This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Although the science is still new and there is a lot to be learned, it is unacceptable for you to stay in the dark any longer. We know too much for you to know so little.

Despite the newness of the science and tentativeness of the conclusions that can currently be drawn, changing women's hormones changes women. And this is a big deal. Although we don't yet know that the pill does the research suggests that it probably has a hand in women's mate preferences, our sensitivity to smells, our relationship satisfaction, the functioning of our stress response, the activities of multiple neurotransmitter systems, the activity of multiple hormones, our moods, our persistence in difficult tasks, our ability to learn and remember and our sex drive. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

For a long time being female was treated by science and medicine as being akin to having a serious psychological disorder. Women were routinely prescribed hysterectomies or anxiolytics like valium to treat the symptoms of hysteria which is a syndrome with symptoms that are suspiciously similar to the symptoms of being of human female who has to deal with stupid sexist bullshit. Although scions and medicine has come a long way since these sorts of practices were common place every woman i know has had an experience of being treated as less rational version of a man. Sometimes even by our own doctors simply by virtue of our gender. There belief that women are irrational and therefore underserving of the same rights as men is something that has lingered in the public consciousness in a huge way. And women are very aware of this. We have to listen to a lot of people say a lot of dumb shit about our hormones and about whether we deserve the right to control our own fertility. These types of claims particularly when combined with sciences and medicine mishandling of women for so long have made it very difficult for anyone, even female scientists, to have thoughtful conversations about things like women's hormones and fertility regulation. These topics unaddressed by science are often met with suspicion by anyone who has ever owned a pair of ovaries or is an ovarian sympatist.

It should come as absolutely no surprise that research has ignored women for so long because the establishment: the journal publishers, the reviewers and the funding agencies has rewarded it. Although the things are changing for the better in the US federal agencies will no longer fund clinical trials involving humans that do not include women... there is still a long way to go [..] Thoughtful, carefully done research on females still takes longer and costs more and is often times harder to interpret than research conducted only on males. So when people's careers depend on their publication rate rather than the need for answers to the questions they are asking, women and the issues they care about most - loose.

We have been far too cavalier with our hormones, and I can’t help thinking that we would be a lot more careful with ourselves if we understood how we work and why we work that way. You need to know how your brain works, you need to know how your hormones influence your brain, and you need to know how all that changes on the pill.

Anyone who tells you that biology is inconsistent with feminism doesn’t know what they are talking about.

There is absolutely no truth to the idea that women’s hormones change and make them irrational but men’s don’t.

Although we don’t yet know that the pill does, the research suggests that it probably has a hand in women’s mate preferences, our sensitivity to smells, our relationship satisfaction, the functioning of our stress response, the activities of multiple neurotransmitter systems, the activities of multiple hormones, our moods, our persistence in difficult tasks, our ability to learn and remember, and our sex drive.

To be a woman, no matter where you are in the world, means to be on the wrong side of social and economic gaps much of the time.*

Research finds that women feel sexier, are more open to new experiences, and put more effort into their appearance at high fertility than at low fertility across the cycle. Women at high fertility also wear more makeup, wear sexier clothes, buy sexier clothes, and wear more red, which is a color known to make women appear particular attractive and desirable to men.