I'm No Feminist, But...

I’ve never been a feminist.  In fact, my formation from a young Christian woman into a less young Christian woman took a distinctly un-feminist trajectory. Oh, I never once doubted the equality of men and women. And yet, within my own Christian context, I tended to be reluctant to play the “What you have said is offensive to women” card.  Not because I thought such things didn’t exist. I knew they did. I saw, read, and heard them on occasion. But rather, because my default position tended to be, “They didn’t really mean it to be offensive to women, so Dani, just let it go”.

These days, I’m finding that position increasingly untenable.

Maybe it’s age? Maybe it’s maturity? Maybe it’s changing contextual circumstances? Maybe it’s disillusionment? Maybe it’s all these things combined? Whatever it is, I now find myself less and less willing to let moments of Christian misogyny pass without identifying it for what it is. And this, not despite my complementarian convictions but precisely because of them.

I write all of this by way of introduction to some reflections I want to offer on this recent article, How the Pill Obscures God’s Truth in Creation.

An Apology, A Restatement & Initial Thoughts

But first, I need to make an apology to Peter, the author of that article. When I read the article a few days ago, I made this off-the-cuff comment:

The reality is this hasty post was neither thoughtful nor helpful. I’m sorry for that and am humbled by Peter’s generous reply in which he asked me to “Say more.” As you’ll see, I remain unpersuaded by some aspects of his article and some of his comments about or implications for women in particular. However, I really don’t like the fact that I’m now “primed” to spot what I think are instances of misogyny and then automatically interpret them as unapologetically or intentionally so. Peter, I’m sorry for doing that here. I need to do better at discerning between a piece like yours and a piece like this (whose anonymous misogyny makes it next to impossible to appreciate any points of theological substance buried underneath the casual chauvinism).

I also think it is important for me to restate something I said in that (somewhat ill-advised) tweet. I firmly believe that we evangelicals are way overdue for a reckoning when it comes to contraception, IVF and even adoption. I think our general approach and attitude to these matters display significant inconsistent (sometimes even contradictory) theological reasoning and grossly inadequate pastoral application. (I’ve found Matthew Lee Anderson’s contributions—e.g., here, here and here—well worth considering). All of which is to say,  I suspect Peter and I share broadly overlapping concerns on the topic of contraception as a whole (more on that below).

Having said all of that, I still have some thoughts…

The Problem that is [Contraception] the Pill.

I recognise that not every article can say everything about anything related to its premise statement. In other words, Peter’s argument doesn’t need to incorporate a discussion about all forms of contraception to evidence his premise about why one particular form of contraception is uniquely problematic. But here’s the thing…

Peter argues that the Pill is the form of contraception primarily responsible for the obscuring of divinely designed sexual differences. For example:

“The main technology that obscures God’s truth in our sexual differences is oral contraception, approved by the FDA in 1960”

“But it [i.e., the Pill] also severed the link between sex and procreation in the minds of entire generations. In doing so, it paved the way for no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, and today’s transgender movement with its neologisms like “pregnant person,” “chestfeeding,” and “people who menstruate.”

These are significant claims to make about this one particular contraceptive technology in particular. And yet, immediately after laying all of these evils at the feet of the Pill, the rest of the article consistently conflates the broader category of contraception (and its effects) with the Pill specifically. For instance:

• The terms “the Pill” and  “contraception” are regularly used interchangeably, as if they were absolutely synonymous with each other or the sum is represented by the part.

• The article offers two quotes (one from Harrington and another from Akerlof and Yellen) to substantiate the detrimental consequences it ascribes to the Pill. However, in context, both sources are actually talking about the development and availability of contraception technology broadly.

• The article links the uptake in contraception with the uptake of abortion (FYI: I think it is a fair link to explore). But it then continues, “Because Christians oppose abortion, we tend to think we’re immune to the Pill’s other effects”, as if abortion is a direct effect of the Pill.

But does this casual conflation of contraceptive technology with the Pill matter? Am I being unnecessarily pedantic?

Well, yes, I think it does matter. The article titles and frames its argument around the Pill itself rather than contraception more broadly. Peter is seeking to say something specific about this particular form of contraception. And that’s fine. There is room, even good reason, to focus specifically on the impact of the Pill on society and the Church.

