The Fear of Male Birth Control

The Fear of Male Birth Control

A Podcast is on this page:

(Link): The Fear of Male Birth Control

What’s keeping men from sharing more of the burden?

Being freaked out by vasectomies is not an excuse. https://t.co/Cq7eoswjNY

— Slate (@Slate) August 30, 2019

When it comes to birth control, women’s bodies are regularly put through the wringer. What’s keeping men from sharing more of the burden?

Listen to Man Up with @aymanndotcom on @ApplePodcasts 🎧 https://t.co/633qU9KjGc pic.twitter.com/6iBA9P0Ppx

— Slate (@Slate) August 29, 2019

The Unintended Consequences of the Contraceptive Mandate by Greer Donley

The Unintended Consequences of the Contraceptive Mandate by Greer Donley

(Link): The Unintended Consequences of the Contraceptive Mandate

Excerpts:

June 2019

Its exclusion of men perpetuates harmful stereotypes. The most obvious one is that birth control is a woman’s responsibility.

In 1971, the Supreme Court for the first time struck down a law under the Constitution’s equal-protection clause that treated men and women differently.

Courts since then have invalidated countless laws that discriminated on the basis of sex.

Bucking convention, advocates frequently attacked laws that were designed to benefit women under the theory that such laws perpetuated harmful sex stereotypes that “put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

Americans now take for granted that the government acts illegally when it creates self-fulfilling legislation that presumes women are caregivers or do not work outside the home.

A Male Birth Control Gel Is Getting Closer to Reality

A Male Birth Control Gel Is Getting Closer to Reality

(Link): A Male Birth Control Gel Is Getting Closer to Reality

Excerpts:

by Michelle Fay Cortez
November 2018

(Bloomberg) — U.S. government scientists will test an experimental birth control method for men, which would be a major advance in contraception and bring more equality to a family planning burden borne largely by women.

The study is being conducted by the National Institutes of Health and will involve 420 couples. The experimental treatment is a gel, applied to the back and shoulders, that combines two types of hormones to halt the production of sperm while maintaining the energy and libido benefits of testosterone.

‘Men Are 100% Responsible For Unwanted Pregnancies’ Writes Blogger in Viral Twitter Thread

‘Men Are 100% Responsible For Unwanted Pregnancies’ Writes Blogger in Viral Twitter Thread

(Link): ‘Men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies’ writes blogger in viral Twitter thread

‘Stop trying to control women’s bodies and sexuality’

A blogger from Oakland, California has become a viral sensation after sharing her views on abortion on Twitter, in which she argues that “all unwanted pregnancies are caused by the the irresponsible ejaculations of men”.

Gabrielle Blair, a Mormon and mother-of-six, began her series of tweets by claiming that men have “zero interest in stopping abortion” and are almost entirely responsible for accidental pregnancies.

“Women can only get pregnant about two days each month,” she writes. “And that’s for a limited number of years.

“That makes 24 days a year where a woman might get pregnant. But men can cause pregnancy 365 days a year.

“In fact, if you’re a man who ejaculates multiple times a day, you could cause multiple pregnancies daily. In theory, a man could cause 1000+ unwanted pregnancies in just one year.”

How A Rare Poison Could Help Bring The First Male Birth Control Pill to Market

(Link): How A Rare Poison Could Help Bring The First Male Birth Control Pill to Market

After decades of research, development of a male birth control may now be one step closer. My colleagues and I are working on a promising lead for a male birth control pill based on ouabain—a plant extract that African warriors and hunters traditionally used as a heart-stopping poison on their arrows.

…Today, men have just two choices when it comes to birth control: condoms or a vasectomy.

Let’s Rethink Sex by C. Emba

I agreed with much of this editorial by Emba (posted much farther below) and don’t have a problem with it.

I’m a right winger. Imagine my surprise a while back when I was visiting a right wing political blog on which one of the blog owners criticized this editorial by Emba.

From what I can recall, the conservative author found Emba’s cry for the public to take sex more seriously and not sleep around so much, to be unrealistic or too stuffy, too… whatever.

I was appalled that a conservative author on a conservative site (the same author has claimed in previous blog posts on other topics to be a Christian) would be attacking a well-reasoned editorial pointing out that perhaps the avalanche of sexual harassment stories we’ve all been seeing in the media in the realms of Hollywood, sports, politics and more, can be due to people having an “anything goes” mentality towards sex. I agree with her.

