to think the washing machine has liberated women more than the pill?

[bettybosseye]

I'm serious, think about it, there are alternatives to the pill but only one to hours spent every day hand scrubbing and wringing piles of washing.
The pill is held up as something that gave women control and this is undoubtedly true but the humble washing machine has emancipated us from hours of drudgery every day and like i say it is unrivaled. The washing machine rules!

Yeah, but it's an ideal that cuts both ways.

I think it has been a crucial element of progress that women are empowered practically and morally to control their fertility.

I think it is a regressive step that people (esp. men) are allowed to believe that sex has been fundamentally decoupled from procreation and mutual commitment.

The pill has made it easier for women to say 'no' to babies, but I think it has made it harder for women to say 'no' to sex.

Apart from the element of politics/cultural change (which is incidental IMO - those could have been hung on any one of many inventions and events ) - I don't see why the pill has such an elevated status over - say condoms for casual sex and diaphragm/coil for family spacing.

My DH comes from Spain. He says the farming kids were always kept home at harvest time to help with the work. That's not a gender issue - but it's as sure as hell an 'opportunity' issue. I'd guess people in those circs would probably find that the combine harvester did a lot for their liberation. I think physical labour - like lack of money - is only a non-issue to those who are not experiencing it.

I don't think its the pill that made it harder to say no to sex, I think thats the over-sexualisation of culture thatmakes sex seem so inconsequential. And its not.

It has that status because it was a zeitgeist. It was the firs time that women got to control their own fertility, and by extension a huge part of their lives. It's no coincidence the marriage age started rising, it was possible to have sex withiout having to get married, or pay massive consequnces for unmarried pregnancy. It helped women to be able to work, to forge careers as well as be married. It helped change the status of women. The political and cultural changes of womens liberation could not have been hung on anything else if women had no control over their own fertility.

We take it for granted now, thats why we don't give it the respect it deserves. You can't imagine having no ability to control your own fertility. It's not trouble free, of course their are issues, but you can't downplay the importance of it.

Maybe penecillin should take its rightful place too, and antiseptic - which means that on average we live long enough and survive childbirth well enough be 'liberated'.

I get the zeitgeist point - it is valid - but IMO it is circumstantial. In the here and now, less use of the pill would overall be a positive result for womankind.

I;ve never been on the pill. I consider that I already bear the major share of the consequences and burdens of sex. Any man who objects to a thin latex sheath and expects me to take the extra hassle, responsibility and personal risk of taking the pill every day can just trot on, in my book.

I just hate that image of a drunk bloke staggering home and mounting his wife without warning... but it's OK, because she's taken her pill. Or people having sex at a party, and then complaining that the girl 'tricked him' because he 'thought she was on the pill'.

No, because they weren't specifically for women.

I don't get your angle here at all. The pill then is not the pill now, and having a problem with it now is not a good reason to deny its importance back then, when it really mattered.

You're also not thinking about other women other than in the UK. You guys got the pill in the 60's, then abortion rights, then y ou could buy condoms in chemists everywhere. This was not the case for us all. Do you know that ALL contraception was completely illegal in Ireland until 1980? Even then you needed a prescription to buy condoms until 1985, and not until 1993 were all legal barriers to freely available contraception were lifted.

The washing machine did fuck all to liberate the women of Ireland. We still have no abortion rights at all.

You don't need to use or even like the pill to respect what it did for women.

Actually penicillin, antiseptics and innoculation are a feminist issue, because birth rates come down predictably (with or without access to hormonal contraception) once couples can be reasonably sure that their children will survive infancy. The only thing more oppressive than having 10 children (where it's not your free choice to do so) is having 10 children and seeing half of them die.

But if contraception was illegal... then would the pill have made any difference? Are you saying that I overestimate how easy condoms were to get hold of/introduce into a relationship before that time?

But I think it undelines my point that what changed was cultural/medical/personal norms.

If the pill had been invented 200 yeas ago, do you think it would have had the same impact and the same status?

As a bullwark of liberation - if I were supreme overlord of the universe - I don't think it is a good choice. Imagine if the early versions of the pill had caused women subsequent infertility/health problems/birth defects. Can you imagine what kind of blame would have been cast around about unnatural women messing about with the natural order of things? At least with a condom, it is clear cut - condoms do nothing else other than prevent one time conception.

they are bound up in each other, the cultural, political and scientific. Women wouldn't have joined the workforce in such numbers without proper access to contraception.

It wasn't something that just happened to women either it was hard fought for and won. And the early versions of the pill did cause problems, they were at least 10 times higher dosage than they are now, there was no end to aspersions about unnatural women messing with things! It wasn't a perfect product then and it isn't now. But the implant, the mirena, even such wide access to condoms, these are all a result of what happened before and after the arrival of the pill.
If you look at when and if women get access to contraception the same patterns happen over and over again in most countries. Birthrate goes down, marriage age goes up, female literacy rates go up, economic stability for women goes up.

I would say the washing machine.

But I do believe that it is easy for us in our country to be complacent about the pill as we are liberated enough to be able to ask a man to wear a condom. In some countries where marital rape etc are more commonplace they would love to be able to take the pill.

I'm not sure that it is worth arguing over which of the Pill and the washing machine is the superior liberator of womankind. Both, and a million more inventions, have made our lives easier.