But to conflate the broader impacts of contraception with the Pill and then lay all (or almost all) of these terrible consequences at its feet is problematic for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is that doing so lays all (or almost all) of those terrible consequences at the feet of those who swallow the Pill—women.

Oh, certainly, men come into play. They are assigned some responsibility. But only as a secondary result of the reproductive agency the Pill offers to women.

“Whereas in the past, a young man felt social pressure to marry a girl he got pregnant, that sense of obligation diminished with the Pill. If a woman can control her “reproductive life” as the Pill promised, then how can a man be held accountable for her pregnancy? Men began to feel less responsibility for their sexual actions…”

Sure. Ok. I can absolutely see how ready access to the Pill exacerbated the issue of men’s sexual irresponsibility. But the key word there is exacerbated. That problem didn’t spring into being with the Pill.  It was a rampant problem before the Pill.  Furthermore, it was a rampant MALE problem before the Pill, that WOMEN inevitably bore the brunt of.

This is where the red flags of subtle (unintended) prejudice against women first started waving gently in the breeze for me. As far as I can see, the article places the bulk of the responsibility for men’s (worsening) irresponsibility on women and their newfound reproductive agency, rather than where it actually belongs and has always belonged. Soley and squarely on men. I don’t think it was intentional in the argument as framed. But I do think it is the inevitable read of the argument as framed..

As I read, I couldn’t help but wonder why there is no mention of a certain other form of contraceptive technology whose ready availability predated the Pill by centuries (millennia, even)—the condom. Here are some stats that reveal just how pervasive that form of contraception was in the decades immediately prior to the Pill:

“By the mid-1930s, the fifteen major condom manufacturers [in the US] were producing one and a half million a day at an average price of a dollar per dozen,” Gamson writes. During World War II, condom production ramped up to 3 million a day, because condoms were given to American troops.¹

For all the article’s talk about the detrimental personal and societal consequences of contraception, why doesn’t that technology get a mention?

The Bitter Pill of Double Standards

Well, I think the answer to that question lies in the fact that the article does not actually want to focus on the broader problematic effects of contraception generally—although, I do think there are numerous points where it does seem to dive into this, thereby confusing or even veiling its main goal and focus. What is its main goal or focus? It wants to identify one specific problem that it contends is the direct responsibility of the Pill in particular— the flattening of sexual differentiation between men and women.

Now, at this point, I must make a confession. Even as I understood the article's premise, I was confused about aspects of its argumentation. Numerous reads later, and I still remain somewhat confused. I think (hope!) I now get it—read on. But it took me some time to parse its particular claims about how and why the Pill has obscured sexual differentiation between men and women and what that obscured differentiation actually is. I’d encourage you to read it for yourself and make up your own mind as to whether you think I’ve understood it correctly or not.

Let me start with what I don’t think the argument is saying.

 “the Pill has reshaped our understanding of women’s fertility, making it more conceptually aligned with the way we think about men’s ability to engage in sex without necessarily considering procreation”

In other words, the Pill has allowed women to treat sex and its consequences as cavalierly as men do. This means the two sexes are now much more like each other in terms of their ability to engage in sex without proper consideration of the consequences. Now, as much as that seems to me a natural reading of that particular quote in the broader premise of the article, I cannot and do not believe that Peter actually thinks that this is the “splendour of our sexual differences” that have been lost by the Pill. That is, I cannot and do not think that he is lamenting the fact that men have lost the capacity to be uniquely cavalier in making unwise or sinful sexual choices.

So if not that, then what?

Well, I think we see a glimpse of the answer in the quote offered from Mary Harrington:

[The Pill] “promised to flatten the most irreducible difference of all between the sexes: pregnancy.” 

I think the sexual differentiation that the article laments has been flattened is pregnancy (namely, that pregnancy is something women used not to be able to avoid. But now they can). Peter seems to confirm this when later he writes (emphasis added):

“… so contraception [Note: In a previous sentence it was the Pill that was specifically on view] clouds our Christian ability (and sometimes our desire) to see the splendor of our sexual differences. It’s easier than ever before to think of men and women as mostly interchangeable. Many of us do. We unwittingly make men the measure of women, whether in work or life or the church”.

