October 22, 2025 • 48 mins
Lately, social media has been awash in misinformation around birth control. Bridget Todd joins us to delve into what is going on, why its working and how its harmful.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Hanny and Samantha and welcome stuff. I've
never told you aflecture of iHeart Radio, and we are
once again thrilled to be joined by the intrepid, the
insightful Bridget Todd. Welcome Bridget.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh, thank you for having me. Love the I descriptor
word theme very alliterative.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Thank you. I've been trying to think of new words.
Helps me sleep at night sometimes. Yes, how have you been, Bridget,
I'm doing well.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
We were talking off Mike a little bit about how
I feel like.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
So.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I love Halloween, I love fall. October is my favorite month.
But I do feel that it took spooky season a
little bit of time to really take and I feel
it's just I'm just now starting to feel the spooky
season vibes. I watched a horror movie under a blanket
last night, so I'll really trying to get my Halloween
vibes on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, yes, I feel the same way. I am a
huge Halloween person. I love October. I love the weather,
and there's been some really great horror movie watching weather lately.
But it took a minute for me to set in
and now I'm trying to I have a lot of
horror movies on my list that I've got to get through.
(01:31):
It's kind of daunting, but I'm sure that I will
do it. Yes, I have. So are you a big
horror movie person, Bridget? Is this something that's new? I
have long time habit that you have.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I love horror movies. I like that. I mean, I obviously.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Like elevated horror, I love Hereditari, I love Midsummer all
that I like. But I also have a soft spot
for just bad, campy horror as well.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
There's just something about.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
A late eighties early nineties horror movie that gets me.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I do like it. How about you? How about you all?
Speaker 5 (02:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I have tried to figure this out with a good
friend of mine who we've enjoyed horror since we were
eight or nine years old. Where did that come from?
Because it's not our families don't like it. We're the
only ones in our families that like it. But I
was sneaking into horror movies when I was nine years old.
I was playing these horror games when I was nine
years old. I don't know. The most scientific explanation I
(02:38):
can give is that I also really love roller coasters.
And there's a scientific reason for loving things like that.
It's called you stress, and it's like a safe stress.
It feels like a safe place to relieve stress. I
don't know why at nine years old that was something
that I felt I needed. But I've been into it
(03:01):
for a very, very long time, and I have so
many horror movies now. I love the elevated horror, I
love dissecting horror, and I love campy horror too. We
were talking about this before. I have delved the dips.
I have found some things no one knows what I'm
talking about. You surely have, some of which we've talked
(03:22):
about on this show.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yes, and we will continue to talk about on this
show soon as in fact, I think but yeah, I
think it has something to do with also the same
people who love like crime shows as well as the
single who love to cry and just be completely destroyed
by a show or a movie. There's something therapeutic and
(03:43):
being able to see it, live it, but not be
a part of it. I have a conversation in this
kind of the whole horror movie film. For me, I'm
very specific in my horror movies. I don't like slasher films.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
I never have.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
I don't like any so it was never really big
in the ninth these like Halloween, not even the Fridi
Kuger movies because it was just too much for me.
But I love a good haunting. I love a good
possession movie, which is odd. I remember also watching a
couple like a good friend of mine and I would
watch all of the the Bad Things at her house,
like that was the thing. You know, you have that
(04:17):
one friend where you know you can get away with
the MTV watching when your religious parents would not let you.
And also the horror movies, which are like, you know,
you're inviting demons into your mind type of conversation. But
we would watch some of the oddest ones, and I
don't even remember half of them because they were so
like out of the realm. It wasn't like we weren't
watching Grimlins. It wasn't that it was something like CAMPI
(04:39):
or like we would watch the dude from Grimlins. We
would watch him in a lot of other horror movies
that I don't know the name of. One of them
was like House of Wax. So it was the nine
eighties nineties rendition of House of Wax, which kind of
scarred me. And then also there was a movie with
clowns that scared me. And then another movie where the
ending is a woman serving these people pies and face explodes,
(05:01):
like that's the ending, And like the the main character
who's a white woman and a black man walk out
all covered in like bruises because you know they've been
through hell, and you see them walking off into the
road into the sun. But you see this scene of
this old white woman killing her husband somehow by making
his face explode because of apple pie.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
Do you know a movie I'm talking.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
About any I have no idea any of you.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I don't know specifically a movie you're talking about. What
there is a movie that is similar called The Stuff.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
I wonder if something like that.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
So, like, I have memories of those types of movies
that still play in my mind, obviously because I'm telling
you about it. But those are the types of movies
that I remember watching and loving. And they were all
VHS recordings I don't know from where again.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
We would watch that. We were all the same.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
We were also the same group of people who would
get that scary tales or scary stories in the mountains
of Appalachian mountain stories and read it to each other
in the middle of the woods. It's in the trailer
by ourselves at nine o'clock at night. And what I
would think is one of the most haunted places because
all I see is pictures of old people, like faded
old pictures everywhere.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
With like Christian memorabilia.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
I'm pretty sure it was haunted and we were like
really testing the ghost there.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
So but those are the time I don't know what.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
That's what I like more than anything else, and I
will find a way to like, yes, let's get into that.
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Is it scary scary or is it kind of catchy scary?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
What's funny to me is both of you had to
sneak to watch horror as youth. I grew up in
the opposite household I was. My dad was the person
who was taking a much too young child to the
theater to see horror movies, and we would this, this
is not gonna make him sound like a great parent,
which I swear he was, but we would stay up
(06:50):
late to watch Tales from the Crypt together, which to
this day I loved Tails from the Crypt. It's hard
to find. You can watch it probably bootleg on YouTube.
But there was a time in my life like maybe
a year ago when I was having a really tough time,
and I was like, would it be weird to buy
myself a cameo from the Cryptkeeper where it's just like
(07:11):
a cameo to me from me, where the Cryptkeeper is
giving me a message.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Would that be weird? I decided it would be.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
But like, that's how much I love Tales from the
Crypt and horror anthology in general.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah, well, you know, I remember, as you say that,
I remember sneaking episodes of that as well as the
newer Twilight Zone.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
Do you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
It wasn't the old one, it was a newer version
that also really twisted, Like I remember the Lottery was
do you know what I'm talking about? That episode of
the Lottery on the Twilight Zone and everything ends up bad,
kind of the same thing with a caper, and I
remember a haunted house on that one, Like I remember
those episocause they were like short shots of something haunting.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
That never really had a good ending. And you're just
like me more than that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, I'm a sucker for the Twilight Zone and horror
anthologies in general where it has some sort of a
twist ending where oh no, it was.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
It's like, oh yeah, yeah, like the real monsters were.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Man all I love. I'm a sucker for a like
artistic twist.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And they even make one of them on the Futurama
where time enough to read.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
I broke my glasses. Oh well, I can still read
the large the large print books. My eyes fell out.
