There certainly are some side effects to taking birth control pills and depending on the person they may react differently or not react at all.
In my case I got some heart issues which made sense because it was in my family history so I just switched to the mini pill which I have taken ever since. Fucking love it. I never bleed and I don’t get pms symptoms. Just get to live a normal life without all the gross stuff.
But with all that said, I too believe that the anti birth control wave online was propaganda. It just came about a little too conveniently after the US made abortion illegal. It is just a tad bit too coincidental.
I followed it a bit when it began getting traction some years ago and I felt very confused and disturbed by the narrative being passed around about birth control. It felt like fear mongering and I just felt confused by the symptoms women were reporting online. I have literally never in my life heard of any woman talk about how birth control made her depressed and I have after all been in the game for awhile and known many women who have been in it too. That was the first thing that made me lift an eyebrow.
Then I watched a video where some expert was talking about how birth control pills make women less attracted to manly men and more attracted to feminine men. I forget the name of the expert but I do remember that she was associated with conservatives and had their interests in mind. I thought it was very funny that she was essentially blaming birth control for women being attracted to unacceptable men.
And honestly, I have a question I would like to ask that expert, because when I was a teen girl, before I got on birth control, I was VERY attracted to scrawny men with long hair and eyeliner. Manly men did nothing for me.
I got on birthcontrol at 19 and wanna know what happened to my taste in men over the years? It evolved to being more focused on men with more masculine traits. Instead of scrawny I began finding men who were filled out, more attractive. I began thinking that beards were hot when I had always found them kinda gross. I thought that men who looked a bit gruff went from being gross and boring to being cute and attractive.
I’m pushing 40 now and my spouse is the exact opposite of what I was attracted to as a teen. There is nothing feminine about him.
But I think I know what that expert meant. She’s blaming women choosing partners who treats them as their equals on birth control. Because here is the thing about my man: he may not look feminine nor does he particularly act feminine, but he’s also not a brute who thinks he’s the head of the household and I am his servant. He doesn’t act like he is better than me nor does he feel entitled to me at all. He cooks and cleans. He is very good with emotional talks and being attentive and empathetic. He is very encouraging and has basically no control issues besides claiming the kitchen as his domain. That’s mostly I might be one of the worst cooks in the world.
Women want men who are emotionally intelligent, who are their equals and who are good partners. They don’t want a slave master. And I think that is why American conservatives are trying to blame birth control. If you can convince women that they are taking a pill that mind controls them into wanting something unnatural and wrong, then they may be more compliant than of you flat out blame them for having higher standards for their men than their mothers and grandmothers had.
There are definitely side effects to taking birth control but there are also side effects to taking pain killers.
I have no doubt the anti birth control wave is orcastrated by the very people who are trying to take away women’s autonomy in the US and beyond. I see the anti abortion movement starting to take root in Europe too and I fucking hate it.
humanity is awesome at kicking its own ass
Do not respond to any of this; just wait around for 2026 and try voting fascism out again.
It’s possible the election was stolen, and no amount of voter turnout could have prevented Trump from taking office.
What then? Would you still tell us to “not respond … and try voting” ?
I was being wildly facetious because that’s what every shitlib is telling us to do. Also, they arent buying the stolen election story for some stupid fucking reason.
When they’re willing to ignore the family’s wishes to pull the plug in life support of a dead woman because the corpse has a fetus growing inside of it, I don’t think anyone should be finishing inside of anyone else without multiple forms of birth control.
I’m gonna get hammered here because this is Lemmy and anything even loosely associated with Natural Family Planning is going to get down voted.
There are very specific and narrow methods that work well (not perfectly, obviously). I won’t quote and statistics here.
To start up top, if you want to use any method of birth control, do it. It’s up to you entirely, I don’t judge anyone at all.
Also, anything related to the calendar method, day counting, or any such nonsense fuckin sucks. Some like to rope that into natural family planning because they are super simple… But super simple doesn’t work.
If anyone is interested in learning about one that actually has scientific backing, it would be the Billings Ovulation Method. But it’s not day tracking or anything… You need to do some work. You need to learn about it, learn your own body, and be diligent. And most importantly, use alternative methods when you aren’t sure.
Again, I’m willing to bring on the downvotes, but I hope people research before assuming it’s all bullshit.
And just to be clear: If you want something easy, use birth control.
As an edit: I want to fully acknowledge the gap between typical use and perfect use. My wife and I are certainly in the perfect use category… Her dad is a doctor and we are well aware of all the science behind it. If you aren’t going to put in the work, the method is NOT for you. At all.
Why is DONT JIZZ IN VAGINA not the primary method??
Holy SHIT people are irresponsible AF.
