Contraceptives degrading to women

[Anglewannabe]

I have been thinking about something lately. There is a lot of talk in Catholic circles about contraceptives being degrading to women. As much as I do believe they are sinful, I honestly don’t understand how they can only be degrading to women. Are men not equally sinning when they are being used?

Thoughts?

 

[pensmama87]

I think primarily this refers to hormonal methods. It presents the idea that women are somehow faulty and need to be chemically separated from our fertility so we can be equal to men. Or, that we need to be constantly available to men otherwise they won’t stay with us.

There’s also the side effects, which are no fun.

I agree that it’s degrading to both, but I think for women it’s an irony being pointed out - contraception was supposed to liberate us, but we’re just as chained as ever.

 

[edlinked]

From Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla:
{
• Personalistic norm: The person is a kind of good to which only love constitutes the proper and fully-mature relation
• There are two profiles of love:
A) The objective profile which is the most important one and which “corrects and guides”, is the affirmation of the value of the person.
B) The subjective profile of love that is divided in:

1. Affectivity: particular sensibility (not excitability) toward the sexual value linked to the “whole human being of the other sex” to “femininity”, to “masculinity”, things not directly linked to the body.
   2)Sensuality: denotes sensibility toward the sexual value linked directly to the body. Sensuality by itself possesses a consumer orientation, the “body” is at times experienced as “a possible object of use.”

They say that men tend more to sensuality and women tend more to affectivity. Though both have those profiles.
}

From this then, I would say that degrading is not from being a sinner by using it. I would say that contraceptives make people don’t care about self mastery, because it’s a way to say we can have intercourse at any time. This brings that we make a habit towards pleasure, therefore pleasure becomes something that leads. So I would say then we see our spouse more as something to be used, instead of someone to be loved. Though I could be wrong in my analysis of why those circles say it’s degrading to women.

 

[Rau]

I have been thinking about something lately. There is a lot of talk in Catholic circles about contraceptives being degrading to women. As much as I do believe they are sinful, I honestly don’t understand how they can only be degrading to women. Are men not equally sinning when they are being used?

Thoughts?

Can you direct us to where this idea is expressed so we can get a fuller understanding of the sense in which “degrading” is meant.

 

[Anglewannabe]

Can you direct us to where this idea is expressed so we can get a fuller understanding of the sense in which “degrading” is meant.

That’s a good question and I have no official source. It is just something I tend to hear a lot

 

[Sarcelle]

I have been thinking about something lately. There is a lot of talk in Catholic circles about contraceptives being degrading to women. As much as I do believe they are sinful, I honestly don’t understand how they can only be degrading to women. Are men not equally sinning when they are being used?

Thoughts?

Unlike NFP which respects the natural cycles of female fertility, artificial contraception subverts the natural processes of female fertility.

As people say, if it isn’t broken don’t fix it.

 

[Lea101]

I can see both sides…I guess

Degrading in the sense that the contraceptive (usually the pill or other hormonal treatments) changes the woman’s natural cycle. Like…she isn’t sick, her body is perfectly fine. But she takes a pill. As if fertility is an illness. NFP on the other hand works around the woman’s fertility, it doesn’t try to change it. Plus the pill, for example, is not really the best thing ever. Side effects are common, apparently it can affect your fertility later on.

People like parenting.com/article/how-birth-control-could-affect-your-fertility say otherwise, and I’m no doctor, but then again, she is affiliated with Planned Parenthood, and PP isn’t really the most honest, kind organisation…soo…

Some people don’t find it degrading, but empowering, because it allows the women to have control over their body. But if you keep probing and probing, eventually it all comes down to “I don’t want a baby, but I want to have sex as much as I want without no consequences, even if it means altering something that isn’t broken/damaged” (some people do use the pill for acne or period pains, which isn’t wrong…it’s just not ideal because of the possible side effects)

it’s a selfish and greedy society we live in, and it’s annoying when people think and teach that contraception/abortions are pro-women. It’s very easy to believe and it seems like it makes sense. But you keep looking and looking until you realise it’s actually quite sinister. Isn’t pro women at all. I’m beginning to lose patience

aaaand as for the condom, you can say that it’s degrading for the same reason…as in to work against the woman’s natural cycle, but it’s pretty hard to argue that without bringing Church’s teachings on sex into it (openness to life/fruitful, etc)

 

[Allegra]

I felt hormonal birth control was degrading way before I was ever a practicing Catholic or understood why it was a sin. Why should women be taught that it’s their responsibility to keep their healthy reproductive systems crippled with poisons so that they can be perpetually sexually available?