I'm a sucker for that.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Yes, well, I think you should also definitely buy that
cameo because sometimes you just need a pep talk. I
may not have that in one of your favorite like
childhood memories.
Speaker 6 (08:53):
That's the best.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
When I was a kid, I used to do a
cryptkeeper impression. I used to do this is so such
a tangent impressions of the crypt keeper and the way
that the Martians speak on Mars attacks.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And my brother would die laughing. You would be bowled over.
That was.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Those are my two the two impressions I had when
I was a child.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
I wanted.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
To extra money doing a crypt Keeper cameos.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
I would be there, I'd been why, I would pay Yes, yes,
this through this?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Oh wow, I love that so much. Oh well, this
is kind of an unfortunate segue. But it is true
that every time Halloween comes around there's kind of a
strange tension for me because usually there's both an election
coming up, but also, uh you know, when you talk
(09:54):
about like what you're really afraid of, there's sort of
the horror movie answer, which is very scary, and then
there's like the real world answer that we're living in,
which is also scary. Uh So it's sort of every
time I'm always like, I love this more Halloween seasonal
(10:16):
horror movie thing, but there's also this real world horrific
thing that's happening.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh yes, yeah, what a scarier than things like misinformation?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I mean, if there could be an evil cackle right now,
there should be.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Amazing, we're gonna we're gonna say use that as like
a meme or something. I don't know how to do
with this. Someone put it as a sound cover.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
That was amazing so much. But yes, we are talking
about a lot of information today, and specifically around a
certain topic, right, bridget.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That is right because if y'all have spent any time
at all on TikTok lately, I probably don't need to
tell you that social media platforms are awash in misinformation
about hormonal birth control. And I actually find it interesting
but also kind of very telling that I'm not talking
(11:26):
about content that is warning about some specific side effect
really about birth control. What I'm talking about is sort
of this content that has a fit looking young woman
influencer type promising that you will kind of get a
vague feeling of feeling more like you if you go
off birth control. And so the question they sort of
(11:48):
ask is, who am I without birth control? Will I
feel some sort of a positive difference if I stop
using it?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah? And you know this is not new, but it's
definitely been amplified by social media and these influencer as
spreading the message.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Oh yes, And I guess that like the thing that
social media is specifically flooded with is this sort of
vibe based reasoning for coming off birth control? Right, It's
not I'm having this specific side effect or this specific
issue or use case.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
It's no. The vibes are all are terrible for birth control.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And there was a really great piece in the New
York Times called who Am I Without birth Control? That
I looked at that really examines how misinformation around birth
control is impacting real women. They chronicled a young woman
named Ashley, who was twenty six. They write she had
started taking birth control pills a decade earlier, when she
was fifteen. Now, as she browsed her social media feeds,
(12:43):
she kept stumbling on videos of women saying how much
better they felt when they stopped taking the pill, content
she was not seeking out. The post typically went like this,
a glowing blonde and a workout top the picture of health,
saying that she stopped taking birth control pills and immediately
felt more clarity of mind, like an emotional fog had lifted,
(13:05):
like she was a brand new, much happier person. So Ashley,
seeing all of this, decides to go off birth control
pills cult Turkey, which is not recommended by doctors, even
though she is in a newish relationship with someone and
they both agreed it is too early to even be
thinking of about kids. So who is Ashley without birth control? Well,
(13:26):
turns out she's a mom because just one year after
she stopped taking your pill, those pills, she became a mother.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Her baby was four months old when that article was written.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And so I thought that was such a funny way
for the article to start, thinking that if I go
off the pill, I'll have some vaguely better life, and
it's like, no.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Who are you not on the pill?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Probably a parent, to be honest, if you're having sex,
probably a parent.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
A mean and then other things.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
There's so much to this conversation because I think we've
already kind of hinted towards things like this in our
talk about chidwives, and then also the yoga pipeline, the
influencers in that wellness circle where we talk about this
level of misinformation and being like, if you do all
(14:30):
these things naturally that you're going to be so blessed
with just being a stay at home mom and being
able to take care of your family and yourself, you're
going to feel healthy and light and young and feel complete.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
But all this is in a rhetoric.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
To a very very dangerous conversation about the loss of
rights for those who are marginalized and specifically those who
have uteresses in this moment. But they are really doing
a great job and changing, like feminism is is being
able to be a MoMA, stay at home. Wouldn't you
rather do that than have to struggle by yourself in
(15:05):
a world that doesn't appreciate you. Type of conversation, so
it seems like this is one more narrative for the
wellness chain, which is an odd and very tricky, tricky conversation.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Oh yeah, you put that so well, and you know,
there is nothing wrong with wanting to become a parent.
There's nothing wrong with staying at home and not doing
wage earning work if that is your choice and you
can swing it. All of those things are great, and
the point of feminism is that people should be able
to have the choices that work for them. However, having
an entire media ecosystem that essentially rebrands having less control
(15:42):
and less autonomy into good things is not a dynamic
where people get to make their own decisions. Really, when
you are being algorithmically fed and serviced. Because remember Ashley
said that she was not even seeking out content about
the dangers of birth control, that content found her. When
you are a wash in that kind of rhetoric and
that kind of misinformation, I would argue that you are
(16:04):
not really in a dynamic where you're able to make
real choices for yourself. And yeah, social media content and podcasts,
they are an entire media ecosystem spreading and amplifying misinformation
about birth control and interestingly, they're not exuplicitly warning against
birth control for religious or political reasons, right the same way, Sam,
(16:27):
that you were saying, Oh, it's so easy these days
to just have a.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Boi'm just into yoga and wellness.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Three swipes later and you're looking at Nazi content, right, Like,
it's so easy and a lot of that stuff. They're
able to use things that feel not non political and
they're not being talked about exuplicitly as political, but they
are political. And so with this kind of birth control
misinformation that we're seeing increasingly on social media, it doesn't
(16:56):
come out and say, hey, we're anti birth control for
political or religious reason. It's because birth control is bad
for you. And so I think that that is a
pretty insidious approach because just like wellness other kinds of wellness,
it doesn't just appeal to people who are political or religious,
it also just appeals to people who are concerned about
(17:18):
their overall.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Health or wellness.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And so increasing this message that's that being on birth
control is at odds with being healthy well and quote
pure like that is the underlying message being presented here.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
That makes me want to throw my computer because I
swear to God it took us so long to get
to the point that women can say this is a
hormonal imbalance issue for me. And I have been struggling
all of my life as a teen having pains where
it took me out for two or three days, or
having this mood disorders that did not make sense, and
feeling like I'm in hell every period or rough three
(17:54):
weeks out of the month, Like I remember growing up
being told these are the things you're just that's just
being a one. And it took us so long to
finally get to a point and be like, oh, maybe
we should. There should be research and there should be
medical actions that can happen that could help us. And
I felt like we go there for like just the
(18:15):
split second, like we were actually accepting that as an okay,
that might be okay for us to have.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that, because I
want to be like very clear, hormonal worth control is
not for everyone. It can have side effects. Case and point,
it was not a good option for me because it
gave me headaches. So this is not me saying everybody
should go out there and get on hormonal birth control.
