To think contraception has been a greater liberator to men than to women?

[Macrodatarefiner]

And for sure, it is a great liberator to women too. Just on balance, men seem to get the better benefit. AIBU?

Well thank god for that. I would hate to have had to marry every man I wanted sex with.
Some people don’t even want to get married, are they supposed to be celibate all their lives. What about the women who don’t want children, are they supposed to be celibate too? What if you only want one or two children, no sex ever again after.

Men who pressure women to have sex with them either before or after marriage are not the sort of man most would want to marry, so I think it’s a huge benefit - see their true colours early.

Just because a man wants something, doesn’t mean women have to succumb. This sounds like the incel movement to me. Keep women knocked up with no control over their bodies. Women have many more choices now, which scares some men. We can choose to have sex with however is willing to have sex with us instead of being scared into marriage and children with an unsuitable man.

I'd say the only benefit that Men get from it that Women don't is they don't have to have the possible side effects.

Kind of a strawman of what I said. I do think women like sex, and get a lot out of it. I do. It's very important to me and I couldn't live the rest of my life without it. Something essential would be missing.

But I've also watched a lot of friends play the game of desperately agonising over whether a man that they're sleeping with regularly will even deign to call her his girlfriend, let alone propose marriage. Or they're playing it cool and claiming they don't even care, they're just looking for fun too, but then they're upset with themselves for being upset when the "situationship" ends.

Look I've got no skin in the game, I've relied on contraception before and will again, and been very happy for it. But I think situationship culture is overall negative for women, I think it's a shame that women's standards are so low that they think "being exclusive" is an exciting relationship milestone instead of a bare-minimum expectation, and I don't really care if that makes me Aunt Lydia...

As a more philosophical point, maybe even more controversial than the last one: I also think it's a negative for women that much of modern/liberal feminism is centred around (and celebrates) breaking the link between women and childbearing/rearing. As if the only way for a woman to reach full personhood is to disconnect herself from children and live a male-pattern life. As if motherhood is nothing more than worthless drudgery, and the path to fulfilment is despite it and never through it.

I also think it's a negative for women that much of modern/liberal feminism is centred around (and celebrates) breaking the link between women and childbearing/rearing.

No, it is so people can have a choice. Some want to have children, some don’t - some people celebrate it and some don’t, neither are wrong. Some want one or two children, not the risk of being pregnant every time you have sex. Not all women are the same, yet we are treated as such. Giving people the choice is so powerful, contraception has transformed women’s lives.

I think standards are changing. Women are seeing they have a choice and not having to conform to this stereotype of being ‘picked’ and being passive. The younger generation is embracing this. Some men aren’t happy with women being self sufficient, aren’t tied to a man because they’re got pregnant, having their own money. This is why the incel movement is so vocal. Women are choosing the men they want to be with and it isn’t the misogynistic ones. No longer do we have to make do, we make the choices.

A life where you are in control of your own autonomy isn’t male, it’s just that historically women have been prevented from having any autonomy and thus an autonomous life became the preserve of being male. A “male pattern life” is simply one that, prior to women becoming liberated through things like access to the workplace, the ability to control their own money and own their own property, and contraception, only men could enjoy. And only men could enjoy that sort of life because women had no power in any of those realms. Women only did obtain full personhood by achieving the ability and right to lead a “male pattern life” and by breaking the automatic link between womanhood and child rearing, because that’s ultimately the link which was used to justify women not being allowed men’s rights and freedoms in the first place.

Again, I'm not sure why that's my problem, if I've managed to navigate what's now apparently called situationship culture without that sort of emotional torment? Look, relationships (and not-quite-relationships of all sorts) are just potentially messy and heartbreaking, especially when you're young. It's an inherent part of the whole deal and it can be agonising for men as well as women (surely you don't think men are navigating it blithely either). But ultimately it's your own responsibility to set your boundaries and your standards and act accordingly, not to blame contraception or OLD or other women who enjoy casual sex.

Well this is even more Aunt Lydia coded tbh. I celebrate breaking the link between womanhood and motherhood on my own individual behalf. I don't think living an independent life without children is "male-pattern" at all because I don't consider biology to be destiny, or even all that relevant. Your implication is that women only succeed in reaching full personhood and leading a "female-pattern" life if they become mothers, which I'm not even going to bother getting offended by.

Before the pill, men who abandoned women they had impregnated were socially ostracised and santioned. I also think many women remain on hormonal contraception whilst being future faked by men who " aren't ready" as their fertility trickles away.

Not to anywhere near the same degree that women were, and many weren’t at all.

It’s on women to take responsibility for themselves. If a man isn’t ready a woman doesn’t have to wait and potentially sacrifice her fertility - she can choose to leave and pursue having a child either alone or with someone that’s on the same as her. A man isn’t unreasonable for not being ready and choosing not to have a child if he doesn’t want one at either a certain time or at all.

When did men stop raising their kids?

Children are both peoples choice, surely. If planned, they’re discussed and contraception stopped etc.

Agreed.

I don’t particularly want to live a “female pattern” life because I don’t want to my life plan to be pre-determined by the fact I was born with a uterus.

Like I’d be some sort of failed female if I didn’t ‘rear’ a child - I don’t think so, it’s not 1965.

I somewhat agree that there seems to be a trend in modern/liberal feminism to break the link between women and childbearing/rearing. Without wishing to derail the thread, or to cause offence, it is a fact that being a woman is now very much linked to gender and feeling, rather than the anatomical equipment (functional or otherwise), to bear a child.

Sorry, I should say gender identity

Me, too (and I didn't have children). It is, however, ridiculous to imagine feminism can be separated from women's role in reproduction. Reproduction is the only reason we exist in two sexes. It underlies everything about men's oppression of women.

