Sex and Birth Control Stigma
The stigma against birth control and sex needs to stop. It’s 2017 and there’s still this stigma surrounding the two. I don’t understand it. People have been having sex for thousands of years and lots of it, but when it comes to a woman having sex people shy away from it. I don’t know what doctors tell males when they’re asked if they’re sexually active, but mine repeatedly in one visit has told me the best form of birth control is to not have sex. I understand that is the best form of birth control, but you shouldn’t make your patient feel bad for having sex. The reason I started on birth control was that my parents found out I was having sex. I was 18 when that happened. I was also 18 when I started having sex.
I chose to wait until I was legally considered an adult to start having sex. I believe it was a good decision, but I’m still made to feel like complete garbage because I choose to have sex and I’m not married. Are men made to feel this way about having sex? Of course not. However, I can’t vouch for what their doctors say when they answer yes to the question about being sexually active. When I was talking to my doctor about changing birth control she must have told me to be abstinent at least three times during the duration of my visit. She also claimed that a lot of insurance companies won’t pay for a woman’s birth control if she simply doesn’t want to get pregnant. She has to have another reason for it, like irregular periods. This is bullshit. If I don’t want to get pregnant that should be reason enough for me to go on birth control, but it’s not. I have to have other things wrong with me in order to go on any type of birth control.
There are also certain doctors you have to see if you want certain types of birth control. If I had wanted an IUD, which I didn’t, I would have had to go to a gynecologist. If a guy wants his type of birth control he goes to a store and buys condoms. A woman has condoms that she can buy as well, but as far as I can tell I don’t think I’ve ever seen woman condoms out on the shelves. I could be wrong and just not looking close enough though. She can also go out and buy condoms if she wants to, in my experience the guy has always been the one to buy condoms. However, there’s still a stigma around buying condoms as well. I’ve always been curious about the different condoms there are, but never had the courage to stand there and look. Our culture has created this stigma around having sex and it’s not okay. People shouldn’t be taught that abstinence is the best option because that’s making it sound like it’s the only acceptable option. It should just be one of many options. This is where the school system comes into play.
Sex ed in schools needs to stop being so abstinence driven. I believe some schools have switched to being less abstinent driven and more about showing students their options, which is definitely a good thing. The sex education I got, from what I remember about it, was heavily abstinence driven, but it also talked about all the different birth control options there are out there if we chose to have sex. I’m glad we had a health class at our school, but it did feel like it was used more to scare us into not having sex than showing us how to be safe about it. I don’t remember how long the sex unit was, but I do remember being shown a birth video that was about the duration of class, not exactly something a tenth grader wants to see. It definitely felt like a scare tactic, at least looking back on it now it feels that way. It could also have been the school saying that that was what us girls would have to go through if we got pregnant, but still a scare tactic.
There are sex positive people out there and certain areas of the world are sex positive too, but from what I can tell most people think that if a woman has a lot of sex she’s a slut or a whore. If a guy has a lot of sex he’s a player and looked at with admiration by his friends. We should be able to meet somewhere in the middle. Women should be able to have a lot of sex and not be looked at as less than a person. We should also be able to have any reason for taking birth control and still have our insurance cover it. I’d like to take birth control for a number of reasons, but one of them is the fact that I don’t want to get pregnant and I don’t want to be looked down upon for that reason. It should be a valid enough reason to take birth control, after all it is called birth control.
I’ve been on birth control for about four years now and, honestly, I’ve loved it. It was a rough start in the beginning and even that was met with a bit of stigma. I was 18 and my parents had just figured out I was sexually active. As if that’s not terrifying enough, I go to the doctor and she tells me that she doesn’t trust teenagers with the pill. I go along with it because she’s the doctor and she knows best. Looking back on it now that I’m 22 it doesn’t sit well. I was an adult back then just like I am now. I could have handled taking a pill at the same time every day, but because teen was attached at the end of my age I couldn’t possibly be responsible enough.
In all honesty though, I really liked being on the shot. It was rough at first because I bled for about three months straight, but it was just spotting and not an actual period. If I had bled as if I had an actual period for three months there would have been something wrong. I was on the shot for about three and a half years, with every year my doctor telling me that it wasn’t a long term thing. I had to listen to her this year because something actually was wrong. Turns out the nurse who did my last shot did it in the wrong place. Now I might have a permanent dent in my arm from it. I had been bleeding off and on for weeks. I even felt like I was having an actual period for about three days. That definitely wasn’t fun. Waking up covered in blood is not fun, especially after not having to deal with it for three and a half years.
I started doing research about what I could do next. As much as I loved the shot I was tired of the random bleeding that came with it. It was time to switch. I had decided to switch to the pill, which had been my initial method I wanted in the first place when I was 18. And this time I wasn’t going to let her talk me into anything else. She mentioned the IUD three or four times even with me telling her I wanted to go on the pill. She also mentioned the implant and possibly some others as well. I stuck with my decision to go on the pill. So far, I’m happy with that decision. My body’s still getting used to it as I’ve only been on it for a little over a month, but so far so good.
The stigma that’s been created around sex and birth control is one that we’re going to have to continuously beat back for years to come, but hopefully in time people will realize that sex is just sex. We’re not the only mammals that do it for pleasure either. If animals in the wild have sex for pleasure why do so many people feel like it’s so wrong for us to do the same thing?
