In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Does the Pill hurt your sex drive?

Jill

Studies point to yes (and the experience of many women points to yes).

In the 1960s, there was much hue and cry that the Pill would turn women into sex fiends and put marriages in peril. But in recent decades, medical concerns about hormonal birth control have shifted to the other end of the spectrum, with doctors maintaining that it may actually lower women’s libido and in some cases lead to sexual dysfunction.

Women have been saying for years that the Pill and other hormonal contraceptives can decrease their sex drives. Of course, for a lot of women, hormonal contraceptives have no such effect; for others, the decrease is small and is a tolerable trade-off for not getting pregnant. But I’m glad the medical community is finally catching on, and is recognizing that sexual desire in women is a good thing. Hopefully the evolution of birth control will continue to go in a lower-hormone direction, and will help women (and someday men, for pete’s sake) to prevent pregnancy without compromising desire or pleasure.

64 thoughts on Does the Pill hurt your sex drive?

  1. Can we talk about the quote near the end of the article?

    “As most people in long-lasting partnerships know, sexual frequency and desire tend to plummet over time. “We know that long-term relationships increase the risk of female sexual dysfunction — a condition easily treated with a new partner, which is many times more effective than any drug or hormone,” Wallen says (although it has been shown to be true in medical research).”

    This was just dropped in the article like it was no big deal. Female sexual DYSFUNCTION treated with a NEW PARTNER? How horribly pathologizing.

  2. I’m on Yaz and have been for about 3 years and yes it has absolutely killed my sex drive. I even went off it it for about 2 months last year and I immediately noticed my sex drive skyrocket back up to what it used to be, and then I got back on it and it went back down again. I guess this doesn’t happen to all women, just some. I’ve thought about switching.

  3. I’m currently taking Trivora to combat my PCOS (Polycysitic Ovary Syndrome) and I’ve actually noticed an increase in my sex drive. I take up with a FWB from time to time (last time was in September) and lately I’ve been seeing him more frequently. This may be because I haven’t had sex in over 8 months or because the Pill is helping control my PCOS, but whatever the reason I am determined to break the dry spell!

  4. Yeah, it did for me, big time. I could still enjoy sex if I talked myself into it, but I almost never felt desire. Since going off the pill it’s been just amazing to have my husband kiss me and feel my body respond… it’s honestly like a sexual re-awakening.

    The pill had a lot of negative effects on me, actually. I know it works wonderfully for some women, but I wish there were more options (and more discussion of the options that do exist) for those of us who react badly to it.

  5. It’s killed mine, but then I prefer this. Lack of a sex drive is only “pathological” if you, yourself, actually miss it, and not just because a partner or would-be partner is pressuring you to get horny. Sometimes it’s a relief not to feel anything.

  7. I think it’s annoying that low sex drive in women is called “female sexual *dysfunction*.” Having a low sex drive isn’t innately bad, the problem is having a sex drive that’s very different from your partner. And yet, I doubt any doctor would say my husband has male sexual dysfunction even though he wants sex *much* less than I do (he still functions, he just only wants to maybe once a week or less, while I would have sex twice a day if I could).

    I also found the “new partner” recommendation very weird. I mean, if that works for you (I’m thinking polyamory here, but I guess he could also mean cheating or breaking up with one partner for another) that’s great, but it’s not really something to just recommend to any couple.

  8. I also thought it was pretty crazy that the author dropped the “changing partners” as a remedy to low sex-drive. While changing sex partners is wonderful and fun, depending on what you want at that time, I’m sure, for some it’s not an option! Saying, “hey, you and your partner for 30 years are having less sex? Find a new one!” seems a bit harsh…

  9. Mine was crap when I was on the pill. After I while, I started thinking, this is *excellent* birth control… not only does it block ovulation, it keeps me from even wanting to have sex! That sucked. So I went off it and we used condoms, which also sucked, but at least I wanted some action. Breastfeeding also pretty much knocks out my drive, which has only come back in the last 4 months or so (and my “baby” is 2 1/3). Hormones are screwy things.