Before seeing this editorial a few weeks ago, I was thinking of writing one similar to it myself (and still may).

I would fully expect the majority of liberals out there – especially the feminists – to mock the notion of being chaste or more deliberate about when, if, where, and with whom to have sex, but a conservative? (Liberal feminists (Link): have already done so before, as a matter of fact.)

Maybe I should not be surprised.

I’ve been posting stories to this blog off and on for around the last seven years, and I’ve seen several instances of conservative Christians who have a “meh, who cares, it’s just fornication, go ahead and do it, sex is no biggie” attitude that one would expect to see from some Non-Christians or from liberal feminists.

But the conservatives and Christians go along with this sort of thinking as well.

Even Sex Is In Crisis in Venezuela, Where Contraceptives Are Growing Scarce

Even Sex Is In Crisis in Venezuela, Where Contraceptives Are Growing Scarce

(Link):  Even Sex Is In Crisis in Venezuela, Where Contraceptives Are Growing Scarce

Excerpts:

CARACAS, Venezuela — Yorlenis Gutierrez, a 28-year-old mother, spent months vainly scouring pharmacies for a drug whose scarcity is complicating her sex life and that of countless Venezuelans. In a country beset by shortages, this is one of the hardest: the disappearance of contraceptives.

  When she couldn’t renew her supply of birth control pills, Gutierrez and her husband made a choice. Long-term abstinence was not an option, they agreed.

They tried to be careful, but soon she was pregnant with her second child.

Er, what? Long term abstinence is certainly an option.

I seldom to never feel sorry for people when they make a choice to have sex but then get pregnant, get an STD, or whatever.

When they act as though being celibate longer than a week is a huge, huge burden that cannot be overcome. No sympathy from me.

Continuing with article’s excerpts:

But the shortage of contraceptives has put Venezuelans in a particularly bleak quandary: Have sex — or don’t ?

Fewer People Are Getting Married – And That’s A Good Thing by J. Wright

Fewer People Are Getting Married – And That’s A Good Thing by J. Wright

If you are new to my blog, I’d like to inform you that I am a conservative, a right winger.

I am not against “the family unit” or against marriage, but, I have noticed that a lot of other conservatives have disparaged singleness and have elevated marriage (as well as parenting and natalism) in to false idols they worship.

So, I’m not against marriage, babies, or the nuclear family, but I am opposed to the over-emphasis upon those things by my fellow conservatives.

(Link): Fewer People Are Getting Married – And That’s A Good Thing by J. Wright

Excerpts:

In a week full of terrible things, the Wall Street Journal published an essay entitled  (Link): “Cheap Sex and the Decline of Marriage” that pondered, “Why is marriage in retreat among young Americans? Because it is now much easier for men to find sexual satisfaction outside marriage.”

“Women: They’re Destroying Everything with Their Sluttery” is, I suppose, kind of a fun theory for an article if your readers hate women.

But the notion that unmarried young people are having an unprecedented amount of sex is without basis in fact. Studies from the (Link): Archives of Sexual Behavior indicate that extramarital sex is actually on the decline. Baby boomers are estimated to have 11 average sexual partners over their lifetimes, while millennials are expected to have only eight.

It stands to reason that women as well as men are having less cheap and easy sex.

Oh, well.

CDC Releases New Report on American Teens and Sex: Here Are 4 Things You Need to Know

CDC Releases New Report on American Teens and Sex: Here Are 4 Things You Need to Know

(Link): CDC Releases New Report on American Teens and Sex: Here Are 4 Things You Need to Know

by Gryboski, Jun 22, 2017

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report Thursday regarding issues surrounding American teenagers and sexual activity.

Titled “Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use Among Teenagers in the United States, 2011–2015,” the report was authored by Joyce C. Abma, Ph.D., and Gladys M. Martinez, Ph.D., of the Division of Vital Statistics.

Here are four things you need to know about the CDC report, including a trend in the rate of sexual activity, the use of emergency contraception, and racial disparities.

Decline in Sexual Activity

The newly released CDC report found that sexual activity among unmarried teenagers in the U.S. continues to be considerably lower than it was over a generation ago.