 

[UbiCaritas]

I felt hormonal birth control was degrading way before I was ever a practicing Catholic or understood why it was a sin. Why should women be taught that it’s their responsibility to keep their healthy reproductive systems crippled with poisons so that they can be perpetually sexually available?

To play devil’s advocate here for just a minute…

There’s another side to this coin. It’s not always an aspect of “I need to be able to have sex with whatever guy wants it”; women enjoy sex, too, and sometimes NFP can be really, really burdensome.

As a fer-instance: according to my OB, it’s very likely that another pregnancy will have to be our last because of medical issues on my part. That will mean using only a shortened Phase III for about 20-25 years, depending on when menopause hits. As a result, DH and I are facing a couple of decades of being able to be together perhaps once or twice a month, with occasional stretches of abstinence for 2-3 months at a time when all the signs and tests don’t line up.

DH doesn’t want me to go on birth control, mind you, and I’m not going to. But if I were, it wouldn’t be because if I didn’t, DH would develop a porn habit/leave me/what-have-you. It would be because I love my husband and want to have sex with him more often than what I’ve described. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see the allure of, on the face of it:

–not having to worry about not being able to pee for two 4-hour stretches during the day for a week of each cycle in order to ensure accurate testing;
–not having to stress about the time it takes to check CM multiple times/day, and how to manage that while juggling a toddler who wants to follow me into the bathroom and discuss what’s going on;
–not having to worry about whether exercising will mess with any of the observations I need to make;
–not having to, once we have been together, worry that NFP will fail us again. It did once, and if I’d gotten pregnant (as I should have), baby and I could have died. Given what we know now, we almost certainly would have.
–being able to actually enjoy having sex. At the risk of going rather TMI, I don’t enjoy sex unless I’ve had it recently–it’s like my body needs to figure out what to do. Once or twice a month? I like the closeness and the intimacy, but on a sexual level…meh. Throw in the added stress of “if I don’t enjoy it this time, it’ll still be another month before we can do this again anyway” and I can forget about it.

It’s really, really sad that I find myself hoping just a bit that I’ll hemorrhage enough with the next baby that I’ll need an emergency hysterectomy, or that I’ll develop uterine or ovarian cancer for the same treatment.

None of that discounts the Church’s reasoning on birth control, which I still agree with, but it’s not always so cut-and-dried as “I wanna go out clubbing and pick up any guy I see, and birth control lets me do that!” I don’t think you were necessarily implying that, either, but I did want to offer another perspective.

 

[Allegra]

To play devil’s advocate here for just a minute…

There’s another side to this coin. It’s not always an aspect of “I need to be able to have sex with whatever guy wants it”; women enjoy sex, too, and sometimes NFP can be really, really burdensome.

As a fer-instance: according to my OB, it’s very likely that another pregnancy will have to be our last because of medical issues on my part. That will mean using only a shortened Phase III for about 20-25 years, depending on when menopause hits. As a result, DH and I are facing a couple of decades of being able to be together perhaps once or twice a month, with occasional stretches of abstinence for 2-3 months at a time when all the signs and tests don’t line up.

DH doesn’t want me to go on birth control, mind you, and I’m not going to. But if I were, it wouldn’t be because if I didn’t, DH would develop a porn habit/leave me/what-have-you. It would be because I love my husband and want to have sex with him more often than what I’ve described. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see the allure of, on the face of it:

–not having to worry about not being able to pee for two 4-hour stretches during the day for a week of each cycle in order to ensure accurate testing;
–not having to stress about the time it takes to check CM multiple times/day, and how to manage that while juggling a toddler who wants to follow me into the bathroom and discuss what’s going on;
–not having to worry about whether exercising will mess with any of the observations I need to make;
–not having to, once we have been together, worry that NFP will fail us again. It did once, and if I’d gotten pregnant (as I should have), baby and I could have died. Given what we know now, we almost certainly would have.
–being able to actually enjoy having sex. At the risk of going rather TMI, I don’t enjoy sex unless I’ve had it recently–it’s like my body needs to figure out what to do. Once or twice a month? I like the closeness and the intimacy, but on a sexual level…meh. Throw in the added stress of “if I don’t enjoy it this time, it’ll still be another month before we can do this again anyway” and I can forget about it.

It’s really, really sad that I find myself hoping just a bit that I’ll hemorrhage enough with the next baby that I’ll need an emergency hysterectomy, or that I’ll develop uterine or ovarian cancer for the same treatment.

None of that discounts the Church’s reasoning on birth control, which I still agree with, but it’s not always so cut-and-dried as “I wanna go out clubbing and pick up any guy I see, and birth control lets me do that!” I don’t think you were necessarily implying that, either, but I did want to offer another perspective.