  10. GOD YES.

    I went on for strict birth control purposes the first time. I switched to condoms after about six months, believing it is better to have to pause sex to put on a condom then to never start sex in the first place. Now I’m on it again to combat ovarian cysts, and while I’m happier with this pill (lower/different hormones = less nausea, fewer headaches, etc), it’s a struggle to make myself want to have sex. Left to my own devices, I am, in fact, a sex fiend. The pill changes that.

    Hopefully these findings will lead to an increase in studies about women’s arousal and sexual desire.

  11. While I have hormonal issues from PCOS and am completely annoyed that the drugs I have to take have robbed me of what the doctor told me was probably an “unnaturally high” sex drive for a woman (who is he to say, I was having fun so where’s the harm in that?), I’m finding the “female sexual dysfunction” comments much more fascinating. Why is it a *dysfunction* indeed rather than treated as the natural thing it probably is?

    Probably because it upholds the fact that monogamy is an unnatural condition we’ve been forced into by the patriarchal practices of ownership of women and children. As animals monogamy is not a natural state of being, for men or women. I’m not necessarily knocking marriage, but the idea of mating for life came about for the purposes of controlling women and ensuring the family line for the privilege of men.

    To me, that’s the most appalling part of this entire article… that they take a perfectly natural part of being human and pathologize it to fit societal norms rather than concede that its a natural condition.

  12. Yeah, how can someone say in the same breath that we all know that women in long term relationships see a drop in their sex drive and then call it a “dysfunction”. It would seem to me to be a function, rather than a dysfunction.

  13. Personally, I haven’t noticed a difference–except for the very first week when I was absolutely insatiable. Then I went right back to being the same old horndog I’ve always been.

    Here’s what I don’t get about BCP decreasing libido for some women. The Pill mimics pregnancy hormones, right? A lot of pregnant women report a surge in sex drive–at least for part of their pregnancies. Of course, a lot of women report the opposite effect. Hormone effects are nothing if not idiosyncratic.

    I wonder if there’s a hidden population of women who find their sex drive surges on the pill who don’t really talk about it. Maybe because nobody asks, or because there’s some stigma around female desire at the best of times.

    1. I wonder if there’s a hidden population of women who find their sex drive surges on the pill who don’t really talk about it. Maybe because nobody asks, or because there’s some stigma around female desire at the best of times.

      Huh, that would be interesting. I actually stopped using hormonal birth control in part because it totally tanked my sex drive, and I’ve heard lots of my friends say the same. But damn, if there’s a pill that increases sexual urges…

  14. Check out IUDs if you are interested in long-term birth control that is not the pill. Your doctor might give you a hassle if you haven’t had kids yet (and it can hurt a lot more when they insert it), but overall I found it way better than the pill, with no hormonal side effects. And I had no trouble getting pregnant soon after I had it removed.

  15. My spouse has never done well with hormonal BC, for several reasons. After pregnancy, she expected a lull in desire, went on the patch, and found that she didn’t really have much desire. She attributed it to postpartum issues and tiredness. Her blood pressure rose, she went off the hormones, and desire came roaring back.

    The medicalize and pathologize everything about female sexuality. Too much? Abnormal. Too little? Abnormal. Wrong kind? Abnormal. Want to talk about it? Abnormal.

  16. I don’t think I’ve had a decrease, and whether I’ve had an increase is an interesting open question. I’ve been on a low-dose pill for a few years, since the high-dose patch was giving me mood swings. I would say, though, that cutting down my period from 6 days to 3 days does wonders for the sex drive, if only psychologically….

  17. My mother can’t do hormonal bc because it skyrockets her bloodpressure, but for me, the pill hasn’t effected my high sex drive. However, I need a high dosage, estrogen containing pill or I might as well not bother, symptom wise. However, the most bothersome pill side effect for me is breast growth. I have gone up several cup sizes and I was a freaking D to begin with (I have lost weight too, so the growth wasn’t from that). My freaking back hurts and none of my damned doctors seem to take my concerns about breast growth seriously. Since I don’t have high progesterone like many women with PCOS but have very high testosterone and am genderqueer fairly butch anyways, I suggested that I try seeing if boosting up to male levels of T would settle the mood issues (when my T goes really high, I tend to have better moods. I can tell when it is high from the hairs around my belly button and my voice tone, I do not grow facial hair, I inherited too many Cherokee genes for that) without the massive breast issues, but the fact that I don’t feel like taking up a strict male identity has kept that option off of the table. Apparantly, when I eat enough estrogen daily to grow boobs on a stone, that’s just fine, but if I want to try out a small dose of testosterone instead, suddenly ‘hormones are not playthings’.

