Feminists lamenting “sexist” contraception culture should look in the mirror

The Cult of Contraception doesn’t exactly enjoy an overabundance of brain power, but when it comes to truly insipid commentary, PolicyMic has always been in a league of its own. This weekend, Marcie Bianco wrote that the birth control market is—what else?—even more sexist than you think.

Opening with a comedy video from Buzzfeed (now there’s a font of deep cultural analysis) that purports to illustrate that “society places the burden of birth control on women rather than men,” whose condoms just don’t come with the cost and “cultural stigmas” of female birth-control options.

The justification process alone — to parents, the medical establishment and to one’s partner — is exhausting and intimidating. It is also a costly process. As the medical assistant notes in the video, upon the guy’s admission that he doesn’t have health insurance, “That will be $150. I hope it’s worth it.”

That women have to justify the need for birth control at all reveals the wild, sexist hypocrisy pervading American culture: On one hand, women are responsible for “taking care of the situation,” while simultaneously fighting all the legal and societal preventative measures — from gawking comments about one’s sexual habits to the increasingly limited and cost prohibitive access thanks to Congress and the courts — in place that make it frustratingly difficult to procure said contraceptives.

[…] Now, if buying female birth control was like buying condoms, there would be no need to “buy” at all. Women simply would go to any clinic or school nurse’s office or nightclub and reach her hand into a basket for a “free” tablet.

Where to begin? Probably with a warning to any Hunter College parents; they hired the author of this crap to teach your kids, so you should probably ask for a refund.

Do you really compare birth control pills- pills that change the hormonal balance of your body, that are body specific and can be seriously dangerous, with condoms, a piece of rubber meant for external usage?

Second, there’s the small matter of sex being a two-person activity. Talk of any given birth control method only being “for” one partner is silly, considering both of them are presumably trying to avoid pregnancy. Yes, because the resulting child develops in the woman’s body it’s easier for the man to abandon them, but you don’t need birth control to understand that having sex with deadbeat slime is a really bad idea—and if you lack that common sense, no pill is going to give it to you.

Third, no contraceptive whine-fest is complete without swipes at Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a slut and Hobby Lobby for asserting their basic freedom not to pay for products that kill embryonic human beings.

Yes, for the millionth time, Rush was wrong and apologized. But he was not simply “gawking at her sexual habits” but at her desire to legally force her sense of entitlement on everyone else. And if we’re to be endlessly browbeaten with one mean thing one commentator said about one liberal, then shouldn’t we expect in return an apology or two for the countless personal attacks they’ve levied against pro-life Americans and faith-based organizations? Like, for example, Bianco’s own suggestion that Hobby Lobby was limiting employees’ “access” to birth control as if they didn’t already cover 80% of the methods ObamaCare wanted covered, and were somehow stopping workers from purchasing the rest rather than merely not paying for it themselves.

Also, while I have reservations about the details, it’s worth noting that Republicans are increasingly interested in making oral contraceptives over-the-counter, which would alleviate much of the cost and hassle the author laments—yet it’s the pro-choice, pro-contraception establishment standing in their way.

But Bianco’s biggest fallacy? It’s not “the wild, sexist hypocrisy pervading American culture,” but that pervading America’s casual-sex subculture—a world created by her own ideological predecessors and deified by her own ideological contemporaries. The blame for its associated indignities lies squarely with them, not with those of us who have been advocating sexual responsibility all along.

Instead of looking for scapegoats for the fact that the reality of the Sexual Revolution doesn’t match the dream, how about left-feminists start reassessing their priorities? They could start by acknowledging that those of us they’ve spilled so much ink demonized as patriarchal, theocratic killjoys just might be on to something after all.

Yes, foregoing sex until marriage denies you lots of immediate gratification. But gratification is hardly a need, and treating sex with the mature, honest seriousness it deserves also spares you a litany of life-changing complications and hardships—medical, emotional, social, economic, and parental. Try as we might, society just can’t seem to conquer sex’s innate power to change an entire lifetime, so isn’t it simple common sense to save it for someone you can trust to share a lifetime with? Isn’t a little delayed satisfaction now a fair tradeoff for stability and peace of mind later?

Winston Churchill once said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” That’s the only sort of equality the left’s sexual ethos has any chance of bringing women.

When we were newly married and doing it two and, sometimes even three or more times per day, my wife quickly decided that a fifty cents per day pill was a far better solution than a 30 cents per time condom. I suspect most young, normal couples reached similar decisions.

The pill has down down in price since the mid 1980s while the condom has gone up. making the differential even greater.

Of course, the left worships the condom because their people (the homos and promiscuous) can use it too.

That's what this is really all about.

As a woman, if I am going to use birth control I’d prefer to have it in my own control. I don’t know why anyone would think otherwise.

Although there are many forms of bc that I wouldn’t never have considered using.

And I was never going to totally freak out if I got pregnant, so I had that going for me too.

I’m wondering if feminists really understand that this empowers MEN more than women?

I guess you’d have to accept the idea that women actually do prefer to be in a committed relationship before rutting. They would like to reject that aspect of their makeup, but that only causes a cognitive rift leading to mental anguish.

They would like to reject that aspect of their makeup, but that only causes a cognitive rift leading to mental anguish.

Yes! You get it, exactly.

As (I note) you have before.

Of course of lot of the problems leftists/feminists have with their unhappy lives and sex is the fact, like all their harebrained ideas, their ideas about sex stem from their belief that males and females are the same except for the physical characteristics. During the sixties radical feminists (when they weren't blaming men for every evil on the planet and all women's problems) were declaring that males and females had the same sexual desires and reactions to sex.

But since they believed in the blank slate/tabula rasa theory of human thought and actions, they firmly believed women could have the same fun with sex men seemed to have. When it turns out females react differently to sex than men, radical feminists were plunged further into misery and unhappiness.

The pill was supposed to change everything. Free sex with no nasty repercussions. It doesn't work that way, but the rad fems refuse to admit the obvious...males and females are very different.... especially concerning how they react to sex.

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