E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y {EME} 2010 pp. 1–20 ISSN 1539-7785 © Hampton Press, Inc., and MEA All rights of reproduction in any form reserved B I RT H C O N T RO L AN EXTENSION OF “MAN” Valerie V. Peterson This article uses a media-ecological perspective to explore how birth control extends and shapes human experience. It begins by discussing media as environments, and makes the case that drugs, including birth control drugs, are media. It then briefly charts the history of birth control, accounting for the factors that led to the emergence of birth control as a defining technology and its relationship to print culture and clock time. An exploration of birth control’s space- and time-altering effects attends to differences between barrier methods of birth control and pharmaceutical methods of birth control and illustrates significant extensions of human capacity. Implications of these extensions for women’s and men’s sense of freedom and autonomy, sex relations, gender roles, family, and other cultural structures and trends are discussed. A mother of two on Depo Provera shots, a father of three who gets a vasectomy, a single career woman who uses condoms and spermicides to avoid unwanted pregnancy, a young newlywed on the pill who has decided with her partner to put off having children for a few years, a newly married couple with children from previous marriages who decide they do not want to have any more children—all these people can participate in a sex life without pregnancy. By current standards, the failure of birth control often is seen as a violation of the non-procreative status quo, rather than an instance of the “natural” woman (or man) breaking through the interference medium. Truth be told, and in myriad ways, humans have not been “natural” for some time. Valerie V. Peterson, Valerie V. Peterson is an associate professor of communication studies at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She is the author of Sex, Ethics, and Communication (Cognella Academic Press, 2011) and also has written academic articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries on such topics as rhetorical and communication theory, visual rhetoric, popular culture, pedagogy, argument and identity, Sophistic thought, and sexual politics. Direct correspondence to: Valerie V. Peterson, 290 Lake Superior Hall, 1 Campus Dr., Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 49401-9403 1 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 1 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control On the face of it, birth control does not seem to be a medium, nor does it seem to be a medium of communication. To many media scholars, media of communication are those media that transmit “messages” by extending senses such as the eye and the ear—organs normally associated with communication. Media such as the printing press, the telephone, the radio, and the photograph are thus seen as “central” to media studies, because they are seen as channels for messages and extensions of major senses. But some scholars might think otherwise. For Marshall McLuhan, media do not simply send messages via sight and sound; they affect a wide range of sense perceptions and ratios of sense perceptions. They are also anti-environmental controls that become environmental. From this perspective, birth control fits easily with other media discussed by McLuhan such as bicycles, games, weapons, clothing, and roads, and appears on the modern-day radar screen as a profoundly significant social force. How has birth control become part of our environment, and what does this mean for humanity? In this article I use a media-ecological perspective to explore how birth control extends and shapes human experience. I do so by addressing widely used and reliable barrier and pharmaceutical methods of birth control methods as media.1 I begin with a discussion of how media function as environments, how drugs are media (so that hormonal contraceptives may be seen as media), and why birth control may have been overlooked as both medium and environment. Next, I offer a brief history of birth control, accounting for its emergence as a defining technology, and showing how it relates to print culture and clock time. Then, I explore birth control’s space- and time-altering effects, attending to differences between barrier methods and pharmaceutical methods of birth control, and illustrating significant extensions of human capacity. Finally, I discuss implications of these extensions for women’s and men’s sense of freedom and autonomy, sex relations, gender roles, family, and other cultural structures and trends, and offer a few concluding thoughts and prognostications. MEDIA AS ENVIRONMENTS In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan discusses how media extend human senses, human capacities, and the broader human landscape. Elaborating on what he means when he says the “medium is the message,” McLuhan (1964) writes, “the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology” (p. 23). In other words, a medium’s “effect” is not so much the messages it supposedly conveys, but the way it alters or enhances human existence. In this way, the “message” of the newspaper is not just “what’s going on,” according to the headlines, it is the emergence of literate middleclass community, and the message of the automobile is not just increased speed and motility, it is the emergence of the travel industry and the suburb. In The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, McLuhan and Fiore (1967) explain how media bring about these extensions of the human: “Media, by 2 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 2 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act—the way we perceive the world” (p. 41). Or to put it another way, the media we make, make us over, by shifting the balance and proportions of our senses, and by changing social configurations enmeshed in space and time. In other discussions of media, McLuhan (1964) illustrates how newer media carry forward elements and processes characteristic of earlier media. Showing how “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium” (p. 23), McLuhan highlights how new media make use of old elements (e.g., how some early motorcars used rudder-like sticks for steering) and also explains how elements of older media are reborn in new media, with wholly new consequences (e.g., how the structuring effects of literacy extended by the medium of the printing press led to nationalism). In these and other commentaries, McLuhan shows how users of media are “used by” the media they use, when those media become environments in their own right, and illustrates how specific technological advances in history qualify and have “played out” as extensions of man. In Counterblast, McLuhan (1969) writes, Technologies begin as anti-environments, as controls, and then become Environmental. . . . To say that a technology or extension of man creates a new environment is a much better way of saying that the medium is the message. This environment is always ‘invisible’ and its content is always the old technology. (pp. 30–31) Or, as he puts it in Take Today: Executive as Dropout (McLuhan & Nevitt, 1972) “Man is an extension of nature that remakes the nature that makes the man” (p. 66). DRUGS AS MEDIA Few people would deny that barrier methods of contraception such as the condom, cervical cap, or intrauterine device (IUD) are technologies, or even media, in the way that McLuhan identified the automobile and the clock as media. But