  18. I’ve seen one study that says otherwise, but I’m still highly skeptical men en masse will take a hormonal birth control, both for the social stigma associated with a potentially lower T level, but also for the important health role T plays.

  19. Yes, the pill does decrease sex drive for me–and I’m glad for it!

    I briefly went off the pill for about 4 months, 2 years ago. I could barely function, I was so horny all the time. My face and hair also dripped with grease, I got lots of zits, and my body hair grew much faster, so finding partners wasn’t very easy either. I had to masturbate about 3-4x a day.

    I never want to go off the pill again, but I can totally understand why women who don’t have a high sex drive to begin with wouldn’t want to take it.

  20. I’ve had to try a few different pills in an attempt to find one that doesn’t ruin my sex drive. Only problem is, I changed to the current one just as I started my first full-time job, so I have no idea whether a low-oestrogen pill is still too much or if the change to a 40-hour working week is responsible.

    It bugs me that I have to choose between my sex drive and having periods that are practical to deal with- before I was on the pill, I would have 3-4 month gaps sometimes, or 2 week gaps, and it was impossible to go anywhere in case of an unexpected gush. I got stuck on a toilet naked for half an hour when I went on a holiday >.< I know it's just inconvenience and not the pain or general suckiness others put up with, but yeah, these are not good options.

    Kind of regretting not getting a job in the pharmeceutical industry now. It's kind of evil, but maybe I could have had a small part in making a better pill if I'd sold a bit of my soul.

  21. The only thing that kills my sex drive more effectively than birth control is prozac. If birth control is a dimmer, then prozac was an off switch.

  22. Well, I’m not assuming male birth control generally would necessarily compromise testosterone levels, but everything I’ve seen of the hormonal solutions so far has involved altering testosterone levels to varying degrees in some fashion. That’s a risk I don’t think a lot of men would take in light of highly effective time-tested already popular women’s hormonal birth control, in addition to the numerous other safe, relatively effective, non-hormonal contraceptive solutions.

  23. I have been on Lo Estrin 24 Fe for a year now, and I am happy to report that my sex drive is pretty high. However, I should add that I have had a very high sex drive since I figured out how to masturbate to orgasm. Before I was on the pill, I was able to have sex three or so times a day if I wanted, but now I’m satisfied with one time a day. Though this decrease could possibly be attributed to the fact that my current boyfriend is quite well-endowed and taking that thing more than once a day is generally not gonna happen.

  24. What Thomas said in his second paragraph.

    My low sex drive is not a dysfunction (unless I say it is)!

  25. Actually, Marle, sexual dysfunction is diagnosed in males much more frequently than it is in females. And I would guess low sex drive in males is just as prone to being pathologized as it is in women, if not much more so.

    There are male birth control pills being developed now that do not rely on a hormonal mechanism of action– which means they will be potentially much less risky and have fewer side effects than the hormonal birthcontrol methods that exist now for women.

  26. “That’s a risk I don’t think a lot of men would take in light of highly effective time-tested already popular women’s hormonal birth control, in addition to the numerous other safe, relatively effective, non-hormonal contraceptive solutions.”

    So you think women are the only ones who should tinker around with their hormones in order to prevent pregnancy? Personally, I’m not going to have sex with any man that I believe would be that selfish if the option to use effective male birth control were available. I fail to see why any woman should have sex with any man that damn selfish unless she has no other option. Perhaps that’s the best way to get men to actually take some responsibility, eh? Just refuse to have sex with them unless they do take some responsibility.

    Re: the actual post…

    I was only on the pill for a few months when I was a young teenager. I don’t recall having any issues at all with it, much less lowered libido. (But who can tell with the already fluctuating teenage hormones…)

    I switched to the depo shot shortly after that and used that in combination with condoms where appropriate until I got my tubes tied. I had no problems with the depo shot either that I’m aware of. I did have some problems with mood at the time but I can’t be sure that they were related to the depo-provera. I personally would go back on the depo over the pill if I had to do so. Getting stabbed with a needle every few months isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, but it beats the hell out of taking a pill every day. Plus, you get the added “benefit” of no periods, or at least many women do…including me.

