As many of you know, the birth control pill turned 50 this year, which means that we’re all in for a lot of editorials chewing that favorite conservative theme, which I’d describe as, “Women only think they like sex.” Via Roy, I have to say that this screed from Kathryn Jean Lopez is in the running for my favorite. Lopez, who I have to point out for reasons that will soon become clear is (as far as I know) childless and unmarried, is the first to line up to explain to all the stupid feminists why we’re so stupid thinking we actually enjoy contraception, sex, and having choices.
In an otherwise largely celebratory forum on the pill at CNN’s website, Republican strategist and book publisher Mary Matalin cleverly and jarringly wrote: “Packages of portable liberation ushered in a generation of women determined to break free from their inferior patriarchal oppressors. And how did they manifest their superiority? Their freedom? Thanks to The Pill, by casual, drive-by sex. Whoa. That really showed those stupid boys.”
They can keep telling us that feminism is about hating men, and therefore we’re breaking our own rules by having good relationships with them and (if we’re straight) enjoying sex with them, but it’s not sticking. Perhaps they’re wrong about what feminism is? I don’t know; I’m just an actual feminist. So when I say that feminism is about women’s equality and creating a non-patriarchal world where men and women are freed get along as equals, I don’t know what I’m talking about. The only people who get to define feminism are people who oppose it.
After this, the bullshit gets so thick that I can’t even make fun of entire paragraphs, or even entire sentences.
The feminist movement has a lot to answer for when it comes to the open and enthusiastic embrace it gave the contraceptive mentality, which interferes with a woman’s relationship with her own body,
You can only have a relationship with your own body if you’re constantly pregnant, according to K-Lo, who has never been pregnant. Perhaps it doesn’t count if your relationship with your body is enhanced by repeatedly denying your body those unnatural sexual cravings? Oh yes, they’re unnatural. You’re stupid, pliable women, and the only reason you think you like sex is you say that stupid HBO sitcom where the women wear expensive shoes and have female friends they don’t hate.
never mind her relationships with men.
I asked my boyfriend if he’d like me better if I was always pregnant and miserable about it, and/or unwilling to be sexually active ever again. He said no. But that’s only where the confusion began. I thought feminists were supposed to want to ruin our relationships with men, and K-Lo says that being on the pill ruins them, so we should go off, right? But then she said that being on the pill made the guys like us, and so we’re suckers, and….
Fuck, I just don’t understand. Both being on and off the pill makes me bad at my K-Lo assigned man-hating duties. What’s a girl to do? (Answer: quit fucking and have more babies. Don’t think about it. God didn’t give you a uterus because he wanted you to use your brain.)
So, we can blame the pill for making relations too good between men and women, and also ruining relations between men and women, whichever potshot seems more convenient. But since “ruined” is the most recent charge, let’s deal with that, especially since Maggie Gallagher came in and explained that the ruination is due to the dreaded separating of sex and reproduction. Perhaps there is some statistical evidence indicating who has better relationships with their menfolk: the bad women who separate sex and reproduction in order to marry and have children after they get educated and install themselves in careers, or women who do it the right way by getting pregnant at a young age? (We’re leaving the relatively rare women who presumably live like K-Lo and hang onto that virginity into their 30s.) I link it alot, but it’s really the book to read for this kind of information: Red Families v. Blue Families. The enemies invoked by Gallagher and K-Lo—-those liberal feminist yuppies with the college degrees and contraception use—-are more likely to get married and stay married that other groups of women. Good women who connect sex and reproduction the old-fashioned way through youthful marriage and baby-making, especially through shotgun marriages, have higher divorce rates. Also, it was found that the later you marry, the happier you are in marriage.
There’s only one conclusion: High divorce rates and marital acrimony are the best sign that women’s relationships with men are right by conservative standards. If you actually like your husband, you stupid feminist, you’re doing it wrong. Contraception interferes with the natural order, where you get ensconced in a committed relationship at a young age and watch things deteriorate rapidly until you can’t even speak to each other in civil tones. That, or you stay a virgin. Either way, if you find yourself overly happy or satisfied about your romantic life, you’re doing it wrong.