“If you think I’m overstating the case, consider the amount of feminist greenie energy expended on waxing poetic about menstrual cups and reusable pads, two methods that 99% of American women will reject out of hand.  And imagine if that energy was redirected towards the far more attainable goal of getting women to stop using tampon applicators.”

Most of the fuss I’ve seen about cups on feminist sites has been less environmentalist and more “zomg this has made my life easier/more comfortable,” so I don’t know if I’m seeing the same conversations, but most of the women who weren’t down with them for non-practical reasons seemed like the sort of women who also wouldn’t have been terribly thrilled at the prospect of using applicatorless tampons.

Though yes, yes, hell, yes on pretty much everything else.

If a non-menstruater may add something, this sort of thing always reminds me of Connie Willis’ famous story “Even the Queen”: http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/sf/etq.htm

As someone who felt pregnant—and not in a good way—every day of the three years I was on the pill back in the 70’s, I was both pleased and surprised to find out how easy and effective the diaphragm was for me. My experience was that others discouraged me from considering this, for me, 100% effective method. As a highly fertile woman, I never had an unplanned pregnancy throughout my entire fertile period of several decades.

My conclusion was that it was assumed that I would not be responsible enough to use a barrier method consistently. Considering that ALL my nightmares (the literal ones) involved unplanned pregnancy, I was extremely highly motivated.

Unfortunately, the pill is not for everyone. Hormones can be very strong medicine, for good or for ill. Back in my day, birth-control pills were said to be totally safe, and yet were much, much stronger than they are now. So physical reactions to those pills were not placebo effects, nor were the acquired wariness of the trusting how safe current pills are said to be by drug companies. However, there is much more objective data available from better studies now, making a true informed choice possible in a way it was not in the 70’s when I tried the pill.

Woman-controlled barrier methods gave me a great feeling of being in charge of my own fertility and sexuality. Some previously easily available barrier methods, such as the sponge, are no longer manufactured. Others require fitting and some forethought, but are right for some people.

I support access to whatever form of birth control suits a woman’s body, temperament and lifestyle. There nothing that works equally well for all, obviously. As long as women are given access to all the facts and alternatives in an unbiased manner, they are given the power to choose the most appropriate method.

But she’s not doing this from an anti-feminist perspective, but from a feminist one that fetishizes the notion of “natural”, a common problem on the left.

One that’s so common that a large part of Oprah Winfrey’s business is catering to that sort of woo.

That’s great for you, means, but that certainly doesn’t mean that women who prefer the pill are dupes or wrong about what they like.

Glasses, houses, jeans, electricity, the internet, democracy and indoor plumbing are all artificial. The Bubonic Plague, tapeworms, large infant mortality rates and fistulas, on the other hand, are all 100 % natural. Useful to keep in mind.

Rather than going after the Pill, which I actually can’t use because of horrible side effects, why not push for the male pill to come out? Possibly my spouse would not have side effects and could take on the burden of contraception, for a change.  Men are perfectly capable of sharing that responsibility.

And condoms, while lifesaving, are something most couples are glad to toss once they can. They’re inconvenient and sometimes uncomfortable.

I do know many women who use NFP, but they mostly don’t mind if they have accidents, and it seems like a heckuva lot of work to me.

I think people often fall into being either germophobes or chemophobes - and display an irrational fear of anything that seems too dirty or too ‘unnatural.’  Good to see that sexuality can be attacked from both directions…sigh.

I see where you’re coming from, and I agree that she was preachy and made some serious semantic missteps (I don’t think she intended to classify “emergency contraception” as non-hormonal, but maybe she really is just a total fucking idiot, who’s to say?), but I also feel like acting like the pill is the super awesome totally sweet solution to birth control is kind of marginalizing to those of us who actually DID experience really awful effects on it.  I was 0 to Rage in like, 3 seconds during my brief experience taking the pill, despite the fact that I’d specifically requested the lowest dose pills possible wrt testosterone, etc.

Also, you countered her about rhythm method and condoms, but you ignored IUDs totally even though she mentioned them.  I currently have a ParaGard, and I realize I’m only speaking for myself here, but I think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.  No hormones = no rage or weight gain or other deleterious symptoms, never have to worry about taking it on time, it’s as effective as sterilization, AND it’s good for ten years. 

So I guess my questions is why AREN’T feminists talking up IUDs more?  I think we’d be better served by opening up that conversation than focusing on ones we’ve had hundreds of times about how stupid the rhythm method is or what condoms are, etc.  And as for people’s awareness of them, my friends had no idea they were safe or even really what they WERE, so I would argue that women DO deserve more information about BC than they are getting from the pill-focused ads and messages around them.

Glasses, houses, jeans, electricity, the internet, democracy and indoor plumbing are all artificial. The Bubonic Plague, tapeworms, large infant mortality rates and fistulas, on the other hand, are all 100 % natural. Useful to keep in mind.

I don’t know about you, but when my jeans get holes in them, I just go down to the denim orchard and pick the ripest, bluest pair from the tree.

Most of the fuss I’ve seen about cups on feminist sites has been less environmentalist and more “zomg this has made my life easier/more comfortable,” so I don’t know if I’m seeing the same conversations, but most of the women who weren’t down with them for non-practical reasons seemed like the sort of women who also wouldn’t have been terribly thrilled at the prospect of using applicatorless tampons.

I have to agree, if fact I hear far more complaints about the “ickiness” of the applicator-less tampons than about menstrual cups.  It might have to do with a lack of knowledge about menstrual cups in general, but tampons without applicators are pretty entrenched in the populous psyche as gross.

but that doesn’t have the same emotional satisfaction, because there’s still the sense that women using applicator-less tampons aren’t suffering enough when they get their periods.

I’m sorry, Amanda, but this is ridiculous.  As a cloth pad user myself, I’m enthusiastic about them because they reduce my suffering (in the form of being expected to pay, what is it $8 now, for a tiny cardboard box of pads or tampons and then wear said uncomfortable, scratchy, soggy and smelly pads or tampons). I’d say 99.9% of the women I’ve met who are into menstrual cups or cloth pads are into them because they’ve made our lives easier, simpler and more comfortable and I think we tend to feel that they’re alternatives that not enough women know about. That’s why we talk about them.

“So I guess my questions is why AREN’T feminists talking up IUDs more?”

Um, they do?  It’s just one of the more fraught types on an individual basis because there’s a big up-front cost for the under- or uninsured, a lot of doctors still just will not do them for childless or younger women if you’re stateside, the insertion can be a super-unfun time, and both hormonal and non-hormonal types have their own issues that require further consultation with doctors (and more of the first two sorts of problems) to make sure you won’t run into.  So they’re a great option to have out there, and they get discussed a lot, especially since Mirena started marketing to nulliparous women, but they’re still farther out of reach for most women than most barrier/hormonal methods.

Eldridge’s life’s work is trying to scare women about the birth control pill

Could you possibly be less charitable?

Eldridge is trying to open up the conversation about the BCP. She isn’t against the pill per se, but rather against a one-size-fits-all conception of birth control. Different ages, relationship statuses, and financial situations might call for different birth control methods, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing that out.

As for her listing of emergency contraception as a non-hormonal method: do you really think she is unaware how EC works? Given that this is an interview, is it not possible that she just misspoke, categorizing EC with other methods that don’t require ingestion of hormones every day over long periods of time?

Not to mention that your objections to the Fertility Awareness Method reveal your own ignorance. FAM /= the rhythm method, nor does it require periods of abstinence. (Rather, it lets you know when you need some kind of barrier method and when you don’t.) Don’t want to take your temperature every day for about half your cycle? Don’t want to keep track of your cervical fluid? Then don’t use FAM. But don’t confuse people who do use it with abstinence-loving sexphobes.

Also, it’s important to point out that the pharmaceutical industry has now had forty years to tinker with the hormone levels in the pill, so what was available in the 60’s and 70’s was VASTLY different than what’s available to women today.  Hormone levels are much lower now and side effects are not nearly as pronounced as those reported in the early days of the medication.

I hear far more complaints about the “ickiness” of the applicator-less tampons

Really? People are icked out by shoving a solitary finger into their vaginas? You have to touch the area anyway to get the thing in.

I thought the problem was that it was difficult to get it inserted far enough w/out the applicator. That’s my problem, anyway.

Some previously easily available barrier methods, such as the sponge, are no longer manufactured.

They’re back in business and available from Amazon.com and drugstores. [If you find yourself in Canada or Europe, a very good alternative is the Pharmatex brand sponge; no nonoxynol 9 for those allergic/sensitive to the chemical.]

So I guess my questions is why AREN’T feminists talking up IUDs more?

I would suggest it’s because they can be ridiculously hard to get.

Many health care professionals will not give a large portion of women an IUD; they generally have two requirements, that your married, and that you’ve had a child.

They want “married” because then you are “monogamous”, which apparently covers their ass if you happen to get an std infection that travels to your uterus.  And if you haven’t had a child there is a slight increased risk that the IUD will slip out of place.

I have run into both these problems with everyone I have asked for an IUD placement and I live in a big liberal city in the Great Socialist North.

Of course this is a huge choice and feminist issue but it’s hard to “talk something up” when you know the majority won’t be able to get one.

I used to wonder why people always miss out mentioning abortion in the litany of birth control. That’s what it is, birth prevention. It is probably the strong societal narrative that abortion is not widely seen as taking responsibility for one’s reproduction (something to only be used in an emergency, as if millions of women per year don’t do it), but as way OUT of responsibility, which is bullshit, but even the left suffers from it. It’s a harmful narrative that positions children and pregnancy as duties, chores to be endured, and it’s women’s obligation to endure them or be seen as irresponsible.

Rather than going after the Pill, which I actually can’t use because of horrible side effects, why not push for the male pill to come out?

Because there isn’t one, yet?  Testing isn’t yet completed, and the one which will likely arrive first, an implant that may also require a daily pill or a monthly injection in addition tot he implant, isn’t likely to be that popular.  The prediction is 3-5 years, I’d bet on 10 for something that’s truly equivalent to existing pill.

This isn’t an example of men being hypocritical, it’s a matter of objective science.  The pill for women means blocking one egg a month by simulating methods the body already uses for that purpose.  There isn’t an existing mechanism that naturally and routinely shuts down sperm production so it’s harder.

There’s one other thing I’d raise: for exclusive honest relationships, where a woman is with a single partner, the male pill will handle things neatly.  For some guy who wants to have as much sex as he wants without worrying about a paternity suit, a male pill is the perfect gift.  However, men aren’t the ones running the risk of getting pregnant if our partner lies/forgets/has the implant run out.  So I don’t think it will actually have that much of an impact or change anything because women will still be taking their pill.

KeithM—the real question is, what happened to RISUG?  Why aren’t reversible vasectomies being researched?  Thank you, thank you Amanda for reminding me that The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.

Anyways, natural lifespans are 45-50 years.  It’s just important not to be stupid about our interventions is all.

I agree with your post.  The pill’s being “unnatural” (although why a hormone is “unnatural” still beats me) is completely unrelated to whether it’s safe or not, and it’s super irresponsible to continue scare-mongering people on that point.

That said, I do think the pill is oversold to women when they go to their gyno’s office. I’m on the Nuva ring, which I generally love.  And IUD’s are way more convenient than the pill, way more effective, totally hassle free, last for 10 years, and often result in lighter, less bleedy periods.  Yet doctors still don’t sell them as hard as they should.  Also, i agree that diaphragm methods are often actively discouraged in a doctor’s office. If your goal is to never get pregnant at all, the diaphragm shouldn’t be your only method of BC.  But with spermicide it can have the same effectiveness as a condom, so it shouldn’t be tossed in the same bin as the “pull out and pray” method.

I hear far more complaints about the “ickiness” of the applicator-less tampons

Really? People are icked out by shoving a solitary finger into their vaginas? You have to touch the area anyway to get the thing in.

The vagina shame is deep in many unfortunately, and you know, menstrual blood.

Also, I’ll join the fray and say that cups are way way way more convenient than tampons, especially if you have heavy flow. You can leave them in for at least a day and forget about them, and you usually don’t have the risk of spillover. Plus, they don’t make you dry and itchy. I don’t use mine because of “green” cred, but rather because it’s nice to never have to worry about what I’m going to do when I get my period, and it’s way more comfortable.  Of course, now i just use my Nuva Ring continuously, so that is the best of all.

I’m with Kristin on this one.  I am absolutely one of those annoying menstrual cup proselytizers, but I do it because I think a lot of women don’t realize that there is an easier, more comfortable way to deal with menstruation, and because pads and tampons amount to a tax on being female.  It has nothing to do with some weird, hippiefied Xtian idea that women need to suffer for the planet.

“I used to wonder why people always miss out mentioning abortion in the litany of birth control.”

Probably because it’s pretty much the be-all end-all in terms of expense, pain-in-the-ass factor, discomfort, etc. of modern birth control methods.  Generally when people talk about birth control, it’s their usual and, if any, their back-up methods.  Even in a perfect world, abortion would still be a significantly more unpleasant and time-consuming method of preventing child-bearing than current methods of pregnancy prevention, so it winds up being the go-to practice very, very rarely.

Although I felt (somewhat irrationally) squicked out when I tried the pill, and reusable menstrual pads can be easier to live with than the big puffy pricey throwaway kind, I think Amanda’s completely right about anti-pill sentiment from identified feminists. 
  It’s the confluence of two nasty tropes that are the opposite of feminist:
1.  If you’re a woman, you’d better not leave an imprint or take up space.  How dare you.  Same impetus behind hating fat women much more than fat men.  So it’s fine to pile up landfills with old tires and discarded electronics, but anyone peeing pill runoff into the groundwater is a terrible polluting person.  For some right-wingers, this is the only threat to the environment worth noting.
2.  If you’re a woman, you’d better be occupied with routines of low-level, irksome toil and drudgery that give you no power.  If you’re not risking unwanted pregnancy—a very severe kind of toil—you should at least suffer with mechanics and counting days of the month.  How dare you just take a pill that keeps your hassles to a minimum.

You’ll pry my keeper out of my dry and wrinkled menopausal hands!

Heaven forfend you touch yourself or actually look at what’s coming out.  You might learn something important - like, you can measure how much the output is when your doc asks if those giant fibroids that are now causing other problems have been leading to more bleeding. I also noted some other potentially problematic changes in recent months that I might not have caught with tampons or pads.

Punditus Maximus,
I know someone who worked on the RISUG project. It stalled because it got caught up in all sorts of regulatory, manufacturing snafus, and also because there was a lot of skepticism about the results of the phase III Clinical trial, in part, I believe, because they were done in India, by Indian scientists, rather than being funded by Western doctors—so less money, more skepticism about the results. Also, I don’t know if they’ve done reversibility studies in humans yet, only animals.

I’m with Kristin on this one.  I am absolutely one of those annoying menstrual cup proselytizers, but I do it because I think a lot of women don’t realize that there is an easier, more comfortable way to deal with menstruation

Somehow I’m finding myself unable to articulate why this statement makes me want to stab my own eyes out. Perhaps I just feel that proselytizing is intrusive and condescending no matter the subject? Or possibly it’s just that I’ve been talked at about menstrual cups and NFP for years now.

Always the assumption is that I just haven’t Heard The Good News! When the truth is, I’ve heard, examined, and unequivocally rejected them as being unpleasant/useless for me. Or what Amanda said: women aren’t dumb, people. We know what we’re doing about as often as anyone does.

/rant.

I didn’t read the article, but how in the world can the BCP be less green than condoms?  I haven’t ever seen a used up foil Pill wrapper littering the ground at my local park, but unfortunately I can’t say the same thing regarding condoms or their wrappers.