  27. The Pill was bad news for me. I went on it for pregnancy prevention and it had some negative side effects. My libido was fine for awhile but eventually it crashed. I think it was slow enough so that I didn’t notice until it was gone. Worse though were some of the other side effects; for me HBC was making a sexual pain condition worse. I will never know if the pill was the cause of the pain, or if it I would have developed the pain regardless, but what was probably happening is, the pill was contributing to thinning out my vulvar tissues. So the pill was draining my libido, but so was the pain… I will not be able to use hormonal contraception in the future, for fear of it making things worse again.

    I am not familiar with the research Wallen cites that says sexual dysfunction increases in long-term relationships and the appropriate treatment is a new partner. I would be very interested in knowing and looking at his source(s) in the medical literature.

    Of course, having female sexual dysfunction myself, I prefer not to look at sexual dysfunction as something inherently “Bad” to have.

    I’m partly reading this article as marketing for filbanserin though… Its a new medication is supposed to be tested more thoroughly in the next few months/years so there’ll probably be more articles dropping it in and comparing it to Viagra.

  28. Actually the male birth control pill in development has nothing to do with hormones…it would phosphorylate the sperm cells to keep them from being activated in the vagina.

    I have no sex drive, but it’s because of anti-depressants. I’m not sure, but I feel like if I was a dude who couldn’t get a boner it would be taken a lot more seriously. I wasn’t able to convince my doctor to change my anti-depressants because they work well for my depression. I have simple stopped taking my meds and have been very depressed lately because of it. But at least my body actually responds now. Doctors seem to think I don’t know what I’m taking about. No I will not dump my boyfriend, Yes I have tried everything short of going off my meds and I was not able to become aroused.

    I dunno if that’s derailing or not because it’s anti-depressants and not BC. But I feel like I can relate.

  29. I’ve been on various birth control pills for 6 years now (started at 18, am 24 now), and found that my sex drive varied with the androgenicity of the progestin used. Seasonale with levnorgestrel turned me into one of those “sex fiends” and it was awful. Norgestimate which was in Ortho Tri Cyclen killed my sex drive almost completely. So I did some research into side effects as related to androgenicity, and went to my doc and demanded a pill with desogestrel in it. And my sex drive has been just where I like it for the last 3 years 😀

    This page was the most helpful – amounts, potencies, and a happy table of side effects. If you’ve bounced around pills, and can match your progestin to how it made you feel, you can pretty much pick something that will make you feel how you want to. Remember that your body is different from everyone else’s, so you need to get the right pill for you. Good luck!

    http://www.wdxcyber.com/ncontr13.htm

  31. What I don’t understand about male birth control is why in the world they can’t just create a set of removable plugs for the vas deferens. It would be 100 % easier than a vasectomy and 500 % easier than tubal ligations or blockages. As it is, vasectomies are already mostly reversible so how difficult could it be to tinker with the concept and make it almost always reversible?

  32. Mandolin: That was my experience in my teens. I wasn’t on prozac but on two of its many clones. (Had to switch because one’s side effects was drowsiness and weight gain.) Then again I thought both sexes were pretty icky in high school- I had trust issues with girls and nothing in common with most of the guys.
    I’ve been sort of on the pill for a year now, and I think my sex drive’s fairly high. I think I’ve actually had an orgasm a few times. (Wish my body came with a manual, growl.)

  33. Lower hormone pills are fine, if you’re just trying to keep from getting pregnant. What about women like myself, who need to keep from having periods because it really is far too much stress for them to go through psychologically each month?

  34. @Dom:

    They’re working on that one too:

    http://www.malecontraceptives.org/methods/shug.php
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vas-occlusive_contraception

    At this stage, as I understand it, they’re trying to make sure this really is more reversible than a traditional vasectomy, or at least not less reversible. Even successfully reversed vasectomies lead to sometimes-dramatically lower fertility if a long time passes between vasectomy and reversal. That’s the kind of study that takes a long time to get a good answer.