people may be less likely to recognize pharmaceuticals, medications, or drugs as media. Birth control pills, patches, shots, and inserts are significant, reliable, and widely used media, or at least they are environments, something that we are in, as a culture, rather than something simply in us, or some of us, as bodies. Ever since humans discovered the effects of fermentation and healing plants, chemical media have been a part of the world and of human existence. They are some of the most ancient of technologies, and have been used for worship, ritual, recreation, and health. Increasingly, the effects of chemical media have become even more widespread, extending human capacities to endure pain (e.g., morphine), treat and cure illness (e.g., antibiotics), and alter people’s very “beingin-the world.” Of chemicals and biology (and foreshadowing developments in 3 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 3 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control pharmaceutical forms of birth control that had not yet come to pass), Lewis Mumford (1934) writes the following: Plainly, Marx was in error when he said that machines told more about the system of production that characterized an epoch than its utensils and utilities did: for it would be impossible to describe the neotechnic phase without taking into account various triumphs in chemistry and bacteriology in which machines played but a minor part. . . . The movement of limbs is more obvious than the process of osmosis: but they are equally important in human life; and so too the relatively static operations of chemistry are as important to our technology as the more obvious engines of speed and movement. Today our industry owes a heavy debt to chemistry: tomorrow it may incur an even heavier debt to physiology and biology: already, in fact, it begins to be apparent. (p. 234) Chemicals are a strange kind of extension of the human because they permeate the body and alter the world from “inside” the body. Yet the body is as much “the world” as is that part of the world that we usually think of as “the world” (that space that we think of as “outside” of us). There is no clear separation between the two. Because chemical media challenge inside–outside boundaries, it is often hard to assess their impact on the senses and sense-ratios. Thus, it may be simpler to think of drugs, including the birth control pill, as “drugs” or “treatments” or “medicines” instead of as media of communication. Although not all drugs could be considered communication media, many can. They directly affect human communication (e.g., alcohol) and/or are used intentionally to shape, extend, control, and/or alter communicative behavior (e.g., ritalin, early use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine [i.e., MDMA or ecstasy] in marital counseling). More than this, however, drugs may significantly alter perceptions of space/time, senses and capacities of self, social and material relations, senses of possibility, and worldviews experienced by those who communicate. This is as true of sex-related drugs (e.g., Viagra) as it is of other drugs (e.g., LSD, Valium, Zoloft, cocaine), and widespread use of such drugs alters both the interpersonal and social landscape. BIRTH CONTROL AS MEDIA AND AS ENVIRONMENTS McLuhan occasionally refers to drugs in his writings. For an example, see his comments on LSD and marijuana in the Playboy interview (The Playboy Interview, 1969), and the tetrad on “Drugs: e.g., tranquilizers” in Laws of Media (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1988). But despite the significance of birth control technologies, implications of these media (specifically “the pill”) are mentioned only briefly, and in passing (1988, p. 99). It may be that his devout Catholicism gave him pause with the topic, or that these technologies didn’t make particularly ideal exemplars: Both mechanical and pharmaceutical methods of birth control are small (less visible in the immediate surround than other media such as telephone lines, highways, etc.) and are used to change the consequences of intercourse.2 4 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 4 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y The latter fact especially leads people to consider birth control a “private” rather than “public” technology, despite the error of the distinction. There is also the fact that much of McLuhan’s work appeared in the 1960s and early 1970s, before some of the more significant qualities of pharmaceutical forms of contraception (e.g., extremely high reliability, apparatus-free sex) were in evidence. Birth control also may be overlooked because of its locus of initial impact. Unlike televisions or advertisements, which are seen as affecting all of “mankind,” birth control is more closely tied to the health and procreative capacities of the female body (even in cases of condom use and vasectomy). Historically, women have “owned” this territory of action. Women more often weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various contraceptive methods and ask questions about them (and are asked about them) during physical examinations, and they more often buy contraceptives and ensure the use of them (Matteson, 1995). That “mankind” often is gendered (or “branded”) male in the popular psyche as well as in scholarship may also contribute to its lack of attention (Moulton, 1977). 3 One media-ecological scholar who comments more extensively on birth control is Lewis Mumford. In “The Planning of Population,” a chapter in Technics and Civilization, Mumford (1934) explains how birth control is becoming a means of change, not only for individuals, couples, and communities, but also for the human race more generally. It is doing this, he says, by facing down repressive religious taboos and the demands of nation states for machine fodder and cannon fodder. As an instance where personal and social interests coincide, Mumford argues, the planning of the growth and distribution of population is “perhaps the most important of all neotechnic innovations . . . [c]entral to the orderly use of resources, the systematic integration of industry, and the planning and development of human regions” (p. 260). Mumford recognizes the significance of technology for birth control’s spread and impact without overstating its force. In the following passage, for example, he recognizes both the human factor in the development of birth control (discovery of and familiarity with biological processes) and the importance of the media of birth control themselves, that is, the development of viable birth control technologies. [T]he rational practice of contraception and the improvement in contraceptive devices awaited not merely the discovery of the exact nature of the germ cell and the process of fertilization: it also awaited improvements in the technological means. Effective general contraception, in other words, post-dates Goodyear and Lister. (p. 260) As Mumford points out, birth control has “come too tardily into practice,” as of yet, to have any measurable control over the planet. “But,” he argues, “the technical means of this change are now for the first time at hand (p. 263). Both despite and because of the sex-related qualities of birth control, the lives of men and women are profoundly changed by its use. Along with clothing, money, clocks, housing, personal computers, and cell phones; birth control deserves consideration as a significant medium with profound implications for the modern and postmodern era. To this end, I now