By NICKY CHAMP
Since it first came on the market in 1960, the oral contraceptive pill has long been associated with female liberation – one small pill, one giant leap for womankind – but a new generation of women are refusing to swallow in favour of another less reliable method.
They’re downing the pill packets and pulling out instead. Well, the men are pulling out.
Yes, we’re talking the time-old withdrawal method.
If you’re in your late twenties or early thirties and started taking the pill around the time of your first sexual encounter then chances are you’ve been popping that 28-day packet on a daily basis for over a decade.
And if you’ve ever felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day when it comes to washing down Yasmin or Brevinor you’ve probably wondered if there isn’t something better out there that isn’t as scary as tortuous-looking IUDs or injections or implanted hormone-releasing rods.
We all know someone who knows someone who had a bad experience or used to be lovely but morphed into a hormonal-raging monster after switching birth control methods. Besides, with the onus relying solely on the woman to not forget to take the pill every. Single. Day that giant baby burden sure is tiring once you hit double digits.
If all that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. An increasing amount of women, the latest US stats say two in five, and their partners are practising coitus interruptus.
Even though the withdrawal method has been used for at least two millennia, an article has coined the latest players in this contraceptive resurgence, the Pullout Generation.
Before you get your judgey mcjudge pants on, it may surprise you to know it’s a trend that belies class lines. It isn’t a phenomenon limited to the teen moms or the poorly educated, the condom-shy or the ‘should’ve known betters’ of this world; it’s smart, successful women dodging the baby-making bullet.
“They buy organic kale and all-natural cleaning products, and so can’t quite get down with taking synthetic hormones every day. They are more driven by sexual pleasure — they see orgasms as a right, not a privilege — and hate the feel of condoms. They wouldn’t call themselves porn aficionados or anything, but they don’t think it’s demeaning to have a man come on them,” writes Ann Friedman in NY Mag.
The women interviewed by Friedman were mostly in long-term monogamous relationships and used period-tracker apps to determine the days they were ovulating and then employed either condoms and/or the withdrawal method to avoid pregnancy.
But a word of warning, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and no babies. Quizzing my friends on their pullout escapades one friend described how she and her first boyfriend, who were crazy mad into trying everything, decided to give the pullout method a whirl.