America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (9 page)

Other experts echoed this concern. One noted that the typ- ical overworked husband comes home “mentally and physically

spent—in no mood to satisfy his newly libidinous, pill-taking wife.” No longer the “virile attacker,” he becomes the “docile partner rendering mere service to his peer—or at least he feels that way.” Another described a woman who began taking the pill and “enjoyed her newfound sexual freedom almost to the point of nymphomania,” causing her formerly virile husband to become hostile, surly, impotent, and violent.
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In a telling comparison, another doctor observed, “Woman power is just like black power, and it’s going to have a similar impact. Faced by the growing public effectiveness and inde- pendence of women, men have traditionally reacted as if their masculinity were under attack. . . . American men are beginning to show a preference for demure, passive women. Perhaps the golden day of the shy Southern belle is due for revival.” This physician suggested that black power threatened white privilege much as women’s power threatened male privilege. According to this logic, white men were at risk of losing their sexual as well as racial dominance—and the pill was part of the problem.
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Sex educator Dr. Mary Calderone was not surprised by these responses, noting that the sexual effects of the pill could bring a woman “face to face with her own sexuality or that of her husband—a confrontation that often results in anxiety or panic on the part of the husband or wife.” Ultimately, these ex- perts offered a predictable solution to the problem of the pill’s adverse effects on men: more experts. They suggested psy- chotherapy to help couples adjust to the impact of the pill on their sexual relationships.
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As these experts and advocates demonstrate, the pill altered the sexual dynamics between women and men. More than

simply providing effective and convenient contraception, the pill disrupted power relations between the sexes. Whether the pill was a boon for men or a bust, millions of women took it anyway, and their sexual partners managed, happily or unhap- pily. The pill clearly revolutionized contraception. Whether or not it revolutionized sex is another matter.

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The Sexual Revolution

The pill is obviously important to the sexual and the contraceptive revolutions, but it is not the open- ing bombshell of either one.

Everyone knows what The Pill is. It is a small object—yet its potential effect upon our society may be even more devastating than the nuclear bomb.

T

he pill is a symbol of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, attached to the decade’s utopian dreams—or dystopian fears—that sex was increasingly escaping its marital confines and exploding among the unwed. As the metaphors of warfare in the above quotes suggest, the oral contraceptive was one more weapon in the growing arsenal of the prevailing cold war cul- ture. Heated controversies erupted over its impact on the na- tion’s sexual behavior.
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The apocalyptic foreboding of the noted

writer Pearl S. Buck reflects worries at the time that the pill would destroy the nation’s sexual mores and unravel the fabric of marriage and family, leading to social chaos. Feminist Glo- ria Steinem, on the other hand, saw the pill as contributing to the increasing autonomy of married and unmarried women as well as an important contribution to their sexual emancipation— but not the cause of either development.

In fact, we know very little about the pill’s relationship to the sexual revolution. Although increasing numbers of un- married women engaged in sex and some of them used the pill, the vast majority of women who rushed off to their doc- tors to obtain prescriptions for oral contraceptives were mar- ried. Single women faced many obstacles. Laws in several states prohibited doctors from prescribing the pill to them. Some single women lied about their marital status in order to get the pill; others found sympathetic doctors. A doctor work- ing in Boston told Gloria Steinem in 1960 that he prescribed the diaphragm for anyone who asked, ignoring the Massachu- setts law that prohibited the distribution of birth control in- formation or devices: “I don’t know a doctor who demands a marriage license before giving contraceptive advice or pre- scriptions. The law says ‘health reasons’ and leaves the inter- pretation up to our discretion. We proceed on the basis that unmarried women need medical contraceptive methods for their own and for society’s health.” One young single woman told Steinem that it was “simple” to get contraceptives. “Just go to a doctor and tell him you’re getting married. I went through the whole bit, including a blood test, just to get a di- aphragm.”
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Not all young women would consider that process

“simple.” But those who wanted birth control could usually find a way to get it.