I even know a DOCTOR who tried to tell me his ex-gf “tricked him into” having another kid. A doctor who doesnt know how reproduction works??
And then three former acquaintances in NC who all had multiple unplanned kids each and acted surprised every time.
It’s NOT THE WOMAN’S RESPONSIBILITY.
Ladies: make him write a treatise explaining how reproduction works and then make him sign a responsibility contract. Men are fucking idiots.
Oh 100% on that. Part of that Billings Ovulation Method is that you need open communication and the practice takes both people.
I understand that it’s not practical for all couples or situations, but it’s an option for some that isn’t talked about much.
I won’t quote and statistics here.
Weird. Wonder why
I mean I want people to łook them up. A lot of studies have them at 99% effective, but with perfect use, which I noted above. Wikipedia says 0.5%-3%, but it depends on the study.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billings_ovulation_method
Realistically, quoting stats doesn’t change anyone’s mind. I doubt you’ll really believe the above. I’m sure you can find things that list it higher, or that you should use typical use rates, which is a completely fair criticism. As I said, this method is not for everyone.
Low birth rates are only problematic to carcinogenic ideologies.
Just want to drop this here.
Birth control is great.
Some methods of birth control are bad for you specifically. Not all birth control is equal. You are a complex piece of equipment. Birth control alters the way that equipment works. There are side effects, no matter what, and they are listed because the were well documented in clinical trials.
That does not mean you should not use birth control. It means you should work with your doctor to find the one that works best for you.
My wife tried a birth control medication that had an interaction with another medication and made her very drousy. My sister took one that made her feel suicidal. They shopped around and found something that worked.
Yeah. Summarizing this, BC has a lot of side effects, but pregnancy has even more.
Frankly, I’m hoping that RISUG makes it to the US. I would get two reversible injections in the crotch to basically prevent pregnancy with zero side effects.
Thanks for mentioning this. Never heard of that before. So we have a almost 100% effective, one-time use, most likely reversible, cheap contraceptive that is free of unwanted side effects. sadly it would lessen the profit of pharmaceutical companies, so we can’t have it. too bad.
yay for capitalism!
Just do condoms?
Or everyone can look at the variety of options and decide what’s best for them at any given time.
Condoms are a great option, and they have the added bonuses of also protecting against STIs and being able to work alongside pharmaceutical contraception. That last bit is big because if you’re absolutely unwilling to have kids and abortion is illegal or something you’re unwilling to do you probably want to be using two methods.
I’m the first to praise condoms especially with people choosing not to vaccinate their children against HPV and with the fact that they’re how one can be certain that they don’t impregnate anyone else. But they too have downsides including that most people aren’t very good at using them.
Condoms are fine if you want to protect from STIs, but they’re less effective than other hormone based contraceptives to prevent conceptions.
And much, much, much more expensive.
BC pills have usages outside of contraception. It can be used to treat various issues related to hormones.
I practice natural family planning
It’s called being ugly
The states that imposed these Draconian laws have terrible maternal mortality rates now and they’re trying to hide the data so they don’t have to acknowledge the harm they did. Same way it was during COVID where some state governments like Florida were attacking independent investigators for having accurate numbers when the state changed theirs to try and look better.
Gotta grow new soldiers for the next war
It’s being pushed by the TERF/radfems on tumblr (covert alt right movement) as well. Birth control messes up your goddess energy or something.
I highly encourage anyone that doesn’t want to ever have kids, to go get tied or snipped so that you won’t ever have to worry about it.
I won’t do this until we have a surgery that allows you to turn your sperm production on and off at any time with the push of a button.
I don’t want kids but I may want them someday, and I rather not have to go through surgery twice and spend a bunch of money just because I changed my mind.
Iirc they can extract sperm directly from the testicles with a needle for folks who don’t want to/can’t get a vasectomy reversed but change their mind about kids, not a fun procedure to go through I’m sure but still easier than reversing a vasectomy and a much shorter recovery time
Good news everyone! That already exists. https://bimek.com/
Uh, yeah, as an idea, lol:
Since spring 2016, we have had the OK from an ethics committee of a renowned clinic in Germany for the clinical study on the Bimek SLV Model 4. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find the financial means to start the clinical study.
For an investment of 600k € we could at best have the test valves manufactured. But then there would be no money left to push the study forward in compliance with all medical device laws. If no further investments were made then, the validity of the sterile packaging would expire.
It is not easy to find investors for this project if one is honest and openly communicates known risks.
Seeing “© 2018” at the bottom of the website doesn’t exactly inspire confidence either, lol.
How would you feel about adopting?
