Comments on: Lysol: America’s most destructive and least effective form of contraception

By: Sondra

Sondra — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:49:58 +0000

“female insecurity both laughable and frightening by today’s standards.”

I doubt female insecurity is lessened in our generation, just less acknowledged, addressed or accepted. It certainly is as sensationalized, but in less obvious ways. Entire shaved nether regions and mockery of those who are not prepubescently shaved. Wipes and sprays and ointments. One just needs to pick up a magazine aimed at women and young girls to realize, the more things change the more they stay the same…….

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:23:55 +0000

Awesome!!!

(Did your students cross their legs and clench their cheeks the whole time? I know I would have. . . )

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:37:04 +0000

Taught this post in class today !

By: Knitting Clio

Knitting Clio — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:55:08 +0000

The show “Boardwalk Empire” might be giving new life to this method. In the episode “Family Limitation,” Nucky’s mistress Margaret Schroeder gets a copy of Margaret Sanger’s book of the same name (from the head of the local WCTU no less). The book illustrates douching and in a later episode Nucky smashes a bottle of Lysol Margaret has hid in the bathroom. I can’t find a digitized copy of Sanger’s book so I don’t know if she actually advocated this method or it was made up by the show’s writers.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:55:01 +0000

I am sure you are right, UE.

I once had a boyfriend who thought that women peed through their vaginas. Yes, he has a college degree; and no, I don’t think he was unusually ignorant.

By: Urban Exile

Urban Exile — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:10:57 +0000

I think that these ad campaigns, created by men, betray the common and not resolved male terror of female genitalia. The majority of them (as if I could know, right? But I’m writing it anyway thus betraying something of my sexual past) don’t know what “down there” is anyway, what the parts are or how they function. All they know if that they like to put “it” there for pleasure, but that that dark place “down there” can get back at them by getting pregnant. Sex education, using real words, real pictures, etc. would seem to be the only way out of that still very prevalent male ignorance and fear.

By: Contingent Cassandra

Contingent Cassandra — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:23:49 +0000

Just finished looking through all the ads in the slideshow. It’s fascinating, in a repugnant sort of way. Things that stood out for me include the repeated, often explicit statement that any distance or coldness between husband and wife is “her fault”; frequent (deliberate, I think, and to some extent realistic) eliding of whether sexual problems in a marriage might be due to waning of the husband’s desire, the wife’s desirability, or the wife’s “confidence” (but continued insistence that, whatever the cause, she can fix it by following her doctor’s advice to douche — an odd sort of disempowering empowerment); and the insistence that, if a woman is tired and/or feeling “old” after several years of marriage (and, presumably, several children), that too, is her fault, and entirely within her control to fix (by douching, again, and proper diet). Assuming the ads are arranged in chronological order, it also seems that Lysol, having created an anxiety and corresponding perceived need/demand, eventually had to protect not only against homemade remedies (which sound considerably more benign), but also against “imposter” disinfectants (to which, however, they could handily attribute any injuries, the possibility for which seems to be acknowledged in some of the later ads, and in the production of a booklet of “explicit” instructions — written, interestingly enough, by a “leading female physician,” though all the doctors who give magically marriage-saving advice in the text of the ads are “he”s). Oh, yes, and one of the last ads says that you *need* a “poison” to kill those nasty, allure-destroying germs; nothing gentler will do. One more version of better living through chemistry, I suppose. Oy.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:19:35 +0000

Roxie: Around ten years ago (may still be the case, but my anecdotal information is old) there was a dermatological medication often prescribed to teenagers that was highly teratogenic. In order to obtain a prescription, a girl or woman had to sign a pledge to use two methods of birth control, and had to list them. “Lesbianism” was not an acceptable answer. “Abstinence,” however, was. This made no sense to me whatever, since I am quite sure that the pregnancy rate among teenagers who predict they will abstain is much higher than that among teenagers who identify as lesbians.

By: Contingent Cassandra

Contingent Cassandra — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:54:20 +0000

We had the full pictured kit in the linen closet, too, and I think there might have been a few pre-packaged douches as well (though perhaps those were enemas; a sibling had troubles in that department). If my mother used it for that purpose, however, she hid it well; I only remember use as a hot water bottle (and in fact I may still own the darn thing and use it for that purpose today; the other attachments are long gone). I definitely remember the women’s magazines and TV soap operas being rife with Massengill ads. I don’t think I ever guessed they were being advertised for contraceptive purposes, however, though we may have been warned *not* to rely on douching with various substances (coke comes to mind, for some reason) in high school biology (this is a girls’ school, early 1980s). I certainly never heard of douching with lysol, though we used plenty of it around the house, and I can well remember both the dry hands and the lingering smell (which I would *not* describe as “alluring”) that went with it.

Caveat: one of my maternal great-grandfathers was a doctor, and I suspect that his wife and female descendants had better-than-average knowledge of and access to birth control. My maternal grandmother was an “oops” baby, arriving well after two older siblings (at the very end of the 19th century), but that sort of proves the point. There may also be a socioeconomic angle, though, since women on my father’s side, which did not include any doctors, also reliably had 1-2 children starting in the late 19th century. They weren’t rich, but they were solidly middle-class and urban, and seem to have had access to some sort of relatively safe and effective method (my impression is some variation on the diaphragm, which I’m pretty sure my mother used, but I’m not sure).

By: cgeye

cgeye — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:13:10 +0000

Back in the day, a douchebag was standard feminine household equipment, which is a frightening as you think it is. The reason it’s not that way now is due to the marketing of the disposable douche, with a single-use container.

I grew up in that transition time, from douchebag to Massengill, from belted feminine protection pads to “beltless” pads with the adhesive strip. Just taking care of Down There was a serious production effort, kids — and we’re not even talking about FDS, are we?

It took the full-court press of Our Bodies, Ourselves and feminist health collectives just to free women from the constant thought that Being Unfresh was the female Mark of Cain — and that basic soap and water would do just fine.

(and, Roxie, megadittoes –)