    I’m curious why you say it would be “100% easier” than a vasectomy, though. I don’t have enough familiarity with the actual surgical aspects to have much of an idea about whether it’s easier or not.

  35. I have never heard of this, but it makes sense now why with the relationship I was in a year ago I didn’t ever want to have sex; I was on both the pill and prozac. My boyfriend could usually get me aroused eventually, but I almost never started it. I went off the pill and switched antidepressants, a few months apart, and have had an actual sex drive as well as enjoying sex lots more since. (This is thinking back on it from several months later.)

  36. Hard to say whether the Pill or emotional issues was the major factor, but most of my sex drive disappeared several years ago. Feelings on this are a bit mixed, it’s a major block to forming relationships but prior to losing it I had dysfunction issues that pretty much left me with a normal sex drive but totally unable to do anything about it, so in that respect I don’t miss it. Went on the Pill in the first place for pain control, am now on it 9 weeks out of every 10 (periods eventually got worse again even on the Pill, so reducing their frequency at least minimises the time i have to spend off work)

  37. Actually, Marle, sexual dysfunction is diagnosed in males much more frequently than it is in females.

    Impotence is, but I’m talking about “low sex drive” as sexual dysfunction. Men’s sex drive isn’t thought of as dysfunctional. Whereas women, if we want it less than men, we’re dysfunctional, if we want it more, we’re just freaks.

  38. “I wonder if there’s a hidden population of women who find their sex drive surges on the pill who don’t really talk about it. Maybe because nobody asks, or because there’s some stigma around female desire at the best of times.”

    It might also be difficult to tease that out from women whose sex drive increases while on the pill because now it’s not being dampened by a fear of pregnancy.

    “What about women like myself, who need to keep from having periods because it really is far too much stress for them to go through psychologically each month?”

    If you are done with/don’t ever want kids, you may want to look into uterine ablation if periods are messing with you so badly.

  39. I haven’t found that hormonal BC has diminished my sex drive, exactly, more like evened it out. Instead of having one week where I’m totally unhorny, one week where I’m normal, one week where I’d have sex with doorknobs if I could figure out how to manage it physically, and one week of period, I now pretty much have the same sex drive all the time. While the “raving sex fiend” week was sort of fun, it didn’t exactly put the ‘fun’ in ‘functional,’ if you get my drift.

    Weirdly, I’ve found my anxiolytics have done nothing at all to my sex drive, but have almost completely erased my physical sensation of feeling hungry. I basically know it’s time to eat these days when I start feeling faint. I was kind of like “um, didn’t that kill the wrong appetite?”

  40. @Ens
    Interesting. The injectable method seems the least likely to require too much intervention.
    And ok, I was assuming it would be easier to insert a plug than to cut and cauterize, which I assumed was the standard method, but I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily.

  41. Totally happened to me. Two years on two different pills and I had lost all interest in sex. I thought there was something wrong with me. I went to counseling. It was only after I had read some testimonials online that I started to think it might the birth control. I went off and have been quite frisky ever since.

    I’m glad to hear that this issue is getting more attention.

  42. Huh. I actually thought this line was really good for women:

    We know that long-term relationships increase the risk of female sexual dysfunction — a condition easily treated with a new partner, which is many times more effective than any drug or hormone

    Why? Because I read this quote as somewhat ironic, as in: really the “dysfunction” isn’t a true dysfunction, women should just switch partners. Because I think a lot of women could have more sexually satisfying relationships, but are told that we “don’t want/need sex as much as men.” As a result, they perceive their low sex drive as just how they are, rather than a function of them being in a crappy/boring/been there done that relationship. This dissuades women from seeking out more sexually satisfying relationships.

    Sure, switching partners could be destabilizing and traumatic, so just cause sex drive has plummeted doesn’t mean break up. But I think it’s unfair to tar women’s sex drive as “low” when often the problem is the woman just isn’t that into the man anymore, at least sexually. Even if, in the end, people decide to stick with their partner for reasons of love, financial dependence, security, etc., they should at least be allowed to acknowledge that they could be having better, more frequent, more satisfying sex with someone else, instead of trying to “fix” a problem with themselves.