consider birth control as a 5 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 5 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control defining technology, as a space- and time-altering force, and as an extension of human capacity mediating human relations. BIRTH CONTROL AS A DEFINING TECHNOLOGY The history of birth control technologies is difficult to trace because of the secrecy that often surrounds them and because powerful religious and other political forces (e.g., the Catholic Church) traditionally have argued against their use.4 In ancient Egypt, both mechanical and chemical means of contraception were developed including pads of lint, acacia tips, auyt-gum, and honey (Tannahill, 1992). In Greece, contraceptive “sponges” made of olive oil-soaked lambs wool were used by courtesans and prostitutes to avoid pregnancy, and medicines made from sylphium (a cash crop so significant at one time that it appeared on the back of Greek coins) were used to induce abortion. Demand for sylphium in the ancient world led to its eventual over-harvesting and extinction, but its botanical relative, the Queen Anne’s Lace, was apparently used as folk medicine by Appalachian women in the United States to achieve similar ends. Other forms of birth control included the commoner’s half-lemon cervical cap and the king’s sheep-entrails condom, with a variety of other measures about which we may never know. Despite these appearances and uses (at least as far as we know), birth control did not become a defining technology anywhere until the 20th century in the industrialized West. “A defining technology,” writes J. David Bolter, “develops links, metaphorical or otherwise, with a culture’s science, philosophy, or literature; it is always available to serve as a metaphor, example, model, or symbol” (cited in Coleman, 1998, p. 113). This means defining technologies are not simply new or pervasive technologies, but influential technologies—able to collect and focus what seem like separate or incompatible ideas in a culture into more coherent wholes. Defining technologies do not bring about major cultural changes all by themselves, but they do, “bring ideas into a new focus by explaining or exemplifying them in new ways to larger audiences” (p. 113). In the 20th century, birth control became a defining technology in advanced Western cultures. As Mumford (1934) writes: [T]he technique of temporary sterilization—so-called birth control—was perhaps the most important to the human race of all the scientific and technical advances that were carried to completion during the nineteenth century. It was the neotechnic answer to that vast, irresponsible spawning of Western mankind that took place during the paleotechnic phase, partly in response perhaps to the introduction of new staple foods and the extension of new food areas, stimulated and abetted by the fact that copulation was the one art and the one form of recreation which could not be denied to the factory population, however it or they might be brutalized. (pp. 260–261) In the United States, in the span of about 100 years, what had been an occasional resource for the few who knew where to find it became an option available to almost everyone. The metaphor and model birth control offers is “freedom,” 6 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 6 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y the freedom that comes from personal choice. This is because birth control makes it possible for a fertile woman or man to have nonprocreative sex (or recreational sex) at any time.5 But on a larger scale, the “message” of widespread and reliable birth control is much more complex; it literally recalibrates the social and cultural environment. Birth control was ushered into the U.S. cultural spotlight by a convergence of forces (scientific, philosophical, literary, and otherwise). In the early 1900s, condoms and cervical caps became more readily available. Factors contributing to this trend included scientific developments in the production of rubber (Mumford, 1934), and powerful and articulate birth control advocates (e.g., Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman) whose arguments succeeded partly because of “nativist and middle-class fears of immigrants, blacks, and the poor” (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988, p. 245). As Sanger often put it, the purpose of birth control was “ ‘more children from the fit, less from the unfit’ ” (p. 245). War also helped the transformation by making condoms standard issue to soldiers for the purpose of protecting against sexually transmitted diseases. Later, surgical and pharmaceutical methods of birth control were perfected. These methods benefited from scientific and medical advances in the study and control of hormones, estrogen, fertility and infertility, advances in surgical science, a powerful women’s liberation movement with reproductive rights at the top of its agenda (and with its own articulate and dedicated leaders), and changes in attitude (including the privileging of science over religion) that rendered the human body more and more subject to human control and alteration. Values of fairness and equality provided support for gender equity and a liberal feminism that sometimes shaded into a desire for “sameness” or at least similar treatment or an “equal playing field” (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988). Novels, Hollywood films, plays, magazine articles, and other elements of popular culture denigrated teen pregnancy, while they celebrated (and continue to celebrate) “progress,” “the frontier,” and the “self-made man.” Child labor laws and the education movement resulted in a large-scale postponement of adolescence, while at the same time widespread industrial development created a need for cheap labor that pulled both men and women away from the rural home (with its own canning, brewing, bottling, dying, weaving, and sewing), and into industries that usurped these duties from the household (Sayers, 1971, p. 24). The erosion of small-town life and migration to cities reinforced values of individualism, humanism, independence, mobility, and productive (but not reproductive) labor (see Firestone, 1970). The United States in the 20th century and beyond also has been characterized by a quickly growing consumer culture and a literate-minded population made even more orderly by industrial space and clock time. Consumer culture helps sell the notion that humans are consumers and producers (and workers and buyers), and that it is by means of conspicuous and pecuniary consumption (and leisure) that people achieve standing in social hierarchies and make a statement in the world (Veblen, 1953). The growth of the image industry has glamorized a world of parties, popularity, and beauty, and offers an alternative to mundane motherhood. 