More essays that started elsewhere

[neonchameleon]

This one started on Ship of Fools

Readily available contraception IMO leads to massive good to the point that those trying to oppose it are (albeit unwittingly) siding with evil.

I tell good from evil by their fruits. So what have the fruits been? Health, sustainability, feminism, and a greater respect for the sanctity of human life. Oh, and a few more people having voluntary and consensual sex.

Feminism (and other female political involvement) has been one of the consequences of readily available contraception because it has given many more women the freedom not to get pregnant, and hence to do other things with their lives. I believe that allowing people to use their (god-given) talents is (normally - I'll make an exception for Hitler and a few others...) a good thing and that preventing them doing so on the basis of birth is a bad thing. (I don't identify as a feminist due to a number of polititical disagreements - but have no problem with this section of their stated aims).

Sustainability - due to developments in healthcare and public health (starting with sanitation and vaccinations), the chances of an infant living are massively higher than they were 150 years ago. Yet women are still pretty fertile. We also have a massive population on this earth. We therefore need to keep the birthrate down to an approximately sustainable level. There are a number of ways we can do this - we can repudiate the advances in healthcare (over my dead body - perhaps literally), we can try educating people not to have sex (and just what is the success rate for abstinence only sex-education these days? Last time I checked it was almost non-existent) (we could simply educate them to have gay, oral, and anal sex...), we can kill any unwanted pregnancies or use the exposure methods of the Greeks, Romans, and others to kill unwanted babies, we can fight continuous wars to keep the population down (again, over my dead body), we can implement Chinese style policies, or we can supply contraception. If we don't do any of the above, our population will once again get completely out of control, and with such a large population we have much less margin for error.

Health - first it's a massive boon to the health of the would-be mother to be able not to be pregnant. But even more than that, it cuts down massively on the overcrowding which would be a problem leading to disease even if there were no sustainability concerns. And it also cuts the crime rate in the same way (and to a much greater degree) as legalised abortion. (And that completely ignores the effects of condoms on STDs).

Finally the sanctity of human life. There is much more regard for the individual if there are too few people, and much more regard for others if the individuals feel that they themselves are wanted. A murder of anyone becomes much more serious, as does a famine (look at the 19th Century Indian famines). Also the sanctity of life will be considered greater if each individual is not competing with each other individual for means of survival.

There's all that against a few people screwing each other who otherwise wouldn't. (And recreational sex was certainly popular long before contraception became easy - see the Karma Sutra, Penny royal, and prostitution for good examples).

Comments

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

we can implement Chinese style policies
Surely, you need contraceptives to be able to implement the chinese birth-control laws?

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that sounds more like immediately jumping down your throat than it was meant to. It just, y'know, struck me. :)

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

No problem (since when have I worried about having my throat jumped down?) - although that icon saying *pounce* being the first part of the message I read lent it a certain irony.

[vectorious.livejournal.com]

since when have I worried about having my throat jumped down?

[Frankie Howerd] Ooh! Missus![/Frakie Howerd]

Sorry, it was too much to resist.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I must be getting rusty to leave myself as wide open as that...

[vectorious.livejournal.com]

(See comment above)

This could get circular very fast!

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

That was very sloppy language. I really should keep it much tighter...

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Surely, you need contraceptives to be able to implement the chinese birth-control laws?

Not entirely - but the other methods of doing so get extremely bloody for the babies.

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

And are obviously Bad in terms of health...

[karen2205]

I think feminism predates the existence of contraception. I date feminism back to the campaigning for women to have the vote in the 1910-1918 period. Marie Stopes + the contraceptive pill only came along in the 1920s and at that stage was only prescribed to married women. A lot of early feminist work was to increase availability of contraception.

I don't see having children as something which stops a woman from using her talents to do things other than raising children. It may well have done in the past from the practical point of view because of the lack of technology (ie. imagine running a household with no fridge, no washing machine, no microwave, no indoor toilet, no plumbed in bath, no supermarkets, no car). Nowadays, the existance of all these things makes it possible to combine children and careers.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the 1960s feminism, and the right to work, not the suffragists.

And you may well be right about the extra technology - but one of the results of technology is simply that standards rise,

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Suffragettes, not suffragists.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

(a) Suffragettes were the more radical fringe and (b) Suffragette was a term coined by the opponents of the movement to belittle the suffragists. I therefore use suffragists.

[lavendersparkle]

It also depends upon what one means by contraception. Some methods have been in existence for hundreds of years; new methods are still being developed.

I really dislike the idea that contraception, from which by neonchameleon's use I think he means hormonal oral contraception and IUDs, caused feminism. Primarily because I think that it dismisses patriarchy to a matter of differences of physiology, which can be solved by using technology to the adapt female bodies. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the benefits of contraception, but I think that it's a mistake to think that feminisms only, or even main obstacle, is pregnancy and motherhood. Apart from anything else, it obscures the ways in which sexism within society penalises mothers in a way which isn't inherent to the condition of motherhood. Another problem I have with the view is that it ignores the ways in which contraception has been used to oppress some women, particularly poor, black, disabled, and/or indigenous women.

I don't think that hormonal contraception really had that much effect upon feminism. As karen2205 touched on, household appliances had a strong effect upon women liberation in the early 20th century. In other periods feminist movements have been inspired by the liberation struggles of other groups at the time.

[neonchameleon]

Good grief, this is an old entry. And I don't think that patriarchy is a matter of differences of physiology, but do think that that is a significant factor - and that any kyriearchy will blow minor physiological differences out of proportion. So yes, I think it helped massively. But certainly wasn't an exclusive cause.