Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

What Women Don’t Learn About Their Bodies

While I agree with all of Sarah’s broader points in her critique of the recent New York magazine cover story, “Waking Up from the Pill,” I do think the article makes a valid point about how many young women are, in varying degrees, ignorant about their reproductive system.

As Sarah points out, there are many reasons women put off having children to their mid to late 30s — from their professional and personal ambitions to the fact that they lack the financial and domestic stability required to raise kids in this country today. And it is indeed foolish to claim, as writer Vanessa Grigoriadis does — and Double X’s Amanda Marcotte points out — that women are somehow too stupid to realize that delaying pregnancy decreases their fertility.

I don’t think women are too stupid to realize this, but I do think that these issues aren’t discussed or taught as much as they should be. I know that I didn’t know too much about my reproductive system until I took a women’s studies class in college, where the true wonders of the vulva and her interior components were revealed to me for the first time. As someone who has since taken a real interest in understanding what it means to be a woman today, I have since made it my business to know about my business. But what about all the women that didn’t sign up for women’s studies classes and haven’t spent the last few years pouring over the feminist blogosphere? Where and how would they learn?

I have gone to a few different gynecologists as I bounced around the country over the past decade (which was my fecund 20s), and not one of them sat me down and discussed the implications of delaying pregnancy as they prescribed me the Pill. Maybe this is a coincidence, and somehow I found myself in the hands of a series of inadequate doctors. But something tells me that that is not the case, and my experience wasn’t unique.

It’s is dangerous and wrong to assume that the Pill is the problem and women are ignorant. But it’s also worth considering how much information is really out there beyond the walls of the women’s studies department and the virtual community of feminist bloggers.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.