People should talk to their doctor and figure out what
kind of birth control is right for them. If birth
(18:44):
control is right for them, there are all kinds of
non hormonal birth control options to consider. Again, people should
be talking to their medical professionals. They should not be
trusting random influencers on social media or random podcasters. But
right now, those people who are really speaking the loudest
and frankly kind of owning the conversation about birth control,
(19:06):
and people are listening.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
They really have an audience.
Speaker 6 (19:10):
And it's coming back, coming back to that old school
thought of you just need to deal with it.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
It's putting more things in your body doesn't help you
all these things and really being like you need to
let your body work itself out, and really telling people
to suffer because it's a wellness thing.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It's like, literally, yeah, you want to be pure, you know,
it's just birth control is just bad for you. And honestly,
the kinds of stuff that people say about birth control
is crap, just a little bit of a summary. So
Alex Clark, who hosts Culture Apothecary, which is sort of
a conservative wellness podcast on the Late Charlie Kirks Network,
turning quints to USA. She has suggested that the way
(19:49):
that women are prescribed birth control is linked to fertility issues,
which it isn't. She's also even said that birth control
pills can false make women feel that they might be bisexual,
which I don't think I need to tell anybody, but
just in case that's not true, birth control pills cannot
(20:10):
turn you queer or gay.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Genuine reaction.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I was already.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
On an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast, Callie Means, who
now is an advisor to help Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Junior basically said that the medical industry views worth control
as recurring revenue, and that the reason that they're trying
to get people to take the pill is because it's
recurring revenue, and that, oh, if you can get somebody
(20:42):
to be on the pill, they're going to be taking
it for most of their lives. And that's it's this
implied conspiracy that no, no, this is not medication that
might genuinely help somebody or might genuinely give somebody more
autonomy or more choice. No, no, no, no no, it's a way
to just make big Pharma is making money off of
you to harm you.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
God, they are so good about taking this type of
rhetoric and I say they as being like anti abortion
slash anti uterus, anti marginal arts people group community and
taking things and making sure to do a conspiracy to
really freak everybody out. Be like, no, no, but this
is what's really happening. It's not because I'm being anti abortion.
(21:24):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, And so it's it's so true because when you
look up birth control on TikTok, you'll find women talking
about how birth control like room into their bodies quote
unquote by making them gain weight or taking their libidos.
And these are things that actually can be symptoms of
hormonal birth control.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
So they're not wrong.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
But the thing is, like, if I were to make
a TikTok about how my doctor took me off birth
control because it was giving me headaches, this is not
gonna be advice for everybody, right, Like, it's it's very
specific to me and my body. And importantly, the dominant
messages on social media frame birth control a conversation that
is not like, oh, talk to your doctor if birth
control is giving you this specific side effect. No, no, no,
(22:06):
it is your doctor is in cahoots with the government
to lie to you by actually forcing you to be
on birth control that is harming you.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Right, It's I honestly wouldn't have a problem. Well, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
I guess I feel like it gets dicey when you're
putting medical advice online if you're not a doctor. But
I honestly wouldn't have that big of a problem with
it if it was just like, here's my side effect
and this is what I did. Instead, it's this purposely
conspiratorial thing that is so obviously being phrased in the
(22:40):
most inflammatory way to get engagement. Like The New York
Times spoke to one of these influencers who has like
just under one hundred thousand followers, who went on TikTok
and talked about birth control as being evil.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
And then said, well, obviously I exaggerate on social media.
You can't have a lukewarm take.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And I'm thinking, do you really want to be taking
medical advice from an influencer who is openly telling The
New York Times that she needs to make things as
spicy and inflammatory as possible to get views on social media?
Like do you not see the way that she's incentivized
to essentially tell the most extreme story of something as
important as your health.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Again, it goes back to also in my mind, like
they're not completely wrong when it comes to women's health.
They don't care, so they they being pharmaceuticals. I sound
very very conspiratory right now in that level of like
they do want to make money. It's the same reason
why period products are not offered for free and there's
an increase and there's tax on it because they can
(23:41):
make more money and they know that it's needed. And
instead of helping to have a cost efficient way of
treating women as well as actually researching on how the
best way to help because some of the beginning of
birth control was real gross, real eugenics what like, it
was real gross, like let's let me real clear on that,
but instead of actually seeking to help women, it kind
of had turned the other way of like, eh, we
(24:02):
don't care enough about helping people with the uterses. We
don't really want to help them, but if we're going to,
we're going to make it as least effective or as
many side effects so we can also make money and
let them know this is your only solution.
Speaker 6 (24:16):
Like there's this.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Level of like, you're not completely wrong, but instead of
helping in a right way, you're just making us go
back twenty steps.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, and bad actors are so good at exploiting that
kind of kernel of truth. That's what they do, right,
And so I get it because listen, Traditionally, margin bized people,
especially women, are often not listened to by medical professionals,
are often not treated with respect or care oftentimes when
you're talking about medicines and medical things, these are things
(24:47):
that we're not tested or researched on our body specifically.
So all of that is true, and we're right to
be pissed off about that, we're right to call that out.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
But what these content creators.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Do is that they swoop in and except like that
very real problem, that very real issue, and use it
to push potentially harmful, untrue messages about our health. And so, yeah,
I completely agree that they're not wrong, and they're not
wrong to be skeptical, paranoid all of that. But then
(25:19):
you have these influencers basically filling the void with lies,
lies that lead to people feeling more anxious and more suspicious.
When The New York Times surveyed women about how our
current social media climate is making them think about birth control,
these messages did not just make them want to stop
(25:40):
using birth control. It made them fearful, paranoid, anxious, suspicious,
specifically suspicious of their own doctors, and made them feel
more trust toward random influencers or podcasters. So you can
see why exploiting that kernel of truth would materially benefit
bad actors who are pushing these lives about birth control.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, and I think there's so much going on right
now with the erosion of trust that has been ongoing.
But you got like RFKA Junior, and he's just pushing
out all of these these things about you know, what
feel like conspiracy theories to me, but to other people
(26:22):
seem like truths. I have a friend who worked at
the CDC and she was seeing, you know, COVID really
exacerbated a lot of things because we were trying to
get this vaccine out, but every day, like what we
knew about it was changing, and so people started to
view that with mistrust. So you've got like this building mistrust.
(26:45):
And then as we talked about in the episode we
did about chat GPT and people seeking out health advice
from chat gpt, where it's so expensive to go to
a doctor or to go to a hospital, and so
people are turning to technology, and people are turning to
(27:06):
these influencers and they're telling you like, this is what
you have to do. This is like it worked for
me us, and it's very It's a nice thing to believe.
It's a nice thing to think, Oh, I could control that.
If I just stopped taking birth control, then maybe I
will be more in control of my body. And you know,
(27:28):
you couple that with like lack of sexual education. It's
just a real mess that we have going on right now.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
And I think I like that comparison to the chat
gept example, because you know, I don't want to shame
anybody who was using chat gept or doctor Google to
figure out what's wrong with them in a climate where
just having access to medical care is so inaccessible. However,
the answer to me is not here, take this unreliable
(28:01):
tool chat youpt and use that. The answer is, let's
make healthcare more accessible for everybody. And I think similarly,
the answer here should not be, oh well, let's just
have an entire ecosystem of podcasters and influencers who are
personally incentivized to make people fearful.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
It's let's have a medical.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Industry that actually listens to people and that people feel
like they can actually trust, Like it's it's such a
it's it's just not a real solution. I understand how
in a climate where it is confusing to figure out
decisions for your own health and your own body, and
we have people who I would say are influencers at
(28:40):
the highest level of government making our health decisions, I
understand it is a funky climate. But the answer is not, oh,
just empower the influencers and podcasters to essentially act as doctors. Now,
it is how do we have a more reasonable climate
that people can trust when it comes to our health
and our bodies.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Absolutely, And I really found this next part you have
in your outline really interesting because I never heard of
it before. I'm very familiar with the placebo effects, but
I was not familiar with its polar opposite.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yes, the no cibo effect.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
So that comes from doctors Rebecca Webster and Lorna Reed,
the co authors of a first of its kind study
in a journal called Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
So they coined the no cebo effect, which is kind
of the opposite of the polacebo effect, where when people
start taking a medication, they then start associating that medication
with negative impacts. Right, So placebo effect is I have
(29:40):
not been given a medication.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
But I think it's working for me.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I think I have positive impacts because of it, even
though I didn't really take it. The opposite of that is,
I am genuinely taking the medicine and now I am
associating it with negative impacts.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And so their.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Study found that the no cebo effect involved four psychological
factors that were associated with women having a negative experience
of her birth control pills. They were an expectation at
the outset that the pill would be harmful, low confidence
in how medicines are developed, a belief that medicines are
overused and harmful, and a belief that they are sensitive
(30:13):
to medicines. So, yeah, it is interesting that you know,
when people are taking medication, they would then be reporting, Oh,
it has made me fearful of this medication, and it
has made not trust this medication.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
And social media.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
We almost kind of can't talk about this phenomenon without
talking about social media because it's definitely a factor. Earlier
this year, a study by public health researchers at Latrobe
University found that among the top one hundred TikTok videos
about reproductive health, just ten percent were from medical professionals.
About fifty percent of creators made comments rejecting hormonal contraception.
(30:50):
The top one hundred most popular tiktoks about birth control
had to mass some five billion views. And so think
about that.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
There's just there.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
It's just that much more difficult for accurate content, lot
alone accurate content that is being made by an actual
healthcare professional to get traction when you're talking about a
climate like TikTok, where overwhelmingly the content that is doing
well and performing well and being a surface for folks
is content that is made by influencers and content creators
(31:21):
that is not based an actual fact about reproductive care.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Yeah, I'm starting to getting a lot of stuff on
my specific TikTok where I'm like Oracle, I feel like
it's already having a.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
Lot of influence.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And I'm sure Bridget you may have already talked about
it on your show or you're thinking on it, whatever
whatnot with the whole new takeover with the company that
is very much associated with the Trump administration, Peter Pill,
all those people, and then there's even more bet worst
players that I can't remember their name because they're so dark.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
To me, it's funny that you mentioned Peter Teal because
that podcaster I was talking about that the time spoke
to Alex Clark from the conservative wellness podcast Culture Apothecary.
She says something that I hear quite a bit. She says, Oh, well,
I don't use birth control, and you don't actually need
birth control if you just track your period. She says,
(32:14):
we are not given full informed consent when it comes
to the pill. Clark began taking her monal birth control
as a teenager and stop in twenty eighteen, eventually switching
to tracking her menstrual cycle on her phone. She says
she has used the app's Flow and twenty eight the
last of which was founded by the creators of the
conservative EV magazine, which we talked about you and I
all on the show, and backed by right wing kingmaker
(32:36):
Peter Teal. Both are a fast growing, multi billion dollar
market for women's health technology. So this is something that
I often hear in this space, like, oh, you don't
need birth control if you just track your cycle, and
conveniently you can use these apps owned by billionaire Trump
crony and if you watch that South Park episode, like
(32:57):
anti Christ expert himself Peter Tea, or apps like Flow,
which just this year, a California jury found that Meta
illegally collected user health data from Flow, violating the state's
wiretap law. This verdict found that Flow, Google, Meta, and
another app analytics company called Flurry we're collecting people's private
(33:18):
menstrual health data without consent for targeted advertising. So yeah,
super convenient. Don't use hormonal birth control because it's so dangerous.
Instead use this app owned by a Republican technocrat. Or
this app that the court says will share your intimate
menstrual data for money.
Speaker 6 (33:35):
Oh goodness, is a nightmare in horror movie.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
I told you, I will say the cryptkeeper would never
get mixed up in any of this.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
He's very pro reproductive rights for women.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Social media has done so much for good and bad.
Like there's so many things, like we were able to
access so much more and seeing around the world and
get a little more information and data and truth, but
also a lot of the misinformation and disinformation that we
have continually had to talk about because it's only getting worse.
But like it reminds me again of like people talking
(34:19):
trying to use the ejaculation or the minute that sperm comes.
Speaker 6 (34:25):
That's killing a baby.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
I'm sorry laughing at myself in this context. And for
so long I've heard my own people, like my age
group of people, very intellectual, like even like pro choice
before tell me after they had a baby. No, yeah,
I can't use hormonal birth control because it kills you know,
it has spermicide, and that means it's killing babies, and
(34:49):
I cannot do that as a part of my religion.
But now it's flip that because it it may have
worked on a few, but it's starting to work less
and less, and so now that I feel like this
is its way of new talk, like no, no, no,
we're not gonna talk about that as the actual problem.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Oh yeah, I mean we had that.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's a very common piece of misinformation about contraceptives is
that they are the same as abortives or abortions. The
Trump administration just this year was trying to falsely claim
that certain forms of birth control are essentially the same
thing as abortions in an effort to restrict access to contraceptives.