  43. I think it’s unfair that women’s sex drive is thought of as low and dysfunctional rather than the man’s being seen as too high and dysfunctional. Nobody makes medicines to reduce a man’s sex drive, but there are plenty to increase a woman’s. Sex advice is always in the direction of “Just give him the sex he wants or he’ll cheat on you/leave you” and never “Maybe he should be more understanding and not constantly whine and beg for sex he knows you don’t want.”

  44. I have had only the worst experiences with birth control. I tried countless brands & dosages, and was told many, many times that my ZERO sex drive, my moodiness, my weight gain etc. were all “normal” and unavoidable reactions to hormonal birth control. I almost dropped out of my last semester of university due to severe depression, which miraculously disappeared two days after I took my Nuvaring out.

    According to The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill by Barbara Seaman (a must read), the Pharmaceutical industry has been researching a “male pill” as long as they have been dosing women, they just haven’t found one with “no side effects” yet. Surprising, not really. Women’s bodies are meant to be manipulated and experimented on, and it’s ok to destroy our lives with depression. We aren’t really important to the functioning of society, right?

  45. I definitely think there’s a difference between having a naturally low sex drive and having sexual dysfunction. I identify with having sexual dysfunction because it doesn’t feel right! I feel like I’m missing something very important that I should have, not just because of pressure from my boyfriend or societal pressure. I think some women have low sex drives and are not dysfunctional, because they feel that’s how they are supposed to be.

  46. I used the Depo shot for a time and that thing absolutely killed my sex drive. So does breastfeeding, which is currently driving my husband up the wall. But at least I was able to get a tubal ligation after my last baby, so no more hormonal contraceptives!

  47. What Anna said. That’s actually what I thought people were talking about earlier when asking why it’s not men’s sex drive that’s dysfunctional. Since it’s largely to do with compatibility rather than some arbitrary standard, why isn’t it “dysfunctional” for a man to have a higher sex drive than his partner?

  48. i’ve been on the pill for about 2 years. my soon-to-be husband can attest to this- we’ve had sex about 10 times since I got on the pill. i can’t even talk myself into it anymore. what’s really sad? i’m 19. i should be jumping at the chance.

  49. No, you should be jumping at the chance to find a birth control that doesn’t ruin your sex drive, instead of talking yourself into sex you don’t want.

  50. The pill killed my sex drive too, but for some reason it made it easier to orgasm. I’ve been off the pill for almost a year and while I am much more likely to initiate sex, my ability to orgasm is very much tied to my cycle. It’s next to impossible for me to climax unless I’m near ovulation which was not a problem for me on the pill. That being said, I’ll take having a harder time climaxing over the problems I had on the pill- longer periods, no sex drive, ridiculous mood swings, horrible PMS and awful menstrual cramps. Everything it was supposed to help actually got worse, with the exception of acne. I break out like crazy now that I’m off it.

  51. … the Pharmaceutical industry has been researching a “male pill” as long as they have been dosing women, they just haven’t found one with “no side effects” yet.

    LOL. This literally made beer come out my nose. Because they’ve found So. Many. “female pills” that are free of side effects.

  52. Interrobang @ 41: that is EXACTLY my experience too!

    I’d been on the pill for 9 years straight, and on and off before that, and just recently went off because I was starting to freak out about the idea that I’d spent my entire adult life with an artificial hormone situation going on in my body. It had never bothered me before, since I had no problems on the pill at all (a higher sex drive would have driven me bonkers), and pregnancy was not an option, but all of a sudden I just didn’t want to do it any more. Just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

    I was just starting to notice a lower libido, and, since I’d had zero issues with sex drive after 9 years, I wasn’t sure that I could say it was the pill, and not just life stress and aging – but on the other hand, I wondered – maybe it didn’t affect me before, but it is affecting me now as I get older?

    I agonized over the decision to give up one of the most effective forms of BC for the less effective condom – not to mention the weird issues I suddenly had about my husband having to take on the responsibility of the BC, and any potential diminishment in fun for him… and several of my friends just hit the same block at the same time, and we had lengthy, lengthy discussions about it.