7 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 7 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control Industry and literacy in the 20th century also helped established a sense of space and time relations characterized by walls, boundaries, limits, and levels. Distinctions between the “public” and the “private” became more pronounced— with work and commercial spaces as “public” and the home and nuclear family as “private” (Fraser, 1994). These divisions highlighted some matters as “public concerns” but left others “behind closed doors” and less subject to public scrutiny and debate. In such a context, birth control finds itself in an awkward situation, because this apparently “private” concern also has very “public” aspects and impact. Recently, these clean public–private distinctions have been undermined somewhat by the Internet and virtual experience, but they have not been undermined entirely. Because birth control use is grounded in human bodies, and because conventional sex is still desirable, and is still the means by which most new babies are made, public–private distinctions, at least as they relate to intimate relations and private parts, will continue. If electronic–mechanical sex largely replaces embodied sexuality, the public–private distinction will be much more easily discarded, and other distinctions or ordering systems may arise. Birth control also extended the impact of print and clock time. Print culture and clock time led to an acceptance of the orderly regimentation of behavior required by industrial life (McLuhan, 1964). According to McLuhan: As a piece of technology, the clock is a machine that produces uniform seconds, minutes, and hours on an assembly-line pattern. Processed in this uniform way, time is separated from the rhythms of human experience. . . . Time measured not by the uniqueness of private experience but by abstract uniform units gradually pervades all sense life, much as does the technology of writing and printing. Not only work, but also eating and sleeping, came to accommodate themselves to the clock rather than to organic needs. . . . As the pattern of arbitrary and uniform measurement of time extended itself across society . . . mechanical measurement of time as a principle of applied knowledge joined forces with printing and assembly line as means of uniform fragmentation of processes. (pp. 135–136) The clock divorces humans from their own idiosyncratic experiences of time and looser cyclical experiences of time (e.g., the day, the lunar month, the season), and subjects them to new, regular, uniform, and measurable rhythms. Such regimentation, as found in factory rules, regimented schedules, orderly spaces, the punch clock, the 9-to-5 workday, the Monday through Friday work week, the split between work-time and leisure-time, monthly paychecks, and varieties of assembly line production all prove ample preparation and context for the spaceand time-shaping effects of birth control. BIRTH CONTROL AS A SPACE- AND TIME-ALTERING FORCE Birth control is a space- and time-altering force, and different forms of birth control alter space and time in different ways. Although many methods of birth control exist, they may be classified into two general categories: barrier 8 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 8 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y methods, which are physical, chemical, or mechanical in nature (e.g., condoms, diaphragms, spermicides, IUDs, sterilization) and pharmaceutical methods, which are hormonal in nature (the birth control pill/patch/implant/shot). Both barrier methods and hormonal methods of birth control suppress fertility, and this suppression of fertility can be liberating and limiting. It can be liberating if “any time” is the desired time for sex, and limiting, perhaps, if sex becomes mundane. In the former case, the freedom to have sex at any time can help cement monogamous relationships and deter promiscuity, adultery, and/or the use of prostitutes. On the other hand, when “any time” is the right time for sex, the freedom/ability to say “no” to sex may be undermined, or sex may become routine or metaphysically decontextualized. By controlling her reproductive capacity, birth control extends a woman’s capacity to do other things. As certified women’s health nurse practitioner, assistant professor of nursing, and author of Advocating for Self: Women’s Decisions Concerning Contraception Peggy S. Matteson (1995) writes: For centuries, heterosexually active women have been held hostage by the risk of pregnancy. No single health care development has provided the means to directly alter women’s lives as momentously as the development of contraceptive methods. The use of relatively safe, effective contraceptive methods provides a means to end the history of death, chronic illness, fatigue, and unfulfilled potential which has been imposed on women by unintended pregnancy. (p. 1) Thus, birth control not only helps women live longer and healthier lives, but it also extends and expands many other senses and capacities, in both women and men. Birth control makes it possible for women to be and/or claim to be both sexually active and non-procreative during the ages when women are most likely to be fertile (approximately aged 12–50). This means that virtues of the body– mind–spirit such as stamina, strength, coordination, sexiness, verbal or technical skill, creativity, dignity, piety, wisdom, and so on, might be recognized as existing in women in their teen and early adult years, at least somewhat independently of potential maternity. Women may become athletes, models, intellectuals, and professionals without giving up sex and without becoming mothers. Recognition of virtues of the body, mind, and spirit independent of maternity is not always or necessarily liberating. Neither is it the case that independence from maternity is necessarily preferable to maternity, maternal ties, or the senses and capacities mothers develop as they raise children. It is significant, however, that birth control extends some capacities in women, particularly those specialized capacities that take significant amounts of time, focus, and dedication to develop, and that these capacities may now be developed independent of maternal contexts and responsibilities. These extensions have implications not only for individual women, but for the men and women with whom they come in contact, and the broader society. A more detailed discussion of space- and timealtering effects of birth control is now offered, focusing first on barrier methods of contraception, and then pharmaceutical methods. 9 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 9 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control Barrier Methods of Birth Control Barrier methods of birth control such as condoms, diaphragms, cervical caps, IUDs, spermicides, and/or vasectomy/tubal ligation alter the spaces of the body by creating physical barriers, much as housing and clothing do to the environment of the modern literate person. With this sort of birth control, the effect of modern space relations is extended and literally reaches inside women’s bodies. The line between public and private is redrawn “inside” the body of women, at the surface of the skin of a man, and/or at the surface of or inside the cervix or sex cell conduits. In a culture that likes to draw clear distinctions between public and private space, the use of barrier contraceptives presents a dilemma. Men’s privates become public objects, not only practically, in the application and handling of items and products, but also philosophically, as they are less associated with baby making and more associated with pleasure (and compared against other men). Barrier methods of contraception also turn women partially “inside-out” by making the “private” parts of their bodies more public than before. Because men and women using barrier methods of contraception have less of their bodies to consider “private” (an effect exacerbated by Pap smears, tests for sexually transmitted diseases [STDs], and other “invasive” medical procedures), they may decide to locate “privacy” in some other real or imaginary space (e.g., diaries, blogs, living spaces, their minds). The private parts of men’s