Custom more than law stood in the way. If the only deter- rent to sex for single women was fear of pregnancy, and if un- married women had been champing at the bit for a safe, convenient, and effective method of contraception, both sexual intercourse and pill use among the unwed would have in- creased dramatically after the FDA approval in 1960. And if large numbers of sexually active single women had used it, there would have been a significant decline in abortions as well as out-of-wedlock births. But none of that happened. The availability of a particular technology rarely creates an immedi- ate change in deeply held cultural values. The diaphragm, for example, had been available long before the pill, and although it was less convenient, it was almost as effective. But neither the diaphragm nor the pill sparked a major change in sexual behavior. In the 1960s, many other factors were involved in unleashing the sexual revolution.
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Polls taken at the time indicated that single women who were already sexually active were enthusiastic about the pill be- cause it allowed them to enjoy sex more fully. But those who were not engaging in sex were not likely to do so simply be- cause the pill was now available. As one doctor noted, “The pill does not make people decide to have sex. It is after they decide to have sex that they go get the pill.” Nevertheless, the pill was part of a changing cultural environment that was gradually becoming more tolerant. A psychologist pointed out that a large part of the sexual revolution resulted not so much from changes in behavior as from “increased freedom to
talk

about that behavior—and to admit to it without apparent shame or guilt.”
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Gloria Steinem noted an increasing public acceptance of sex and an emphasis on individual moral choices. With more young women becoming “self-motivated and autonomous . . . they are free to take sex, education, work and even marriage when and how they like.” The pill, she believed, encouraged this trend, but didn’t create it. She concluded that as women gained more independence, the availability of the pill would “speed American women, especially single women, toward the view that their sex practices are none of society’s business.”
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Steinem’s observations proved to be prescient.
Women used the pill to further a trend that had been devel- oping for several decades. The rise in sexual activity among single women in the 1960s appears dramatic not because it was historically unprecedented but because it was such a stark contrast to the 1950s—an aberrant decade marked by a wide- spread rush to the altar. The marriage rate skyrocketed as people wed at younger ages, creating the baby boom. In fact, 1957 marked the high point in births among teenagers, with nearly 10 percent of fifteen- to nineteen-year-old women having babies. But 85 percent of those young mothers were already married. By 1959, nearly half of American brides were younger than nineteen. Teen sex had undoubtedly in- creased during the 1950s, but young marriage was a substan- tial part of the equation.
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If the 1950s and 1960s are viewed in a longer historical context, changing patterns appear more evolutionary than rev-

olutionary. The rate of premarital intercourse among American women who came of age in the 1920s was more than twice that of the previous generation. By the early 1950s, half of all American women had engaged in sex before marriage. The numbers increased rapidly in the late 1960s and even more dramatically in the 1970s. By the late 1980s, premarital sex was the norm for both women and men, with a majority of young women becoming sexually active by the age of nineteen.
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There is no evidence that the pill’s arrival in 1960 had any im- mediate impact on these trends. Two eras stand out as mo- ments of dramatic change: the 1920s, when new dating customs gave young couples more privacy and sanctioned a greater degree of physical intimacy; and the late 1960s and 1970s, marked not only by changing behavior but also by a greater openness surrounding public discussions of sex. In both periods, sexual activity, including intercourse, increased among the unmarried.
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And in both “sexual revolutions,” effective contraception played a role, but not a causal one.

In addition to fostering intimacy among unwed couples, both revolutions liberated and encouraged marital sex. In the early twentieth century, increasing numbers of medical experts acknowledged that women as well as men had powerful sex drives, and that sexual fulfillment was equally important for husbands and wives. Romantics like Margaret Sanger saw birth control as contributing to the greater expression of fe- male sexuality, which she saw in idealized, spiritual terms. In her 1926 sex manual, Sanger articulated her belief in the up- lifting power of physical intimacy: “Sex-communion should be considered as a true union of souls, not merely a physical

