Praise for ‘the Pill’

My Dear Dissonance,

You are right to note that birth control, particularly the Pill, has been very beneficial to Our Father. That it still is such a rallying point for millions of women 50 years after it became available is a source of endless satisfaction to those of us who tempt females. It’s like having a permanent monopoly on one aspect of the feminine character.

Technically speaking, it divorced sex from children, giving women a false sense of power over biology that has never proven true. Look at how many women fall into bed with losers they would never “date” — to use a quaint term — or could ever imagine becoming a husband and father of their children.

Talk about a recipe for delivering short term pleasure and long-term pain! Plenty of women get hooked in that cycle until they wake up in a panic at 40 and wonder why they wasted so much time with men who only wanted to know them from 9 PM until 6 AM on a repeat basis. I hate that humans can experience pleasure in any form but when it can be used to undermine their understanding of love and distort their longings, I’m OK with it.

Even better, over time birth control has become a right of passage for most women. The fact that it is so heavily prescribed – and without thought on the part of physicians or their patients – sends the message that sex is not a choice. When people feel that they are not in control of a situation, we win. Even your patient, with her antiquated notion that sex is best left to marriage, is a product of this system. She started taking the Pill at 14, ostensibly to make her period regular, but soon realized the side benefits. That in turn made her feel badly that her behavior did not match her beliefs which only drove her farther away from the Enemy because she felt guilty.  Her experience is common.

Think of how many people want to lose weight and never do because they think can’t change their eating or exercise habits. Or of those who want to buy a house but let their expenses dictate their lives. The best part about all of these situations is that powerlessness usually is not an isolated, compartmentalizable problem. It eats into every aspect of a person’s life.

So imagine the power we are given when a 14-year-old girl like your patient goes on the Pill. It almost immediately hands over a life to us, or at minimum a big chunk of her life for years to come. And the best part is, we don’t even have to work to win her over. Society has already told her sex is OK in almost all circumstances, even if she may not feel comfortable in most of them. You see, the prescription makes her feel as if she doesn’t have a choice. It eliminates the biggest reason to say no. And because the only morality around sex in today’s world involves whether someone is adequately protected from disease and procreation and whether the birth control is free, she really has no choice. Remember the uproar over a certain law student’s testimony to Congress about the need for free birth control? For the elite, the only moral issue is whether everyone has “access” to birth control – which is termed “preventative care” in modern politics. No one could have devised a more perfect formula for us.

And the funny thing is, the ability to have sex with whomever, whenever, has often made women in particular unhappy. Humans are happier with fewer partners and happier being married, but that never seems to be discussed – to our benefit. Humans also never seem to realize that falling into bed with someone distracts people from finding someone who is compatible with them.

The interesting thing is that this situation is called “empowerment” in modern political terms. It is our job to keep women deluded that they are actually made more powerful by suppressing their biology.

Thankfully, we have culture working on our side in this case. Women today think they can put off having children almost indefinitely until they have found the perfect man and they are at the right point in their careers. One woman recently wrote a book about how liberating it was for her to freeze her eggs, giving her more time to have fun and meet a partner. I’m totally all for letting women rely on technology to have children so long as it permanently helps them to keep putting off thinking about what they really want out of life and the kind of man who they want to share it with. I also like that it helps to make childbirth seem like just another lifestyle choice instead of a completely life altering experience that gives humans an understanding of love on an almost cosmic scale, and by association, a glimpse of the Enemy.

And if it helps them to think they can raise a child on their own, all the better. Otherwise, I am indifferent about it or would rather it didn’t exist – especially because it has the potential to bring so much joy into so many families lives that wouldn’t otherwise be able to have children. The whole pregnancy process in general is a bad time for us.

Of course, some women don’t care about their children and abuse their bodies during pregnancy, which is an easy win for us, and some overly obsess about their weight. But for the vast majority of women in the U.S., the child growing in their body can come to seem like a miracle and make them realize that they are not totally in charge of their lives. It’s also really annoying that it’s so easy to sign up for weekly updates on child development. They make a mass of cells seem like a full-fledged human being even before it could live on its own. That in turn prompts moms and dads to think about the meaning of life, if not the Enemy, and see a child instead of Our Father’s preferred term, fetus.

That’s why it’s always best to prevent pregnancy before it happens. In your case, the longer your patient keeps dating her current boyfriend, the better, as it takes him so long to make a decision that she might not be able to get pregnant by the time they marry.

Your affectionate aunt,

Pandemonium