But, W,W @30, a lot of women haven’t heard of those other options because we do live in a culture that shames and silences talking about the non-culturally-approved ways of dealing with menstruation. It would take more than both hands to count the number of menstruating women in my family, for example, and I think maybe one of them had heard of menstrual products you don’t have to throw away and pay for new every month.

I’m not going to guilt anyone into trying cloth pads (I feel I’m not an appropriate spokeswoman for the cup, as much as I like the concept, because with a tipped uterus, I can’t use one) and I’m not going to bug someone until they agree to change, but yeah, I’m that one chick who says “OMG I *love* using cloth pads” when other women are talking about pads or tampons or what a pain in the ass it is to menstruate or whatever.

To me, disposable menstrual products are like makeup and leg-shaving: I’m not going to shame anyone who chooses to do those things, but I think it’s wrong that our cultural conversations about them don’t seem to include the option of not doing them, because when women don’t feel like they have an alternative the expense of those things becomes as mamram said, a tax on being female —one of those expenses that only empty womens’ pockets.

My biggest issue with birth control is that the most reliable forms of birth control for women are all hormonal. And it’s not the “omg unnatural chemicals” part of it, it’s that some bodies react badly to hormones, and smokers or women who have high blood pressure can’t take the pill. I just wish there were more options that were *as effective* that didn’t use hormones.

And while I’m far from a vegetarian or vegan, my suspicion is that the hormones that we get from the mass-produced meat and dairy that we consume from the point we’re weaned is way more harmful than the stuff we use to keep from getting pregnant. If I feel that the pill “wrecked me” when I was on it, it’s because it had a nicely primed body from my Mr. T-approved milk-drinking and wasp-middle-class meat-eating and the hormones from the pill just went apeshit on my system. I don’t think it’s unfair to the pill to make the argument that bodies are generally balanced systems and individuals may have various degrees of delicateness to that balance that introducing a new element to that equation can make for problems.

But compare what the pill did to me to what would have happened if I got knocked up? I’ll take the pill tyvm.

OK, and TMI warning. Hippie-dippie environmentalist that I am, my favoritest thing about the menstrual cup isn’t that I’m not throwing out tampons anymore, it’s not even the cost savings of not having to go out and buy a fresh pack of tampons every month or two—it’s the capacity of those buggers.  Back in my tampon days, I could only rely on a tampon to work for a few hours. After 2-3 hours, it would start leaking, and I’d have to change out or start worrying about how long I had for my back-up pad. It could be a lot less than that if I has having a heavy day. With the keeper, I can go for *eight hours* on a heavy day without nary a drop on the panties. For a busy gal on the go, that’s great. Also, my periods are *shorter* and my suspicion is because the keeper isn’t blocking my cervix the way a tampon might.

But yeah, they’re not for everyone. I think apart from applicators (which, let’s face it, if you’re not using an applicator, you might as well use a cup), it would be nice to find more non-bleached tampons available. They’re all over the place in Europe, but American women would rather put chlorine in their vag than have to understand that something can be sterile and safe and not be snow-white.

but yeah, I’m that one chick who says “OMG I *love* using cloth pads” when other women are talking about pads or tampons or what a pain in the ass it is to menstruate or whatever.

In my nearly 30 years of being a woman (20 of which have been menstruating years) I have never once seen this conversation happen outside of blog posts. I assumed it was a fictional creation of commercials for various ladyproducts. The proselytizing I speak of is always in the context of general feminism, as in, “oh, you’re using PADS? I didn’t know you hated and feared your vag. Tsk.”

She also failed to mention coitus interruptus as a form of Birth Control, despite it being free, producing no waste, and being about as effective as condom use. But putting the burden of pulling out on the poor men would be just too unfair! Better start examining the consistency of my vaginal mucus to see if I might be ovulating…

Then again, I truly don’t give two shits about my vag. If someone would just remove the whole business, uterus, ovaries, and all, I’d be really and truly gleeful. It does me exactly zero good, and requires tons of maintenance even apart from menstruation. So perhaps the Tsk-ers are correct.

“Or possibly it’s just that I’ve been talked at about menstrual cups and NFP for years now.”

Well, this unfortunately isn’t exactly a topic that’s been discussed in school, so you have women finding it on their own or being turned onto it and then wanting to tell everyone how awesome it was/is in a pretty steady, endless trickle.  There’s no standardization of knowledge beyond what’s right there in the feminine hygiene aisle, and the uneven gradient creates a constant, low-grade current.  I’m somewhat grateful for it—prior to seeing proselytizers on the feminist blogosphere, I was unaware that there were alternatives.  The stores around here certainly don’t carry them.  My mother’s response to griping about pads was “Be glad you don’t have to deal with belts like I did when I was your age.” The revolutionary concept amongst my friends was tampons without applicators—you could totally carry them in your pocket without anyone knowing you were having your period!—which isn’t really that big an improvement.

Thank you so much for this!

It’s always pissed me off to see supposed feminists criticizing other women’s birth control choices like they’re stupid. As for everything else, you’ve pretty much summed up my problems with birth control opposition on the left in a nutshell.

Also: RE: Tampon Applicators: The problem that I have isn’t being grossed out. It’s pain. I’m sorry to get too graphic but it feels like shoving sandpaper up there without the applicator. =(

Also, you countered her about rhythm method and condoms, but you ignored IUDs totally even though she mentioned them.

I have nothing against IUDs, but once again, I’m impressed that something that’s more painful is automatically considered better.

Oh, how I wish I could use the pill, since I loved it, but it drove my blood pressure through the roof, and I assure you, it was not an imaginary woo-based OMG CHEMICALS side-effect. And the rhythm method, in our case, just means we use condoms during likely fertile times. Periodic abstinence is not required, whatever the god-bothering sex-haters think.

I haven’t gotten up at our town meeting to talk about how awesome cloth pads and menstrual cups are, but I’ve definitely talked to friends about them IRL.

While many may find this depressing, a major form of modern communication is discussion of products. When you discover a product that has vastly improved your life (latest find: Shark Steam Mop), you want your friends and family to benefit from it. Re-usable menstrual products have given me more freedom (not worrying about leaks) and saved me a ton of money over the years, and I don’t see why my friends shouldn’t see those improvements themselves.

Here’s the litmus test I have: If I’ve ever casually discussed periods or pms with a friend (asking if they have an extra tampon, mentioning that I’m on the rag, complaining about my bloating, whatever) then we’ve already reached a level of familiarity where I might as well tell them about the cup.

Eldridge is trying to open up the conversation about the BCP. She isn’t against the pill per se, but rather against a one-size-fits-all conception of birth control.

I addressed this argument in the post.  It’s what skeptics call “JAQing off”—-pretending to just be asking questions, when you in fact have a predetermined conclusion.  She tacitly admits as much when she admits to feeling like she did something wrong by staying on the pill, and suggesting that women who are on the pill are only on it out of ignorance.

FAM works great ... as long as you’re one of the women lucky enough to have regular periods and you have time to dedicate to monitoring your temperature and mucus output.  If you’re not naturally on a regular 24- or 28-day schedule, then it’s a sure path to motherhood.

Condoms and diaphragms are great, too ... as long as you’re not sensitive to latex and/or nonoxynol.  You can find non-latex condoms, but there are very few types available and God help you if your partner is not average or below-average size or the poor guy will feel like he’s being strangled.  But I have insanely sensitive skin—I even had to find organic lube because common stuff like Astroglide and K-Y cause nasty burning sensations.

A blanket condemnation of “the Pill” is silly considering how many different formulations there are and that everyone can have a different reaction to the different formulations.  Triphasic pills were an absolute disaster for me, but low-dose monophasics work quite nicely.  You will pry my Mircette out of my cold, dead hands.

Probably the only reason I insist on condom use for every sexual act is that there is the chance that either I or my husband might like to “get some strange”, and I’d rather it be solely a problem for our relationship than for our health.  I know from living in the real world that monogamy is not a foregone conclusion even in the best of relationships.

It’s unlikely I’ll ever be pregnant again, but were I fertile I’d still much rather buy fresh condoms every week than suffer through how much worse my depression was on hormonal birth control. I’m talking about multiple suicide attempts within three months.  What pisses me off about the automatic and unthinking prescription of hormonal birth control for me was not how it interacted with the mental illness, but how it was completely contraindicated for the mild heart condition that the very same doctor diagnosed in the same frickin’ visit.  My fertility was apparently so scary and out of control that it wasn’t necessary to actually read my chart or consider the effect to my overall health.

Coming off of hormonal birth control also gave me a lot more power to negotiate my sexual encounters while I was still developing my boundaries and dating choads.  There are a regrettable number of dickweeds out there who think that a woman on hormonal birth control is consenting by default, and I dated too many of them.  (It’s not really a surprise to me that I don’t pine to be a teenager again. Jeebus I put up with too much bullshit cause I didn’t know better!)

I will proselytize about my menstrual methods until the cows come home.  I don’t see what is so wrong about talking about menstruation.  It is a necessary fact of life and I want to know as much about it as possible.  I am one of those irritating diva cup fans and I tell people about it because otherwise they wouldn’t know.  I wish that I had heard about them when I was a teenager.  I used to get yeast infections all the time and that completely stopped once I ditched the tampons.  Apparently the cups have been around for fifty years and I just heard about it five years ago.  Well, they are incredible and have made my life a lot better and if my rambling on about it helps somebody learn something new, then I am going to do it.  We should be able to talk about menstruation like any other topic.  It is just a bodily function after all.

So Well, what? ... what do you do in a foreign country when all you can find are pads that require a garter belt? 

I just retreive my Keeper from my luggage and wash it off.  I don’t have to guess at how many tampons I need anymore.

All right, I guess I have to chalk this up as just one of those irritating-as-fuck things I’ll have to deal with all my life, like Perez Hilton or people who talk loudly on their phones on the train. Point retracted, I suppose.

Also, I’m glad you mentioned not using condoms in a monogamous, disease-free relationship. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to skip out if you know that neither of you has an STD and you’re in a trusting, faithful long-term relationship. And also… well, I hate to say it for risk of getting flamed, but not everybody likes them. They’re literally a barrier. They’re uncomfortable. Maybe, though, that’s partly due to the lubrication being irritating like Mnemosyne mentioned.

FAM works great ... as long as you’re one of the women lucky enough to have regular periods and you have time to dedicate to monitoring your temperature and mucus output.

And having sex whenever you want isn’t important to you.  Rhythm method pushers exploit the fact that people are ashamed of wanting sex and will never speak up and say, “You know?  Taking a week off every month instead of popping a pill is a drag.”

So Well, what? ... what do you do in a foreign country when all you can find are pads that require a garter belt?

For one thing, if I were traveling to such a country (hasn’t happened yet and there’s no chance of it happening any time in the foreseeable future), I could use my—OMG—birth control pill to ensure I didn’t get my period during that time. Beyond that I haven’t seen any new laws forbidding the packing of pads or tampons in luggage.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t bashing the pill or claiming FAM works just awesomely for everybody. It’s what we ended up with after trying a lot of other things, including about six different pill prescriptions that all had the same impact on my blood pressure. Also, I don’t just count, I use a Persona fertility monitor.

You know what I would love to see? Increased research of temporary sterilization. One of the new sterilization methods is a lot more temporary than ligation, but doctors still treat it like a permanent procedure.

Most women aren’t thinking of whether or not to have children on a month-by-month basis. Once a girl becomes sexually active, it would be nice if she could just go in for an afternoon outpatient surgery. Years—decades —later, when she’s gotten her life where she wants it and actively wants to have a child, she can go in and get the plugs taken out, and have her kids, then when she’s done she can go back and have the sterilization again.

People have romantic notions of the body’s wisdom of getting pregnant precisely when you’re ready to have a kid—how the pregnancy could be exactly what the relationship needs, or how getting pregnant is God’s way of telling you you’d be an awesome mom, but that’s bullshit. Pregnancy should be something that’s planned, not something that just drops into your lap and you try to make the best of.

Godless, I’m super glad condoms work for you.  But I fail to see why shame people who don’t use them by hinting that we’re fools who discount the possibility of cheating.  All of life is managed risk.  More people than you think have a good idea of whether their partner is faithful.

Next question: your trip is extended - either by intention, or not.  Did you bring enough?  Really?  Did they disappear from your luggage (yes, this DOES happen)? 

You must live in a predictable world.  How nice for you.  Of course you would like all of us to acknowledge that you do because you are the master of it and can plan your business trips around menstration, and delays in travel, etc.  How wonderful.

“All right, I guess I have to chalk this up as just one of those irritating-as-fuck things I’ll have to deal with all my life, like Perez Hilton or people who talk loudly on their phones on the train.”

Or until they start covering stuff like that as a basic part of health or sex ed classes.

“I love the idea of a cup, but with small hands and short fingers, getting it in and out would be a challenge, I think. I can barely reach my g-spot, let alone get anywhere near my cervix.”

It’s supposed to sit at the base of the vagina instead of up near the cervix.  The bigger obstacle seems to be for women with shallow or short canals.

BTW, as a 43 year old woman whose mother had several strokes because of the pill and died of a clotting disorder, lets just say that taking the pill isn’t in the cards for me.

I wasn’t shaming women who use the cup, so I fail to see why shaming women who prefer not to is in play.  My only point is that I don’t see it taking off, and so the amount of energy spent on pushing the cup instead of promoting something more realistic—-such as doing it like Europeans with applicator-less tampons—-suggests to me motives other than altruistic ones.

Yeah, Ms Kate, like MOST people I do live in a fairly predictable world. It’s lacking in exotic, hardcore travel and I don’t travel on business.

WTELF? Yes, I should definitely overhaul a practice that works just fine for me, trade it in for a practice I dislike and find ineffective, on the off chance that I suddenly spend several months or years abroad in a place where I can neither obtain pads nor birth control.

I didn’t tell you to chuck your keeper in the trash, right? Did I go into a fugue state and command you to do this during a posting black-out or something? It works for you, bully bully horray! It doesn’t work for me, and I’d appreciate having my experiences and preferences respected as though I were a real person, despite my apparently incredible, unprecedented dullness.

No, but you were all about the “OMFG SOMEBODY MENTIONED A MENSTURAL CUP OMFG OMFG OMFG”

She has a point.  The proselytizing about it is annoying as fuck. If you have to sell something that hard, don’t be surprised if people think you’re pushing snake oil.

The way I feel about it is that it really depends what works for you at any given period in your life.  Which is why I don’t get articles like this one—OK, you can proselytize for your chosen method of birth control till the cows come home.  But I’d assume that, as feminists, we all agree that a wide variety of methods should be available and legal.  Sure, the ring is rocking my world right now, but maybe next year I’ll get that gig writing for Lonely Planet and need to switch to the pill because it’s more widely available internationally. 

So what’s the point of articles like this?  Are we trying to give the anti-choicers ammo, or what?

Oh, and Amanda?  You don’t have to even mail order the cups in Europe so far as I’ve seen.  They stock them in the pharmacies.  I suspect that means they are considered a “euro” thing to do, too - if only for tax evasion

@MaryL: Yay, I’m not alone! =)
@Amanda #55: You’re one of the first people I’ve seen (especially on the left) who doesn’t shame people for choosing not to use condoms. Thank you.

Yeah just want to chime in and say that those who advocate reusable cups and cloth pads aren’t doing it because we want women to suffer during menstruation.  How absurd.  Personally I tried the cups and they seemed to get dislodged and uncomfortable whenever I had a BM and I couldn’t get them back in properly at the restroom at work, so I gave up.  I still use (biodegradable) tampons for my heavy flow days. But my flow is really light most of the time and I find that cloth pads work perfectly for this and are so much more comfortable than plastic pads, which a lot of times get twisted around and stuck to my pubic hair which is really awful. 