and women’s bodies made more public by contraception are thereby more subject to some public ills (e.g., promiscuity funded by a sense of reproductive control, diseases transmitted while using non-barrier birth control methods) and public discussion of these ills may expand. But the stigma of discussing “private issues” in public persists and tends to undermine an appreciation of the broader social and cultural contexts that frame sexuality, sexual practice, and birth control use. Pharmaceutical Methods of Birth Control Pharmaceutical methods of birth control help erase the link between women and cyclical time (the moon, the tides, the earth, etc.) that the menstrual cycle represents. Ironically, it is the loss of estrus and the coordination of menstruation with the moon that may have been responsible for Homo sapiens’ original “discovery” of “deep” time (and, thus, our success as a species) in the first place (Shlain, 2003). Erasure of the link with cyclical time is accomplished only by embracing awareness of an even more regimented clock time. The birth control pill, patch, shot, and insert alter women’s bodies “throughout.” Unlike barrier methods of contraception, hormones have a system-wide influence—and generate a stress that comes from alterations of time. Instead of the menstrual cycle taking its course independent of intervention, hormonal methods of birth control require that women pay at least some attention to clock time. Instead of menstruation demanding time of women, regulation suggests there is no time for such things, or such things must now be scheduled and managed. Women must remember to take their pill every day at as close to 10 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 10 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y the same time as possible, put their patch on every week, schedule and get their shot every few months, and so on. Failure to take a pill, schedule or remember an appointment, or get or fill a prescription, often results in stress. Because hormonal methods of contraception are more clearly “owned” by women (the method is not shared and does not require male “compliance”), and because hormonal methods of birth control are potentially invisible, they offer women even more of a sense of autonomy and control than barrier methods, while also placing on them a different set of demands. Additionally, hormonal forms of birth control can regularize, minimize, and even eliminate menstruation, which not only makes women’s lives less painful and messy, it also extends the effects of clock time. Some women (e.g., athletes) take birth control for this regulatory reason alone. In all these cases, to at least some degree, the effects of pharmaceutical methods of birth control move beyond preventing pregnancy and into Cartesian territories—the desire to control one’s body and physical health (reduce pain, reduce menstruation, control acne) and to be that much more of an autonomous individual by doing so.6 BIRTH CONTROL AS AN EXTENSION OF HUMAN CAPACITY On close inspection, we see how birth control is not only a medium, but a technology of communication. Specifically, birth control is a defensive kind of medium that interferes with the communication of sex cells (and sometimes also STDs) between the bodies of men and the bodies of women. In this form of communication, the given or shared element is not information “stuff” (messages) and the emphasis is not only on transmission, but also on sharing and connecting (as in community/communion). A similar kind of communication occurs through caresses, dancing, and other performed acts (that may or may not be verbal or convey clear “messages”). The further generative implication of this sort of communication is reflected in words such as “disseminate” and “seminal,” which remind us of the deep and historical connection between communication, sex cells, “seed,” and semen (Peters, 1989). Like a sound or visual barrier (what the transmission model would simplify into the term noise), birth control acts as interference—in this case, a physical barrier against or killer of (male) sex cells, or as a hormonal/chemical a barrier against implantation of female sex cells in a woman’s body. This interference increases the capacity for nonverbal communication (the capacity to use sexual relations to arouse, express, or convey meaning) and it also makes the proliferation of genres of sex more possible—each with its own kinds of “meanings” (e.g., make-up sex, “quickies,” etc.). Like the study of the uses of silence or “absence” in communication (e.g., Noelle-Neumann, 1991), uses and effects of interference are hard to assess. Nevertheless, absence and interference have positive functions in acts, including communication acts. Just as hecklers interrupt meetings and protesters barricade buildings, interference can be a means of communicating messages and exerting 11 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 11 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control influence. With birth control, the basic (implicit or explicit) message is “I do not want to procreate with you (now).” This message may be intentionally, unavoidably, or accidentally sent, or it may be hidden or missed entirely in any sexual encounter or relationship. Because this sort of interference can function as an extension of humans, its effect can be as great as traditional and more familiar extensions of speech, sight, and other senses/capacities. Birth control extends human capacity in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Most obviously, birth control allows a person who has sex (or who plans to have sex) to know that there is little chance a pregnancy will result from the encounter. Women (and men) use contraceptives as a technology to control their own procreative capacity, but this is only part of the story. Both inside and outside marital/monogamous relationships, birth control (at least somewhat) equalizes the risk for engaging in intercourse and levels the reproductive “playing field” between sexual partners. Because some barrier methods of contraception also protect against STDs, and because AIDS has added to the risk of promiscuity for men, the playing field may be even further leveled. Within relationships, birth control also gives couples more control over their reproductive fate. The fallibility of birth control and the ability to misuse it suggest it as a potential site of substantial contention. Birth control is also an extension of male capacity by means of interference (the ability of men to not get women pregnant). Although many birth control methods are used primarily by women (e.g., the pill, the patch), many others are used by men and women (e.g., the condom), or by men alone. Vasectomy, for example, is a fairly simple surgery for men resulting in sterility. Specifically, the surgery stops the transmission of sex cells during sex, but leaves other elements of the sex act intact. Although some men fear the procedure will result in a loss of libido (which they may associate with “reproductive potency”), others look forward to knowing, almost without doubt, that they will be able to engage in purely recreational sex. Vasectomy often is used by individuals or by couples happy with the number of children they have and wanting to avoid the side effects characteristic of other methods, and it is widely practiced (see footnote 1). Men with vasectomies often express happiness with the freedom from procreativity they can enjoy with their partner or partners, although others, due to a change