And so there's nothing wrong with abortion, but abortion and
(35:28):
birth control, as hopefully we all learn into health class
are two different things. And so if contraceptives are trying
to prevent in like a like an egg being fertilized,
if you have no fertilized egg, it's not the same
thing as an abortion.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
But the Trump administration was trying to.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Use this sort of tricky false logic to essentially further
restrict birth control and reproductive health more generally.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Like that's really what it was.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
But so like that is an incredibly common piece of misinformation,
And yeah, it's just that we're in a place where
it's not just being traded around the back of the
bus or you know, on TikTok, it is in our government.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, and we are seeing the fallout and impacts of this.
One thing I find interesting is I do I have
some friends who are nurses, and they told me before,
you know, people come in. People have always come in
since the internet has been a thing and been like
you know, I saw on WebMD, I have this. But
(36:33):
now they're kind of coming in with this I saw
on TikTok.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
Is this a thing?
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Should I be worried about this? And it's just just
another task for them to take on of almost educating
like no, no, no, no, that's not that's not what's
going on. But there have been some fallouts, some more
measurable than others.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Right, Yeah, So the question that I had is, well,
it definitely seems like misinformation about birth control is it's
our platforms are washing it. But is it having an impact?
And it's a little bit hard to say. It depends
on who you ask. So the New York Times work
with this company trily into Health, a healthcare analytics company,
and they conducted an analysis for The Times and found
a decrease in the use of hormonal birth control pills
(37:16):
among women age eighteen to forty four. In twenty nineteen,
thirteen point one percent of women said that they use
the pill. In twenty twenty four, that number fell to
ten point two percent. But researchers at the Goutbacher Institute,
which is like an abortion rights organization, they say that
they have not seen an indication of a population level
decrease in hormonal contraceptive use per their analysis of data
(37:38):
from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
And so it's not.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Totally clear if this is having a specific impact that
people actually are abandoning hormonal birth control. It's possible that
even if they are, they're using some other kind of
birth control. But we can't not talk about the way
that this is happening against this backdrop of an administration
that is clearly just hostile toward birth control and reproductive
(38:04):
health care in general. This spring, more than a dozen
public health organizations sued the Trump administration, arguing that it
was undercutting access to health services, including birth control, by
withholding Title X funding. And then when you take into
effect things like Medicaid cuts, those things would leave millions
of people without access to health coverage, which obviously also
(38:24):
threatens to limit things like contraceptives and birth control. And
so all of this stuff is not happening in a vacuum,
and I think that that's what scholars are sort of
worried about, right this one two punch of this growing
media climate that spreads fear lies and misinformation about birth control,
also combined with these policy decisions that restrict birth control.
(38:48):
The New York Times spoke to Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist
at the University of Colorado Boulder, who said those two processes,
stigmatization and legal restrictions, are mutually reinforcing.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
And I guess I would say the piece of this
that I find.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
The most interesting to me and the most telling is
just sort of the way that social media has reinforced
being critical or skeptical or not on birth control as
a kind of identity. And here's how Doctor Jennifer Penna,
the chief medical officer for the reproductive telehealth platform WISP.
(39:23):
She says that she sees dozens of patients each year
who come to her with worries rooted in misinformation. They're
asking her things like, is an IUD going to make
me infertile if I go off birth control? How long
will it take me to get out of my system?
How can I do this naturally? With an aora ring?
I want to be pure, right, like all of these
things that seem so identity based, And she really traces
(39:43):
that back to these online wellness influencers. She says, there's
a cry for identity. Social media is becoming the algorithm
for education, and once there's a trend, it becomes the
norm for topics of conversation inside clinics. And I think
that's really the thing, is that people are watching all
of this content and the same way that I, you know,
(40:04):
I'm like, oh, maybe I'm somebody who should start.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Wearing more ath leisure, or maybe I'm somebody who should
drink smoothies.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
The same way that social media can influence me in
that way, it is also influencing people to be incredibly
critical and concerned about this medication. And doctors are saying, listen,
we have people coming in asking us these questions that
I know are rooted in online misinformation about birth control.
Speaker 6 (40:27):
That work pure. That's such a red flag. I want
to be pure.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
It's bad.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
And what's so funny to me is that the piece
talked to another young woman, like a black college activist,
who was like, listen, I worked my ass off working
retail to pay for birth control when I was in
high school myself, because I wanted to have the freedom
that birth control allowed me in my life, and I
wanted to have the control that it allowed me of
my life and my choices. And so she talked about
(40:58):
how going to colleg now and hearing from her friends
who are the same age as her, who are basically
saying like, oh, I don't want to be on birth control.
I don't want to, you know, put that stuff into
my body, and how.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Sad it makes her that.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
In this day and age, this way of helping us
control our lives, our finances, our plans, our futures is
being so stigmatized and demonized that it makes her sad.
And so she became a college activist who tables on
her campus to help people get access to birth control.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And she described it like this.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
She said, the biggest thing I see on social media
is this earthy, green girl lifestyle type. Shebang, It's like
a trendy aesthetic. And I guess that is my point.
If you speak to a doctor and birth control is
not for you, more power to you. But I don't
think that rejecting birth control should be a trendy identity
(41:53):
aesthetic that you get from TikTok. Right, these are healthcare
and medical decisions. This is a decision whether or not
to take a prescription drug. That is a decision that
you should be making with your doctor, not with some
rando on TikTok. Because you liked her green, earthy girl esthetic, right, you.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
Got a fifteen second glimpse of her made up and
seemingly happy in the Golden Hour shot.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
That is not truth.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, and who knows what her life is really like?
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Who knows why she is telling you this? Right?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
And I just think that we should really be concerned
about what happens when rejecting birth control becomes this trendy
identity aesthetic on TikTok. More and more women are going
to be losing control and autonomy over their bodies, their plans,
their futures, their finances, and their lives without even necessarily realizing.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
That that's what's happening. Right.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
The woman that The New York Times spoke to, Ashley,
who was like, I wonder who I am if I'm
not on birth control a parent who had a child
before her and her partner were ready to have that, per.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Her own description of the situation.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
And by the way, after having her child, the New
York Times check back in with her, and she was like, oh,
I'm on birth control.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Now I can't have another kid, you know.
Speaker 6 (43:04):
Yeah that was that was a follow up.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
I really wanted to know, honestly, And now you're back
on Are you good now?