The fertility awareness method isn’t what you think it is either.  Whether you actually choose to use the method or not, I think that understanding your body and being able to observe your fertile signs is really empowering.  It was so eye opening for me to read Taking Charge of Your Fertility and understand how things really work instead of the lies I was fed in abstinence sex - ed: “you can get pregnant at ANY time, etc.”  I have PCOS and irregular cycles and spent a lot of my late teens being worried constantly that I was pregnant because I was not aware that I was not ovulating - no doctor EVER told me why my cycles were like that, just that I should go on the Pill so I can get regular periods.  Anyway, I have no intention of abstaining from sex during my fertile time because that’s when I’m most desirous of sex anyway.  But it’s good to know what’s going on down there.  I don’t have any strong opinions on the Pill, but I don’t see anything wrong with researching the impact of estrogen in the water supply.

Mentioning != prosletyzing.

I merely claimed to dislike being talked at about the evillness / uselessness of my chosen feminine products, as though I were some kind of brainwashed person. (If I recall correctly, this is what the post was about, yes? About the hazards of treating women as if they don’t know what they’re doing with their own bits?)

I retracted my statement after seeing that apparently, I’m in the vast minority on the subject of discussing/proselytizing less mainstream stuff like the cup/keeper/diva what have you. If most people feel like it’s a necessary and good service, then I’ll suck it up and just keep politely stating that I’m happy with my pads and pills, thanks, and I am not switching.

what do you do in a foreign country when all you can find are pads that require a garter belt? 

How many women travel for months at a time in countries that remote?  I spent two months in India and didn’t have a problem obtaining supplies that were familiar to me and easy to use.  Which, to me, implies that you’d have to be in Borneo or something (and for MONTHS) to find yourself up menstrual creek that way. 

I mean, if the cup works for you, then cool.  I know many people who swear by them, and I’ve considered it myself in the past.  But there are a lot of useful supplies for extensive travel to developing countries that I don’t feel the need to include in my day-to-day life.

Well, ultimately you’re going to have to hit the same “EW! Put a finger up there?” response when you’re talking about a cup as you would with an applicator-less tampon. So you want to talk up the product to help someone overcome that Ick Factor.  It’s not about snake oil, it’s about overcoming the fact that women have been trained to think of their vaginas and their menstrual blood as filthy things that should be avoided at all costs.

And like anything, it’s a lot easier to sell someone on something if you point out the personal benefits that they will receive (leak-free heavy days, cost savings, etc) than it is to try to sell them on some altruistic “do it for the planet” aspect of disposable products.

But there are a lot of useful supplies for extensive travel to developing countries that I don’t feel the need to include in my day-to-day life.

Ah, another “master of the universe” whose day-to-day life somehow manages to avert intensive-travel-related menstrual catastrophes. Apparently, we’re rare.

rebelliousjezebel, consider as well that one aspect of “family planning” is knowing when you can get pregnant so that you may get pregnant if that is what you want.  While much effort is expended avoiding pregnancy, and fertility awareness is only sort of good for that, it would be good for women who want a pregnancy to know and be aware of when they are fertile.  I have had lesbian friends chart their cycles for a couple of months before attempting artificial insemination, so their caregivers would have some idea when to book them in to verify ovulation and inseminate.

That’s great, Ms Kate, but I’ve seen them stocked here. They work great for a small minority of women! 

But you know what you can’t get here, at least not inexpensively?  Applicator-free tampons!  If you like these, as I do, then this sucks mega watt balls.  Imagine if just a fraction of the energy spent on self-congratulation for using the cup went towards pressuring Tampax and Kotex to make inexpensive applicator-free tampons available, so that women would use them more!

The fertility awareness method isn’t what you think it is either.  Whether you actually choose to use the method or not, I think that understanding your body and being able to observe your fertile signs is really empowering.

Incredibly condescending, don’t you think, to insinuate that those of us who like the pill are scared, disempowered, and ignorant?

Amanda, that may be, in part, because OB tampons were patented as lacking an applicator.  That patent should be up now, but it may have prevented less expensive brands from emerging.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t bashing the pill or claiming FAM works just awesomely for everybody. It’s what we ended up with after trying a lot of other things, including about six different pill prescriptions that all had the same impact on my blood pressure.

That, honestly, is where the enthusiasm that people feel for their particular method tends to backfire.  For something as personal as deciding how you have sex or how you deal with your menstrual cycle, someone who’s super-enthused about their particular method often ends up sounding like a condescending asshole who assumes that what they use/do is the best possible way for everyone, not just the best way for them.

Frankly, while I can understand proselytizing in the outside world, I do often find the assumption that women who frequent feminist websites have never even heard of FAM or the menstrual cup to be pretty damn condescending.

(Not saying that you did that, just to be clear.  More of a general comment on how enthusiasm about something that people already know about tends to come across.)

And having sex whenever you want isn’t important to you.  Rhythm method pushers exploit the fact that people are ashamed of wanting sex and will never speak up and say, “You know?  Taking a week off every month instead of popping a pill is a drag.”

Somebody already pointed out that this simply isn’t true. Not everyone using FAM (for the record, I’ve never used it) is opposed to using other contraception. Some people use FAM to know when they need to use their sponge or condoms.

Amanda, that may be, in part, because OB tampons were patented as lacking an applicator.  That patent should be up now, but it may have prevented less expensive brands from emerging.

So all the more reason to exert pressure there!  Instead of simply telling women their choices are all wrong, when they probably have very good reasons for making those choices.

and because pads and tampons amount to a tax on being female

Since when is the menstrual cup free?

In all seriousness, the main reason I don’t use the Keeper is that they cost like $40.  Which means that, if I don’t end up liking it, I’m out $40 and have to go back to paying $15-20 a year for tampons anyway.  And if I do like it, I better keep liking it for a year or two (and not leave it behind or drop it in the toilet or let the dog get to it), or it’s still not going to be cost effective.

“But you know what you can’t get here, at least not inexpensively?  Applicator-free tampons!”

Is o.b. out of business or charging a lot now?  That sucks.

Mnemosyne, it is also condescending to say “oooo ick yuck” and spout a whole bunch of falsehoods and ignorance, then get all “how DARE you prosletyse ME on MY PERSONAL SHIT” when people attempt to correct your misinformation.

Ah, another “master of the universe” whose day-to-day life somehow manages to avert intensive-travel-related menstrual catastrophes. Apparently, we’re rare.

Wait, so you’re not wearing your rip-stop carabiner-compatible quick-dry rock climbing pants today? 

Fuck.  I hope you don’t fall off the side of a mountain at the office today…

Opoponax, I do object to pads and tampons being subject to hefty sales taxes in my state, when other “necessities” are not.  That’s not why I have used the same keeper for 8 years, but I still find it galling.

You know what I would love to see? Increased research of temporary sterilization. One of the new sterilization methods is a lot more temporary than ligation, but doctors still treat it like a permanent procedure.

As I understand it, the main problem is that scarring can result even from temporary methods and that it’s difficult for doctors to predict who will experience scarring that could result in permanent sterilization and who won’t, so they prefer to treat it as a potentially permanent procedure.

There’s a reason why science fiction written by women often includes little details like wide availability of temporary sterilization and/or turning off one’s menstrual cycle—it’s like a female-specific version of the transporter beam. 

Mnemosyne, it is also condescending to say “oooo ick yuck” and spout a whole bunch of falsehoods and ignorance, then get all “how DARE you prosletyse ME on MY PERSONAL SHIT” when people attempt to correct your misinformation.

I haven’t seen any misinformation on this thread, other than that discussed in the original article (EC is hormonal, etc.) I also haven’t seen any oooo ick yuck. I have seen a lot of “I don’t find that x works for me.” Perhaps you confused the two?

Fuck.  I hope you don’t fall off the side of a mountain at the office today…

Shit, you’re right. That’s gonna cramp my style big-time.

kristin, I wasn’t saying they were against sex for themselves.  I’m saying they exploit people’s reticence while pushing this.  It’s not easy for most people to say that spontaneity in sex is an priority for them.  We’re not a people that like to talk about pleasure. 

Instead, discussions about contraception often take on this dour tone, as if sex is just this thing that happens to you that needs to be managed.

Well, what? I think there is a huge difference between lecturing somebody and sharing useful information.  I guess by proselytize, I meant more the latter:
“I was supposed to go hiking this weekend, but I have my period, so I think I am going to bail.”
“You know, I use the DivaCup, and I find it a lot easier when I go camping.  I know you go hiking a lot, maybe you would prefer it.”
To me, this remark is basically the same as, “if you are still getting a backache from riding your bike, maybe you would find a smaller one more comfortable.”  I don’t see the first as assuming that women are stupid, any more than the second.  Many American women are relatively ignorant—not stupid, but ignorant—regarding alternatives to pads and tampons, just like many people might not realize that their incorrectly sized hand-me-down bike can cause pain. 

On the other hand, I could see how, to some people, any remark regarding how a person manages their bodily functions would be completely uncalled for.  And different people obviously find unsolicited advice more or less useful.  But I think navigating that is just a matter of knowing who I am talking to.  I wouldn’t lecture a woman in the tampon section at the pharmacy, but I also don’t think it is insulting to share with my friends what I find to be useful information from my personal experiences.

Mnemosyne, it is also condescending to say “oooo ick yuck” and spout a whole bunch of falsehoods and ignorance, then get all “how DARE you prosletyse ME on MY PERSONAL SHIT” when people attempt to correct your misinformation.

What “misinformation” have people stated?  Are you saying that it’s untrue that women with irregular menstrual cycles have less success with FAM, or that women here who say they’ve tried the menstrual cup or the Pill and it didn’t work for them are lying?  Please let us know what falsehoods people are spreading in this thread, because they mostly seem to come from personal experience.

Preying mantis, I have found that OB tampons tend to be twice the price of other brands.  They only very rarely go on sale, and I had to keep them stocked in three sizes. I preferred them because they fit better and I always have to strip off the applicators from other brands before using them. I do keep a box at work for surprise events and coworker support, but the payback with the Keeper was done in three months for me compared to the equivalent cost of OB.

Mnemosyne - not your misinformation.  Sorry.

Amanda, I am floored by the bad faith you’re arguing with here. People saying what works for them, and even suggesting that is might work for more people /= telling you what to do. Eldridge saying that some women would be better off not on the pill /= her telling you to get off the pill, you stupid woman. People arguing the merits of alternative forms of BC aren’t saying that it works for everyone.

And you’re not listening to what actual practitioners of FAM are saying about it (re. abstaining from sex), which you still clearly have not taken the time to understand.

Utterly reactionary.

And as for this statement–
I have nothing against IUDs, but once again, I’m impressed that something that’s more painful is automatically considered better.
Now who’s trying to dictate on what grounds a BC method can be judged better or worse? Jesus.

Incredibly condescending, don’t you think, to insinuate that those of us who like the pill are scared, disempowered, and ignorant?

Worse than going on and ON about a method you have demonstrated yourself to know very little about?

Also, people who have NOT tried the cup, yet forcefully vent that even mentioning it is somehow “prosletyzing” are spreading misinformation apriori.  Ditto for it being extensively promoted as green on feminist sites, when the vast majority of discussions center on cost/convenience.

@ mamram: the key is often, I find, in the follow-up. I would have no problem with the exchange you mentioned:

“I was supposed to go hiking this weekend, but I have my period, so I think I am going to bail.”
“You know, I use the DivaCup, and I find it a lot easier when I go camping.  I know you go hiking a lot, maybe you would prefer it.”

As long as person B is free to say, “yeah, I’m not really keen on that idea, but thanks” and not trigger a litany of how much she is missing out on/how wrong tampons are/how she’s killing the earth/why does she think the vag is gross? Know what I’m saying? That is where info-sharing becomes proselytizing.

Unfortunately I have seen more angry reactions to my choice of method than neutral ones, and that maybe gives me a bias against the discussion happening at all. And I’m learning that the bias is almost definitely unfair—something I’ll have to work on.

Did they disappear from your luggage (yes, this DOES happen)? 

Dude, where?  Saudi Arabia?

I’ve traveled pretty extensively, and as far as I know tampons disappearing out of your luggage is not really a common travel problem.  And if so, like I said before, the vast majority of places that Americans travel are going to have something you can use.

Keep in mind, also that only about 20% of Americans even have a passport.

It just goes to show you the way so many of us have been raised—how some of us come off as know-it-all’s because we take on the tone of the males who taught us.  I’m sure that if you were to tell the author of this article that she sounds just like a pompous white male she would be hurt and insulted.

Yet the tone of her article is exactly that—a person who knows better than the rest of her fellow feminists—and she’s going to let us know why that is so.

Also, people who have NOT tried the cup, yet forcefully vent that even mentioning it is somehow “prosletyzing” are spreading misinformation apriori.

I love how you magically know what has and has not been in my vagina. Because obviously there’s no way I could have tried it and found it lacking, no sir ma’am sir.

Not to flounce, but I’m out—coincidentally, I actually am heading out to pick up pads AND bc pills today. Proceed to inform the thread how all of my “problems” (oh the horror of two errands) could be solved if only I were more like you.

There seems to be—or at least have been, with traces remaining—a strain within feminism that combined gender essentialism with equalism. In other words, “science is male, nature is female, so we don’t want to get more women into science/get women more into science, we want to raise te profile of nature” (I am aware that science and nature aren’t in opposition, but a lot of people separate them). So this makes it easier for feminists to accept woo: it’s a female thing (in this view), it doesn’t make you dependent on men the way (in this view) science does, it’s a way of not letting men/scientists/conservatives (conflated here) tell you what to do.

And there is some truth in the idea that all else being equal, men will prefer HBC to condoms, for all it doesn’t follow that women will not. But even if most women who use HBC aren’t doing so at their respective male partners’ behests, almost every (mongamous, hetero) woman who does give her partner the final say will use HBC. So in that sense one could make a (weak) case for HBC not being the feminist choice.

I used to wonder why people always miss out mentioning abortion in the litany of birth control. That’s what it is, birth prevention.
Comment 19—Princess Rot

It’s also surgery, and I for one would never recommend surgery to anyone who has a reasonable alternative. Forget all the politics around abortion for a moment (not to mention the cost factor): you’re essentially saying “rather than do a little thing now, just plan to have surgery later!”

Jill picked up on something interesting that I think gets back to Amanda’s original point:

[Eldridge] also makes some good points about the Pill and other contraceptive methods being highly profitable for pharmaceutical companies, and those companies sometimes sometimes covering up or downplaying negative side effects.

I can’t help wondering, considering that many formulations of the Pill have gone generic, exactly how profitable they really are for pharmaceutical companies.  To me, that smacks of the anti-science “Big Pharma is trying to KILL YOU!” paranoia that surrounds a lot of the anti-vaccine talk.

Yes, I’m sure that Big Pharma is busily pushing doctors to prescribe things that are still under patent because that’s what they do, but I doubt that there are too many reps out there demanding that doctors write more prescriptions for things like Ortho-Tricyclen that have been generic for years.

The proselytizing about it is annoying as fuck. If you have to sell something that hard, don’t be surprised if people think you’re pushing snake oil.

Christ, yes.  THIS.

I do not give a deep-fried, flying, sugar-coated fuck about how anyone else handles their periods/birth control methods, and I hold that the way I handle mine are nobody’s business but mine.  If I want advice/suggestions, I’ll ask.  Badgering me unbidden about the One True Way of anything is only likely to get you told to STFU.