Every trope about women's fragility, stupidity, incompetence, etc comes from a male desire for control over the reproductive sex - Afghanistan provides a useful, if disgusting, live example of that.

Female control over our own fertility is THE most critical factor in women's liberation: if men can subject women to endless pregnancies and baby care, they can keep us out of public life.

When women have the right to choose if, when and how often to reproduce, we're able to take up space in the public (male) arena and argue for the rights of all women.

Feminism can't break the link between our sex and baby-making. What it can do is assert that women are not only baby-makers; we're fully functional, adult humans with a full range of capabilities as well.

It's dangerous to fetishise motherhood. Parenting can be a path to fulfilment for both sexes but, if the creation of children is elevated above other achievements, the birthing sex ends up in male captivity.

I don't think I disagree with that, @Garlicworth - if I sound like "Aunt Lydia" it's out of a frustration that women's liberation is often seen as conditional on not becoming a mother, not wanting a committed monogamous relationship, not caring about home and hearth over career ambitions.

I think feminism that treats all those things as just "optional extras" that some women might randomly choose from a menu of many different options for entirely arbitrary and unpredictable reasons is a little empty. I don't want anyone to be forced to have kids (and I'm a breadwinner-career woman with condoms in my drawer) but like it or not, those choices above are the ones that most women do want to make, and ones that provide fulfilment to many women. If the default in society is strongly pushing women away from them, that should be interrogated.

Caring about ‘home and hearth’ if it comes at the cost of not being able to support yourself, isn’t just not a feminist decision, though, it’s a dangerous form of economic vulnerability women should be warned off.

And I don’t think we do know the choices women would make, if they were free of gendered socialisation that makes them think it’s ‘natural’ to stop working when they have children, or in a society where high-quality childcare is freely available. In societies where it is, far fewer women choose to exit the workforce.

@OneAmberFinch I personally think liberation is challenging in a patriarchal system. Getting ahead in your career, sowing your wild oats, eschewing domestication seem to be a by-product of patriarchal values such as competitiveness, domination and ruthlessness. Such values are useful in war or in bringing order to hierarchical systems such as patriarchy. On the other hand, it's the dominant system, and if women want any say in it at all they have to be able to choose when and if they have children, as @Garlicworth has said. Unfortunately, even the choices of when and if to have children are partially dictated by your financial position and your relationships with men, areas which could be said to be under patriarchal control.

I don’t think OP is being goady.

and it doesn’t mean feminism is bad for women.

but practically speaking, contraception has changed the way we look at sex. There have been unintended consequences. And it’s all to do with how misogynistic culture has interpreted it.

people are more relaxed about sex - on the face of it, great! But as boundaries became blurred, it also gave creepy men license to push young women into having sex.

Getting ahead in your career, sowing your wild oats, eschewing domestication seem to be a by-product of patriarchal values such as competitiveness, domination and ruthlessness. Such values are useful in war or in bringing order to hierarchical systems such as patriarchy.

I don't see it quite like that. To me - and one of the reasons I rejected a "home and hearth" traditional feminine life - domesticity within the nuclear family encapsulated a patriarchal, hierarchical system. Maybe it's because I spent my childhood fighting a man who thought he was the head of the household. But what my career and my sexuality mean to me is independence. They're liberation to me because they give me freedom - they are freedom, as much freedom as I can muster in late capitalism, to be and do what the fuck I want.

Unfortunately, even the choices of when and if to have children are partially dictated by your financial position and your relationships with men, areas which could be said to be under patriarchal control.

That's the crux of this thread isn't it? Not just children but having a heterosexual relationship at all. You depend on a man for that. Having sex with men, casual or otherwise; being their girlfriend or wife - all that entails doing what men want. There isn't much getting around that except to ensure it's also what you want, and to remember the men you choose to have sex with or marry aren't actually stand-ins for the patriarchy, or men as a class.

Men have always pushed women into sex and they weren't even seen as creepy for doing so in the past. It's not new and it's not because of contraception.

Women have more ability to actually set boundaries and push back if they don't want sex now.

True. But there has been a lot written about how the 60’s just saw men finding it easier to push women into sex.

its a psychological trick - social proof. ‘Everyone is doing it’ why not you?

of course women can set boundaries now, but it’s probably not due to contraception. Women’s lib is far wider than that.

and even then - look how many threads on here show lots of women have poor boundaries. While I wouldn’t want to live in a rigid society- it does at least make things black and white.

I think we are far better off as result of contraception btw! Thank god we have control over pregnancy, but I think we have to acknowledge that it wasn’t a silver bullet that killed the patriarchy

@gannett I do understand that your career and sexuality are fundamental to your freedom and independence. I also believe women should never be financially dependent, and be able to provide for themselves in every way possible, whether single or in a relationship. I think that we were born into a system that was created by men, for men, although previous generations of women have fought to change it to better accommodate women. I don't know if a matriarchy or a co-operative matri/patriarchy would be any different, of course. I do think women are always trying to fit in or beat a system that was not originally designed for them.

There's a lot of truth in that story Sex became nearly compulsory, and maybe it still is. I remember it well. And don't get me started on 'Sex is natural' crap that was being tossed a round then!

I'm pretty sure sex is natural 😂

Getting's story about her whiny male friend demonstrates very little about the effects of contraception on women's freedoms. It's a tired old tale of patriarchal entitlement, in which sex is a service provided to men by women. The superannuated twerp felt his girlfriend was short-changing him because she didn't have a good excuse!

I rather think she had an excellent reason not to shag him, and hope she moved swiftly on to a bloke who sees sex as mutual enjoyment, shared both ways.