    Weird psychological shit comes out about that damn pill – what it means for a generation of women to grow up under an artificial hormone regime (is it better? worse? neutral?), comfort with risk around effectiveness of birth control, is taking a ‘pleasure hit’ worth it? Who takes that hit? (ie. the slightly lowered sex drive I had, versus my husband having to wear a condom; having to take a pill every day, or having to remember to keep rubbers handy)… all those years it was just this neutral part of my routine, and all of a sudden it was totally fraught in ways I’d never really thought about.

  53. On the topic of women’s sexual dysfunction, please please see the documentary Orgasm Inc. The film argues persuasively that the pathologizing of women’s decreased sex drives comes from (surprise) the pharmaceutical companies, who have cashed in on Viagra and are hoping to extend the market to women. A must-see.

    http://www.orgasminc.org/

  54. Happy Feet,
    You’ve exactly nailed what I’ve been going through with the Pill. I’m 29 and have been on the Pill for almost 12 years straight. I’ve always been so scared of pregnancy that the idea of a less-reliable form of bc scared the sh*t out of me. But then…suddenly….I just couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t even know what’s normal for my body now, thanks to being on the Pill for so long. That’s pretty scary when you think about it. It’s also seriously f*cked with my sex drive, a side effect which seems to be getting worse as I get older. Since I love sex and feeling frisky, this is a big problem for me.

    A few months ago, apparently the generic manufacturer of Ortho-Tricyclen Lo stopped making it due to “production and supply issues.” At least, that’s what I’ve been told at all my local pharmacies. I can’t afford the name brand price, so I just stopped hormonal bc completely. I’m in the middle of my “placebo” menstrual cycle from the last week of pills, and am SO EXCITED to get my normal body and its cycles back in the next few months. I just want to know what’s normal for me again-and hopefully have some great sex in the process! I plan on using condoms, the sponge, and when I can get to the doctor, eventually an IUD. I am a little worried about heavy bleeding from the copper IUD, but I refuse to go back to the Pill. Never again.

    Of note, one of the reasons this choice is possible for me now is that I’m older and a baby wouldn’t be the little financial disaster it would have been in my younger years. Where are the more reliable, non-hormonal options for younger women? Why aren’t more of them told about IUDs? I feel like some of the best sexual years of my life (at least in terms of time unburdened by children or work stress) were squandered due to hormonal bc sex drive reduction. 🙁 Our younger sisters shouldn’t share the same fate.

  56. Rachel S., lol.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with either high or low sex drives. People are not all the same, and we don’t have to come from the factory with the same settings. Some of us are monogamous and some of us are poly, some of us have high sex drives and some low and some of us are asexual, some of us find pain or power exchange intimate or hot or both, and some of us don’t. IMO, just like we should see sexual and affectional orientations as a spectrum where people vary, and gender expression as a spectrum where people vary, we should se sexuality and sexual conduct as a spectrum where people vary. “Normal” may be a convenient word to describe the tall parts of a distribution curve, but it’s tough to use it would importing a normative rather than descriptive meaning, violating the is/ought barrier.

  57. I was on the NuvaRing for pregnancy control for a year. I have been off BC for about 4 months because my prescription expired and I haven’t seen a doctor in about a year, but next Tuesday I’m going in to the doctor’s and want to get back on BC.

    The NuvaRing was great! I never noticed a lowered sex drive; my bf and i are extremely sexually active, an average of 3-5 times a day. Also I had no problems with mood swings or weight gain. My face was clear of acne, I had an even temperament the whole month -skipped PMS-, and had a low menstrual flow on my period for 3-5 days. These good effects may be because it was a ‘low dose’ BC.

    And it’s not taken orally. I’ve heard that oral BC affects eating/cravings. My friend Natalie was on an oral contraceptive and I would catch her in my kitchen at 3 in the morning snacking. She told me she gained 20 lbs since she started the pill (about a duration of 6 months). When she quit, all her cravings ended and she dropped weight. She switched to NuvaRing and that’s how i found out about it.