The Opoponax, I guess it comes down to how much you spend in the first place.  I used to spend upwards of $60 a year on tampons (maybe I have an unusually heavy flow?) and my local hippie store carries the DivaCup for ~$30.  If I didn’t like it, yeah, I would have been down $30, but when I was going through tampons like it was my job, it seemed like a relatively small risk compared to what I would otherwise spend.  And while I do know people who have tried cups and don’t like them, they were in a small enough minority that I thought it seemed like a pretty good investment.

@ mamram, in general—

I guess I find any well-meaning instruction on How To Manage Your Personal Hygeine kind of condescending, considering I’m almost 30 years old and have been handling it just fine up to now.  If this were a blog for teenage girls, or if it were being phrased more like “I do this and it works great for me”, that would be one thing.  But I think on a blog like this, we should all assume that everyone has what they need to manage their own deal in a way that works for them.

Incredibly condescending, don’t you think, to insinuate that those of us who like the pill are scared, disempowered, and ignorant?

Wow, way to TOTALLY misinterpret what I said. Saying one method is empowering is not the same as saying another is disempowering, and I don’t know where you are getting this “scared” crap.  The only time I mentioned being scared was when I said that I was scared when I WASN’T using the pill because I didn’t know how to know when I was fertile or not and I would go months without a period.  Regarding ignorance, I did not say that people who use other methods are ignorant.  I was merely acknowledging the sad state of sex education in this country and sharing my own experience with it.  I do not think that I am unique, I think that most women who have not looked in to this method or who are not currently trying to conceive have not learned how to check if they are fertile or not.  BTW I may or may not use the Pill again after I have my baby (planned).  I’m certainly not biased against it like you are against fertility awareness for some reason I do not understand. 

rebelliousjezebel, consider as well that one aspect of “family planning” is knowing when you can get pregnant so that you may get pregnant if that is what you want.  While much effort is expended avoiding pregnancy, and fertility awareness is only sort of good for that, it would be good for women who want a pregnancy to know and be aware of when they are fertile.  I have had lesbian friends chart their cycles for a couple of months before attempting artificial insemination, so their caregivers would have some idea when to book them in to verify ovulation and inseminate.

Yeah I didn’t mention that but that was actually the reason I started looking in to it.  Since I had so many issues with irregular, long cycles it was particularly helpful for me to be able to pinpoint the fertile window and confirm that yes I do ovulate, just not very often.  Which is why I think it’s just not true that it only works for women with regular cycles.  It’s even more beneficial for women with irregular cycles because it’s basically impossible for us to use a calendar method.

@mamram #102 -

OK, so great, the cup works for you.  Please don’t paint it as a solution for everyone (see my above comment, #103).

I did the math on my own like a big girl, and have not yet been able to justify the expense.  Especially since I’m on the ring for birth control, and there are really only so many bits of plastic I can carry around in my vagina at one time without feeling like a sideshow freak.

There’s a reason why science fiction written by women often includes little details like wide availability of temporary sterilization and/or turning off one’s menstrual cycle—it’s like a female-specific version of the transporter beam.

Well, to be fair not just women.  Whatever other writing sins he’s had, David Weber does address the issue in some of the books in the Honor Harrington series.  There’s an offhand remark in one about all on-duty personnel receiving contraceptives (I forget at the moment whether it was implants or oral contraception) as a routine since, in mixed-sex military forces, they aren’t stupid enough to believe that sex won’t happen amongst crews who are often isolated for months at a time.  The book set on the prison planet Hell also has mention of the fact that, since the prisoners are also gender-mixed, that the staff mixes contraceptives in the the food they provide (humans can’t survive on the native life and thus avoid the treatments).

Other than that, yeah.  Most SF and fantasy doesn’t touch the issue at all.

Since I had so many issues with irregular, long cycles it was particularly helpful for me to be able to pinpoint the fertile window and confirm that yes I do ovulate, just not very often.  Which is why I think it’s just not true that it only works for women with regular cycles.

It only works as birth control for women with regular cycles.  When you move from the realm of trying to prevent a pregnancy into trying to get pregnant, you’re dealing with a whole other set of issues that, frankly, don’t require nearly the same level of precision.

Okay, just my experiences here, but I had reactions to mood, attention span and ability to stay awake(basically the same as being 3-4 mo pregnant minus the morning sickness) on the pill, minor before kid 1, a bit more troubling after kid 1, life impacting after kid 2.  15 years later, the dep shot knocked me on my ass for 3 damn months, left me spotting intermittantly without any warning, resulted in headaches and extreme mood swings, minor weight gain, morning sickness,various other unpleasantries.  Not a fucking plecibo effect, thank you very much.
I use applicator-less (spec OBs). My daughter would like two as they take up less space in a pocket or bag, but has trouble inserting them.  As I occationally do field work with no bathroom facilities with running water, no, a cup would not make my life easier, by any means.  And how would cloth pads be better for leaks, smells, etc than standard pads?  Really, why would our great grandmothers have been so thrilled not to have to deal with them any more if they were so great?

“Preying mantis, I have found that OB tampons tend to be twice the price of other brands.”

Yikes.  They were always one of the cheaper brands when I was still buying them.  Though maybe this area’s just getting completely hosed on Tampax and Kotex.

From an outsider’s perspective, Cup : menstrual products :: Mac : computers.

I hate these discussions that devolve into defensive words about the “best” type of birth control or menstrual products. I think it happens because lady bits are still considered icky by the larger society, so it’s hard to find neutral discussions. In an ideal world, there would be a ton of places where you could find neutral discussion of birth control options. In real life, however, it’s hard to find because so many sources of information have some sort of bias, acknowledged or not. (Of course there are some good sources, but if you want detailed information, you have to wade through a lot of crap.)

We have to cut out the one-size fits all mentality. Different choices for different women in different circumstances. Personally, I used hormonal methods through my 20s, and that worked great for that phase of my life. I used FAM through most of my 30s, and that was easy and effective. Either might have been totally wrong for women in other circumstances or with different physical issues. In fact, they both would have been wrong for me if the time frames had been switched.

Now, the boyfriend has a vasectomy, and I have the luxury of having an active sex life and not having to worry about birth control at all. There are some great advantages to getting old.

“Really, why would our great grandmothers have been so thrilled not to have to deal with them any more if they were so great? “

Not having washing machines is one reason that springs immediately to mind.  I imagine modern washers and water heaters have made cloth pads less of a pain in much the same way they’ve made cloth diapers less of a pain.

It only works as birth control for women with regular cycles.  When you move from the realm of trying to prevent a pregnancy into trying to get pregnant, you’re dealing with a whole other set of issues that, frankly, don’t require nearly the same level of precision.

Here’s the thing, though.  The methods you use to calculate your fertile days are not based on any kind of calendar method.  They are based on the signs you are exhibiting right now.  The author, at least of TCOYF, does not advocate counting days based on past cycles because even regular women have fluctuations from time to time.  Paying attention to the signs is much more reliable.  That’s the difference between fertility awareness and the rhythm method, and yes it’s annoying to constantly have fertility awareness dismissed as the same as the rhythm method and totally ineffective. So in that case, it really doesn’t matter whether it happens within the same range of dates every month or a less common window.  If you have long cycles, you have an even smaller fertile window to avoid, so it’s actually easier assuming that you keep up with it.  I did use this method with condoms for a year before we were ready to start trying for a baby.  Again, I can understand why many people would not want to do this as their method of birth control, but it does annoy me when it is completely dismissed based on false information.

The Opoponax,
You asked, “Since when is the menstrual cup free?” I was just explaining that my “female tax” remark wasn’t made forgetting that the cup costs money too.  I have no idea if it would be a good investment for you, and I never said that it would be.  I thought it was plainly clear that I was talking about my personal experience.

Maybe I have been mistaken, but I didn’t think this was a conversation about the merits of the cup itself.  I have not been trying to paint the cup as a solution to anything.  The only thing I have been trying to say in this conversation is: I sometimes share information about my preferred method of dealing with menstruation with people that I think would find that information useful, just like I generally share information about my experiences with people with whom I have an information-sharing type relationship, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

“I have nothing against IUDs, but once again, I’m impressed that something that’s more painful is automatically considered better. “

They really should be promoted more, though, and various organizations (like Medical Students for Choice) have been attempting to do so.

They ARE actually more effective, because they won’t fail due to interaction with other medications or inconsistent use.  And Mirena’s especially great - no systemic hormonal effects and, for many people, zero menstruation for years.  It’s been worth the pain of insertion many times over for me.

Prohibitive costs and physician ignorance/refusal to insert them into nulliparous women, however, are very valid concerns, which the medical community definitely needs to address.

Incredibly condescending, don’t you think, to insinuate that those of us who like the pill are scared, disempowered, and ignorant?

Yah…

Post-menopausal here…but I’d like to point out that back in the day, the “pill” virtually eliminated cramps, and reduced a heavy 5-6 day flow to a light 2-3 day flow.

One thing that kind of drives me crazy in these conversations is the assumption that A) your personal conditions are universal for everyone, or B) your personal conditions are the worstest ones ever, and everyone else should do what you do in sympathy for your heavy flow, bad cramps, unfortunate side effects, or whatever.

I have a fantastically light period (to the point that, now that I’m on hormonal birth control, it only lasts a couple days).  I have my share of menstrual symptoms, but nothing crippling.  My hormonal birth control causes certain side effects, but nothing catastrophic.  And you know what?  I refuse to apologize for any of that. 

I’m happy that those of use who do not have things so easy with periods and birth control and hormonal crap have found solutions that work for them.  And for those of us who can’t say that about themselves yet, I hope things improve.  But your heavy flow or bad pill side effect doesn’t have any impact on the choices I make about my own body.  Period.  Heh.

Yes, I’m sure that Big Pharma is busily pushing doctors to prescribe things that are still under patent because that’s what they do, but I doubt that there are too many reps out there demanding that doctors write more prescriptions for things like Ortho-Tricyclen that have been generic for years.

On the question of whether Big Pharma is evil, I have no firm opinion, but it does make good business sense for this industry to flog the pill even though a lot of what’s on offer is generic, as Mnemosyne says.  Women on the pill are supposed to get an annual checkup, which brings them into doctors’ offices, which helps sell more drugs for other conditions.  They’re also a nice market for any new! shiny! improved! BCP or other Big Pharma invention that comes along.

The Opo—that’s exactly what bothers me about about a lot of pill availability discussions. Whenever we discuss how the anti-choicers are trying to limit access to birth control and abortion, we invariably get people who claim that they need the pill for their cramps / acne / bleeding.

In other words, “I’m a good girl! Give me my pills because in your rush to punish the Those Sluts, you’re also punishing good girls like me!”

As far as I’m concerned, whenever someone gives you shit about being on the pill, your response should be something along the line of how it frees you up to be in that polyamorous bisexual BDSM society.

Same thing with abortion. We shouldn’t encourage exceptionalism. There shouldn’t be any sort of “abortion should be legal because I nearly went blind when I had my baby” conversations. Abortion should be legal because women should be able to control when and if they have children.

Whatever other writing sins he’s had, David Weber does address the issue in some of the books in the Honor Harrington series.  There’s an offhand remark in one about all on-duty personnel receiving contraceptives (I forget at the moment whether it was implants or oral contraception) as a routine since, in mixed-sex military forces, they aren’t stupid enough to believe that sex won’t happen amongst crews who are often isolated for months at a time.

That wasn’t an offhand remark.  Weber needed an excuse for the main character to have an unexpected pregnancy, which was rather difficult given that she was a conscientious military officer in a biotech advanced society.  So he retconned the mandatory military contraception, a computer error, and her convenient lapse of memory.  And the proof of this is…

The book set on the prison planet Hell also has mention of the fact that, since the prisoners are also gender-mixed, that the staff mixes contraceptives in the the food they provide (humans can’t survive on the native life and thus avoid the treatments).

If the military had mandatory contraception, why would they need to put it in food?  Ansd if they had civilian personnell that they needed to keep sterile, it would be cheaper and more reliable to give them military-style contraception.

I maintain the thesis that Harrington, an obvious Hornblower tribute, started off as essentially neuter and functionally a traditional male, and making her an actual woman involved awkwardly shoehorning in a back story.

Women on the pill are supposed to get an annual checkup, which brings them into doctors’ offices, which helps sell more drugs for other conditions.

All women are supposed to get an annual checkup to be screened for cervical cancer even if they’re not on the Pill.  Or is a Pap smear just another plot by Big Pharma to force women to buy their products?

By your lights, no one should ever get a health checkup because Big Pharma may have influenced their doctor to prescribe a drug that they may not need.  I guess diabetics should avoid annual checkups just in case their doctor decides to switch their medication to what the drug rep told them is the latest-and-greatest.

thought it was plainly clear that I was talking about my personal experience.

You declared that pads and tampons were a tax on femaleness.

As if menstrual cups grew on trees or something.

Keith M., it’s implants if I remember correctly.  And Ringo, whose latest few books have a boatload of issues in how they portray women (especially the honorary-man trope), has used both implants and nanotech birth control, and I believe the later was for both sexes (though I may have misread or misremember as it was only in one trilogy).

The Opo—how about this: The menstrual cup is a one-time fee, whereas pads and tampons are an ongoing tax.

Women on the pill are supposed to get an annual checkup, which brings them into doctors’ offices, which helps sell more drugs for other conditions.

What Mnemo said.  Also, I’m on the ring, see my GYN regularly, and do not find this to be accurate.  The only prescription drug I’m on is the nuvaring.  My doctor has never pushed anything else on me, and in fact going on the still-under-patent nuvaring was my idea.

Yeah, I made a big mistake in referring to the cycle-tracking stuff I do as “rhythm method” up there. I blame being old and growing up Catholic, although I’m a long-term unrepentant atheist now. I guess I just get touchy because a) I really, really wish I COULD take the pill, and b) I hate being lumped in with sex-hating godbags, since abstention is not in any way a part of our birth control method. For one thing, there are plenty of people who don’t, in fact, require p-in-v to consider what they’re doing ‘real sex,” and for another, well, condoms work for us.

I really fucking hate not being able to take the pill, because I would JOYFULLY do so if I could.

And Ringo, whose latest few books have a boatload of issues in how they portray women (especially the honorary-man trope), has used both implants and nanotech birth control, and I believe the later was for both sexes (though I may have misread or misremember as it was only in one trilogy).

OH JOHN RINGO NO!

For Ringo’s action thrillers, a “boatload” is putting it mildly, unless the boat under discussion is a supertanker whose holds are packed with teenaged prostitutes.

The Opoponax,
I agree, assumptions A and B are completely unhelpful.  But the assumption that my personal conditions aren’t unique is a pretty safe one to make.  If your personal conditions are nothing like mine, then what I say would obviously have little or no value to you.  But if somebody’s conditions ARE like mine, then it is possible that the things that help me will also help them, and if I know that they are the kind of person who wouldn’t mind unsolicited advice, I will probably give it.  I am the same way with my BC pills, now that I have found a brand that doesn’t cause unpleasant side effects for me.  You seem to be taking everything that I say to mean, “you should do what I do,” when all I am trying to say is, “here is some information about my situation which is probably not unique.”  If I say to somebody, “brand X really killed my sex drive, but brand Y has been great for me,” it is not because I think it is my job to tell them what brand of BC to use.  It’s because I think they might benefit from knowing what my experience with the same problem was like.

rebelliousjezebel, sperm can live in the vagina up to 72 hours waiting for an egg to show up.  Is it your contention that with FAM you always know more than 72 hours in advance when you are going to ovulate?  If not, then it’s not quite as useful a method of birth control as you are saying it is.  I think it’s probably it’s exactly what it’s advertised as:  fertility awareness, not fertility control.