Pharmacist Allegedly Refused To Fill Teen’s IUD-Related Prescription

Pharmacist Allegedly Refused To Fill Teen’s IUD-Related Prescription

(Link):  A Pharmacist Allegedly Refused To Fill A Teen’s IUD-Related Hormone Prescription For “Personal Beliefs” by K. Brabaw

M.S.’s daughter, who was twelve at the time, had a period that wasn’t going away with other birth control methods, so her doctor suggested she get an IUD, according to a statement from the ACLU of New Mexico. The doctor prescribed three medications to help the IUD insertion go more smoothly— a pain reliever, an anti-anxiety medication, and Misoprotol —but Garrett said he was only able to fill two of the three and M.S. would need to go to another Walgreens for the third.

He allegedly refused to fill the Misoprotol, which is used to treat stomach ulcers, but is also often prescribed for reproductive health, such as inducing an abortion and to soften the cervix prior to an IUD insertion.

When M.S. later asked Garrett why he couldn’t fill the prescription, she was told that they did have the pill at the store but that particular pharmacist wouldn’t fill the prescription due to “personal beliefs.”

He told her that he “had a pretty good idea” why her daughter needed the medication, insinuating that she either needed to have an abortion or that she was getting an IUD for sexual activity.

Atheists At Risk of Dying Out Due to Belief in Contraception

Atheists At Risk of Dying Out Due to Belief in Contraception

(Link): Atheists At Risk of Dying Out Due to Belief in Contraception by Rachel Hosie

Religious people are having more babies

A new study has suggested that atheism is doomed because religiouspeople have higher rates of reproduction.

Morning-After Pill Now Available At UC Davis Vending Machine

Morning-After Pill Now Available At UC Davis Vending Machine

(Link): Morning-After Pill Now Available At UC Davis Vending Machine

April 2017

In a quiet UC Davis study lounge, back in the corner just past the coffee cups, you’ll find contraception for sale in a vending machine.

If you look closely, the machine isn’t just stocked with condoms, tampons and pregnancy tests. It’s selling the morning-after pill. The A row up top will dispense the Plan B pill for $30 a box.

Tokophobia – Too Afraid To Have A Baby by A. Lauretta

Tokophobia – Too Afraid To Have A Baby by A. Lauretta

(Link):  Too Afraid to Have a Baby

• Tokophobia—a pathological dread of giving birth—might be causing some women to avoid pregnancy.
• ….Though there aren’t statistics in the United States for a pathological anxiety over pregnancy and childbirth—known as tokophobia— (Link): studies in Australia and Britain have found that 6 percent of pregnant women report a disabling fear of having babies, while 13 percent of women who are not yet pregnant are afraid enough to postpone or avoid pregnancy altogether.
• ….Pregnancy and childbirth do come with feelings of anxiety, of course: hopes that the mother and child will be safe and healthy, that there will be little to no complications during childbirth, that the first days and months at home will go smoothly.
• So when do common pregnancy jitters cross the line into a clinical phobia? And, if the phobia is as prevalent as some research suggests, why isn’t it more widely recognized? The answer may have to do with the difficulty of being open about not looking forward to something that most people consider a miracle—especially when more than six million women in the U.S. alone have problems getting or staying pregnant and may dream of having children.
• …Tokophobia is categorized in two forms: primary and secondary. The former can be understood through the lens of Mirren’s fear—often happening at a young age—when seeing disturbing images of birth or even resulting from sexual assault. The latter is often described similarly to post-traumatic stress disorder, resulting from a traumatic past birth experience.

Teenagers Given Condoms at School Likelier to Become Pregnant and get STDs / STIs: 2016 Study

Teenagers Given Condoms at School Likelier to Become Pregnant and Get STDs / STIs: 2016 Study

(Link): New Study Shows ’90s Era Condom Programs Increased Teen Fertility Rates

Excerpt:

• by MICHAEL J. NEW
• June 17, 2016
• A new study by a pair of Notre Dame economists received some media attention this week. It found that school districts that instituted condom distribution programs in the early 1990s saw significant increases in the teen-fertility rate [as well as an increase in sexually transmitted diseases].

