IT'S ALMOST MORE NATURAL THAN THE REAL THING
the birth
control pill
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The birth control pill simultaneously allows women to have authority over their own reproductive health, while also making them at fault for their own bodies. If you don’t want to get pregnant take the pill. Simple as that.
Women’s bodies and identities are often defined by normative conceptions of the female physical form and functions. Through giving women control over their own bodies, birth control allows women to naturally regulate their bodies back to how they should normally operate and, in turn, restoring their body-mind harmony. It's a fact.
However, birth control does not only restore women to normality but also reinforces normative society.
While birth control pills give women more autonomy over their bodies and sexual freedom, it also makes women solely responsible for pregnancy and childcare. Thus, upholding normative gender roles that put women fully in charge of pregnancy and then childcare.
Birth control pills also shape normative ideas about sex, female sexuality, desire, and the use of female bodies. Even when prescribed for PCOS or other reasons that do not have to do with preventing pregnancy, birth control is called birth control. Its name indicates that it is first and foremost thought to be used by women because they do not want to get pregnant while engaging in sex. This notion perpetrates normative ideas about sexuality and sex.
Birth control has historically been used to shape society through governing the reproduction of races believed to be inferior. While the promotion of birth control has enabled many women to have larger sexual freedoms, it has also been used historically to oppress certain groups by trying to curb the growth of minority populations. Thus, the birth control pill is not a tool used just to normalize individual bodies, but also to try and normalize entire populations through constructing normative gender roles around childcare, assumptions about sex and sexuality, and regulating minority groups thought to be inferior.