Being on birth control is dehumanizing. No matter how hectic my schedule I have to take a pill, filled with unpleasant hormones, at the same time every day. Or else. There are days where my mind is eight thousand places at once; three papers due on the same day, ICTV productions after class, payments due. I’ll forget, and feel a wash of shame when I swallow the little blue pill after jolting out of a deep sleep at six a.m. after a pregnancy ridden stress dream.
I admit that I’m bad at the pill, so I asked my gynecologist about my other birth control options. “Just try again, you’ll get the hang of it. Between you and me, it still works if it’s four hours between the time you settle on.” This was said after I had briefed her about all of my other issues with the pill, which include the following: joint pain, increased lower back pain making it impossible to sit, stand, or walk, increased mood swings, depression, increased panic attacks, migraines, and cramps. Lots and lots of cramps.
A 2008 study surfaced about four months ago via CNN with the headline, “Male Birth Control Shot Found Effective, But Side Effects Cut Short.” The United Nations began testing the effectiveness of male birth control shots. The study had 320 heterosexual couples as participants, where the biological male in the partnership is regularly injected with a shot every eight weeks for fifty-six weeks. The study found that the shots had a ninety-nine percept effectiveness rate, but the study was eventually cut short due to “painful and intrusive side effects” such as cramping, depression, acne, joint point, weight gain, e-t-c-e-t-e-r-a.
Although it did not reach the effectiveness of female birth control which remains at a staggering ninety-nine-point-nine percent, it’s integration would greatly reduce the gender bias in reproductive medicine. I say this considering the third and last time I’ve ever heard the term “female condom” was on the punchline of a joke on South Park. And just as a gentle reminder, vasectomies are 100% reversible.
Medicinal gender bias is indeed a thing. I know that, because I googled “medicinal gender bias” and was confronted with the headline, “Is Medicine’s Gender Bias Killing Young Women?” Well, it turns out the answer is, kinda, probably. Technically, everything is killing young women. And everyone else. We’re all dying. Anyway, the obviously feminist website had similar things to say about a handful of other examples where society has deemed certain ailments as gender typical, such as heart disease being connoted as a “man’s disease”. This perception disregards women who suffer from heart attacks and puts them in dangerous situations since they are twice as likey to die as their male counterparts.
The similarity between general medicinal gender bias and more specifically reproductive medicinal bias is the lack of concern for the woman because of her inherent status of being female. Just look at The Pill versus Viagra. We just got access to The Pill. It took six months to approve Viagra, and six months and two minutes for David Hasselhoff to promote it.
Despite the unfair discrimination, I’m grateful for my access to birth control. Just kidding – I have to fight with my insurance company monthly as to not pay $60 for my doctor-recommended and prescribed birth control. This is a problem for a number of reasons. The most glaring is the absolute necessity of remaining consistent with your prescription. If you’re a woman forced to restart her birth control because of influx expenses determined by an irresponsible and ignorant insurance company, that’s bad news for your body. Since the body now expects hormone doses on the daily, the symptoms get worse if you have to start over.
Most girls and women who take birth control pills or any form of hormonal birth control do so for their own health reasons. Some birth control has been known to regulate and lighten periods or help fight acne. It shouldn’t be a monthly fight to pay for birth control at a reasonable price.
To the men who just couldn’t stand those awful side effects, I’m playing you the world’s smallest violin. You quit early, and without having to experience bleeding for two weeks after your period is supposed to be gone. You quit without experiencing the fear of something being wrong with your ovaries and realizing you’re only bleeding because you took your birth control an hour later than you’re supposed to. You didn’t get scarred for life by that show I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. You don’t become frustrated and confused by your emotions, unable to decipher why you’re feeling the way you do.
There is an inhuman quality in justifying your feelings when there need not justification. There was no reason for me to cry in that office hours meeting, yet there I was, blubbering on about how stressed I am. I suffer from weekly epiphanies that explain why I acted the way I acted. They are always related to my hormonal birth control use. Don’t even get me started on the yeast infections. Do you know what it feels like to literally have to eat yogurt as a snack? I would rather endure the vaginal tearing than to suffer through a Chobani.
So, patriarchy, you win, thanks to the twenty men who just couldn’t handle the side effects. I’ll nut up and take my birth control.