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (43:09):
I mean, she like, I it's s I really don't
want to make it seem like I'm saying everybody should
be on birth control. But the same thing that we
talked about with the tradwives thing we should not be
pushing young people into giving up autonomy and giving up
the things that give us choices. And even if you're
(43:30):
not somebody who wants to or needs to be on
birth control, we should not be creating a climate where
it's stigmatized, where somebody who does need it is going
to look twice at it, or I think that's that's
unsafe for me, that's dangerous for me. If I put
this in my body, I am I might turn bisexual,
or I might be making myself infertile, or any other
kind of junk that is being amplified on social media
platforms so responsibly right now when it comes to birth control.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Right and again this comes back into this bigger layer,
like we probably need to do a playlist of all
of these episodes with you, because to connect these thoughts
once again, there is a connection to the Chadwives conversation
that we've had the misinformation about abortion from the jump,
the misinformation from things like WhatsApp who tell you it's private,
(44:13):
but it's not using things like this as well as
this conversation, like this is a bigger chain. This is
a bigger picture in a small detail that they don't
actually they don't tell you that, but when you start
looking at who's behind that and why this information is coming,
it is a bigger picture and it's propaganda.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah, I mean, these bad actors aren't wrong.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We are being lied to you, just not the people
they necessarily want us to be fearful of. And I
think that's exactly my point, that all of these things
are related.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Tech companies are tech.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Companies, and bad actors are materially benefiting from all of
us being fearful and less informed about these choices that
are so important for the way that we live our lives.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
And you know, I birth control.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
I'm at the stage of my life where it's not
a huge concern for me in general.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
But that's just the thing, birth control.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
It's not just about side effects or hormones or the
ability to have sex. It is about those things, but
it's also about autonomy, the ability to make informed decisions
about our own bodies based on facts and not fear.
You know, that is something that generations of women fought for.
My own mother or my own late mother, God rest
of your soul, she fought for that. And I just
(45:28):
don't think we should just give that up because an
influencer told us to. And I think that as these
algorithms get louder than actual medical experts, it is really
worth asking who is benefiting when we stop trusting our
doctors and start putting our trust in influencers and podcasters instead.
And so if the question is who are you without
(45:48):
birth control? Hopefully not just content for somebody else's wellness
grift right our wellness brand. The better question is who
could we become when we start demanding care and content
that is honest, evidence based and actually centered on us
and our bodies and what we truly actually.
Speaker 6 (46:06):
Need big on the centered on us please, yes.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Oh absolutely well a very a very spooky episode indeed,
and as always, so many other things we could talk about.
We always love having you on. Thank you so much
for coming on and hallucinating these things for us as
much as they can be in our wild times.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, my pleasure. And yeah, if anybody, if the cripkeeper,
if you're listening.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Oh yes, let us know about me out call me.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Don't call me, and you probably prefer to get called
by the ghostream voice ghost space.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
Yeah, there was a hot line right when the movie
was coming out that you could actually send a message,
So I put Annie's in photo she got that call.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
It was fun, yes, and we played it in the episode.
It scared me very very because you told I would
never answer a number that I didn't recognize, and you
sent me a text, Samantha that was like, answer the call.
Speaker 6 (47:18):
You need to answer this fun call.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
It was a New York number. Dream Yeah, like.
Speaker 6 (47:22):
You have it. You need to answer this call.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I did, and it scared me and I loved it,
so thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Well.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I hope that you have more excellent horror movie times
Halloween times, uh, and we're looking forward to talking to
you again. But in the meantime, Bridget, where can the
good listeners find too?
Speaker 5 (47:42):
Well?
Speaker 2 (47:42):
You can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC.
You can find me on TikTok at Bridget Marie and
DC on YouTube at there are no girls on the Internet,
and you can listen to my podcast there are no
girls on the Internet. If you like spooky conversations about
our social media landscape, sure, I mean.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Honestly yes, yes, Oh well go do that, listeners, if
you haven't already, if you would like to email as
you can or email as hello it's stuff I never
told you. We're also on Blue Skype moms to a
podcast or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I Never
Told You. We're also on YouTube. We have new merchandise
accomp Hero, and we have a book you can get
wherever you get your books. Thanks so start a superducer,
(48:22):
Cosine or executive pducer my undercontributor Joey, Thank you and
thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told You
is fuction my Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
a podcast wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Hey, this is Hanny and Samantha and welcome stuff. I've
never told you aflecture of iHeart Radio, and we are
once again thrilled to be joined by the intrepid, the
insightful Bridget Todd. Welcome Bridget.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh, thank you for having me. Love the I descriptor
word theme very alliterative.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Thank you. I've been trying to think of new words.
Helps me sleep at night sometimes. Yes, how have you been, Bridget,
I'm doing well.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
We were talking off Mike a little bit about how
I feel like.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
So.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I love Halloween, I love fall. October is my favorite month.
But I do feel that it took spooky season a
little bit of time to really take and I feel
it's just I'm just now starting to feel the spooky
season vibes. I watched a horror movie under a blanket
last night, so I'll really trying to get my Halloween
vibes on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, yes, I feel the same way. I am a
huge Halloween person. I love October. I love the weather,
and there's been some really great horror movie watching weather lately.
But it took a minute for me to set in
and now I'm trying to I have a lot of
horror movies on my list that I've got to get through.
(01:31):
It's kind of daunting, but I'm sure that I will
do it. Yes, I have. So are you a big
horror movie person, Bridget? Is this something that's new? I
have long time habit that you have.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I love horror movies. I like that. I mean, I obviously.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Like elevated horror, I love Hereditari, I love Midsummer all
that I like. But I also have a soft spot
for just bad, campy horror as well.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
There's just something about.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
A late eighties early nineties horror movie that gets me.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I do like it. How about you? How about you all?
Speaker 5 (02:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I have tried to figure this out with a good
friend of mine who we've enjoyed horror since we were
eight or nine years old. Where did that come from?
Because it's not our families don't like it. We're the
only ones in our families that like it. But I
was sneaking into horror movies when I was nine years old.
I was playing these horror games when I was nine
years old. I don't know. The most scientific explanation I
(02:38):
can give is that I also really love roller coasters.
And there's a scientific reason for loving things like that.
It's called you stress, and it's like a safe stress.
It feels like a safe place to relieve stress. I
don't know why at nine years old that was something
that I felt I needed. But I've been into it
(03:01):
for a very, very long time, and I have so
many horror movies now. I love the elevated horror, I
love dissecting horror, and I love campy horror too. We
were talking about this before. I have delved the dips.
I have found some things no one knows what I'm
talking about. You surely have, some of which we've talked
(03:22):
about on this show.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yes, and we will continue to talk about on this
show soon as in fact, I think but yeah, I
think it has something to do with also the same
people who love like crime shows as well as the
single who love to cry and just be completely destroyed
by a show or a movie. There's something therapeutic and
(03:43):
being able to see it, live it, but not be
a part of it. I have a conversation in this
kind of the whole horror movie film. For me, I'm
very specific in my horror movies. I don't like slasher films.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
I never have.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
I don't like any so it was never really big
in the ninth these like Halloween, not even the Fridi
Kuger movies because it was just too much for me.
But I love a good haunting. I love a good
possession movie, which is odd. I remember also watching a
couple like a good friend of mine and I would
watch all of the the Bad Things at her house,
like that was the thing. You know, you have that
(04:17):
one friend where you know you can get away with
the MTV watching when your religious parents would not let you.
