“The Pill makes women horny for girly men” is now a GOP talking point

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Adam Schwarze, the GOP candidate for the US Senate in Minnesota, wants you to know that the birth control pill causes women to be attracted to “effeminate girly boys” instead of “alpha cavemen” like they should be. It doesn’t, but he wants you to know that anyway.

In an appearance on the right-wing Meg Ellefson radio show, the GOP hopeful helpfully explained that “women, if they’re natural, not on birth control, they’re actually more attracted to more alpha cavemen” types, but that “birth control changes that,” basically brainwashing women into being attracted to beta “soy boys.”

I dunno, “soy boy” is so 2017. Why not update the insult? Call them “pill boys.”

Now, if you’re not intimately familiar with the online discourse about birth control, Schwarze’s claim may seem a bit unhinged, and it is. But for a time claims like this had a certain almost-legitimacy. Some small-scale evolutionary psychology studies suggested that there were subtle shifts in women’s mate preferences across their menstrual cycles: women, at their most fertile moments, were said to prefer men with more masculine faces (that is, somewhat broader, with sharper jawlines and so forth).

Women on the pill, or so it was claimed, were missing out on this horny, fertile, alpha-hungry phase each month, and so tended to prefer boring but stable beta providers to sexy alphas–dads, not cads. That’s right: For some reason the “family values” crowd thinks it’s outrageous that any woman might prefer dudes who make good fathers over those who might make for better one-night-stands. (Allegedly.)

But this research has basically turned out to be bullshit. A 2019 study of over 6,000 women found no meaningful link between pill use and preference for masculine faces. In short: no, the pill is not turning women into beta-male seeking zombies.

Apparently right-wing ideologues and online influencers haven’t heard the news, because boy do they love repeating the “birth control makes women horny for betas” claim. Ben Shapiro and Mikhaila Peterson have both pushed this line on YouTube and TikTok, respectively. Evie Magazine, an online women’s magazine infamous for pushing right-wing talking points, has declared flat-out that “the pill essentially picks our partners for us. If you’re on the birth control pill and in a relationship, the boyfriend or husband you picked would likely not be the one you’d choose if you were off the pill.”

Meanwhile, right-wing influencer Alex Clark is convinced that birth control doesn’t just make women attracted to girly men; it can make them attracted to actual girlies. Clark, who hosts a Turning Point USA YouTube show, has told her unfortunately vast audience of mostly young women that the pill “can falsely make women feel bisexual.” (Uh, it can’t.) Insisting that the pill “is completely altering your personality,” Clark has made it her “mission to get young women off this pill.”

Unfortunately, she’s not the only one, by a long shot. Anti-pill propaganda is everywhere on social media, especially on Tik Tok, where a veritable army of influencers has been spreading alarmist misinformation about hormonal birth control for years. One 2024 study found that a 50 percent of TikTokkers who talked about the pill encouraged their followers to get off it; a 2023 study found that a staggering 74 percent of YouTubers who talked about birth control offered the same advice. This widespread cultural animosity towards the pill is having a real world effect: younger women are increasingly rejecting hormonal birth control. Which is a new thing in the world.

Meanwhile, the Republicans (not just Schwarze) seem to be gearing up for a ferocious war against contraception in all its forms. In Idaho, a Republican lawmaker has mused about banning IUDs and Plan B. At the federal level, House Republicans overwhelmingly voted against codifying the right to contraception in 2022. Trump’s (second) pick for surgeon general, Casey Means (whose nomination has since been withdrawn) is adamantly against birth control pills, saying they promote a “disrespect of life.”

Now I don’t want to imply that birth control pills are somehow above criticism. Like all medicines, birth control pills have risks and side effects, and these can vary tremendously from person to person. Most seriously, birth control pills (at least those containing estrogen) can increase the risk of blood clots from three to fivefold, and that’s no joke.

But many of the claims made about hormonal birth control by the haters are exaggerated if not simply made up. Birth control pills don’t cause infertility. They don’t cause abortions. They don’t “masculinize” women’s brains. They don’t cause weight gain of more than a few pounds. They generally don’t cause the drop in libido that many women fear; one study found that only 3.5% of women taking the pill reported a decrease in desire, while 12% actually reported an increase. (By contrast, some popular antidepressants like Celexa and Paxil cause a loss of libido in well over half of those who take them.) And while the pill can slightly raise the risks of breast and cervical cancer, it provides significant protection against ovarian and endometrial cancers.

Yes, the pill can increase the risk of depression, especially among teenagers, but these risks have been vastly exaggerated by the anti-pill crowd, and the pill can actually improve moods overall in some women.

Let’s put the risks of birth control pills in context. Basically, any time you pop any pill into your mouth you are taking on some risks–even if that pill is doing you some considerable good. Adverse drug events are now the third leading cause of death in the United States, according to the American Society of Pharmacovigilance, accounting for approximately 250,000 deaths annually–more than stroke and respiratory disease combined. And it’s not just prescription pills that are the problem: Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, and overdoses kill 500 people a year.

The birth control pill looks even better if you take into consideration the serious health risks of pregnancy and birth, two things that birth control pills are, you know, remarkably effective at preventing. Most seriously, pregnancy can cause death, which is something that the pill does not do; there are as many as 800 maternal deaths every year in the United States. Pregnancy increases the long-term risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic conditions.

And those blot clots? Women are more likely to get blood clots during pregnancy and immediately afterwards than on the pill. Yes, the pill has risks, but overall it’s safer than many other commonly used prescription meds, and a lot safer than pregnancy.

The thing is, none of this anti-pill rhetoric is really about hormones or blood clots. It’s about taking away the autonomy of those (blessed or burdened) with uteruses.

Birth control has been one of the single most transformative tools women have ever had. It allows them to choose when (or whether) to have children. It allows them to get themselves decent educations, careers, financial independence, and a life not defined by the constant threat of unwanted pregnancy. For antifeminists, this is the original sin of that awful, awful sexual revolution.

Strip away the talk about “natural” women and masculine jawlines, and all those wildly exaggerated health risks, and what you’re left with is the same old patriarchal impulse: control women’s bodies, limit their choices, and put them back in their place on the Ballerina Farm. It’s unfortunate that so many female influencers have hopped aboard this altogether reactionary movement–and that so many women have been swayed by their scaremongering tactics and sometimes almost comical misinformation, like the bullshit about the pill picking women’s partners for them.

Note: The war on birth control is far too important for a single post. So consider this the first in a series.

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