of mind or changed circumstances, seek to reverse the procedure.7 Birth control and its claim to freedom become an issue when forced sterilization or sterility (of both men and women) is practiced on disabled, minority and/or otherwise disempowered members of the population, with little discussion of the propriety or racist or classist implications of such actions. In this case, control of procreativity is taken from the individual and administered by the state or other authority. As part of the disciplining and regulation of bodies characteristic of modernity (Foucault, 1995), this use of birth control is not seen as an extension of other capacities (although it may have this result), because it has not been chosen intentionally or voluntarily by the subject.8 When birth control is used, either by men or by women, it is women who are the ones who do not get pregnant. Even with mitigating effects of paternity lawsuits, social pressure, and marriage, it is still the case that consequences of 12 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 12 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y sex such as pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing play out most profoundly in the lives of women. It is through the control of these practices by women that birth control has its most significant effect on society. For individual men and women, and for couples, the use of birth control is surely significant, but it is the widespread use of this medium across an entire population that results in a new environment, not simply a whole greater than the sum of its parts, but a systemic change of profound proportions. As the clearest “extension of man,” widespread use of reliable birth control is not simply an extension of capacity (by means of incapacity) in individuals; it is an extension of one sex into the “domain” of the other. In a species with two sexes, one of these sexes—the only one designed for pregnancy—now can avoid pregnancy. This shifts the balance of power and duty in the species and makes it possible for some women to live more “like men,” that is, sexually active, without pregnancy potential, and with a potentially less onerous or suppressed menstrual cycle (although clearly they do not “become” men). In other words, women become less specialized (less destined to pregnancy) and more open to complex social roles. This also leaves women who do not choose to use birth control, or who cannot gain access to it, or whose birth control method has failed, to carry the responsibility of pregnancy and many of the tasks associated with it. Not all people choose to use birth control, but many choose to use it at least some of the time. People who don’t use birth control are still surrounded by people who do, and they are affected by the choices these other people make. Choices about sex and procreation are extended by birth control and figure even more largely in lived experience. “Should I go on/use birth control?” “Is birth control affecting my sexual choices?” “Should I focus my energy on a/my career or focus on a/my family?” “Is it time to permanently end my fertility?” Questions like these and many others now loom large on the decision-making stage. To the extent that we think of choices and choice making as elements of the rational and independent thinking human subject, birth control extends these capacities. Social effects of reliable birth control technology can be seen in gender roles and marital ideologies, marriage and divorce rates, dilemmas of career versus family, hiring practices, and birth rates among different socioeconomic classes (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988; Russell, 1970). For one thing, the ability of women to control their own reproductive capacity has helped to erode the long-standing double standard of sexual conduct expected between men and women (Borowitz, 1969). It also has undermined the traditional requirement of virginity before marriage (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988). At the same time, and perhaps partly as a result of the eroding double standard, “love” increasingly has been used as a justification for marriage (Fromm, 1956). Romantic love and the desire for it both complicates the courtship process and replaces traditional rationales of marriage in which unions are arranged by parents and families, brides are property, and gender roles are clear and waiting to be filled by the appropriate sex. Because reliable birth control has afforded women increased control over their own bodies and thereby increased their power relative to men (through, among other things, the ability to earn money), it also has made women less beholden 13 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 13 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control to men if they desire to dissolve a relationship or marriage. Women who choose to focus completely on a career but not sacrifice their sexuality can more easily do so, and women who wish to curtail their procreating powers temporarily to focus on career, spouse, and/or existing children can also do so. This makes women more flexible workers and professionals in a consumer-capitalist culture, and further disrupts gender role assumptions. Unlike the day when female teachers had to quit their jobs once they became engaged, women can now, to some extent, focus on their work when they choose to do so and more effectively balance work and family obligations (e.g., planning pregnancies around work, limiting the size of their families). On the other hand, difficulties arise as women juggle responsibilities and try to live up to a “superwoman” ideal. The effect of reliable birth control can also be seen in differing birth rates among socioeconomic classes. Most often (and contrary to Sanger’s early efforts), middle and upper middle classes show the most interest in birth control, using it to limit the number of children they have in order to concentrate their energies and maintain their standard of living in a complex society. Poorer people are less likely to have access to reliable birth control, and they are less likely to be able to pay for it. They also are less likely to have incentive to use birth control because their standard of living (regardless of children) is already low. This stagnation of population growth in the middle and upper classes and expansion of the ranks of the poor exacerbates the effects of poverty and polarizes populations by expanding the resource divide between the two groups. The result is that, for the poor, the state, religion, or other philanthropic groups often become stand-ins for the father, because the role of the father as breadwinner is undermined (Russell, 1970). Because of reliable birth control, and within the middle and upper middle classes, women of childbearing age have tended toward one of two different camps. The first camp relies on traditional gender roles still intact in those classes, and performs the role of the stay at home mother. Often married or divorced, women in this camp primarily rely on a husband, the child’s/children’s father(s), or the state to financially support the raising of children. These women are more beholden to standards and expectations of women as established before the widespread use of birth control, even if these women use birth control themselves. In the other camp, women participate in or are solely responsible for the financial support of a household. If in a relationship, these women are more likely to share child-care and household tasks with a