Tea at Trianon: The Hidden Lies of Birth Control

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

The Hidden Lies of Birth Control

From The Feminist Turned Housewife:

I entered womanhood in a world where birth control was already a given, a cultural inheritance passed down. It was never presented as an option, but as the default state of the modern, responsible woman. Doctors spoke of it with clinical confidence, as though prescribing hormonal suppression was no different than treating seasonal allergies. It’s just the thing everyone does. Teachers, if they mentioned it at all, spoke of it as a wise safeguard, a mark of prudence for anyone who did not wish to derail her life. Friends spoke of it casually, a normal accessory to adolescence. I do not recall a single serious voice questioning whether altering the most fundamental rhythm of a woman’s body might have consequences beyond the obvious. And I, never thought about it either.
All that we knew as young girls, was that the worst thing that could ever happen to us, was becoming pregnant, and so our bodies and nature were treated as something that needed to be treated. After all, we were all made to be independent women, and independent strong women do not have children young, and they most certainly don’t abstain from the new found freedom of sexual liberation.
We were told that the pill, and all things like it, the injections, implants, and hormonal devices, were great, a major step in the road that is becoming a woman. By severing sex from its biological design, it would give us mastery, command and freedom over our lives. We could choose if and when to become mothers; we could direct the course of our futures without fear of biology intruding. This was a medical marvel, a hard-won right, a leap forward for equality. Few of us, if any, could ever imagine what this would actually do to us as women, and to our lives.
Birth control promised control, but what it actually delivered was a subtle, creeping estrangement agaisnt my own body. The ovulatory cycle, with its fluctuations of estrogen and progesterone, its peaks of fertility, its quiet luteal declines, was replaced with a flat hormonal landscape manufactured in a lab. I thought I was simply becoming more “stable,” more even-tempered. The hormonal suppression did not merely turn off ovulation; it dimmed my connection to myself. It turned off a very important part of what it means to be a woman. (Read more.)