    I have one concern though!
    When i went off NuvaRing, and I now have sex with my bf, there is an uncomfortable pain. It wouldn’t make sense that his ‘dick is too big’ because the pain has never been there before.
    My sex drive seems to be lowered as an after effect now because i can’t handle the pain and keep up with his sex drive too! :[ I could say it feels like being raped…I actually cried once and almost every time we have to stop because I can’t bare it. In biology class i learned that from the vagina to the cervix it is about 5-6 inches, well his dick is a good 8 inches and thick; but like i said, in the fist Year 1/2 of being together this never happened until i went off NuvaRing. We’ve been together for two years, on BC together from Jan 09′ – Jan 10′, and i’ve been in pain since i went off in January.

    Does anyone have any ideas what is wrong with me????…Help?
    Also any recommendations for BC, I was thinking of trying a new one when i go to the doctors next week.

    Thanks!
    -Solera

  58. “I could say it feels like being raped…”

    You could, but you’d be a reprehensible douchebag for doing it. I’m sorry your consensual sex hurts and you should talk to a doctor about it who may be able to shed light on what’s going on. In the meantime, please don’t suggest that sex that hurts is somehow like having a violent crime committed against you. It’s not.

  59. Sorry I didn’t mean to offend, I didn’t think of it phrased like that. Thinking of something to describe how it feels isn’t easy (crying, whimpering, youre own bf feeling like a stranger inside you, the ripping feeling where the pain is…yeah im not being dramatic either) But hey! name calling on a blog isn’t very nice, I would have understood my mistake without that ‘reprehensible douchebag’ comment. My misuse of words though, I apologize.

  60. I’m not going to get chided for calling out someone who posted on a blog frequented by a number of rape survivors that their painful sex is somehow akin to the trauma the survivors have gone through.

    “Thinking of something to describe how it feels isn’t easy”

    I’m aware. I speak this language. However, when I feel pain, I try not to appropriate the experiences of a marginalized group of women for my own personal analogy, especially when it’s clear that you have NOT been so victimized. And as an assault survivor? I’m going to go ahead and tell you you’re a reprehensible douchebag when you’re being a reprehensible douchebag.

  61. I haven’t been in a relationship in over a year, and I think that at least part of it is due to the hole where my libido used to be. I went on BC for the first time at 20, for a host of reasons that only marginally included a vague desire not to have babies. Mainly, I wanted to see if it would help the deep depression I’d been in for two months, and if it could do something about the excruciating pain I had been in once a month since I was 12. It took two years to find a birth control that didn’t entail break-through bleeding every time I got stressed (or, you know, every two weeks — for two weeks straight). I finally found Nuvaring, and when that worked, the University pharmacy I went to kept me in free packs for five months after my health insurance lapsed, because *they* didn’t want to see me go through that again.

    I didn’t have a drop in libido for the first year I was on Nuvaring, but then it plummeted like a stone. I attributed a lot of it to moving to grad school, new city, etc. etc. I’ve only tried going off it once since then. Suddenly I had a libido again — and pain so bad I wanted to smash things and scream a lot. So it’s this trade off, right now. Do I want a modicrum of numbed sanity the whole month, or three weeks of feeling sexy and desirable / desiring and one week of murderous agony?

  62. This is so strange: I was on the Pill for over 10 years (Ortho, then the Nuva Ring, finally Loestrin). I knew about 5 years ago that it was the Pill that was killing my libido. It doesn’t happen all at once. Around ovulation, i would get very aroused. However, in the last 2 years, it was decreasing. My sexual desire was their, but I got less and less interested in “sharing” it with my partner. I just wanted to be by-myself.
    Also, sex had started to hurt. I NEVER thought that this was due to the Pill. I figured it had maybe something to do with getting older, plus the lower sex drive, plus maybe not having sex as much was causing soreness.
    So, I get off the Pill and go on the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). After 3 months, I was finally able to take my restored body on a “test drive” (had to wait 3 months to get my cycles to make sense and be reliable indicators). OH. MY. GOD!!! My old self! No pain! Instant lubrication! I could rely on my body again!
    Why isnt this really told to women? I mean, when my doc recommended the NuvaRing, she (yes! A woman!) said that it didn’t hurt, wouldn’t feel it. Nope. It hurt, it made me get this nasty, thick discharge and worse yet, my partner could feel it.
    Ladies, if sex hurts and your libido has decreased, don’t necessarily think that it’s your fault or your partners. Hope my story helps someone!

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