partner, and the necessity of balancing work and home life would make them less beholden to (although not necessarily free from) traditional gender roles. Some of the women in this camp may choose not to have children at all. Conflict between these two politically powerful groups and their aims can be seen both in the feminist movement and in the wider public. In the feminist movement, tensions between career-oriented, liberal, and/or “male-identified” feminists and maternal, “woman as nurturer,” separatist, and/or “different but equal,” feminists suggest this underlying split. In public debates we also see how difficult (if not impossible) it is for women to come to a consensus on issues when many of their personal interests and ideologies are at odds. Reproductive 14 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 14 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y rights, hiring/pay differences between single women and men (especially men who would be or are fathers), funding for day care and maternity leave, and expectations of single versus married female employees, are just some of these areas of contention. Participating in this split is the way birth control partially erodes the connection between women and the earth, a connection both denigrated and celebrated across the ages. Mother Earth, Gaia, Demeter, and numerous other archetypal figures throughout history have acted as metaphors for the fertility of the womb and the nurturing practices of women. Men, too, have been connected to procreative archetypes (e.g., Zeus as a shower of gold impregnating Danae, man as the Sky making rain that brings forth the crops). Women and men who control their fertility move away from these archetypes (and some fear they may jeopardize the earth by undermining a crucial link between humanity and the planet). No longer “fertile ground for planting seed” or “sowers of seed,” women and men who use birth control, especially those who choose to use birth control to avoid procreation entirely, may need to seek out new or different role models to guide their personal, public, and spiritual development.9 Traditional scholarship on the effects of birth control addresses many of the issues already discussed, especially in the context of political battles over women’s liberation, equal rights (including the Equal Rights Amendment) and workplace equity. But to say mediums are environments is to suggest we also attend to the side effects of any medium, that is, those other social, cultural, and even spiritual “messages” conveyed by media, even when causal connections are hard or impossible to trace. Some of these side effects would take us beyond the scope of this paper, but consider, for example, how the spacing of children in the middle classes shrank families (especially number and variety of siblings), elongated and separated generations (breaking links between children, parents, and grandparents), and enabled the medical establishment’s cooptation of maternity, childbirth, and childrearing. Consider also the triumph of Mattel’s Barbie™ over more traditional babylike dolls, artfully chronicled by Ann duCille (1996) in Skin Trade, or the growing popularity of the warrior female myth, in examples such as Ripley of the Alien films, GI Jane, Xena Warrior Princess, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for an example of scholarship on this topic, see Magoulick, 2006). Also making the list would be sex desegregation of public universities and increased sex equality in athletics (e.g., Title IX), the proliferation of recreational sexual practices and resulting synergy with same-sex couples and their causes, the emergence of DINK (dual income no kids) households, the ready-made food industry, the two-car garage, and paternity leave. Birth control lets women deny the reproductive aspect of corporeality, “heating up” women as McLuhan (1964) might say by allowing for less participation (p. 37). In other words, birth control regulates women, brings them into alignment, and makes them more predictable. McLuhan’s writings on gender and sexuality suggest this result, and seem somewhat nostalgic for a preindustrial time when men were “cool” (unencumbered by narrow capitalist ideals of success and able to pursue a multiplicity of viable personal and social roles) and women were “hotly” maternal. See, for example, McLuhan’s comments on reproduction, 15 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 15 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control homosexuality and, “love machines,” in the Playboy interview (1969) and also The Mechanical Bride (1951) where he discusses the industrial age’s interfusion of sex and technology, its co-educational system’s “neutering” of the minds and sexes into replaceable and expendable “hands” for labor, connections between recreational sex and homosexuality, and the breakdown of masculinity and the family in the face of rapid change. In fact, however, the broader effect of birth control may be the reverse of “heating up”: a “cooling down” of women by making more social practices, life options, and life scripts possible both within and across women as a group. Lives of women who use birth control and who live in the environment of birth control arguably may be somewhat less grounded and cosmic, but they may also be somewhat more independent and mundane. They may be well suited to individualism and capitalism, but they may be just as well suited to altruism and humanitarianism.10 Just as the (sterile female) worker bee supports, sustains, and defends the colony while the hive-bound egg-laying queen determines the genetic future of the colony, so too might the woman using birth control use her talents and freedoms to help maintain, nourish, and cultivate her community. Because the selection of role is not determined at birth, as it is with bees, some movement back and forth between “queen” and “worker” roles is possible. In any event, the “extension of women’s separation from the earth,” by means of birth control, whether occasional or extended in any particular woman’s case, won’t make women less human, nor will it make them into men, but it will make them less wedded to biological destiny and more complicated as a sex. CONCLUSION Birth control serves as an example, metaphor, model, and symbol of personal freedom—a freedom from duty/nature and a freedom to choose from a wide variety of human options. Promoted by powerful leaders and fueled by the convergence of ideological and social forces, birth control went from an occasional practice to a defining technology in modern, Western cultures such as the United States. From barrier methods to later pharmaceuticals that incorporated, extended, supplanted, and transformed contraceptive practices, reliable birth control has acted as a space- and time-altering force, marking off new territories of public and private space, and extending the effects of print and the clock. Despite forces that still would suppress it, birth control is compatible with consumer culture, capitalism, individualist humanism, and the values of equality and choice. It has become too pervasive to ever be defeated entirely. As access to the means of reproductive control expands, the upper and middle classes will continue to experience a split between “camps” of women and strict gender roles will continue to loosen (to some degree). Calls for gay marriage, gay adoption, transgender procedures, and other sex-role “bending” behavior also will persist. As long as the babymakers of the world continue to be women, traditional