Elon Musk made women very angry when he weighed in on the issues surrounding hormonal birth control. Oddly enough, that form of birth control has a lot of people willing to get defensive about it, but the truth is that it does present a load of problems that few people are discussing.
Namely, it takes a huge toll on women's mental health.
“Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide,” Musk posted on his social media network, X. “This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it.”
Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 16, 2024
This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it.
Musk then linked to a piece by TIME that explains this:
The same researchers reported last year that hormonal contraceptives were linked to a 70% higher risk of depression, which itself is associated with suicide. Because of that connection, in the current study, the researchers looked specifically at contraceptive use and suicide. They used a national study that tracked all women ages 15 and older who were living in Denmark from 1996 to 2013. The study analyzed prescriptions and filled prescriptions for contraceptives, as well as deaths and causes of death, and compared women taking this type of birth control to women who did not have a history of contraceptive use.
Among women who used hormonal contraceptives currently or recently, the risk of attempting suicide was nearly double that of women who had never used contraceptives. The risk was triple for suicide. The patch was linked to the highest risk of suicide attempts, followed by IUD, the vaginal ring and then pills.
Hormonal birth control is definitely not the consequences-free fix for stopping pregnancy that it's somewhat billed as. The ads of women living a free and happy life in the commercials that sell them aren't telling the whole story. Depression is definitely something that often comes with hormonal birth control, often resulting in a night-and-day difference in personality when a woman finally gets off it.
In fact, the personality change can be so drastic that some women who found men attractive while on birth control suddenly found them less attractive when they got off it.
But there's a deeper societal problem that birth control caused, and that came in the form of taking the power of sex away from women.
That might sound odd because women are now "liberated" to have sex whenever they want and with whomever they want, right? While that's true, that actually resulted in women having less power over sex than before. In fact, as time goes on, people are having less and less sex, but that deep dive's a whole different article.
What I mean by the power of sex being taken out of women's hands is that birth control removed the consequences of sex. Before that, women had to be pretty choosey about who they got into bed with because the act could easily result in pregnancy. This fact, in itself, had a deep impact on society.
Men wanted to have sex and very badly. We're wired that way. So, for us to have sex, we first had to become someone worth having sex with. We needed to prove that we would be a good provider and husband. Dating had a purpose beyond getting laid — it was literally a proving ground.
Men were more motivated to be better people, harder workers, and willing providers. Not that women were idle themselves. They prepared themselves for the inevitability of children and learned nesting and childcare skills. Marriage was more or less a requirement because it meant that the couple could engage in socially acceptable sex but also that the sex they engaged in would result in a functioning home and a good life.
But when birth control became widely available, women could have sex without pregnancy becoming an issue. They could get sexual pleasure without the risk, and as such, they became less choosey about the men they were courted by. Men, in turn, didn't feel the pressure to be better or even commit to a woman. If one woman didn't want to have sex, he could find another who would.
As the natural mating dynamic of men and women deteriorated, so did society.
All in all, civilization was much better off when women held the vast majority of the power of sex.
Now, to say that this is the singular reason the male/female dynamic deteriorated would be wrong, but it's a much larger factor than many people realize or talk about. Hormonal birth control is, at the end of the day, one of the more destructive things mankind created, and we don't realize it.
More conversations about this kind of thing need to be had, and the truth about the dangers and drawbacks of hormonal birth control need to be discussed at length. However, you will find that it has some very, very rabid defenders.