I got snipped and then got married to someone who already had a kid, so I ended up being a (step-)parent anyway. But I told my doctor that if I ever changed my mind, I would adopt.
And if you’re in a conservative hell state in the United States where doctors refuse to do a tubal ligation unless you have one child, are over 30, or “get your (nonexistent) husband to sign off on it”, find a doctor in Washington, California, Massachusetts, or really any non Republican dumpster fire, and they’ll likely treat you like an adult. Likely. Not bitter about that at all.
I’ve told my partner that if anyone needs my sign-off on any medical decisions, they are to inform the provider that I will be more than happy to do it, but I’m going to punch whomever is requiring it in the face first.
One of my best friends had endo. She tried to get it fixed (she is not straight and never wanted kids) and she was told “no, there’s other options, we’re not doing a hysterectomy” multiple times.
I believe it was her third suicide attempt after being admitted multiple other times for self harm that they finally took her shit out.
She’s been fine since then. No suicide-inducing pain, no debilitation, no problem. You’re right—it’s fucking insane that it has to come to that.
There’s an open source period tracker called drip that doesn’t collect your data. Everything is kept local. My wife used it for a while and learned some things about her cycle. It was also cool being able to know almost exactly when she’d be on her period 2 months ahead of time.
Seems more like this post was done to peddle big pharmas and the patriarchies idea of how women should be available for sex by being constantly drugged on hormons.
Condoms are a thing and protect against many STDs too.
patriarchies idea of how women should…
How about women have the right to choose how they want to plan their families how they see fit
For which they should know about the risks of hormonal contraception rather than it being swept under the rug.
drugged on hormones lmao? birth control doesn’t have psychoactive effects, chill.
on condoms: stealthing is a thing, condoms break, and no single birth control method is 100%. not everyone can afford the risk of pregnancy by relying on a single layer of defense
Idk. My birth control triggered treatment resistant depression. Possible it could have happened anyway, but I didn’t struggle with any mental health issues before that. We tried all different kinds of birth control. My doctor certainly didn’t warn me about the risks for any of them.
I wasn’t even trying to be safe for sex, I just had chronic pain. No pain meds ever offered. Just birth control suggested from early in my adolescence. When I finally eventually started birth control it didn’t fix my pain and I ended up leaving college and my life fell off the rails for years. Major depression is no joke.
sounds like you developed depression from medical malpractice and I’m really sorry your doctor was a raging misogynist.
I’m not denying that hormone blend could have made it worse, it just sounds like you’d have developed depression regardless because your chronic pain probably got worse because it went unaddressed and on top of that you also got blamed for it because of your uterus.
I believe being on birth control without informed consent is fucked up, which is maybe what the person above meant by “drugged”. what I thought they meant is comparing it to being on psychoactive substances which sounded silly to me.
childism and women being treated like children is a huge issue in medicine, and I’m sorry you didn’t get to assert your bodily autonomy.
Hormones most definetely effect the psyche. There is a lot of women who have strong psychological side effects from hormonal birth control.
Denying and downplaying these, like this post seems to advocate for, is not in the interest of anyone except the companies selling the drugs and men who think they are entitled to rawdog without consequences.
i hate to burst your bubble but the only people who wanna force women to be sex dolls are the anti-birth control and anti-abortion christofascists. also idk why you’re bringing women into it because the original post used gender-neutral language. you don’t need to be a woman to need birth control.
there’s no lobbying group that I’m aware of promoting an anti-sex ed agenda like you’re implying such as “rawdogging is totally fine if you’re on birth control, actually”. that sounds like something an anti-feminist, an incel or a Christian theocrat would say.
blaming misogynistic violence on birth control makes as much sense as blaming harmful sex attitudes on Big Condom because “this new technology allows you to fuck without worrying about pregnancy”.
I knew a woman who stopped taking birth control because of occasional headaches, and she and her husband both ended up with one that didn’t move out until 23 years later.
This actually happened to me. The doctor said the birth control was raising my blood pressure. I said “I don’t think so” but turns out she was right. So I quit them and immediately got pregnant.
But when you say “occasional headaches”? The other thing I found out when I quit them is that they were amplifying my migraines quite a lot. Occasional headaches does not adequately describe that pain, vomiting from the pain.
I’ve used hormonal IUDs since I was 16, and they’ve fantastic. You can just have one inserted and then not have to worry for the next ~6 years. Completely stopped my period too (came back briefly before I got on T, then T stopped it again, and now it’s still gone even after being off T for several years). I can not overstate how amazing not having a period has been for my mental health.
When I first tried to get one, my doctor tried to convince me out of it because I was “too young” and hadn’t had a child yet. I’m so glad I stayed firm in my decision and got a gyno who would work with me.
