Is birth control making women less feminine?

[Anonymous]

Everybody knows that women today are much more aggressive and independent than they were say 50 years ago. Most people just chalk it up to feminism and changing social attitudes. But what if it's more scientific than that? Aggressiveness, drive, and independence are typically qualities associated with males who have high testosterone and low estrogen. Is it any coincidence feminism started to really gain ground in the 60's, when the pill started getting popular, and you know the "sexual revolution" happened? What if the hormonal changes by birth control are what really caused woman's changes and why are we not looking at any of the negative side effects? As a guy, I really didn't know anything about what birth control actually does until I did some research. From what I understand, the main component in because is synthetic estrogen. This immediately stood out to me because there is actually a similar thing that some men use which contains synthetic testosterone. And They're called anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids can do serious long term hormonal and physical damage and are illegal for this reason. It would only make sense that synthetic estrogen can have the same effects, right? There was a study that compared waist, hip, and bust size with women about 50 years ago and found that while waist size has increased hip and bust size have stayed roughly the same, giving a more box like figure. They chalked it up to people getting fatter. But that can't be the case because women tend to accumulate fat on their bust and hips before their waist. Men are the ones who accumulate accumulate fat on their stomach and waist first ("beer belly"). Every guy likes to joke about how girls are sluttier these days. But sexual attitudes don't just up and change because of some political movement. There has to be a chemical catalyst that causes the change in the female body. In my opinion, the evidence is clear. The birth control pill altering women's hormones and making them less feminine and more masculine. The feminist dream achieved through science.

[Anonymous]

Aggressiveness, or drive has nothing to do with taking the pill, if anything the pill would be more likely to decrease your drive and make you confused and depressed.

It is not a political movement that changed women's behavior and attitudes, but a constant fight and incremental social changes over the past centuries. WWI and II especially provided women with the opportunity to show that they were as capable as men, to run farms, shops, factories etc when the men had to go to war, and carried on in the after war when so many didn't return. This is the reason why it has been more noticeable in the 50-60's, but this is not new at all. Women have not changed, they are just louder now, and are finally taken seriously, which doesn't in any case make them less feminine.

Women are all different in the way they accumulate fat, and if there is a tendency to gain more fat around hips and bust, it doesn't mean we don't add fat a bit everywhere, this is just silly to make any correlation between the pill and fat gain. Yes some pill can make you gain weight if it is not adapted to you, but the right pill doesn't make you gain any. Fat gain is a social phenomenon : women AND men get fatter because we just eat much more than 50 years ago, when food was not overproduced, and in some areas still quite scarce ( ration tickets in parts of western Europe for example were still being used some years after the end of WWII)

And of course, there wasn't as many cars, escalators, lifts, TV, computer, video games as there are now so people did exercise a lot more, and were a lot less stressed out, had the time to eat well etc. Anyway, this is not new stuff, but all that to say that the pill is not the cause of girls getting chunkier!

(~ personally I recognise that the pill is a great thing/protection for some women, but not for all, and that it does have pretty bad side effects, which is why I'm not a great advocate of it.

If I really wanted to go further in being controversial, I would say that the pill actually serves men's interests, rather than feminism : decrease of women mental and physical health, less risks of paternity for guys who carelessly sleep with different partners and in a society where we are all constantly being aroused by ads, films etc and in which we are constantly being fed the idea of bodies being objects, of sex being meaningless, girls are becoming more 'standard' in the way they are sexually arousing with bigger boobs and butts enhanced by the pill ~ which leads to girls having now more pressure to conform )

Let's say that feminism will really win the day they introduce and generalise a pill for men :)

[Izzy2102]

Well ya birth control contais estrogen but in a small dosis. It rather has the opposite effect than testosterone. Birth control won't make you more masculine if anything it will rather make you more feminine. That's why some women take it to grow bigger boobs or stuff like that. It will also rather decreas your sex drive. Some women who take birth control have absolutley no sex drive anymore.

Yes birth control makes you gain weight around your midsection, for once becuase estrogen in general makes you gain weight (which is why it's stupid that women in menopause who gain weight take estrogen to lose it. Testosterone makes you lose fat) but also because it makes your body think that you're pregnant and thus stores more fat around your waist.

Also waist size is often seen as indicator of healthy nutritioun and it's no secret that 50 years ago, we ate better. Nowadays a lot of people eat too many bad fats, which makes your body store more fat on your belly instead of hips/boobs.

Also the way our food is produced has changed drastically. Most of us are on some kind of growth hormone because that's what they feed the animals we eat.

