The Invented Tradition of Women’s Sexuality
Madeline Forwerck
Suppression of female sexuality manifests in various forms across the globe, and researchers find difficulty tracing the exact origins of such a widespread, ancient, multi-faceted reality. Though a variety of hypotheses exists on the subject — each one as valid as it is impossible to confirm — some psychologists and sociologists suggest the systemic suppression of female sexuality that has resulted in the deviant coding of birth control is a uniquely Western phenomenon.
Social psychologists Baumeister and Twenge define suppression of female sexuality as “a pattern of cultural influence by which girls and women are induced to avoid feeling sexual desire and to refrain from sexual behavior.” They attribute the origins of this suppression to the perceived threat of women’s “naturally and innately stronger” sex drive, as compared to men’s. Men across the Western world, they say, have subconsciously feared for a long time that this imbalance will tip the scales of power and disrupt the “natural order” of things. In an attempt to keep roles from adapting, they seek methods by which to suppress women’s sexuality, largely by way of purposefully forged cultural expectations and limitations mediated through various social groups and legal forces.
The demonization of contraception, specifically, is performed within both of the above networks, as its purity and validity are repeatedly attacked by groups and individuals — on one end of the spectrum being religious organizations speaking out against the use of contraception and speaking slanderously of those who use it; the other, female friends playfully shaming one another for using the pill to “sleep around” — as well as by members of complex power structures, as the inherent validity of birth control as a key healthcare element worthy of insurance coverage comes under fire again and again. Though these impulses and actions are not always thought to be deliberate in origin or in continuation — at least not to the extent that all of these individuals, group members, and public figures are consciously working to keep women’s powerful libido from overthrowing deep-seated cultural norms — the results are nonetheless detrimental.
Though the sexual revolution and recent conversations on sexuality launched by intersectional feminists have worn down some of the barriers created over centuries of suppression, new methods of discouraging women from sex emerge constantly. The forces by which women are taught to fear and avoid sex come from all angles, and these forged anxieties easily translate into the shaming of birth control use. Recent online discourse indicates that birth control is rapidly becoming a concrete marker of identity. Some people, like Twitter user Amanda Sally, claim this identity in a positive way and believe it to be important to the identity of women as a group.
On the other hand, some opponents of birth control also posit its use as a marker of identity — but they use it as a shaming tool, suggesting that women who freely have sex are undisciplined and gluttonous. Below, Twitter user Jarod argues that sex is merely a “hobby” to the population of women taking birth control for its intended use, suggesting the solution is for women who can’t afford birth control to just stop having sex altogether.
Indeed, attacks on female sexuality have been seamlessly intertwined with discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic status from the beginning. These attitudes manifest today in the two-fold demonization of working class women who have sex for pleasure rather than for reproduction.