sex-role stereotypes will persist, although their force will decrease as more women live their lives differently. Boundaries of privacy and the “private” 16 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 16 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y also will continue to shift, although some notion of “private parts” will remain. The “cool down” of the office and the bedroom will also present challenges, as women “heated up” by their narrowed realm of social participation—that is, their non-procreativity—will require more engagement from others in their everyday interactions (McLuhan, 1964, p. 37). If advances in technologies ever do lead to machines that can remove the mother from the process of gestation, then all prognostications are hereby withdrawn, and a totally new set of consequences may result (Firestone, 1970). Participating in the orderly regimentation of behavior required by industrial life, birth control extends human capacities in many ways, not just for individual men and women, but as part of the cultural environment we have created, exist in, and from which we cannot be separated. The transforming effects of this extension of human capacity are still being determined. So too are implications of how this “extension of men” will be transformed by future inventions, in our ever more complex, mediated environment. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the editor of EME, Corey Anton, and participants at the eighth annual convention of the Media Ecology Association in Mexico City, 2007, for their support and help with this article. Notes 1. Relatively reliable contraceptives, are defined here as contraceptive methods with a 20% failure rate or less. The most reliable forms of birth control are sterilization, hormonal implants, hormonal injections, and IUDs, which result in 1 to less than 1 pregnancy per 100 users. Birth control pills are next, with failure rates between 1% and 5%. The failure rate of condoms is 14%, and diaphragms, cervical caps, sponges, and spermicides are also effective (ranging from a failure rate of 20% to 40%). When combination methods are used (e.g., condom with spermicide, cap with spermicide, condom with sponge), reliability is markedly increased (Hatcher, 2004). The rhythm method, withdrawl, and postcoital measures are not considered “contraceptive measures” by some, and are not sufficiently effective to qualify as “relatively reliable” (Hatcher, 2004). National estimates of contraception use in the United States in 1988 indicated that at least 80% of the women at risk for unintended pregnancy were using some form of reliable contraception (Matteson, 1995). Data on contraceptive use is difficult to collect, and varies with the population surveyed. A broader survey of the population (one including single contraceptive users) might find very different proportions of contraceptive use, but data on couples is nonetheless informative. According to Mosher and Pratt (1990), who gathered data on the use of contraceptives by couples in the United States from 1973 to 1988, sterilization (either female or male) was the leading method of contraception. It was chosen by 23.6% of those interviewed. The use of oral contraception 17 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 17 6/13/11 7:20 AM Peterson: Birth Control was selected by 18.5% of those interviewed, whereas the use of male condoms was the choice of 8.8%. The diaphragm, periodic abstinence, withdrawal, the IUD, and all other methods available at the time were chosen by 9.3% of the respondents. 2. Regarding size and smallness, Mumford’s (1934) comments about biology and the significance of even tiny amounts of substances are enlightening (and again, his insightful comments pre-date but anticipate the workings and impact of pharmaceutical methods of birth control). He asks the reader to note a phenomenon “which binds together the machine and the world of life in the neotechnic phase: namely, the respect for minute quantities, unnoticed or invisible before, sometimes below the threshold of consciousness” (p. 254). These minute quantities include not only metal alloys in metallurgy, tiny amounts of energy in radio, and ultraviolet waves in processes of growth, but also bacteria and filterable diseases, vitamins in the diet, and hormones in the body. Attention to small quantities, Mumford argues, leads to subtlety, finesse, intricacy, respect for organic complexity, and higher standards of refinement in technical methods. This recalibration toward the small and delicate, along with the “taking in” way that drugs are ingested or administered might lead some people to think of drugs as a “feminine” form of technology (see also footnote 3). 3. Denigration of the female, the female body, and the sexual parts of the body in general—the belief, in many Western cultures, that private parts and women’s private parts especially, are dangerous, dirty and/or disgusting—may also undermine discussion. 4. From a media ecological perspective it is interesting that the other significant medium-turned-environment strongly resisted by the Catholic Church was the printing press. With the printing press, the Catholic Church lost control of knowledge and this proved damaging to its political power. Losing control of women is also debilitating to the Church and other patriarchal structures. 5. The choice of term to use here matters. I do not want to imply that procreative sex also may not be recreational sex. But the term recreation is a rich one, and implies its own creation or creativity. Nonprocreative sex simply means sex that will not result in a baby, whereas recreational sex points to other ways in which sex gives humans a way to create together (e.g., relationships, fun, physical pleasure, love). 6. As McLuhan and McLuhan aptly comment in Laws of Media, “ ‘The pill’ tends to banish insecurity and uncertainty, while enhancing the ‘programmable machine’ approach to the body and numbing the user to its more human (fallible) dimensions, thus providing an amoral base for promiscuity” (p. 99). 7. It also might be worth considering the possible drawbacks of subverting men’s procreative potential (which does not definitively end in mid-life as it does for women) and/or the drawbacks of removing that potential barrier to sexual action from men’s experience. 8. As, for example, when employers enforce the use of birth control by sweatshop laborers (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988). 9. Hoffman (1984) argues likewise about homosexuality. He explains how polytheistic cosmologies offer better attitudes toward homosexuality than monothe18 01_HP_9,1_Peterson_01-20.indd 18 6/13/11 7:20 AM E X P L O R AT I O N S I N M E D I A E C O L O G Y istic. The same might be said about polytheistic cosmologies and nonprocreative persons. In the ancient Greek gods, for example (and despite Zeus’s generativity) there are nonprocreative archetypes in figures such as Artemis, Athena, and Hermes. 10. Seaborg (1984) and Shlain (2003) consider homosexuality in a similar way— as a possible form of altruism of the species where some humans are inclined toward behavior that does not result in progeny, but that does result in benefits to the social group and the progeny of others. Re fe re n c e s Borowitz, E. B. (1969). Choosing a sex ethic: A Jewish inquiry. New York: Schocken Books. Coleman, A. D. (1998). Depth of field: Essays on photography, mass media, and lens culture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 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