Women being more slutty has nothing to do with hormones, it's a mix of social acceptance and no more risk of getting pregnant

[Asker]

Although you're right about us eating too many bad fats, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't effect where the fat is deposited. The hormones decide where the fat goes. In any situation where a woman has a lot of estrogen, the fat should stored on the chest, hips, and thighs first, even during pregnancy. This doesn't mean women don't get belly fat, just that in a healthy hormone balance it should appear in those places first.

[Izzy2102]

no not quite right, I keep forgetting the names but there are some fats that are more likley to be stored on your hips/boobs, those are usually the healthy fats and then there are other that are more likley to be stored around your midsection. estrogen is a fat storing hormone but the way the fat is dristibuted is also due to cortisol, insulin and even testosterone. The first two are definitely more stimulated in our modern diet. It's true that a woman on a healthy diet will first

[Izzy2102]

store fat on her hips/chest, the same is not true for women who eat a lot of sugar/sweetener and bad fat. I also can't imagine bust and hip sizes stayed exactly the same, that's almost impossbile. Do you have the link?, I'm sure what they meant is that the waist to hip ratio changed. Which is what happens if you some very overweight people in your study because as every clothing manufactor will be able to tell you, after a certain point the body distributs fat completley different from the one

[Izzy2102]

of normal weight. I believe that women choose different males when they are on the pill, such that they would prefer men who make good fathers over the best genetic match. And where is the harm in that? Excluding relatives most men will make a decent genetic match anyways. Studies show there tons and tons of health benefits of taking the pill.

[Asker]

Two points about diet: 1. A lot of those unhealthy foods that contain bad fats also contain xenoestrogens which essentially do the same thing as birth control so we don't really know if it's the fat or the xenoestrogens causing it. 2. Yes testosterone and cortisol also effect body fat storage, but birth control has also been known to mess with the proteins that testosterone binds to. This leaves more free testosterone in the blood, and higher free testosterone means fat will deposit on the belly

[Asker]

The only reason choosing mates is harmful is because the normal way of seeking out quality genes is disrupted. Now any decent quality genes will do. This leads to less healthy offspring. It could also man she "falls in love with" isn't necessarily the same man she would if she wasn't on the pill. What happens when she stops taking it? I don't think it's any coincidence that 70% of divorces are initiated by women.

[sammy67]

I don't take birth control and I'm a feminism and I'm an Independent woman .

I don't like guys doing things for me I like owning my one way and putting in the hard work instead of just sitting their and looking pretty . I think women back then probably wanted to be independent but it wasn't socially acceptable for them to be back then .

I hate having to ask a man for money or wait for him to give me money the fact that I can go out and get a job and buy the things I want makes me feel good . Also if I get married and my hubby is having trouble paying the bills it's nice to know that I can help out and he doesn't have to carry a heavy load on his shoulders .

I think so men can't handle the fact that women don't have to depend on them anymore for things I don't get why ?

But I think of it this way I like being independent also so a man wouldn't tell me hey if you don't do what I say I'm gonna do this or that for you .

I can get not liking women being too lose now days but

Why don't you want us to be independent ?

[Alonso14]

The levels of synthetic estrogen ingested by women on the pill is far less than the amount of synthetic testosterone used by men to achieve unnatural body shapes. Furthermore many women aren't and have never been on the pill so why are all, or at least the vast majority, acting differently to 50 years ago?

As for the point about divorce rates women are actually attracted to different men at different points of their menstrual cycle so I doubt that would be the sole cause for divorce rates anyway.

Women store some levels of fat on their hips and bust however if they are overweight they will likely store excess weight in other places too, people are definitely more likely to be overweight now that they were 50 years ago. Maybe women only initially store fat on their hips and bust until they reach a certain level of body fat (probably an unhealthy level) and begin storing it on their stomach and waist? I don't know for sure, its just an idea.

Primitive humans were likely very promiscuous, our closest living relatives (common chimpanzee's and bonobo chimpanzee's) are both very promiscuous, most still existing tribal societies also seem to be. In my view its much more likely that humans are natural promiscuous and have just been repressing it for approximately the last 5000 years because of religion, so actually I would say sexual attitudes can definitely up and change due to political and social movements.

[martyfellow]

I wonder sometimes about the hormonal intake and what that does to women's personalities, but I don't know of any scientific evidence that modern attitudes relate much to hormone levels.

I tend to ascribe the increased aggressiveness to societal attitudes the pressure to succeed, to outmaneuver other people in work situations.

Those sorts of corporate hustling attitudes have carried over into personal relationships, to my way of thinking. So they are power tripping in their personal lives often without realizing that is what they are doing

1

[bcc24]

Okay,

1. Psychology today and the daily mail are not legitimate sources for information. They usually report correlations instead of actual documented data, so you should test your theories in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.