When young girls are being told about birth control, marriage, possible medical issues associated with pregnancy, and other issues like that are rarely discussed. Girls are told that it is their responsibility to drug themselves so that they will be ready in case the guy they are already presumed to have sex with didn’t remember to bring a condom. That’s the mindset that is degrading. I was also told by my mother that men don’t like condoms and not being on birth control made a woman less desirable.

It’s certainly possible to consider BC with a less degrading mindset in the context of a life-long commitment, but since such commitments are not really on the radar for young people, that isn’t the angle at which the pill is initially marketed to them. I think society in general leans more toward the degrading mindset as well.

 

[Anglewannabe]

I felt hormonal birth control was degrading way before I was ever a practicing Catholic or understood why it was a sin. Why should women be taught that it’s their responsibility to keep their healthy reproductive systems crippled with poisons so that they can be perpetually sexually available?

So if I understand what you are saying in your posts about this subject is not so much that that contraceptives are degrading only to women, it is the way they are spoken of in our society that is degrading to women only

 

[Convert_in_99]

I think primarily this refers to hormonal methods. It presents the idea that women are somehow faulty and need to be chemically separated from our fertility so we can be equal to men. Or, that we need to be constantly available to men otherwise they won’t stay with us.

There’s also the side effects, which are no fun.

I agree that it’s degrading to both, but I think for women it’s an irony being pointed out - contraception was supposed to liberate us, but we’re just as chained as ever.

This!

 

[Arizona_Fat_Gir]

Doesn’t one of the hormone companies use pregnant mares for estrogen collection? They keep the horses pregnant for this, and when the colts are born, they are auctioned off to slaughter houses.

It seems the situation affects horses, too, and even though no one thinks about them, it is no life for these animals.

Isn’t that ironic, what female horses have that to deal with so female humans can mess with contraception pills… although I realize that the meds are used as hormonal replacement sometimes.

 

[1ke]

I have been thinking about something lately. There is a lot of talk in Catholic circles about contraceptives being degrading to women. As much as I do believe they are sinful, I honestly don’t understand how they can only be degrading to women. Are men not equally sinning when they are being used?

Thoughts?

To degrade means to treat with contempt or disrespect, to devalue or debase. Both women and men can degrade each other when it comes to contraception. I find it sad when women at work talk about their husands saying things like, “he better get snipped” or “fixed”. Like their husband is a dog! We “fix” animals who breed indiscriminately. I find it repulsive when women speak thus. Women often debase themselves by being the one pursuing contraception.

 

[Anglewannabe]

Isn’t that ironic, what female horses have that to deal with so female humans can mess with contraception pills… although I realize that the meds are used as hormonal replacement sometimes.

To actually put female horses on the same level as human women horrid !

 

[Allegra]

So if I understand what you are saying in your posts about this subject is not so much that that contraceptives are degrading only to women, it is the way they are spoken of in our society that is degrading to women only

I’m saying that they way they are viewed, marketed, and primarily used is degrading to women to a high degree than men.

 

[SusanneT]

I felt hormonal birth control was degrading way before I was ever a practicing Catholic or understood why it was a sin. Why should women be taught that it’s their responsibility to keep their healthy reproductive systems crippled with poisons so that they can be perpetually sexually available?

I completely agree ! Very well put.

 

[SusanneT]

I have been thinking about something lately. There is a lot of talk in Catholic circles about contraceptives being degrading to women. As much as I do believe they are sinful, I honestly don’t understand how they can only be degrading to women. Are men not equally sinning when they are being used?

Thoughts?

Whilst I do believe that the use of contraception is a sin for both sexes I afraid that I do feel, as a woman that it is degrading.

 

[Arizona_Fat_Gir]

No, it’s not horrid. Those horses have no life and women do. I think animals are great and I love horses. To know that they stand in a stall all day with very little water in order to collect urine that is rich in estrogen is not right.

Also, the continuous slaughter of their babies is nauseating. I like being compared to an animal…my father said I walked like a duck when I was little. Many people act like monkeys. Some act like jackasses. Being swift as a gazelle is a good thing. I don’t think I insulted anyone. I just drew a parallel.

Animals are noble creatures and get a lot of abuse. And let’s face it; many people are not noble creatures and don’t get enough abuse. You hear about it every day on the news.

 

[Rosebud77]

Always wonder wh y it is always the woman who have to deal with this. My family work in India where the birth rate is out of control in poor ares as the men will not allow them to take the pill etc lest they prevent a boy…

Girl babies are often …discarded at birth ( my family rescue) and the chosen method of setting the matter straight is to give the women hysterectomies, and they are laid out in a field to recover, which many never do

WHY are women expected to pollute their systems while the men do nothing? PS I know we are not talking of catholics here but the title did not limit it.