just coming up with thoughts off the top of my head, but, what if this pill which was meant to sexually liberate women does the actual opposite? Would scientific research if undertaken suggest that female contraception in fact suppresses a woman’s sexual urges? If this so happened to be the case, is it not then that women are in fact even more repressed than 60 years ago? Is it so, that the only thing female contraception liberates women from is unexpected or unwanted pregnancy? Because it sure as hell does not liberate women from sexually transmitted infections!
I view my body, in that it is meant to enjoy sexual activity, as it is, in it’s natural state, without the interference of any extra hormones. I think men should be responsible for their own sexual health by using condoms. If you love yourself it’s the least you can do! As much as, a woman doesn’t know where a man has been and vice versa.
Who feels liberated within their life these days? Work, family, juggling the bills, it all takes it toll. I’m just happy I feel in control of my body. And the only repression taking place in my bedroom is that of the noises coming out of my mouth!
Provocative Prose 