2. This is just my theory, but what if the drive and ambition was always there and it was just stifled by men and the way they controlled women in everything? The whole women's rights movement may have happened relatively recently in history, but women's rights have been developing throughout time. We used to be treated like property, but by the time women started demanding they have rights, they already had a lot more than if it were ancient Rome, so I think the progression of time has facilitated the transition from field mouse, to lioness.

3. I have been on and off birth control for years, and I am still aggressive, driven, and a "b*tch" whether I'm on of off it.

[Asker]

1. The articles I linked are citing scholarly sources themselves. 2. You're right the drive and aggressiveness was always there, just not as much. Testosterone is THE hormone responsible for aggression in both men and women. Birth control has been known to mess with the proteins that testosterone binds to in the body. Unbinded test is called free testosterone. The higher the free testosterone, the higher the aggression.

[Asker]

Sorry, *the articles I mentioned, not linked. I can't use links yet

[peace-love-couture]

Feminism has made women less feminine(in the traditional sense) and allowed females to take on traditionally male roles/attitudes/jobs.

Feminism ruined femininity in a sense...well, it's ruined the image of the docile, subservient woman who plays deaf, dumb and stupid.

[SuperCurious]

While your reasoning is very well thought out and you have a valid point, as a woman on birth control I have to disagree. It has not affected the way I am in any major ways. I have always been independent and driven, I didn't need my hormone levels to change to make me who I am. I'd say that the way most women are today is from current expectations and culture. Back then there was not much more expected aside from being a good house wife and mother. Now we are expected to go to college, work, do everything a man does and still be good mothers and wives. While contraceptives can affect our moods when we first start and are getting used to the hormones changing, it does not change the type of person we are.

[Asker]

I'm thinking the changes are more subconscious than anything. Not exactly recognizable in day to day life. Essentially it tricks the female cycle into thinking its pregnant. This has to have some subconscious consequences on things like mate selection, body composition, etc. I know some girls say they feel like totally different people when they're not taking it.

[SuperCurious]

It affects everyone differently, as for the attraction, I saw that as well but it's a theory. There are millions of things that contribute to that. I'm no different than how I was before I began taking bc, I, my man, friends or family would point it out if I was. I am who I am because of how I was raised and what I have gone through in life, not because of my bc. As far as the attraction, I've been with the same man since before I started taking because am my attraction to himdidn't change one bit :)

[vsangel7]

I use to be on the pill, and I have to say everything you've said is true. I started in when I was 16, I gained 15lbs. I got off of it last April, I was 20 and I noticed a huge difference. I lost all the weight, my waist went from a 32 to a 27 and I would literally have to eat everything on the dollar menu for a week straight to gain weight. I hate the idea of putting hormones in my body..it makes girls temporarily infertile and I found that so abnormal. I seem to be attracted to the same men though lol but my sex drive isn't as "aggressive" and my periods are normal. My skin is even clearer. Def would never go back on that!

[Leggoddess]

Birth control is a steroid. It messes with your hormones.

[blondebeauty27]

i recently started birth control for the first time and it has two hormones. estrogen and progestrogen. the pill I'm on does give me mood swings yes but it hasn't altered my shape. my boobs have gotten larger but not my waist/hips. there are hubdreds if not thousands of different birth controls that will affect the millions of women who take them differently. you can't really have a connection between feminism and birth control.

[Anonymous]

No I highly I doubt it.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't think so

[Anonymous]

I don't think so

[Anonymous]

The daily mail...seriously? you really take that as evidence?!

[Anonymous]

There are lots of reasons but women's lib is the main reason and birth control is just a side effect of that

[Anonymous]

I don't think it changes them at all. They still complain on or off of birth control.

[Anonymous]

Idk if it makes you manly... just from my personal experience my friend was on the pill and she was a slut and cheated on guys and was very manipulative... but that very well could have been just who she was... I have another friend who used a diaphragm and she liked to hook up and not get into relationships, and me I have not used anything, and I abstain from sex currently but when I first lost my virginity I was a whore... ha ha well I slept with 5 different in the span of 2 years. I finally fell in love with this one guy (who I still love) and we had sex without a condom and no morning after pill or anything like that... I can not tell you HOW SCARED I WAS thinking I could be pregnant at only 17... I think this is a feeling every girl should go through... it really made me think, is this guy right for me? If I had a baby would he support me or leave? It made me think deeply about our relationship and I did realize I loved him very much but was not ready for anything like that... I think going through emotions like that make you mature a lot... I think a lot of women these days are stuck as little girls, nothing is their responsibility anymore... there are all these exit routes for their mistakes... anyways just my 2 cents... I have no idea what kind of chemicals are in the pill, to me it is just unhealthy mostly for psychological reasons... but this could be a whole other topic for me... I am against most pills people take.