Oddly enough, today I’ve run across comments on various sites that mention cycles of increasing and decreasing population in several species. On Samizdata, for one; and at Watts Up With That, for another.

“neo on February 11, 2019 at 6:17 pm at 6:17 pm said:
DNW:
When the pill was invented and first came into widespread use, it’s not as though prior to that most people were using the rhythm method. I’m doing this from memory, but I believe that condoms and diaphragms were very popular back then. Now, they certainly weren’t quite as effective as the pill, nor were they as simple. However, they had already made it possible to have sex whenever a person wanted, without much risk of pregnancy. All one had to do was use them every time.”

Ok, yeah sure, but that is not what I was saying or implying.

Re the pill, and its spill-over effects relating to a general lessening in libido, I started by acknowledging that the pill was not invented for the sake of hedonistic indulgence.

I then noted that among the sexual revolutionaries of the 60’s it was however touted as the solution to the “problem” of worry, interference with spontaneity, and the obnoxious intrusion of consequences into the equation. This was obvious to any high school kid in the early 1970’s with a subscription to Psychology Today.

” … without much risk of pregnancy. … “All one had to do was use them every time.”

And therein lay (no pun intended) the rub (ditto) according to the proponents: “not much risk” as opposed to supposedly none; and the conscious and possibly buzz-killing intentional act of deliberately preparing to place the nagging conscience aside (for those with such a conscience) as opposed to just fuggedaboutit.

Again, the point I am emphasizing is that there was a kind of ideology behind the promotion and use, if not the original development of birth control pills, which if the estrogen environmental poisoning theory is true, is ironically redounding in the most logically exquisite manner.

If rubbers made “sporting” men impotent we might have a parallel to what I am remarking on. But they apparently don’t.

In one sense they are diminishing, although not biologically. If women (or men) don’t get married or into a stable relationship till their 30s or so, and/or postpone having kids even if in a relationship, the window of opportunity will shrink once they do decide to have kids. Particularly for women, who have a much smaller window than men to begin with.

BOOM!

When the pill was invented and first came into widespread use, it’s not as though prior to that most people were using the rhythm method. I’m doing this from memory, but I believe that condoms and diaphragms were very popular back then. Now, they certainly weren’t quite as effective as the pill, nor were they as simple. However, they had already made it possible to have sex whenever a person wanted, without much risk of pregnancy. All one had to do was use them every time.

“We know a lot about the physical side effects [of birth control pills], but very little about the psychological side effects,” said Alexander Lischke, a psychology researcher with the University of Greifswald in Germany.

So, Lischke and his lab decided to look into how taking the pill might change someone’s ability to process emotion. Their research, published today (Feb. 11) in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, found that women on the pill mislabeled the emotion on someone’s face 10 percent more often than participants who weren’t on the pill

Sexual consent anyone ?

P.S. Someone above said (I think) that there is a “relatively narrow window of fertility.” Relative to what? You mean it’s getting smaller?

I said that: and I meant that although the human female’s sexual receptivity is month long, recent research purports to confirm that the same is not true with regard to the chances of pregnancy.

First site I came across just now:

“On average, the rhythm method is between 80 and 87 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, mostly because abstinence has to be practiced on more than just one or two days — it can take up to 10 days without sex to prevent pregnancy.”

So my argument was that : The pill which may be poisoning our environment, was meant (at least by its most ardent proponents) to provide the opportunity for all, to heedlessly copulate without the trauma or unwelcome introduction of intellectual reservation or calculation. Whatever the pill’s original designer thought, this was considered a primary feature and social benefit among the sexual revolutionaries of the mid century. “Forget yourself, give in to desire anytime, and if it feels good just do it.”

And then the very means by which this stance is supposedly allowed, turns out to be killing the desire which that means is meant to fulfill.

You take this pill and you can have as much sex as you want without thought, doubt or planning. Only trouble is that once the chemical gets into the water supply, you won’t want it … or not enough to trouble yourself with real human relations.

Or so it would seem if the pill poisoning theory is to be granted.