WTF is your super secret plan for replacing birth control?
Whenever I talk to my husband about feminism, he starts to sound vaguely Trumpian in his responses —we get some alternative facts, we get some denial and we get someone opining on things they know nothing about with the authority of a president. Honestly this whole experience of sharing this important part of my identity with him hasn’t gone exactly as planned and it causes enough heartache that I’m here writing.
I first noticed it with his roundabout way of insisting feminism shouldn’t exist — NO ONE can have it all he would insist, deaf to anything I was saying. I had to explain that in this particular context it was understood that “have it all” meant very little actually — it meant what men had been enjoying for hundreds of years — it simply meant having a family AND a career. That’s all. Not literally “ALL” like a yacht and private jet and billions of monkeys.
When a woman mentions the inequality she perceives and a man answers her by saying “NO ONE can have it all” to me, it is the equivalent of replacing “black lives matter” with “all lives matter.” To the ignoramus doing it, it sounds like being inclusive and insisting racism doesn’t exist. To the people hearing it, it sounds like — “you don’t matter. With our privilege we are blind to your reality, to the reality of inequality.” Because yes, technically all lives matter, but not all lives are threatened by police the way that black lives are.
Fun fact — I’m pregnant and I don’t want to be. My husband will be the first to insist it is BOTH of our faults. I notice that whenever I try to share what is PERSONALLY affecting me with regards to male-female inequality he not only fixates on that single aspect as representative of the validity of the WHOLE of women’s rights, but also does his best to minimize it and argue that the inequality that I perceive does not exist. (Right now I’ve fixated on how becoming the birth vessel and main feeding instrument for oh, 2–3 years PER CHILD sure does put a woman out of commission career-wise and biologically ordained or not, it’s FUCKING UNFAIR.) As you can imagine, this is frustrating and heartbreaking in the extreme.
So then I expand. I keep trying to drill into his head that this is not just about me and my current issue, or his mother or his sister, or any of the women in his family, it is about ALL women, and ALL of the injustices ALL women face. Like I personally have never been raped per se (but I have been pressured into sex by a partner more horny than me — what woman hasn’t?) however, there are those women who have not only been raped, but who Arkansas has now decided that in order to abort a pregnancy resulting from rape, do not have the right to do so unless their spouse and family are on board. Ie, a woman’s spouse or father can LEGALLY PREVENT her from getting an abortion. So this is not my personal experience, but it is a womens’ rights issue nonetheless. There are MANY injustices that collectively create an inequality. Neither he nor I can pick and choose which to minimize and/or dismiss outright, based on something as ridiculous as how closely they match or do not match our (inherently limited) personal experience. How can I get my husband to see this?
Which brings me to abortions. Why are they necessary? My husband thinks that most women are perfectly happy, delighted even to become mothers. As a woman, he would know. But another issue of inequality I bring up — birth control — also falls on ignorant ears. Don’t get me wrong — I am ALL for birth control because I’ll be the first to tell you that women shouldn’t have to get pregnant if they’re having sex. And I also maintain that abortions are necessary because birth control sucks. It is often expensive, potentially harmful, a hassle to get and to take, and 100% the woman’s responsibility.
Let’s talk more about birth control. So many issues with it — where to begin? For one, 90% of birth control options are invasive and potentially harmful to the woman’s body. I have read horror stories about IUDs causing periods so painful that women cannot get out of bed. I have had so many clients dealing with the fallout of hormonal birth control as their bodies struggle to re-establish normal hormonal levels after being controlled by high doses of synthetic estrogen for years.
I don’t want to get into it, and your opinion is yours to have if you disagree, but the correlation between breast cancer rates and the Pill is STRONG. For those birth control options that aren’t invasive or harmful, the burden of responsibility STILL falls on the woman. HOW THE FUCK IS THAT FAIR?
Hormonal birth control has some pretty intense side effects. So intense in fact, that when researchers tried to design an analog solution for men, they desisted after the side effects of mood swings, weight loss, increased risk of stroke and blood clots, and other serious issues women have been suffering with quietly for years now, were deemed too dangerous for men. But not for women. And you’re going to sit there and tell me we have equal rights? How is this fair at all? Not only do we have to be the ones to remember to take the fucking pill everyday, but there’s a scarily high probability that we, and only we — not you men — might get breast cancer or some other serious condition because of it, and when we finally decide to come off the pill, we might have difficulties with fertility and almost certainly have to deal with other issues caused by seriously f’ed up hormones, like acne.
My husband argues that woman have a choice — they don’t HAVE to take birth control. No, they fucking don’t. But what are their other options? Risking pregnancy? Abstaining from sex all together? Sounds like we’re caught between a rock and hard place if you ask me.
Which brings me to my pregnancy. After trying to explain to my husband that birth control SUCKS and the risk of pregnancy SUCKS, he tells me women have a choice. He would never tell any woman to go on the Pill. And that’s true — he did not tell me to go on the Pill. We tried condoms, which I personally love. I have zero issues with them. You know who had issues with them? My husband, then boyfriend. He liked sex better without them. So, with me refusing to risk putting my endocrine system into a tailspin with hormonal birth control, and (correctly) thinking that the time commitment, risk, pain and money that an IUD entailed was insanity, our other options amounted to spermicide or a diaphragm.
I wasn’t comfortable with spermicide and getting a diaphragm (I feel the need to explain myself, although I really shouldn’t.) required a visit to a gyno — I had no health insurance at the time. Granted, I could have searched for some free clinic or something while my husband drank beer and watched TV, then I could’ve taken half a day off of work to go to the clinic, while my husband had no fucking idea about the stress that this fucking diaphragm was ALREADY causing or the shit I was getting from my boss because apparently, taking too much time off for doctor visits is frowned upon.
So I could choose — new eyeglass prescription or diaphragm. I need the glasses for work, and I needed the work for money, so I didn’t end up getting a diaphragm. Which I was fine with, because I didn’t love the idea of a diaphragm. Know why? Because it comes with a fair amount of responsibilities, believe it or not, that over time grow as tedious as the drip of a broken faucet. You have to remember to put it in, you have to wash it after every use, you have to pack it for every trip, and you have to plan ahead if you’re going to have sex where basic hygiene isn’t available, like camping. You’re going to tell me that that is nothing — but try getting a man to put something into his body every time before he has sex and then clean it afterwards. He will bitch and moan about what a hassle that is. And I posit that if we ever did get pregnant and I was using the diaphragm the burden of guilt would be ON ME — “she didn’t put it in correctly” and ONCE AGAIN, the man would get off scot free — no embarrassment, no stress, no responsibility.
So we proceeded with my husband’s suggestion, the pull-out method, which he swore he was really good at. And he was pretty good, because two and a half years passed before I got pregnant. But I did get pregnant. And it was not planned. And I didn’t want to be pregnant. And I don’t want to be pregnant.
So when my husband looked me straight in the eye and told me that he would never pressure a woman to take the Pill and they could always use a condom if they didn’t want shitty synthetic hormones in their system, and women had plenty of choices and birth control was totally fine and there was no women’s rights issue here at all, I wanted to drown him in a puddle of menstrual fluid.
When I reminded him about why WE weren’t using condoms, did he back down and apologize? Admit there was an issue? Admit that birth control wasn’t fair? Nope. He just stood there. In silence yes, but not in deference. His mind was struggling for another argument, a comeback.
I am fully aware that I have put my man on blast. But I feel so let down by him. So hurt and afraid and alone. If I can’t get my husband to see there is a problem, what hope is there?
