Skip to main content

Under Influence

A while ago, I read about the genesis of birth control pill which in turn prompted this blog post. Today, read about the pill again and how it influences a woman's selection of a mate - in a negative way. If there are certain male traits that a woman on a pill finds attractive or not, chances are that it will be among the driving factors in who she selects as a mate. This would be true for those who are on it most if not all the time. However, things can get confusing if she goes on and off it. Who and what she found appealing while on it may not be quite match her preferences once she is off it.

When it comes to relationships, the exercise of free will is a challenging proposition even in the best of circumstances. Apparently, a bunch of chemicals have the ability to consume what little is left of it. This is a lot like picking up someone at a bar in a state of inebriation and finding out they were all wrong the morning after. Except, after the hangover has worn off, the woman has to contend with the baleful influences of her morning after patch. How ironic that the thing that was supposed to have done the most for the cause of female liberation, is now turning out to be what ends up making women do things that they may have not have otherwise done - in essence, the very antithesis of liberty.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques