Tracy Quan's Anti-Withdrawal Argument Gives Women Zero Agency
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Tracy Quan, who is normally so sex-positive and has written extensively about her life as a call girl, has an article in the Daily Beast warning women against using withdrawal as a birth control method, even though new research has shown it to be almost as effective as condoms. When I wrote about the withdrawal study from the Guttmacher institute in May, I remarked on some of the same issues that Quan does with withdrawal vs. condoms: Withdrawal doesn't protect from diseases, and getting teens to use it properly is probably never going to happen.
What surprised me about Quan's argument against withdrawal was that it allowed grown women very little agency in their contraceptive choices, and takes an incredibly dim view of men. "The folk wisdom—endorsed by this paper—that withdrawal is a valid method puts women in a very awkward position when discussing contraception with male sex partners," Quan writes, "Getting men to take birth control seriously has never been easy. One laddish website is astutely touting the news as a 'happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.'" Quan even goes so far to say, "I can’t help but feel that researchers and health care providers who 'just kind of dismiss withdrawal,' as Jones puts it, are actually doing us all a favor."
Certainly, no one is recommending that women use withdrawal with casual sex partners who have not been given the full battery of STD tests. But keeping valuable contraceptive information away from grown men and women is doing everyone a disservice. Adult women should be aware of all of the contraceptive information out there so they can make educated choices about their reproductive lives. What's more, if you can't trust a man to "take contraception seriously," maybe you shouldn't be sleeping with him. We should be telling that to young women, rather than shielding them from the truth about withdrawal.
Photograph by Getty Images.
Jessica Grose is the managing editor of Double X and the co-author of Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home. Click here to follow her on Twitter.
Comments
I'm married, but...
By: kellysn | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 12:32
I think I'll stick with the pill. Sorry, but it's idiotic to base your contraception on another person's ability to restrain himself in the heat of passion. Withdrawal is just reckless.... have we forgotten what the consequences of failed contraception are?
Also, I don't think withdrawal allows women "agency," I'd say it takes it away.
Really?
By: mm1984 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 12:30
How interesting. My husband and I used withdrawl for many years and never became pregnant. Of course I would never rely on this as a method of reliable birth control, but since we were married, financially secure, and willing to accept the consequences of a pregnancy, it worked for us. Having been told for many years that withdrawl was not reliable, I always assumed one of us had fertility issues, since in 10 years of using withdrawl we had never had a pregnancy.
Imagine my surprise when we decided to actively try to conceive and I became pregnant in the first month, and again became pregnant the first month, two years later with my second child. After having two kids, we decided to go the iron-clad birth control route and my husband had a vasectomy. I have always wondered why, if the withdrawl method is so unreliable, my husband and I never conceived over the course of a decade.
breathtakingly dumb
By: lorikay4 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 12:14
Pulling out as anything to recommend to ANYONE is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Without exploring my profound skepticism regarding most men's agency w/r/t birth control, bottom line is, nobody takes care of YOU better than YOU. Until there's a birth control pill for men that turns their earlobes orange or some other unmistakable and unfakable marker, it's our job, because we take the hit if mistakes are made. The fact that this can work doesn't make it a good idea. Women need to expect to take a leading role in requiring condoms and acquiring a second line of defense, unless you want your life to become a less funny version of Knocked Up. (which wasn't all that funny, by the way....)
I think I would prefer to masturbate
By: janeslogin | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 11:26
I'm a 71, or is it 72, year old male and I think that when health and opportunity permitted I would have rather masturbated than attempt withdrawal. Masturbation with a partner was not altogether unrewarding.
BTW, it was my experience that a vasectomy was perhaps the best minor surgery ever invented. A vasectomy will alleviate more pains than a tooth extraction. I cannot recommend it enough.
A: Mom
By: MrJM | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 11:14
Q: What do you call a woman who relies on withdrawal for birth control.
-- MrJM
That's some pretty serious
By: jennies1897 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 11:11
That's some pretty serious trust if you can rely on pull out. Maybe if I were married, but I wouldn't trust anyone I was dating to pull out. Sorry, good people have bad judgment sometimes.