I’m sure there are some people that FAM works great for, especially people who have very sensitive systems that can’t tolerate hormonal methods or barrier methods.  That doesn’t mean that women who choose not to use it are lazy people who are afraid of touching their mucus.  It means that other methods work better for them.

The menstrual cup is a one-time fee, whereas pads and tampons are an ongoing tax.

Well, sure, but that wasn’t really what I got from her original comment.  Also, again, depending on the individual, the price may not be that different.  With the rate I lose small objects, it would be unrealistic for me to amortize that $40 over 10 years.

Ugh, I wasn’t going to read the article but had to (and I blame Blume for it):

Eldridge saying that some women would be better off not on the pill /= her telling you to get off the pill, you stupid woman.

Except that’s not what Eldridge is saying. This is what she’s saying:

It’s hard for anyone to be critical of the Pill, even if you’ve been studying this drug for years. (this statement alone should disqualify this person from being taken seriously. The Pill isn’t an idol and nobody worships at its altar!)... but fortunately for you silly women The.One.True.Pill.Critic is here to save you from yourselves and the big, bad physicians and Pharma with such “evidence” as:

- ...when new methods have gone wrong - look at the Dalkon Shield, Norplant and now, perhaps, Yaz.

- ...[women] feel from experience the pharmaceutical company is probably concealing side effects and even dangers.

- We can be confident that all these chemicals taken together can cause cancer….

- ...until we can prove that ethinyl estradiol is an important problem pharmaceutical companies are going to deny it.

- Women are used to hearing denials - we tell our doctor that we got depressed on the Pill and we are told there’s no evidence for that.

It’s true that some women would be better off not on the pill. This is why you present them with the advantages and disadvantages of the currently available methods, you discuss their particular life situation and medical history, and you assist them in making their decision on which method would be most beneficial for them to use. Really, it’s that simple and routine, no condescension, Pill-worshiping, fuzzy feelings, or conspiracy talk required.

But the assumption that my personal conditions aren’t unique is a pretty safe one to make.

Actually, it’s not.

Especially in this context. 

If you were chatting one on one with a girlfriend, and she complained that she’s spending $50 on pads every month because her period is so heavy, sure, mention that you had that issue and the cup really saved you a lot of money. 

But this is the internet.  We’re having a conversation that is only tangentially related to the menstrual cup, and which is absolutely UN-related to your goal of selling us on the menstrual cup as the best solution for everyone.  So it comes off as vaguely condescending when you start hurling around things like “tampons and pads are a tax on femaleness”. 

This isn’t a fucking tupperware party, though, OK?  Save it for Ron Popeil.

“You declared that pads and tampons were a tax on femaleness.

As if menstrual cups grew on trees or something.”

And then I thought I clarified:  Many women, like me for example, spend a lot of money on pads and tampons.  I jokingly referred to this as a tax on being female.  Using a menstrual cup can help some of those women save almost all of that money.  I never said this was the case for you, you assumed that part yourself.

PiaToR @ 120:
I thought the bc in the foodstuffs on Hell was because of the mixed origin of the prisoners who were not all from the same waring factions within Haven’s sphere or outer cultures with which they were in conflict.

A metacomment:  I think one of the reasons these threads devolve so quickly is that most of us who comment here are close to 30, if not older.  That means that we’ve already been through a lot of trial-and-error to figure out what method(s) work best for us at which times.

It’s one thing to present to a high school or college student the entire spectrum of choices that they have, from the Pill to FAM.  It’s another to essentially tell a woman in her 30s (or, in my case, 40s) that she’s an idiot who clearly didn’t bother to look at any of the alternatives if she went with some formulation of the Pill.

Up-front, I’ve been a pill-user since a teen, and I love love love it.  I’m looking at trying to conceive in the near future, and a little nervous about stopping the pill, especially for the period-lightening and seizure-suppressing side-effects it has on me. 

I don’t get all the hate on docs who don’t want to do IUDs for women of particular circumstances.  If my doctor honestly thinks she’ll fuck up my health/life if she gives me an IUD*, I want her to say no. 

*Doctors are sometimes wrong, sure.  But I don’t want them going against their better judgment to just give me what I want.

Gracchus @ 127:
I have been told I am prone to understatement at times; yes, that was one of them.  It is amazing what one can read when trapped on planes and in hotels where the only bookstore in town is a Christianist one.  Co-work gave me the “March to ...” seriies.

That’s co-worker. Damn.

By your lights, no one should ever get a health checkup because Big Pharma may have influenced their doctor to prescribe a drug that they may not need.

I’m puzzled by the hostile reading of what I wrote.  Of course pap smears bring patients into the office, and there’s nothing wrong with going to the doctor for checkups.  I do it myself.  I’m just pointing out that drug manufacturers have a stake in the custom.

My hormones have always been a roller coaster.  I have acne breakouts and, more importantly, severe breast pain at certain times of the month, which, considering my family history of breast cancer, has really freaked me out at times.  Actual cancer (assuming it’s not inflammatory) likely wouldn’t cause breast pain, but it still feeds my nascent hypochondria.  The pill evens out my hormones, and no one’s taking that away from me, thank you very much.

s it your contention that with FAM you always know more than 72 hours in advance when you are going to ovulate?

Mnemosyne, FAM has measures built in that do allow you to take precautions (i.e., using condoms or some other barrier method or abstaining from p.i.v. sex) for the appropriate amount of time before you ovulate. It doesn’t try to predict the exact day you will ovulate (like counting methods do), but rather blocks out the time in your cycle when you *could* get pregnant. Using actual physical signs, rather than counting days, so that if things are different from month to month, the method remains accurate.

The method does acknowledge that yes, the only way to be absolutely for sure-sure you won’t get pregnant is to wait until after you ovulate to go barrier-free. You can practice FAM with varying degrees of caution. But with close observation, it is possible to learn how long before ovulation you can have barrier-free sex without getting into a danger zone.

Whenever anyone asks me what male privilege is, I’m going to just point them to one of these contraception/menstruation threads and point out that no man has ever been expected to monitor his “mucus level,” or scolded that he must not love his body if he doesn’t want to stick fingers and thermometers up his nether orifices on a regular basis.  The sheer amount of effort women are expected to expend on constant body upkeep is mind-boggling.

And no, I don’t find any of this pain-in-the-ass shit “empowering.”

Next question: your trip is extended - either by intention, or not.  Did you bring enough?  Really?  Did they disappear from your luggage (yes, this DOES happen)?

You must live in a predictable world.  How nice for you.  Of course you would like all of us to acknowledge that you do because you are the master of it and can plan your business trips around menstration, and delays in travel, etc.  How wonderful.

Okay, you got me.  Next time I visit a remote third-world country that hasn’t gotten new menstrual supplies since Judy Blume wrote Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, I’m forced to stay there an entire extra month, the bellhop steals my half package of pads, and for some reason I can’t just use whatever the hell other women in that country use, I will sit in a pool of my own blood and weep with regret that I was so blinded by my doesn’t-expect-to-be-stranded-in-Bolivia-on-a-regular-basis privilege that I forgot to pack a Diva Cup.

“But this is the internet.  We’re having a conversation that is only tangentially related to the menstrual cup, and which is absolutely UN-related to your goal of selling us on the menstrual cup as the best solution for everyone.”

My initial comment was a direct response to the original post’s claim that people who promote menstrual cups do so out of some “need to make sexuality painful or unpleasant.”  I don’t know if you missed that, but it was part of the original post.  The closest I have come to trying to sell anyone on anything has just been a response to the claim that menstrual cups make menstruation more painful or unpleasant.  That’s all.  Do you think that responding to that point is off limits because somebody might misinterpret it as my telling them what to do?  Then would I be right in interpreting ~20% of the above posts as telling me what to do, instead of simply repsonding to the claim that HBC is always unpleasant for everybody?

Clearly I made a mistake when I jokingly used “proselytizing” and “tax on being female,” and if that is what you found condescending, I apologize.

f it were being phrased more like “I do this and it works great for me”

This is the only way I ever see it discussed so I don’t know where people are running into rabid and condescending cup or cloth users. I mean, I believe you’re running into them, it’s just completely outside my experience.

And to bring some levity to this serious thread: “Rythm method” for me conjures up images of thinking you can’t get pregnant if you’re dating a drummer.

The sheer amount of effort women are expected to expend on constant body upkeep is mind-boggling.

Not only that (see my #2 above @27), but it’s extra proof of female inferiority.  To be a man is to transcend the physical.  To soar above.  Meanwhile, the lower orders poke about their torsos and mop up their effusions.

“rebelliousjezebel, sperm can live in the vagina up to 72 hours waiting for an egg to show up.  Is it your contention that with FAM you always know more than 72 hours in advance when you are going to ovulate?  If not, then it’s not quite as useful a method of birth control as you are saying it is.  I think it’s probably it’s exactly what it’s advertised as:  fertility awareness, not fertility control.”

In my case, yes, I knew 72 hours in advance when I was going to ovulate. The changes in mucus, for me, are quite obvious, and I got to the point where I barely bothered with tracking my temperature because the other signs were clear enough. That’s why FAM was a good option FOR ME at that point in my life.

It’s certainly not the answer for everyone, but it is a reasonable and effective approach for women in certain situations. It requires things like a willingness and ability to spend time tracking your cycles and a partner willing to work with you by using barrier methods and/or engaging other sexual activities while fertile.

This whole thread would be a lot more pleasant if people would ask these questions without make snide assumptions.

Again, I agree with Kristen.  Maybe the reason that I am kind of lost here is that the only conversations about menstrual cups I ever have, with the exception of this one, are in person and of the “here’s what I do and my problems,” “oh, here’s what works for me,” variety.  They are basically exactly like the conversations I have had about different methods of contraception.

Mamram, I want to apologize.  This thread has been moving really quickly, and I’m at work only sporadically able to pay attention to it.  I feel like I’ve been less than fair to you because of that.

This is the only way I ever see it discussed so I don’t know where people are running into rabid and condescending cup or cloth users.

Because the trajectory, to me, usually looks more like this:

“I use a Menstrual Cup, and I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

“Oh, OK.  Well I’ve looked into it before and decided it didn’t look as good as what I’m already doing.”

“But MY CRAMPS!!!  And MY FLOW!!!!  And BUSINESS TRIPS!!!! Menstrual Cups really are the bestest way, I promise!  But you can just go ahead and keep paying your Lady Tax like the sheeple you are if that’s what you really want…”

Maybe these conversations flow better IRL because we can respond to each other in more nuanced ways, or we can see better how one response follows another?  But on the internet they inevitably read like If You Don’t Do My Chosen Form Of Personal Hygeine, You Are An Un-Empowerful Dupe!”

Opo, I really think you’re being unfair to mamram. She’s not pushing anything on anybody, and you aren’t the Thread Police officer in charge of Appropriate Areas of Discussion. (unless Amanda decides you are, I suppose).

Before today, I was not aware that discussions on different choices about handling BC/menstruation could be just as full of accusations and outrage and straw-women as discussions on childrearing. Hey, color me educated. (though you guys STILL have nothing on threads about how to deal with babies who won’t sleep.)

Anyway, I’m pretty sure none of the women here think that there’s any reason to hate on hormonal birth control or tampons for anyone who wants to use them. I certainly haven’t seen anyone call anyone else here an evil polluter or idiot for using those things, just some people talking about various reasons why they can’t/don’t. So why all the friction?

This is a bizarre comment thread. I’m not really clear where all the animosity is coming from.

Because really, the truth is that every form of birth control out there sucks hardcore for some people. There are issues with cost, availability, allergies, comfort, effectiveness, side effects… the list of problems go on and on and vary wildly from person to person. I don’t see how any non-asshole can demonize one form or champion another for the general population. THEY ALL HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS.

Maybe some of you have never had a birth control-related headache, but I’m guessing most have in one form or another. For some people it can be a bit of a journey to figure out what works best/sucks least, and we should, you know, support them so they can have a happy life free of unwanted pregnancies. But it’s fucking impossible to do that when the whole subject is tainted with dirty lady sex, so the Rite-Aid cashier might give you dirty looks, the pharmacist might not fill your prescription, your doctor might not offer an IUD or requested sterilization, ‘natural’-types might be sad about the chemicals, etc, etc. The constant headwind certainly prevents a lot of women from knowing very much about their reproductive systems, except for periods maybe, since they tend to happen even if they remain a taboo subject.

(I love my Paragard IUD. It’s fanfuckingtastic for me. Getting it inserted was uncomfortable and I had little “micro-cramps” for a couple of months, but my periods are no different than they are naturally. I wish it was the same for everyone, especially the part where my insurance paid for it 2 years ago and I still don’t have to pay for birth control now that my insurance is gone. Also it’s the #1 most lazy option!)

Wow, way to TOTALLY misinterpret what I said. Saying one method is empowering is not the same as saying another is disempowering, and I don’t know where you are getting this “scared” crap. 

Sorry, but the insinuation that women don’t like FAM because they don’t want to get down and dirty learning about their bodies is indeed suggesting we’re scared.  I know a lot about female physiology!  I don’t really need to run a higher risk of pregnancy in order to get in touch with my body.  It’s just a weird, condescending argument to pull out irrelevant issues like “empowerment”.  Most people’s main concerns about contraception are a) is it safe and b) is it effective.  Not, is it putting me in touch with my cycles or empowering me.

I can’t help wondering, considering that many formulations of the Pill have gone generic, exactly how profitable they really are for pharmaceutical companies.  To me, that smacks of the anti-science “Big Pharma is trying to KILL YOU!” paranoia that surrounds a lot of the anti-vaccine talk.

Well, generics manufacturers are still part of Big Pharma.  Both brand name and generic make a killing off birth control pills.  They’re cheap, the research is by and large done, a lot of the research is outsourced, and women have to pay for them every month. 

For me, the problem is the knee-jerk assumption that if someone profits off something, that means it’s bad.  It’s a fallacy that’s close to the ad hominem.  It’s also intellectually incoherent.  Most people who argue profits are automatically suspect then turn around and support industries that are just as capitalist. For instance, a lot of people who oppose Big Pharma turn around and give money to companies who make herbal drugs and useless supplements.  Not only are the people who sell that shit just as capitalist as Big Pharma, in a lot of cases, these “alternative” medicines are also being sold to you by Big Pharma, though they stamp a different name on the bottle to fool you.

I’m not even really against FAM, by the way.  I know women it worked for.  But, not to be TMI, there are differences in how you conduct the actual sex you’re having to make it work, and I simply won’t do that.  And I’m not going to apologize for wanting my sexual interests to stay the way they are.

Because the trajectory, to me, usually looks more like this:

“I use a Menstrual Cup, and I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

“Oh, OK.  Well I’ve looked into it before and decided it didn’t look as good as what I’m already doing.”

Whereas I often see a trajectory like this:

“I use cloth pads and I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

“No THANKS. I want to be hygienic. Washing used pads is disgusting. You can’t use them when you’re out unless you want vagina blood trickling around in your purse. My boyfriend/husband shouldn’t have to see those things in the wash. They stink. It’ll warp my children if they see my dirty pads soaking. And why would women a generation ago have wanted disposable pads if using cloth ones didn’t suck, anyway?”

For me, the problem is the knee-jerk assumption that if someone profits off something, that means it’s bad.

It’s a socialism of fools.

If a cartel was to take over food production and coerce us to pay ridiculous prices for food so they could make obscene profit, would it follow food is bad? No. Profit is bad. Not the medicine that is so vital to us that a cartel created itself to strangle off access. What does providing fake medicine as an alternative accomplish, except allow the continuation of a fucked up capitalist system?