And also the horror movies, which are like, you know,
you're inviting demons into your mind type of conversation. But
we would watch some of the oddest ones, and I
don't even remember half of them because they were so
like out of the realm. It wasn't like we weren't
watching Grimlins. It wasn't that it was something like CAMPI
(04:39):
or like we would watch the dude from Grimlins. We
would watch him in a lot of other horror movies
that I don't know the name of. One of them
was like House of Wax. So it was the nine
eighties nineties rendition of House of Wax, which kind of
scarred me. And then also there was a movie with
clowns that scared me. And then another movie where the
ending is a woman serving these people pies and face explodes,
(05:01):
like that's the ending, And like the the main character
who's a white woman and a black man walk out
all covered in like bruises because you know they've been
through hell, and you see them walking off into the
road into the sun. But you see this scene of
this old white woman killing her husband somehow by making
his face explode because of apple pie.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
Do you know a movie I'm talking.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
About any I have no idea any of you.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I don't know specifically a movie you're talking about. What
there is a movie that is similar called The Stuff.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
I wonder if something like that.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
So, like, I have memories of those types of movies
that still play in my mind, obviously because I'm telling
you about it. But those are the types of movies
that I remember watching and loving. And they were all
VHS recordings I don't know from where again.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
We would watch that. We were all the same.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
We were also the same group of people who would
get that scary tales or scary stories in the mountains
of Appalachian mountain stories and read it to each other
in the middle of the woods. It's in the trailer
by ourselves at nine o'clock at night. And what I
would think is one of the most haunted places because
all I see is pictures of old people, like faded
old pictures everywhere.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
With like Christian memorabilia.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
I'm pretty sure it was haunted and we were like
really testing the ghost there.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
So but those are the time I don't know what.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
That's what I like more than anything else, and I
will find a way to like, yes, let's get into that.
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Is it scary scary or is it kind of catchy scary?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
What's funny to me is both of you had to
sneak to watch horror as youth. I grew up in
the opposite household I was. My dad was the person
who was taking a much too young child to the
theater to see horror movies, and we would this, this
is not gonna make him sound like a great parent,
which I swear he was, but we would stay up
(06:50):
late to watch Tales from the Crypt together, which to
this day I loved Tails from the Crypt. It's hard
to find. You can watch it probably bootleg on YouTube.
But there was a time in my life like maybe
a year ago when I was having a really tough time,
and I was like, would it be weird to buy
myself a cameo from the Cryptkeeper where it's just like
(07:11):
a cameo to me from me, where the Cryptkeeper is
giving me a message.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Would that be weird? I decided it would be.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
But like, that's how much I love Tales from the
Crypt and horror anthology in general.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah, well, you know, I remember, as you say that,
I remember sneaking episodes of that as well as the
newer Twilight Zone.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
Do you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
It wasn't the old one, it was a newer version
that also really twisted, Like I remember the Lottery was
do you know what I'm talking about? That episode of
the Lottery on the Twilight Zone and everything ends up bad,
kind of the same thing with a caper, and I
remember a haunted house on that one, Like I remember
those episocause they were like short shots of something haunting.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
That never really had a good ending. And you're just
like me more than that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, I'm a sucker for the Twilight Zone and horror
anthologies in general where it has some sort of a
twist ending where oh no, it was.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
It's like, oh yeah, yeah, like the real monsters were.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Man all I love. I'm a sucker for a like
artistic twist.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And they even make one of them on the Futurama
where time enough to read.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
I broke my glasses. Oh well, I can still read
the large the large print books. My eyes fell out.
I'm a sucker for that.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Yes, well, I think you should also definitely buy that
cameo because sometimes you just need a pep talk. I
may not have that in one of your favorite like
childhood memories.
Speaker 6 (08:53):
That's the best.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
When I was a kid, I used to do a
cryptkeeper impression. I used to do this is so such
a tangent impressions of the crypt keeper and the way
that the Martians speak on Mars attacks.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And my brother would die laughing. You would be bowled over.
That was.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Those are my two the two impressions I had when
I was a child.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
I wanted.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
To extra money doing a crypt Keeper cameos.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
I would be there, I'd been why, I would pay Yes, yes,
this through this?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Oh wow, I love that so much. Oh well, this
is kind of an unfortunate segue. But it is true
that every time Halloween comes around there's kind of a
strange tension for me because usually there's both an election
coming up, but also, uh you know, when you talk
(09:54):
about like what you're really afraid of, there's sort of
the horror movie answer, which is very scary, and then
there's like the real world answer that we're living in,
which is also scary. Uh So it's sort of every
time I'm always like, I love this more Halloween seasonal
(10:16):
horror movie thing, but there's also this real world horrific
thing that's happening.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh yes, yeah, what a scarier than things like misinformation?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I mean, if there could be an evil cackle right now,
there should be.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Amazing, we're gonna we're gonna say use that as like
a meme or something. I don't know how to do
with this. Someone put it as a sound cover.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
That was amazing so much. But yes, we are talking
about a lot of information today, and specifically around a
certain topic, right, bridget.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That is right because if y'all have spent any time
at all on TikTok lately, I probably don't need to
tell you that social media platforms are awash in misinformation
about hormonal birth control. And I actually find it interesting
but also kind of very telling that I'm not talking
(11:26):
about content that is warning about some specific side effect
really about birth control. What I'm talking about is sort
of this content that has a fit looking young woman
influencer type promising that you will kind of get a
vague feeling of feeling more like you if you go
off birth control. And so the question they sort of
(11:48):
ask is, who am I without birth control? Will I
feel some sort of a positive difference if I stop
using it?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah? And you know this is not new, but it's
definitely been amplified by social media and these influencer as
spreading the message.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Oh yes, And I guess that like the thing that
social media is specifically flooded with is this sort of
vibe based reasoning for coming off birth control? Right, It's
not I'm having this specific side effect or this specific
issue or use case.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
It's no. The vibes are all are terrible for birth control.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And there was a really great piece in the New
York Times called who Am I Without birth Control? That
I looked at that really examines how misinformation around birth
control is impacting real women. They chronicled a young woman
named Ashley, who was twenty six. They write she had
started taking birth control pills a decade earlier, when she
was fifteen. Now, as she browsed her social media feeds,
(12:43):
she kept stumbling on videos of women saying how much
better they felt when they stopped taking the pill, content
she was not seeking out. The post typically went like this,
a glowing blonde and a workout top the picture of health,
saying that she stopped taking birth control pills and immediately
felt more clarity of mind, like an emotional fog had lifted,
(13:05):
like she was a brand new, much happier person. So Ashley,
seeing all of this, decides to go off birth control
pills cult Turkey, which is not recommended by doctors, even
though she is in a newish relationship with someone and
they both agreed it is too early to even be
thinking of about kids. So who is Ashley without birth control? Well,
(13:26):
turns out she's a mom because just one year after
she stopped taking your pill, those pills, she became a mother.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Her baby was four months old when that article was written.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And so I thought that was such a funny way
for the article to start, thinking that if I go
off the pill, I'll have some vaguely better life, and
it's like, no.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Who are you not on the pill?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Probably a parent, to be honest, if you're having sex,
probably a parent.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
A mean and then other things.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
There's so much to this conversation because I think we've
already kind of hinted towards things like this in our
talk about chidwives, and then also the yoga pipeline, the
influencers in that wellness circle where we talk about this
level of misinformation and being like, if you do all
(14:30):
these things naturally that you're going to be so blessed
with just being a stay at home mom and being
able to take care of your family and yourself, you're
going to feel healthy and light and young and feel complete.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
But all this is in a rhetoric.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
To a very very dangerous conversation about the loss of
rights for those who are marginalized and specifically those who
have uteresses in this moment. But they are really doing
a great job and changing, like feminism is is being
able to be a MoMA, stay at home. Wouldn't you
rather do that than have to struggle by yourself in
(15:05):
a world that doesn't appreciate you. Type of conversation, so
it seems like this is one more narrative for the
wellness chain, which is an odd and very tricky, tricky conversation.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Oh yeah, you put that so well, and you know,
there is nothing wrong with wanting to become a parent.