I fell prey to this way of thinking when my daughters were little. I’d sometimes ask them what they wanted to be when they grew up and then suggest all sorts of wonderful things like a teacher or writer or doctor. I came to realize I was suggesting everything except the one thing only a woman can be: a mom.”

I think Peter is saying that the sexual differentiation that the Pill has compromised is this: Because women are now able to avoid the reality of pregnancy, and so freely pursue (and be distracted) by other aspirations without regard for that, this makes them more like men.

I think the key phrase here is that the Pill has led us to “unwittingly make men the measure of women”. Peter illustrates this by speaking of how he encouraged his young daughters to dream big about everything they might grow up to be until he realised that he was himself flattening their unique sexual differentiation. How? By not ever suggesting the one thing that is the unique measure of a woman— being a mother. (Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it in just a moment)

So, in summary, this is what I have come to understand the article’s overall argument about the flattening effect of the Pill to be:

1. Because women are the ones who get pregnant, the unique measure of what it is to a woman is—or at least must necessarily include reference to—being a mother.

2. Men can be fathers (and that’s great!). However, because they don’t get pregnant, the unique measure of what it is to be a man does not necessarily include reference to being a father.

3. By providing them with agency over whether or not they get pregnant, the Pill has enabled women to measure what it is to be a woman without necessary reference to falling pregnant and being a mother.

4. In other words, they are now like men in that respect.

5. And so, the Pill has uniquely obscured the sexual differentiation of men and women.

Sorry friends, but I sense a double standard lurking here.

Why is the measure of a woman found uniquely in what only she can do—being a mother—while the measure of a man is not found uniquely in what only he can do—being a father?  

Why is the male measure consistent with “all sorts of wonderful things like a teacher or writer or doctor” without reference to fatherhood, while a female’s measure may possibly allow for some of those wonderful things, but only so long as it includes reference or allowance to motherhood?

(Note: I’m not saying I think motherhood should be incidental to womanhood. Rather, I’m questioning why fatherhood is considered incidental to manhood.)

Is this really what we think lies at the heart of sexual differentiation between men and women? Women get pregnant and so their measure is rightly made in relation to that. Men don’t get pregnant and so their measure is not necessarily related to their capacity to impregnate women?

From what I can see, that seems to be the conclusion of this article. From what I have been able to understand, that is the sexual differentiation it claims has been tragically flattened by the Pill, and the Pill in particular (and therefore by women, and women in particular).

Unfortunately, I think this results in the diminishment of the privilege and responsibility of both men and women in this creation. What is more, this diminishment is characterised by unintentional and subtle, but nonetheless inevitable, misogynistic undertones.

If we are going to measure what it means to be a woman by her capacity to bear children (and become a mother), then we also need to measure what it means to be a man by his capacity to impregnate women with children (and become a father). If we are going to exhort women to form their expectations of how they go about fulfilling the creation mandate to work in this world in necessary conjunction with their privilege of conceiving children, then we need to exhort men to form their expectations of how they go about fulfilling the creation mandate to work in this world in necessary conjunction with their role in the conception of that child.

To put it simply, I don’t think the argument or conclusions of this article truly honour the equality that is implicit within sexual differentiation. And I don’t think this is healthy or honourable for women or men alike.

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Postscript: I feel I need to clarify that while I believe God’s design for conception and procreation is absolutely intrinsic to sexual differentiation in this creation, I am resistant to the idea that it represents the ontological definition of sexual differentiation (i.e. that it is the absolute, fundamental, eternal thing that differentiates men from women). We will all still be men and women in the resurrection age. But there and then, none of us will be having sex, being impregnated, impregnating others or becoming parents. This suggests to me that procreation is essential to understanding God’s design and intent for manhood and womanhood in this age. But that it is not the basis for our telic understanding of differentiated manhood and womanhood as an eternal ontological reality that will be perfected in the new creation. As Christians, we straddle both of those ages and so should resist defining what it is to be a man or a woman now solely on the basis of this creation alone. But that’s a discussion for another day. My point in this piece has been to critique this article on its own terms and according to its own argument.

1. https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-of-the-condom/. Interestingly, this source notes that condom sales decreased once the Pill (and IUDs) entered the marketplace. This would seem to only confirm the reality that men saw women’s contraceptive decisions as an occasion for them to take on less contraceptive responsibility.