function for the momentary relief of the sexual organs. Unless the psychic and spiritual desires are fulfilled, the relationship has been woefully deficient and the participants degraded and dissatisfied. . . . The sexual embrace not only satisfies but ele- vates both participants. The physical demands are harnessed for the expression of love.”
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Sanger’s words reflected the views of many sex reformers throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
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World War II created new opportunities for previously taboo sexual behavior among single men and women, espe- cially among many “respectable” young women, who discov- ered sexual adventures amid the upheavals of wartime. At the same time, the war glorified marriage, home, and family as the American way of life for which the country’s soldiers fought and died. During the war, in major Hollywood films such as
This Is the Army
and
Penny Serenade
, marriage and babies took center stage. When the war ended, much of the sexual activity unleashed during the war became enveloped in marriage, as young people focused their hopes for peacetime happiness on domestic bliss. The double standard, which had eased some- what during the war, returned with a vengeance. For the next two decades, sex for women was contained largely within mar- riage, where happy families were expected to flow naturally from procreative intercourse.
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But the white picket fences surrounding these idyllic homes didn’t contain the sexual desires of postwar couples. Within marriage, young wives faced more than two decades of fertility and worried about bearing and rearing too many children. Outside of marriage, the stakes were especially high for women. Young men faced little or no stigma for their sexual

adventures—some dalliance on the way to manhood was ex- pected, and men often boasted of their conquests. For women, shame and notoriety followed those who “went all the way.” If “caught” with a pregnancy, a couple either married quickly under the scrutiny of family and friends or the unmarried woman had some hard choices to make. Many took the risk of an illegal abortion. The lucky ones found a private physician willing to provide a “therapeutic” abortion by claiming that continuing the pregnancy risked the life or health of the pa- tient. But hospital policies were making that option more dif- ficult by requiring a panel of doctors—not just the woman’s physician—to agree that the procedure was medically neces- sary.
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Others went through with their pregnancies at great personal cost. Young white women were often whisked away to homes for unwed mothers to give birth and put their babies up for adoption. Young black women—frequently denied access to white-only homes for unwed mothers—turned to their fam- ilies to help raise their babies.
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Whether or not a pregnancy occurred, sex was risky for single women. Artists and writers explored the rigid sexual culture and its costs, especially for women. Two major Amer- ican writers, Mary McCarthy and Philip Roth, took up this theme in their work. Mary McCarthy’s 1954 short story, “Dottie Makes an Honest Woman of Herself,” revolves around a sexually liberated college student’s visit to a birth control clinic to be fitted for a diaphragm. The story caused a stir when it was published in
Partisan Review
and became a chap- ter in McCarthy’s best-selling 1963 novel,
The Group.
Begin- ning with the words of Dottie’s lover, “Get yourself a pessary,”

the narrative chronicles Dottie’s search for both love and liber- ation, even though Dick, the man with whom she had lost her virginity, insists, “I don’t love you, you know.” As in many sto- ries exploring the sexual dynamics of the era, Dottie is looking for love, and Dick is looking for sex.
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Like Mary McCarthy’s story, Philip Roth’s 1959 novel,
Goodbye Columbus
, also featured a diaphragm. The central plot—a romance between affluent Brenda Patimkin and Neil Klugman, her working-class boyfriend—turns on Brenda’s bold decision to go to a clinic for a diaphragm and her mother’s sub- sequent discovery of the device.
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As in Mary McCarthy’s story, the diaphragm leads to an unhappy ending. Neither Dottie nor Brenda finds true love; contraception does nothing to free them from shame, rejection, and heartbreak.

In a 2005 interview, Philip Roth reflected on the centrality of the diaphragm in his story. He recalled, “There was no legalized abortion [in 1959]; young men and young women were ex- tremely concerned with not getting pregnant. . . . So it was a cru- cial issue, because there was no remedy short of something drastic, which was either marriage for very young people or an illegal abortion, which was quite terrifying, if one even knew how to go about doing it.” When Brenda went to the Margaret Sanger Clinic for a diaphragm, “It may seem like a small thing now, but it really wasn’t a small thing for Brenda, coming from her background, to do, it wasn’t a small thing for [her boyfriend] to ask her to do. . . . Of course they’re undone by that.”
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Mc- Carthy and Roth, keen observers of sexual culture, made it clear that it would take more than effective birth control to transcend the taboo against unmarried sex, especially for women.