Years ago I used to work at what was then a major parenting website in the Pre-Pregnancy Community, and as the head of the chat part of the site.Essentially I helped organize the message boards and chats relating to the women who were actively trying to become pregnant. One privilege I had while working there was hosting the chats with guest experts, one of whom was Toni Weschler, author of TTOYF.  Some of the women took her book as practically a bible in their efforts to become pregnant, and because of it condemned any woman who didn’t follow everything in the book as “ignorant” of their own bodies, so on and so forth.

I received a copy of the book gratis as preparation for hosting the chat, and I genuinely was impressed by the amount of knowledge one can gain about their bodies, and I do think much more attention should be given to helping young women become more aware of their own cycles and reproductive systems. HOWEVER- this being the caveat- the mechanisms for using Fertility Awareness are time consuming, require a great deal of dedication, and don’t work for everyone. It is much better suited (imo) for women attempting conception. If it works for people, more power to you. There just really is this subset among the True Believers that women who don’t follow their path really must hate their bodies and willfully choose methods that keep them ignorant of their Inner Workings. For the average woman, having the information to understand themselves available is a positive thing, but most will inevitably choose a birth control method that is easier and requires less energy, and in the long run for the bulk of women, more effective.

hp @137: For sure.  I’m not dissing the IUD.  I’ve seriously considered it, because it’s such a great method, it really is.  But I’m unconvinced that it’s so great that we should just yank the pill off the market.  Or that I even should switch.  Part of it is that I’m lazy, part of it is that I’m miserably squeamish and it would be hard to psychologically handle an IUD (a personal failing of mine for sure), and part of it has to do with reasons that are a tad TMI for sharing here.

I think IUDs should be marketed more, and doctors are a bit irrational about them, to be clear. Because they’re super great for a lot of women.  But I draw the line at suggesting that this means that women on the pill don’t know any better.

The Opoponax, no worries.  I am clearly ignorant of a very obnoxious side of the pro-menstrual cup world.

On the glamorizing of European use and knowledge of menstrual cups and non-bleached tampons: I’m from Spain and from what I see at supermarkets and pharmacies and what my friends use: tampons with applicator.  Tampons without applicator are available but, for the quantities supermarkets carry on they shelves, I don’t think they sell well.  Menstrual cup is still a super-feminist super-green thing, and very unknown, and I have never seen non-bleached tampons in any kind of store.  Spain does not represent the rest of european countries, though, but I’d say it might be the same for Italy and Greece and part of Eastern Europe.

kristin, characterizing people who don’t want to use cloth pads as prudish or childish is exactly why we get so fed up with this discussion.

Also, again, depending on the individual, the price may not be that different.  With the rate I lose small objects, it would be unrealistic for me to amortize that $40 over 10 years.

.... I don’t know that this is going to be the case for the cup. Unlike, say, a pen, or a cellphone, the cup has a very limited # of places it could be: It could be in your bathroom (where you will insert/remove/wash it), or it could be in your vagina. I don’t find myself carrying my cup around room-to-room with me while I’m tidying it up and leaving it on an end table and forgetting where I left it.

There are a *lot* of reasons to use a cup, and I think some arguments are weaker than others. Frankly, even if you’re using plastic applicators, I don’t see that as somehow more environmentally important to weed out than tossing out empty bottles of Dasani to go join garbage island. If you’re using cardboard applicators, it doesn’t even register. And there are reasons to not use the cup and stick to tampons. And if I’m talking to someone about something that I feel could save them a fair bit of money over the years, could give them greater freedom and flexibility during their periods (more time to twirl and dance), then I’m going to get defensive if their reasons amount to me being a disgusting person because Ew Ick.

The cup has a really stupid reputation. When I first heard about it I was literally reading obnoxious Salon Lifestyle Section quips about harnessing goddess power and fertilizing your plants with your menses and using your period blood in your paintings (I’m serious). I think a lot of us cup users feel that we’re unfairly stigmatized as a bunch of menses-worshippers, and so we go out of our way to dispel that conception and point out that the improvement to our lives has been tangible.

persek, I shouldn’t have generalized to all Europe.  But a lot of nations don’t really do the applicator thing—-France, England, and Holland is where I’ve been, and non-applicator ones dominated.  I’ve seen some attempts to research this, and the general gist seems to be the more conservative a country, the more taboo there is about women touching their own vaginas, and the more likely it is that tampons will have applicators or be considered wrong somehow. 

Which is why it’s so weird in the U.S. that only OB is non-applicator.  I don’t think there’s an especially strong prejudice in the U.S. against women touching their own vaginas.  But Ms Kate said that it was a patent issue, and that makes sense to me.  I just really hate paying a couple more dollars for OB, but I love non-applicator tampons because they are so fucking discreet.  If you need to change a tampon and you’re in public, you don’t need to take your whole purse to the bathroom.  You can just quietly slip an OB into your pocket.  They also take up less shelf space and less space in your suitcase when you travel to the non-exotic places I end up, like Boston or something.

Mighty @164 has a pro-cup argument that actually doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out.  Well done!  You made me think about it.  I still can see myself spilling blood all over the bathroom, though.  I can barely manage a tampon, I’m so clumsy.

In my experience, as an American expat who’s been living in the UK for well over a decade, the non-applicator tampons are much more readily available, and cheaper than the applicator kind.

Amanda: When I realized that I couldn’t stay on the pill, I tried convincing my gyns to give me an IUD. I might as well have been asking them to perform a full hysterectomy so that I could mail my uterus off to the Taliban so that they could create some sort of new lethal biogenic weapon from it.

I actually had an easier time convincing them to sterilize me than to put in an IUD.  If you don’t already have kids, Doctors will pretty much dismiss the idea out-of-hand.

I think that general knowledge about the IUD pretty much begins and ends with the Dalkon Shield. When I was talking to my mom about IUDs, all she could contribute to it was “DON’T!” When we learned about IUD’s in health class, the take-home was something along the lines of “It will rip your uterus out, and that’s why they aren’t used anymore.” The only reason that I was in any way willing to give it a second look was because so many feminist sites out there were talking about how effective and good the new models are. But just like everyone in the online feminist community has heard of the menstrual cup whereas most people outside of it haven’t, I think most people outside of the feminist community really have NO IDEA that the IUD is now a safe and effective means of B.C.

Maybe times are changing, but I suspect that a lot of OB/Gyns are either old enough to remember the Dalkon Shield or they were taught by people who remembered the Dalkon Shield.

So I guess what I’m getting at is, don’t stress about being squeamish about an IUD. A doctor probably wouldn’t give you one anyway.

I would just like to note that when I bought a diva cup, it came with a year long money back guarantee, so if I tried it and didn’t like it, it would have cost me nothing.

Mighty Ponygirl, whether or not your doctor will give you an IUD or not totally depends on your specific doctor. I’ve participated in a women’s health forum online for years (vagina pagina @ livejournal, which I highly recommend) and some women in the US can’t get them, but for others it’s no big deal. Personally, I would rather find a doctor that already performs IUD insertions regularly than try to convince my doctor, because the ones with lots of practice are better at it.

One additional thing about copper IUDs that hasn’t been mentioned here is that many people believe that it kills fertilized eggs. Yeah, people think that about the pill too, but copper IUDs don’t have a mechanism for suppressing ovulation like the pill does. Does anyone remember the news story about the nurse that kept pulling out patients IUDs and acting like it was a mistake? That was the reason why. Honestly, I have no idea if that’s true or not because I don’t care what happens to my eggs fertilized or not, but I always mention it if I’m recommending it to a friend in case they do care. They can do the research and find out the chances that the egg and sperm will live long enough in a coppery uterus to fertilize.

I don’t know that this is going to be the case for the cup. Unlike, say, a pen, or a cellphone, the cup has a very limited # of places it could be: It could be in your bathroom (where you will insert/remove/wash it), or it could be in your vagina.

I’m more concerned that I would leave it behind somewhere, or forget to unpack it out of a suitcase, or it would fall into the abyss of my boyfriend’s revolting apartment.  Or I’d shove it into a drawer and it would magically cease to exist.  Not so much the absent minded “now where did I put my glasses?” sort of thing.  More like the way I wind up buying a new cell phone charger every time I go out of town.

Though lose-ability isn’t the only reason I haven’t converted yet.  It really just seems like a big upfront cost for something I might not like.  Especially since I buy maybe 2-3 boxes of tampons a year, which means it would take a lot of use to be competitive with the price of what I’m already doing.

It’s kind of like the reason I don’t own a car.  My bike cost under $200, and a month of unlimited public transit in NYC is like $80.  I’m sure there are great aspects to owning a car that I’m missing out on, but the way I get around my city already works for me and it unfortunately costs too much for me to spend the money just to see if maybe I’d like it better.

Also, yeah, I know it’s not practical for people to find and then switch to a doctor to get an IUD. They should all do it, but some people *are* lucky enough to have access in this country. I hear IUDs are no big deal in much of the rest of the world.

I would just like to note that when I bought a diva cup, it came with a year long money back guarantee, so if I tried it and didn’t like it, it would have cost me nothing.

Fair enough.  Do you mail it back to the manufacturer or what?

kristin, characterizing people who don’t want to use cloth pads as prudish or childish is exactly why we get so fed up with this discussion.

I’m not characterizing anyone as anything. Those are the exact things people have said about using cloth pads. Those are the responses I get the majority of the time.

I wonder if that’s regional, Mighty.  I have a lot of single, childless female friends with IUDs.  A surprising number, in fact.  I think their reputation is shifting rapidly, but obviously some doctors are way ahead of the curve.  I know at least one goes to a feminist provider who also offers midwifery services, so.

Amanda, I’m late getting back to your response. I agree that demonizing *any* birth control option is ridiculous. The ‘pills are bad’ crowd seem to be going on emotion rather than objective fact, and it’s right to call them out as you do.

Thank you for pointing out some of the hyperventilating going on in this area. The degree of emotion involved almost suggests some hidden sexual guilt/shame involved. It has that ‘my way is the only way, all you other people are wrong!’ feel that the fundies have about sex.

One additional thing about copper IUDs that hasn’t been mentioned here is that many people believe that it kills fertilized eggs.

I don’t think anyone in this discussion cares, which is probably why. According to Planned Parenthood, an IUD makes it hard for sperm to swim.  It’s a lot like the condom, then.  Works by keeping the sperm away. So any friends of yours worried about it shouldn’t.  Unless they believe that sperm are people. 

kristin, you characterized an unwillingness to do those things as somehow infantile.  I think it’s perfectly reasonable not to want to wash bloody cloths off in your sink.  I also think my strong desire not to have blood all over my vulva is perfectly reasonable, which is why I’m insanely hostile to pads of any sort.

Those are the exact things people have said about using cloth pads. Those are the responses I get the majority of the time.

The way I see it, though, the problem is that you’ve lumped together objections rooted in irrational judgment (“disgusting” “warp my children”) with objections rooted in, as Amanda put it, perfectly reasonable objections (“you can’t use them when you’re out”). The effect of this is basically to say: No objection to this device is acceptable, all are equally irrational.

Aside from which, people are entitled to their hangups. Some people don’t deal well with blood AT ALL, whether menstrual or not. Just like some people don’t like Kleenex, and other people are squicked out by handkerchiefs. Yes, it is a shame that *some* women have body issues thanks to sexual shaming in our culture. Scolding them about how childish that is probably isn’t going to cure them.

with objections rooted in, as Amanda put it, perfectly reasonable objections

ergh. “objections rooted in perfectly reasonable grounds”, sorry.

Both astroglide and K-Y are, aside from water, made up entirely of organic compounds, it’s totally organic. I bring this up on the note of us lefties occasionally obsessing with Natural.

It’s not so much the Natural as the No Preservatives.  I have extremely sensitive skin and preservatives make me break out.  When those preservatives get into my vajayjay and start irritating those extremely sensitive tissues, it is Not Fun.  And usually causes a lovely yeast infection to boot.

Astroglide and K-Y include the preservatives that cause nasty reactions for me.  The organic lube that I use doesn’t have those preservatives.  Therefore, it doesn’t cause nasty reactions.

I didn’t realize that you would fixate so much on the word “organic” that you would ignore what I actually said, which was that the other stuff causes skin irritation and that I know this because of experience.

Regarding regional resistance to IUDs: I wonder how much of it has to do with malpractice laws in various states. I admit I “doctor shopped” while trying to find a non-hormonal method of birth control and it seemed like a lot of resistance I was meeting with regards to IUD and sterilization were CYA things: doctors didn’t want me coming back to sue them later on.  This was…. 7 years ago. So obviously, things could be different now (Mirena seems to have a pretty good marketing plan).

I also ran into a bunch of flat-out sexist bullshit, which was an eye-opener for me because I thought that seeing female gyns would make them more receptive to my particular woes. But they were the ones telling me shit like “you should wait until you’re married” and “oh, you’ll change your mind.”

I don’t find myself carrying my cup around room-to-room with me while I’m tidying it up and leaving it on an end table and forgetting where I left it.

Clearly you are not me, because that’s exactly the kind of thing I would end up doing if I had one.  But I’m the kind of person who takes the TV remote into the bathroom and then can’t remember where I left it, so it has more to do with my ADD than any flaw with the concept of the menstrual cup.

On another unrelated note, people who tout reusable pads clearly don’t live in apartments with shared laundry facilities or use a laundromat.  And if you do, sorry, but eeeewwww.  It’s one thing to be washing bodily fluids out in one’s own home.  It’s another to do it in a washer that a stranger is going to have to use after you.

There are lawsuit concerns with sterilization, too, Mighty.  That’s why doctors are so paranoid about it. 

I have to say I love the ads for Mirena.  They’re about as close to the “love sex but don’t want a baby?” ideal as you can get.  Bonus points for making the kids in the commercial holy terrors.  A little comedy in a birth control ad!  I couldn’t believe it.

Which is why it’s so weird in the U.S. that only OB is non-applicator.  I don’t think there’s an especially strong prejudice in the U.S. against women touching their own vaginas.  But Ms Kate said that it was a patent issue, and that makes sense to me.

Not sure what Ms Kate meant, but o.b. doesn’t have a patent on applicator-free tamponing.  The original tampon applicator yielded a patent for its inventor, but the no-applicator method of insertion isn’t patentable.  (Although the owners of o.b. probably own many other patents—the tampon world is full of ‘em.)  I imagine the consumer market for non-applicator tampons just isn’t that large.

kristin, you characterized an unwillingness to do those things as somehow infantile.

No. When I make a statement about my personal preference (I use cloth pads and I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread) and I get responses that act like I’M gross or unhygienic for not minding the same things about cloth pads that the other person would mind? That’s not me “characterizing” anyone as infantile or anything else. That’s how that person is behaving. Not by not wanting to use cloth pads but by how they’re responding, in the conversation.

I’m not gonna criticize anyone for not wanting blood on their vulva (I get it, pads aren’t my ideal solution either, but I can’t comfortably wear tampons). I’m not gonna criticize anyone for not wanting to rinse pads out in their sink.  Feeling differently about menstrual blood doesn’t make someone infantile or prissy or closed-minded, but responding in an “ewwwwwww” tone of voice or refusing to hear the facts about something *does*. A non-infantile response would be “I don’t like rinsing messy things out” or “I really hate the sight of blood”. Not “How could you think I would do such a disgusting thing!!!!”

the problem is that you’ve lumped together objections rooted in irrational judgment (“disgusting” “warp my children”) with objections rooted in, as Amanda put it, perfectly reasonable objections (“you can’t use them when you’re out”).

No, I lumped them by tone. Snotty, don’t-talk-to-me-about-being-weird-and-gross tone. There’s a polite and mature way to express every one of those objections but in my experience (not in this thread), people just don’t use them.