I Waited to Have Sex Until I Was 26, And Now I Can’t Have an Orgasm (by a Woman Raised in Christian Purity Culture) – Provides Yet Another Reason to Ditch the Equally Yoked Teaching

I Waited to Have Sex Until I Was 26, And Now I Can’t Have an Orgasm (by a Woman Raised in Christian Purity Culture) – Provides Yet Another Reason to Ditch the Equally Yoked Teaching

—————————————

• I would not be surprised if (Link): my Blog Stalker, John Morgan, still visits my blog (and sometimes my Twitter account) and steals links and story ideas to blog on at his blog. He’ll probably swipe the following story I found and feature it on his own blog.

—————————————–

I did not see an author’s name on this. It just says “Anonymous”

I have a few comments below this long excerpt:

(Link): I Waited to Have Sex Until I Was 26, And Now I Can’t Have an Orgasm (by a Woman Raised in Christian Purity Culture)

• by Anonymous
• May 27, 2016
• I can’t even talk to my sister or some of my closest friends about it because they all still think I’m a virgin, living my life of purity for the Lord.
•  ——–

• I was raised in an almost cult-like Southern Reformed Baptist church. I was told that sex was wrong, lustful thinking was wrong, and basically anything that involved sex before marriage would send me straight to hell. It wasn’t until last year that I had the first physical step of courage to go against my upbringing and risk losing everyone around me to do what I thought was right and okay as a woman — not what I was told by evangelical men.

• ….The church taught us that sex was one of the cardinal sins. Once defiled, always defiled. Women could not make decisions without a father or husband to do it for them, and how would we earn a husband if we were not pure?

• They trained the young girls in our church, myself included, that we should live and die to find a husband. Education was fine, as long as it contributed to getting a husband. “Be fruitful and multiply” was the mantra.

• I went along with this. It was all I knew, and I had no mother figure to tell me otherwise. As I grew older, though, I grew indignant of my small amount of options.

• They told us to find a husband within the church, one who was “equally yolked,” but no man in the church chose from the church. They left the church to find wives and left a congregation of deserted and bewildered home-schooled hearts. Yet they were applauded for their fine, godly choices in women. Meanwhile, the women of the church were left to rot.

Abstinence Groups: New Sex-Ed Study Misses Point of Urging Teens to Wait

Abstinence Groups: New Sex-Ed Study Misses Point of Urging Teens to Wait

(Link):  Abstinence Groups: New Sex-Ed Study Misses Point of Urging Teens to Wait

Excerpts:

• By KILEY CROSSLAND
• Posted May 11, 2016, 03:30 p.m.

• Abstinence advocacy groups say a new (Link): study criticizing virginity pledges misses the point of abstinence education.

• The study, “Broken Promises: Abstinence Pledging and Sexual and Reproductive Health,” published on the website of the Journal for Marriage and Family, reports that the vast majority of virginity pledgers break their promise to save sex for marriage.

Woman Realizes Having Open Relationship Bothers Her / Married Couple Confront Each Other About Their Other Sexual Partners via Cosmo Magazine

Woman Realizes Having Open Relationship Bothers Her / Married Couple Confront Each Other About Their Other Sexual Partners via Cosmo Magazine 

I do have some problems with how conservatives (including conservative Christians not just secular social conservatives) deal with the topic of sex (hey, about 65% of my blog posts are about that topic). However, your liberals can be problematic in this area as well.

Liberals like to believe sex has no consequences, not physical nor emotional.

However, at the same time, they scream on their blogs against abstinence-only public school sex education and yell that women should receive tax-payer funded birth control, abortion should be legally and widely available, and so on.

Liberals tend to downplay the possible physical ramifications of sex, especially for women, when speaking or writing for women (ie, sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy), to teach women that being trampy is not shameful but is feminist and empowering. I find that liberals sometimes speak out of both sides of their mouth on this topic.

Secular feminists also like to tell women (especially the younger, naive ones) that they won’t have any emotional fall-out from having sex.

I’ve known women (in person) and read of too many testimonies by women online and in magazines to know that is not always so.

Plenty of people do have issues accepting that their partner has a sexual history or has cheated on them with another person.

Here is another example  or two of this being the case (I have not watched the video on the page with the video.)

I will also link to a page I saw recently by a woman who said she was initially fine and accepting of her poly-whatever boyfriend but after so many months of dating the guy, knowing he was emotionally growing attached to the other women he was dating and having sex with disturbed her.