By the way, I wear cloth pads when I’m out all the time. they provide perfectly fine coverage for me if I’m out for up to 3 hours, and I carry a spare in my bag and put the dirty one in a Ziploc. It’s not a big deal for me.

Yes, but my experience was that doctors were more worried that I would change my mind and then sue them for sterilization, which is silly. The failure rate for sterilization is something like 1 in 3000 so they don’t have to worry too much about me suing if I end up pregnant after the procedure. But if you’re getting sterilized, you know that you’re getting a permanent procedure. If you can get across to the doctor that you’ve thought about the consequences of sterilization and you’ve thought ahead to the “what if I change my mind” scenario and make it clear that suing the doctor is not going to be high on the list (after say, adoption or in-vitro) then they’re more likely to take you seriously.

But with an IUD, the worry is that you could be sterilized against your will, and that you don’t fully understand the risks of the IUD because your end result isn’t that you want to be sterilized, you just don’t want kids for a little while. So if they end up putting Dalkon Shield 2 in you, then you could sue them when you went to go have children and were unable to, and that’s a much easier case for the plaintiff in court.

I presume that all shared laundry facilities see washing involving bodily fluids on a regular basis. Panties that have been leaked onto during some woman’s period, panties/bedsheets/washcloths with semen on them, your everyday washcloths and towels, baby clothing that has spit up, puke, or poop blowouts, toddler clothing or bedsheets that’s been peed all over, adult clothing that has experienced whatever . . . and etc.

Yeah, what I personally find a lot grosser than bloody pads is old fashioned handkerchiefs with big old fashioned snot wads in them.

But in my experience, no matter how diplomatically you try to point out that period blood is not objectively any grosser than all the excreta that ends up in our washers and that we have to deal with regularly anyway, people get pissed at you for calling them infantile or squeamish. So I dunno.

I wouldn’t say it’s no different.  I can sneeze on my white shirt and wash it off, no harm no foul.  But if I bleed all over it, it’s ruined.

But in my experience, no matter how diplomatically you try to point out that period blood is not objectively any grosser than all the excreta that ends up in our washers and that we have to deal with regularly anyway, people get pissed at you

Can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s not that period blood is any nastier than anything else—it’s that I already have to deal with 100 kinds of gross in my daily life. Can I not catch a break just once?

For that matter, this applies to my thinking on, say, the Pill vs NFP*: women already have the lion’s share of work in a relationship. Emotional maintenance, household drudgery, training the men to be more feminist so that maybe someday, we WON’T have to do all the scut work… you name it. We get ONE shortcut, namely that we can avoid babies in just 4 seconds a day. And we’re supposed to give that up? Oy!

*disclaimer: I know, I know, not everyone can use the pill. Understood.

Seriously, I appreciate the urge to demystify menstruation. But it gets a little silly when we’re stepping beyond the obvious—-that menstrual blood is no grosser than any other blood—-to suggesting that blood is the same as other body secretions.  It’s just not.  I’m actually not one to gross out over messiness—-my squeamishness is a very specific one related to pain. I gack at blood UNLESS it’s menstrual blood, which has no association for me with pain. So I find it funny when I read feminists trying to convince me that my strong desire to keep menstrual blood from getting all over the place is due to some sort of latent misogyny or prudery.

Moreover, it’s not as though we have ZERO squeamishness over other body secretions. We have protocols for dealing with mucus, urine, feces, saliva, and non-menstrual blood. I suppose it’s arguable that we have stricter, weirder protocols for menstrual blood than for other fluids. But it is not as though menstrual blood is the sole verboten excretion.

Yeah, but not all of us are trying to demystify menstruation. A lot of us would just like it to be known that if you hate shelling out money every month for something you have to throw away, worrying about being out of pads or tampons, want to cut down on your trash volume, or find the disposable ones uncomfy, there’s some other options.

If we lived in a world where every method of dealing with our crotch bleeding was presented openly, no one would have to “advocate” for the alternative methods, but until then, people talking about it is the only way people like me find out about it.

I have to say I love the ads for Mirena.  They’re about as close to the “love sex but don’t want a baby?” ideal as you can get.  Bonus points for making the kids in the commercial holy terrors.  A little comedy in a birth control ad!  I couldn’t believe it.

Yeah, I think I saw that ad too and it just about knocked me over with a feather.

I was wondering: how much of the softpedalling of IUDs is about their horrific results 30-40 years ago? When Readers Digest does an article about how horrible a medical device is, you can be pretty sure it is firmly lodged in the national consciousness.

Um, I presume that all shared laundry facilities see washing involving bodily fluids on a regular basis. Panties that have been leaked onto during some woman’s period, panties/bedsheets/washcloths with semen on them, your everyday washcloths and towels, baby clothing that has spit up, puke, or poop blowouts, toddler clothing or bedsheets that’s been peed all over, adult clothing that has experienced whatever . . . and etc.

For me, the difference is volume.  Maybe I just have an unusually heavy period, but there’s a difference between urine (which is sterile, if smelly, and dries fairly quickly) and the blood+tissue that makes up a period.  Urine and semen are easy to do a quick rinse-out before putting them in the washer.  A full period, not so much.

And someone who uses a public laundromat to scrape out their baby’s cloth diapers—or, worse, not scrape them and just wash them as-is—is disgusting.  I’m sorry, but the price of not owning your own washer/dryer should not be having to deal with other people’s (literal) shit getting on your clothes.

That’s a lot of it, paul.  There’s a real tendency for people of all political persuasions to hang on to historical examples that may not apply going forward.  And with IUDs, that’s a big one.  It helps to remember that in the heyday of the IUD, anti-contraception legends were thick around it, too.  There were stories of babies being born clutching it and stuff like that.  Pure bullshit, but it adds to the taboo.

If being on the Pill makes you sad or causes weight gain, you may ask about trying a lower dose before writing it off entirely.

My experience did involve water retention that made my dental visit painful, plus a horrible mood swing at the turning point in my cycle. I tossed the pills and went back to condom use.
Then after a few years, my always-irregular cycle went completely out of whack. I was at least spotting every day for 4 months, and went to a doctor, very worried I had something seriously wrong with me. After various tests, it turned out I just was having more NATURAL hormone fun, creating a super-thick lining.
My natural hormones also include enough testosterone to give me thick, dark hairs in places women shouldn’t have them, like my face.
My natural hormones are a PITA. I would never have known if I had gotten pregnant, until the baby bump, because I could go 7 months with no period at all. Nature doesn’t actually like me very much. I’m also allergic to semen, so these days…
Low dose Pill, but not the lowest, and condom use combine to make me happy and healthy.

On another unrelated note, people who tout reusable pads clearly don’t live in apartments with shared laundry facilities or use a laundromat.

I’m not so squicked about other people’s bodily fluids (I’m sure people with shitty/pissy/snotty babies use my laundromat), but the logistics of dealing with the pads if you don’t have a washer and dryer at home.  Because I have to use shared facilities, I do a lot less laundry than the suburbanites I know.  One of my main domestic priorities is going as long between runs to the laundromat as humanly possible, because it entails schlepping a 15 lb sack of linen around the neighborhood—not one of my favorite pastimes.

That’s also just something I don’t need the lady at the wash & fold place knowing about me.  I mean, she sees all my underwear and knows I have holes in my socks.  Now she needs to get all up close and personal with my period?

Opoponax:

If you think someone who works at a laundry in new york hasn’t seen damn-all everything. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. (I want to make some kind of analogy with the invisibility and omniscience of household servants, but I’m not sure how that plays out.)

IUD opinions from a med student…

Women who use the pill rather than IUDs are obviously not doing so because they are ignorant. 

Doctors who categorically refuse to insert IUDs in nulliparous women, however, ARE ignorant.  They’re the docs who haven’t kept up with research and thus rely on whatever they were taught back in residency (i.e., the Dalkon Shield).  Alternatively, they could think that OMG IT KILLS BAYBEES! or are overly fearful of lawsuits. 

(/rant about non-academic physicians)

But I found this passage surprisingly enlightening as to what’s going on when it comes to categorizing methods as more or less “natural” and therefore good.  The goodness of a method appears to go up as the effectiveness goes down and the pain in the assness of it goes up.

I’m curious what you would have to say about the “natural birth” movement, whose adherents use the same flawed logic - it’s “natural,” therefore it’s “better.”  And despite the fact that it’s so popular with a certain kind of feminist, the basic premise of the natural birth movement is that birth SHOULD be full of unnecessary pain, and if you don’t want to experience that pain you aren’t a “good woman.”

Yeah, I’m skeptical of “natural” childbirth for that reason.  It’s a good example of the difference between generic concern trolling about what’s natural, and making specific, evidence-based criticisms of current practices.  The natural childbirth movement was initially a reaction to the practice of twilight sleep, where a woman’s memory of childbirth was wiped with drugs, but her in the moment reactions were much more horrible than if she had no drugs at all.  (Confusion + pain = hell.)  But those criticisms caused doctors to really rework their methods!  Now women are encouraged to be mentally present, even if they’re using pain killers.  You see a lot of vague concerns that painkillers are dangerous, but nothing like the specific, evidence-based concerns about twilight sleep, which was a demonstrable horror show.  (They had to wrap women’s heads in cotton to keep them from hurting themselves banging their heads around.)  Pain killers in childbirth seems to me to be a logical extension of various other medical care that addresses things about the human body that evolved for reason X and cause problems.  For instance, I would never suggest you’re a bad person for taking pain medication for your back, or having knee surgery!  We were just as “meant” to have certain parts wear out first as we were “meant” to be in pain during childbirth.

That said, I do think the midwifery movement is strong when making specific arguments.  The two compelling ones are a) most childbirth is uncomplicated and shouldn’t be so expensive and b) since it’s supposed to be a joyous occasion and not just a medical event, there should be more emphasis on making it comfortable and personal.

If you think someone who works at a laundry in new york hasn’t seen damn-all everything. That’s why they get paid the big bucks.

It’s not that I want to protect people from having to be exposed to my period (I still hand in blood-stained underwear and sheets that have had FSM knows what happen between them, after all).  It’s more about my own privacy and boundaries.  There are just some things I prefer to keep to myself, you know?

True story: a friend of mine got scolded by her friendly neighborhood drop-off person for her bloody sheets!

Glad that there’s finally something approaching an IUD-themed thread for me to chime in on - I’m single, nulliparous, and my gyne looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if they did IUD insertions - as in a duh, we’re gynecologists, of course we do those, why would it even occur to you that we might not?  I understand the need to warn women that not all US gynes are willing to do them, but I had read so much about how doctors will categorically refuse to insert one in a woman w/o kids unless her husband signs a permission slip, I almost didn’t bother asking.  I can’t ever take hormones again, as a blood clot while on the Pill almost killed me, so the IUD was the only option for me, as someone who does want kids, that would allow for Pill-like spontaneity.

Yes, hurt like the worst cramps EVER when it was inserted (she told me it is easier for women who have had something larger than an unfertililized egg pass through their cervix previously.), but they responded to standard painkillers, and were gone faster than ones from menstration.  And I haven’t had actual cramps ever since, or a real period.

The only concern my original gyne (or any of the docs I’ve seen since) had was that not all insurance companies will cover them, so I had to pay for it before they would order it, but they paid, no problem.  And we’re talking cities all over the south, they look at me like I’m confused when I act like they’re unsual to have.  I could do the math, Mirena was about the same as a year’s worth of co-pays for the Pill I couldn’t take, and I could afford the upfront.  But, WAY cheaper beyond the first year, going on 4 now, so have another year left on it, and not ever having to worry about having periods at all is awesome.  And that’s supposedly a very common side effect.  No $ for birth control until next year, or even tampons, and there’s nothing that I can do to accidentally mess up the effectiveness.

nd despite the fact that it’s so popular with a certain kind of feminist, the basic premise of the natural birth movement is that birth SHOULD be full of unnecessary pain, and if you don’t want to experience that pain you aren’t a “good woman.”

In my experience, that’s a bit of a strawman.  It’s a complicated issue, and there’s a wackjob out there for every crazy notion under the sun, but every pro-natural-childbirth feminist (key word there) I’ve met is all about women making informed decisions about their care.  Not about how you’re an evil un-woman if you get an epidural.

There are, however, plenty of non-feminist natural childbirth people out there with all kinds of bizarre ideas.  For instance, at least among the crazy fundies I know, it tends to go hand in hand with quiverfull tendencies.

ouch. I wrote my post before reading comments. I am SO not trying to preach to the women who’ve done their research, etc.

It’s just when *I* went off the pill (at about age 24-26?), I had no idea how drastically different brands/formulas effected the body. I just thought: well, the Pill has bad side effects. I’ll just have to deal with shaving lots and having irregular periods.
And then when my body pretty much forced me to go find a gynecologist, one who talked to me (I’ve had some bad luck with doctors, and have learned not to put up with poor communication), I had good luck on my second try.

I was *not* meaning to dismiss the experiences of those who have tried and whose bodies dislike HBC.

My post was really about the original crap about “natural vs. unnatural” and why I distrust those who push nature as the solution to everything.

BTW, I would never have heard of Diva Cup, Keeper, etc if not for comments on blogs like this. And I haven’t been able to try one yet, so I don’t mind the reminders of brand names and info like Diva’s money-back guarantee!

Sometimes people explain in public about things I do already know about—but “It’s not about me, so it’s not about me.”

Oh, I’ve definitely seen the guilt tripping, both about not wanting pain and admitting that it was hard. You see a lot of wishful thinking about pain being adequately managed through positions and simple exercises. And if you crack and get a Pitocin drip, in some people’s eyes, you must be Satan.

There’s a real lack of understanding that childbirth, without modern medicine, is often deadly.

I understand that the pill isn’t for everybody, but I was on it for years and I absolutely loved it.  It took a while to find the right one, and I had to do the trial and error process all over again after both my pregnancies, but overall it was wonderful.  Once I found the right formulation, I had almost no side effects and, for a while in between the kids, at least, no periods at all.  I loved it.

Last year I got a Mirena and so far, I’m not sure how much I like it yet.  It is definitely convenient, but it hurt like hell getting it in (really, it felt like I was in labor all over again) and so far it hasn’t stopped, or even slowed down, my periods.  Plus, I have acne.  I’m 33 years old and I didn’t even have acne as a teenager, but I have it now and I am not happy about it.  I’m giving it a year, since between my own research and pestering my doc, I’ve learned that it can take that long for things to settle down once the IUD is in, and I’ve got a few months left, but I really think I may be switching back by the end of summer.

What I want to know, though, is why there can’t be some kind of easy way to stop having periods (which, let’s face it, even at the best of times are messy and inconvenient) and not get pregnant that doesn’t involved either inconvenience or major surgery.  Biology is seriously unfair in this regard.

This is way late, Amanda, but I kind of spaced when making my point about how it’s important to remember that some people think they kill fertilized fetuses. One of the big problems with IUDs is, as people have mentioned, access. Doctors refuse to give them, or refuse to give them to certain types of people (i.e. the ones they think ought to be having babies, not effectively eliminating that chance for up to 10 years. Young, white, middle class women without children will have a much harder time getting an IUD than pretty much anyone else), but one of the reasons they might refuse might be that anti-choice belief. Even if it’s total bullshit. Much of the real problem is ignorant doctors, after all.

Also if I’m giving advice to someone about birth control and I think they might not take Planned Parenthood’s word for it that eggs will not be fertilized and then terminated, I just make them aware of the issue and let them decide for themselves. It would be horrible of me to just leave out that little bit of information, they get an IUD and then later discover that it violates their morals. One of the reasons that women in my social group will confide in me about their contraception woes is that I’m totally not going to judge them about it. (Another reason is that I *do* know a lot more than the average woman in my age group, but I’m not a doctor or anything! It is an interest of mine, though.)