(Link): I Tried an Open Relationship—and It Was a Disaster 

Excerpts:

• by Sophie S. Thomas
• Three ways I’m better at being monogamous now.
• …Jack [the writer’s boyfriend] was polyamorous. And because I was in love with him, I wanted to go with the flow and make it work. I tried for three years to do things his way — I’d sometimes sleep with other people while he sometimes went on dates with potential new partners.

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

As this report notes (link is much farther down this blog page), more pressure is placed on WOMEN to marry and have children than is placed on MEN.

I know that culture and Christians can treat single / celibate / childless men like trash, but they are TEN TIMES worse on Christian WOMEN in these regards.

Women get far more pressured to marry and have kids than men do or ever will.

Women get more shamed and insulted by Christians (and at times, secular culture) for staying single, celibate, and childless than males ever are.

Just because most women are capable of carrying a baby inside them, society and churches think it’s their DUTY to have a baby (as though women serve no other purpose in life), and if they choose to opt out (or cannot have a kid), they are still marginalized or insulted for it.

Men don’t face nearly as much insult or pressure to have kids as women do.

I am right of center – but I agree with this left wing (liberal) guy that other right wingers such as Dobson’s real goal is to be against what he perceives as liberal threats to the church or culture. That is one very real motivator some right wingers have, in why they do things like harass women to have children.

I also want to say how utterly moronic I find this approach by Dobson.

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The Hell Out Of The GOP

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The  Hell Out Of The GOP

Sometimes some of these reviews of Traister’s book, or interviews with her, bring up how so many Republicans often demonize or criticize single motherhood.

I happen to be a Republican myself, someone who was raised in a traditional Christian home.

One thing I don’t get is how so many other Republicans and Christians do in fact constantly bad-mouth single motherhood, but out of the other side of their mouths, they frequently complain that not enough women are having babies.

It ticks these types of Republicans and Christians off that baby-making rates have declined a bit in the last decade or whatever (see this link for example).

So, on the one hand, my fellow Republicans complain about women having babies (women who happen to be single), but then turn around and complain and gripe about women NOT having babies.

Christians and Republicans are somewhat inconsistent on this point. They might argue that women should marry first, and then make a baby with their spouse, but this is part of the problem: plenty of women WANT to marry, but there are no eligible males for them to marry (see this link or this link for more).

And, of course, there are married women who cannot have babies because they are infertile, or some may choose to forgo motherhood – and their choices should be respected, not condemned.

Another thing that bothers me about this conservative demonizing of single motherhood is that I suspect one view that undergirds it is that they believe that marriage or parenthood supposedly makes adults more mature, responsible or godly, which is simply (Link): not true (and see this link and this link).

(There are a lot of conservative Christians who have taught or said that people only become mature or responsible when they marry or have a kid.)

The Bible does not teach that marriage or parenthood are necessary to make a person more godly, loving, responsible, or mature.

And even every day common sense and observation bears that out: we’ve all known, or heard of, married parents who are immature, greedy, or immoral swine.

Disclaimer:

• I am right wing and have been a Republican for years. However, I don’t always agree with Republicans on everything.
  I do occasionally agree with some of the left wing’s criticism of right wingers, and concerning how dismally right wingers treat singles, I agree with them on that.

The link I give you here is from a left wing site, by Amanda Marcotte, a liberal feminist who is (Link): sometimes hypocritical about women’s sexual issues.

Even though I completely disagree with Marcotte on some topics, I did find myself agreeing with some of the content of this interview she had with this book author:

(Link):  Scary single ladies: Rebecca Traister explains why single women frighten the hell out of the GOP by Amanda Marcotte

Excerpts:

• Author Rebecca Traister’s new book on single women looks at how this growing population is reshaping America
• Author Rebecca Traister’s last book, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” took a comprehensive look at how the 2008 elections changed everything for American women.
• Now she’s back with a similarly pop music-themed title, “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation,” an examination of the role single women have played in American culture, both in our history and in our current times.
• (Link): Single women are a potent political force in a way that they never have been before, making up nearly a quarter of the electorate and leaning to the left of both men and their married counterparts.
• This, along with a whole host of inchoate fears about what happens when women are left to their own devices without male supervision, has led to a rash of conservative pundits and politicians denouncing the ladies who aren’t married. I interviewed Traister about this moral panic over single women and what it means for the culture at large.
• [Question to the book author]: In your book, you detail how obsessed the conservative media has become with single women, who clearly anger right-wing pundits. The most hilarious quote you pull is Rush Limbaugh whining, “What is it with all these young, single, white women?” What is it with these conservative pundits focusing on single women?
• It was just a couple of weeks (Link): after his tirade of Sandra Fluke that he made those comments about another woman who had written a book.
• The fact that he said “white,” well, there are these versions of single womanhood that we are presented and the version that threatens most, is the white, privileged women.
• Sandra Fluke testifying in front of Congress, women who are writing books, Murphy Brown, and Anita Hill, even though she’s not white, a lawyer appeared for Clarence Thomas.
• There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
• What if reproduction is taken outside that version of male control? What if women are competing?

The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

Pretty long article, but very interesting.

Please use this link I’m giving you if you’d like to read the entire page (it’s a little bit farther below).

I am a right winger, have been a Republican my whole life (though the GOP has been annoying me more and more the last few years, but no, I am not fine with the Democrats), and I am a single woman who was raised in a Christian home.

My parents were Christians who had very traditional values.

The one thing I dread when reading articles like this one I am linking to in this post is imagining how my fellow right wingers will react to what it discusses.

Typically, rather than help single women where they are (which is what they should be doing), they will more likely, instead, complain and yell about singleness, about what a shame it is people aren’t marrying as much or not as young as they did decades ago, and yell at single women to run right out and get married immediately.

(One thing these types of idiots overlook is that marrying is not that easy. I’ve always wanted to be married, but I never met the right guy. I am not going to marry just any guy with a pulse just for the sake of being married.)

Anyway, following that initial reaction of my fellow right wingers, they will then, at that point – by “they,” I refer more specifically to the conservative marriage concern trolls among the secular right wingers and the conservative Christians – will write fear-mongering articles (like (Link): this one) to scare single women into marrying the first man they meet who has a pulse.

The fear mongering and pressure by conservatives to scare or cajole women to marry has gotten so bad with right wing marriage concern trolls, that some of them are even directing Christian women to marry (Link): known pornography addicts.

The majority of my fellow conservatives don’t give a rat’s ass about doing anything to assist single women so long as those women are single.

Many conservatives would prefer to sit back in their rocking chair on the front porch, sipping on lemonade, smoking on their pipes, complaining about how times have changed for the worst, and how the nation was so much better back in 1952. They would rather pine away for the so-called “good old days” than to help people in practical ways in 2016 where ever they find themselves in life.

Though I am right wing, I think this author makes a few good arguments against conservative views about singleness and marriage and the roles of women.

(Link): The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

Excerpts:

• The most powerful voter this year, who in her rapidly increasing numbers has become an entirely new category of citizen, is THE SingleAmerican Woman
• By REBECCA TRAISTER
• ….In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent. In other words, for the first time in American history, single women (including those who were never married, widowed, divorced, or separated) outnumbered married women.
• Perhaps even more strikingly, the number of adults younger than 34 who had never married was up to 46 percent, rising 12 percentage points in less than a decade. For women under 30, the likelihood of being married has become astonishingly small: Today, only around 20 percent of Americans ages 18–29 are wed, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960.
• It is a radical upheaval, a national reckoning with massive social and political implications. Across classes, and races, we are seeing a wholesale revision of what female life might entail.
• We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.
• This reorganization of our citizenry, unlike the social movements that preceded it and made it possible — from abolition and suffrage and labor fights of the 19th and early-20th centuries to the civil-rights, women’s, and gay-rights movements of the mid-20th century — is not a self-consciously politicized event. Today’s women are, for the most part, not abstaining from or delaying marriage to prove a point about equality.
• They are doing it because they have internalized assumptions that just a half-century ago would have seemed radical: that it’s okay for them not to be married; that they are whole people able to live full professional, economic, social, sexual, and parental lives on their own if they don’t happen to meet a person to whom they want to legally bind themselves.
• The most radical of feminist ideas—the disestablishment of marriage — has been so widely embraced as to have become habit, drained of its political intent but ever-more potent insofar as it has refashioned the course of average female life.