The Opoponax,

Per a conversation with a friend about them about 2 hours ago, the diva cup people no longer have the guarantee.  There was an address which I would have mailed the cup back to, if I had decided I didn’t like it.  The friend says there are now 8 or 9 different menstrual cup makers - the ones I’ve heard of are the keeper and the diva cup.

hmmm… a little googling gives me this comparison:
http://community.livejournal.com/menstrual_cups/648061.html

I’ve definitely seen the guilt tripping, both about not wanting pain and admitting that it was hard. You see a lot of wishful thinking about pain being adequately managed through positions and simple exercises.

I think that sucks, but if people want to go through it, whatever.  I’m not going to strap anyone down and MAKE them take painkillers if they’d rather not. 

And regarding getting judgey over others’ choices to have whatever intervention - I’ve seen it happen on message boards and such, but the existence of judgey wackjobs on the internet doesn’t really mean much.  There are judgey feminists on the internet who think it’s morally wrong to shave your legs, and yet I wouldn’t tar all feminists with that brush.

Critical thinking isn’t simply tossing accusations and seeing which ones stick.  It’s about considering logic and evidence, and avoiding fallacies or predetermined conclusions.

Oh?  Try considering logic and evidence and avoiding fallacies and predetermined conclusions when you act like there’s nothing wrong with hormonal contraception.  And try avoiding pretending that scientific studies are all hogwash just because they don’t agree with your agenda.

For fuck’s sake, I have your book, I thought you were great… what is with this willful ignorance?  It’s so fucking counterproductive.  You’re acting like the idiots who thought that obscenely huge snowstorms in Texas was actually proof against global warming.

Nobody denied the pill has side effects. Strawman. The post is about demanding sound science, not falling for a grab bag of rhetorical tricks because they satisfy our view of the world.  She says women on the pill are addicts! That’s crankery, not critical thinking.

Put you hurt feelings aside and note that I linked an excellent example of how to think critically about prescription drugs. I’m not against cynicism towards Big Pharma. But it should be restrained by respect for facts and reality.

Also, Eldridge’s tactics are straight out of a global warming denialist handbook. Lobbing accusations under the guise of questions? Check. Trying to refute sound science with goofy objections? Check. Taking special delight in annoying the experts without actually refuting their points? Check. I’m surprised she didn’t insinuate that the pill is a conspiracy.

This would have been such a better post if it expended more energy on debunking and less on rhapsodizing about wonderful birth-control pills are compared to all those other, awful methods. I mean, c’mon. Sex where one person is using hormonal birth control is “unfettered”, unlike those poor, pitiable relationships where the sad things have to “work around” the condom?

Let’s set aside silly hand-waving about the Pill being unnatural and like unto chomping arsenic. I’m rather surprised to read such an uncritical endorsement of the Pill over two posts on a feminist blog.  Was it really all that long ago that feminists pointed out the Pill is pushed on women precisely because it’s a method that places all the burden of use and the risk of side effects on the woman?

What I want to know, though, is why there can’t be some kind of easy way to stop having periods (which, let’s face it, even at the best of times are messy and inconvenient) and not get pregnant that doesn’t involved either inconvenience or major surgery.

Wasn’t there just a big whoop a year or so ago about how you can just take the pill continuously and, ta da, no periods? They had to market it as “4 periods a year” so peoples’ heads wouldn’t explode, but you seriously can just skip it, can’t you? I’m sure it’s not perfect, because nothing is, but…neither less convenient than pills nor involving major surgery…

The ‘the pill is bad because it’s unnatural!’ woo is evident nonsense for me, because my own hormones make me ill. Entirely natural, but not at all good.

I suffer from ovulatory bleeding, which is apparently a mild inconvenience for most women who have it. For me, though, it was agonising and debilitating one day per cycle. Because I was a teenager and not sexually active when it first occurred, it took me three months and five doctors before one of them said ‘hey, since this is clearly upsetting you, why don’t we just put you on the pill?’

Since then, I’ve been on HBC for more than ten years. Every now and then I go off it for a month or so to check if my ovulation symptoms have gone away (they haven’t) but only out of curiosity. The pill has also made my very heavy periods more manageable and my irregular cycles predictable. The hormones in my pill are way more balanced than what I got from nature.

I know plenty of women who have had problems with the pill. It certainly is bad for some women, but it can also be a solution for hormonal problems that don’t have anything to do with birth control. And it is a bad idea for anyone, feminists especially to assume that natural = good.

mythago, I’m forced to point out the benefits, because her arguments are predicated on the notion that someone like me doesn’t know what I want.  If I don’t praise how the pill works for those it works for, then how exactly to I retaliate against the argument that I’m a moron being manipulated by evil men trying to remake….oh wait.  Is that your argument?

Sorry, I disagree. Being critical doesn’t always mean coming to a negative conclusion.  I don’t think condoms are awful, but I like the pill better.  Your implication that I can only come to that conclusion by carefully not thinking is simply incorrect.  I offered my reasons, and so you slam those reasons as mindless praising.  Actually, I offered reasons because that’s what they are: reasons.

Condoms are great for those who like them, and if you’re not in a tested, monogamous relationship, they are the best thing going.  But I’m sick, absolutely sick, of women being shamed for choosing the pill when it’s right for them.  And being told that we must be stupid dupes of men!  Reminds me of anti-choice arguments about abortion only existing because dumb women are being misled by sexually voracious men.

Plus, I gave you my reasons for the two posts.  If you want to reject them and assume it’s because I’m a mindless sexbot being used by men, okay.  But the reason was straightforward—-feminists are already characterized as paranoid hysterics who shove aside facts for ideology.  It doesn’t help when feminists actually do this!  So I’m sorry if I come down hard.  But I’m sooooooo sick of people on the left not calling out anti-science hysteria because it’s coming from the “right” people.

To comment #180 by hp:

I was in the Marine Corps whenever I had my Mirena inserted at the end of 2006.  I never had any grief about it.  (I *do* have two children and had had my second only a couple of months prior.)  As far as the mechanics go, it hurt a great deal getting it in, but normally they prefer to insert it while you are on your period so that your cervix is more receptive, and I could only schedule immediately after my period, which meant that it was closed tight.  And it hurt like a motherfucker.  I’ve had a few mood issues on it, and have occasional issues with cramping.  My periods haven’t stopped.  However, it’s extremely convenient, and hasn’t caused any more problems than the Pill has, and suits someone as absentminded as me.  I love it, and, if I don’t get sterilized instead (or if my husband doesn’t), will probably go with that again.

About the menstrual cup (for the TMI portion of the talk):

I don’t like tampons because they feel awkward, don’t like applicator-less ones because they are thirty times as awkward as the others (due to, as they put it in the Monologues, “A dry fucking wad of cotton up my pussy?!”), and I am extremely hostile to blood on my vulva as well.  The cup works well for me, and is minimal hassle.  I do tend to prefer it up closer to the cervix, though, because the tube that you use to pull it out scrapes up against the back wall of my vagina if it’s not very far up there.  I don’t evangelize about it, but most of the people I know have never heard of it when I mention it.

OT:

Oh, I’ve definitely seen the guilt tripping, both about not wanting pain and admitting that it was hard. You see a lot of wishful thinking about pain being adequately managed through positions and simple exercises. And if you crack and get a Pitocin drip, in some people’s eyes, you must be Satan.

Amanda, I love you, but this is utter bullshit and condescending too boot (seriously, “wishful thinking”?).  Many of us (raises hand) have actually used these techniques and they do work.  Indeed, there is nothing magical or mysterious about the techniques of managed breathing, position change (yes, some positions are more painful to labor in but it varies for each woman what the best position will be), and movement.  Not to mention, women have varying degrees of pain tolerance so these techniques will be more or less effective depending on how well you cope with pain in general. 

Now, I hold no truck with the brand of natural birther who makes other women feel like they should be ashamed for narcotic or epidural pain relief or for having a c-section instead of a vaginal birth.  But seriously, there are evidence-based reasons for advocating women attempt to labor naturally before using interventions (things like induction make a c-section more likely, for instance) and it isn’t because we think that women should endure as much pain in labor as possible. Quite the opposite; the point of Bradley Method or HypnoBirthing is to give women pain relief tools that they can use sans drugs.  Better for a woman know how to manage pain in the event her epidural doesn’t work, than to leave her unnecessarily stressed while laboring (it’s stressful enough on its own).  However, if she needs an epidural or has psychological or biological issues with vaginal birth that c-section could alleviate (in addition to emergencies), then she should have every right to make the best decisions for her and her baby without the guilt tripping.

Good points, history_mom. It’s a fact, not wishful thinking, that using different positions and moving your body in certain ways can facilitate labor and decrease either pain, or the perception of pain.

I gave birth in a tub of warm water and had a fairly long and intense transition period with double-peaking contractions. The thing that got me through that period was being able to turn and rock weightlessly in the water. When I tried to hold still, it was agonizing.

And speaking as someone who *also* had a hospital birth with all the trimmings, I endured an hour of pitocin-induced contractions with no pain relief because my first epidural went wrong and the anesthesiologist took his sweet fucking time getting me another. That was an hour of hell because no one around me knew anything about managing pain except with drugs, so I had no chance to try alternative pain management techniques—I just suffered. Yet when I had my childbirth classes, the instructor had told us not to worry about learning that stuff because if we were in pain the epidural would take care of it!

Short version: I laugh loudly and bitterly whenever someone informs me that natural childbirth is painful and giving birth in a hospital with access to an epidural will be easier.

(Opononax: I totally feel you on the cup stuff, btw. I heard about the Diva cup a while ago on a blog and I was like “oh yeah?” but then it was followed up by about 50 comments telling everyone who wasn’t driving to the store for one right now that they clearly hated their periods and hated themselves as women. So I peaced out pretty quick. Obnoxious preaching is obnoxious.)

Re the interview, statements like this:

We can be confident that all these chemicals taken together can cause cancer

make me want to strangle someone. D’you know what else is full of carcinogens? Fucking burnt toast. Eating food introduces dangerous chemicals to your system. Metabolizing food constantly pumps poison into your cells. Radiation streaming through your skin damages your DNA all the time. Breathing can kill you—where are you gonna get free radicals without all that evil oxygen, yeah?

Seeing huge science and critical thinking fails like this just makes me tune out all the rest of it as pure woo. As soon as you start using “chemicals” as a buzzword, and as a cipher for everything in the world that you hate, you are automatically full of crap.

@226, 227:
For Some women Some of the time, those things will work.  It is wishful thinking to believe they will work for every woman all the time and those who “break” and use the big evil drugs are horrible people.  I think that was what Amanda was refering to. 
I have also seen this.  My first child was with drugs (not knocked out, not wholly numb), my second without any.  Yes, there are idiots who act that way, who shame women who do what is right for them that time.  They may not be the majority, but they exist.  Yes, I dealt directly with a few.

Helen:  Yes, having been neck-deep in “mommy” territory (mom blogs, groups, and the like) I have also encountered these women. But they are about as numerous as the ones who look down on those of us who opted for a natural birth (“hey, it’s not like you get a medal”).  And it’s about the same as the lactivists and the “breastfeeding is gross” crowd.  Which is to say, there are always a minority of asshole women on either end of the spectrum making the rest of us feel like shit for whatever we do.

But that isn’t actually what Amanda said, even if she meant something different.  What she said was dismissive and ill-informed, which is particularly grating from someone who has zero experience in this area.

Oh, I’ve definitely seen the guilt tripping, both about not wanting pain and admitting that it was hard. You see a lot of wishful thinking about pain being adequately managed through positions and simple exercises. And if you crack and get a Pitocin drip, in some people’s eyes, you must be Satan.

There’s a real lack of understanding that childbirth, without modern medicine, is often deadly.

Yeah, that’s more what I’m criticizing; not the natural-birth movement in general, but the guilt-tripping and also the generic woo stuff that natural is always better than hospital-born and if you’re going the latter way you’re losing your “women power” or something.  And the general lack of understanding about differences in pain tolerances.  As history_mom pointed it out, it varies from woman to woman.  I have always had an extremely low pain tolerance; as a kid, I would freak the fuck out if I went to the doctor and found out I was getting a finger-prick.  I get terrible cramps every month and have gotten accustomed to taking multiple painkillers at the same time as soon as I see blood, because the cramps combined with my low tolerance for pain would force me to miss school in middle school & high school.  You’ve got to trust me when I say I could NOT handle childbirth without a LOT of medication.

Particularly, the C-section argument frustrates me.  Yes, doctors do probably over-prescribe it now, but talking to some natural-birthers you’d think the procedure was completely unnecessary.  It *does* exist for a reason, and it has saved many lives - including my own life.  I was breach, and would likely have been stillborn if my mom didn’t have the option to do a C-section.  Also, the C-sections-on-demand idea seems to often turn into shaming women who see childbirth as something they want to get over with as soon as possible rather than some powerful, mystical experience, with the whole “but now women can just plan the pregnancy when they want!  that’s horrible!”  If you’re truly a feminist, I don’t understand why you believe women should be at the mercy of their reproductive system, why it’s so “wrong” for women to have more power over their pregnancies - even if it’s in ways you don’t desire.

I remember hearing some argument on a Feministe thread where a woman was complaining about the baby industry and some natural-birther used that as an excuse to jump on a soapbox about the issue (even though that was exactly what the author was NOT looking for, that is, more judgment about her pregnancy).  And she ended her statement with “Birth is natural, not a medical emergency.”  Some births are not medical emergencies, certainly.  But a lot of them are, and it’s simply ignorant to assume that if it was always smooth-sailing for you, it is for everyone.  Again, I would have likely died if my mom opted for the “natural” route.  The reason so many women died before we had hospital births is not because birth is deadly for all women, but because there are SOME women who need medical attention.  And it’s simply anti-feminist to deny them that.

I just don’t understand why anyone is jumping on Amanda here about the natural-birth stuff.  She acknowledged that it had good reasons for starting and most natural-birthers are reasonable.  But she had the AUDACITY to suggest that some women take it too far, and people who claim to be the “reasonable” kind of natural-birther are mad at her for that?  Really?  Unless there’s something else she said that is “problematic,” but please point me to it because I can’t find it.

Helen:  Yes, having been neck-deep in “mommy” territory (mom blogs, groups, and the like) I have also encountered these women. But they are about as numerous as the ones who look down on those of us who opted for a natural birth (“hey, it’s not like you get a medal”).  And it’s about the same as the lactivists and the “breastfeeding is gross” crowd.  Which is to say, there are always a minority of asshole women on either end of the spectrum making the rest of us feel like shit for whatever we do.

But see, I sympathize somewhat with the “it’s not like you get a medal” people.  It’s ridiculous to act like you’re a better person for getting natural birth.  A lot of women simply don’t have that option.  They have a low pain tolerance.  They’re too busy.  Either their life or that of their unborn child (or both) would be at risk without medical intervention.  I’m not saying you said anything to indicate arrogance about it, but these women are probably sick of being berated by the more extreme form of natural-birther and unfortunately are taking their rage out on you.  I don’t think you can really say that they’re the other side’s equivalent of natural-birth people who insist that EVERYONE should do natural birth and doctors NEVER know what they’re talking about.

Short version: I laugh loudly and bitterly whenever someone informs me that natural childbirth is painful and giving birth in a hospital with access to an epidural will be easier.

Not everybody has the same pain tolerance as you do, as numerous other posters including myself have pointed out.  For some people, it is more painful.  For some people, it’s not an option, period; they need the things hospitals might provide in order to just, um, not die or have their baby not die. 

Your pregnancy and your body are not everyone’s.  Get over yourself.