There's nothing wrong with staying at home and not doing
wage earning work if that is your choice and you
can swing it. All of those things are great, and
the point of feminism is that people should be able
to have the choices that work for them. However, having
an entire media ecosystem that essentially rebrands having less control
(15:42):
and less autonomy into good things is not a dynamic
where people get to make their own decisions. Really, when
you are being algorithmically fed and serviced. Because remember Ashley
said that she was not even seeking out content about
the dangers of birth control, that content found her. When
you are a wash in that kind of rhetoric and
that kind of misinformation, I would argue that you are
(16:04):
not really in a dynamic where you're able to make
real choices for yourself. And yeah, social media content and podcasts,
they are an entire media ecosystem spreading and amplifying misinformation
about birth control and interestingly, they're not exuplicitly warning against
birth control for religious or political reasons, right the same way, Sam,
(16:27):
that you were saying, Oh, it's so easy these days
to just have a.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Boi'm just into yoga and wellness.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Three swipes later and you're looking at Nazi content, right, Like,
it's so easy and a lot of that stuff. They're
able to use things that feel not non political and
they're not being talked about exuplicitly as political, but they
are political. And so with this kind of birth control
misinformation that we're seeing increasingly on social media, it doesn't
(16:56):
come out and say, hey, we're anti birth control for
political or religious reason. It's because birth control is bad
for you. And so I think that that is a
pretty insidious approach because just like wellness other kinds of wellness,
it doesn't just appeal to people who are political or religious,
it also just appeals to people who are concerned about
(17:18):
their overall.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Health or wellness.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And so increasing this message that's that being on birth
control is at odds with being healthy well and quote
pure like that is the underlying message being presented here.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
That makes me want to throw my computer because I
swear to God it took us so long to get
to the point that women can say this is a
hormonal imbalance issue for me. And I have been struggling
all of my life as a teen having pains where
it took me out for two or three days, or
having this mood disorders that did not make sense, and
feeling like I'm in hell every period or rough three
(17:54):
weeks out of the month, Like I remember growing up
being told these are the things you're just that's just
being a one. And it took us so long to
finally get to a point and be like, oh, maybe
we should. There should be research and there should be
medical actions that can happen that could help us. And
I felt like we go there for like just the
(18:15):
split second, like we were actually accepting that as an okay,
that might be okay for us to have.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that, because I
want to be like very clear, hormonal worth control is
not for everyone. It can have side effects. Case and point,
it was not a good option for me because it
gave me headaches. So this is not me saying everybody
should go out there and get on hormonal birth control.
People should talk to their doctor and figure out what
kind of birth control is right for them. If birth
(18:44):
control is right for them, there are all kinds of
non hormonal birth control options to consider. Again, people should
be talking to their medical professionals. They should not be
trusting random influencers on social media or random podcasters. But
right now, those people who are really speaking the loudest
and frankly kind of owning the conversation about birth control,
(19:06):
and people are listening.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
They really have an audience.
Speaker 6 (19:10):
And it's coming back, coming back to that old school
thought of you just need to deal with it.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
It's putting more things in your body doesn't help you
all these things and really being like you need to
let your body work itself out, and really telling people
to suffer because it's a wellness thing.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It's like, literally, yeah, you want to be pure, you know,
it's just birth control is just bad for you. And honestly,
the kinds of stuff that people say about birth control
is crap, just a little bit of a summary. So
Alex Clark, who hosts Culture Apothecary, which is sort of
a conservative wellness podcast on the Late Charlie Kirks Network,
turning quints to USA. She has suggested that the way
(19:49):
that women are prescribed birth control is linked to fertility issues,
which it isn't. She's also even said that birth control
pills can false make women feel that they might be bisexual,
which I don't think I need to tell anybody, but
just in case that's not true, birth control pills cannot
(20:10):
turn you queer or gay.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Genuine reaction.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I was already.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
On an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast, Callie Means, who
now is an advisor to help Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Junior basically said that the medical industry views worth control
as recurring revenue, and that the reason that they're trying
to get people to take the pill is because it's
recurring revenue, and that, oh, if you can get somebody
(20:42):
to be on the pill, they're going to be taking
it for most of their lives. And that's it's this
implied conspiracy that no, no, this is not medication that
might genuinely help somebody or might genuinely give somebody more
autonomy or more choice. No, no, no, no no, it's a way
to just make big Pharma is making money off of
you to harm you.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
God, they are so good about taking this type of
rhetoric and I say they as being like anti abortion
slash anti uterus, anti marginal arts people group community and
taking things and making sure to do a conspiracy to
really freak everybody out. Be like, no, no, but this
is what's really happening. It's not because I'm being anti abortion.
(21:24):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, And so it's it's so true because when you
look up birth control on TikTok, you'll find women talking
about how birth control like room into their bodies quote
unquote by making them gain weight or taking their libidos.
And these are things that actually can be symptoms of
hormonal birth control.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
So they're not wrong.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
But the thing is, like, if I were to make
a TikTok about how my doctor took me off birth
control because it was giving me headaches, this is not
gonna be advice for everybody, right, Like, it's it's very
specific to me and my body. And importantly, the dominant
messages on social media frame birth control a conversation that
is not like, oh, talk to your doctor if birth
control is giving you this specific side effect. No, no, no,
(22:06):
it is your doctor is in cahoots with the government
to lie to you by actually forcing you to be
on birth control that is harming you.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Right, It's I honestly wouldn't have a problem. Well, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
I guess I feel like it gets dicey when you're
putting medical advice online if you're not a doctor. But
I honestly wouldn't have that big of a problem with
it if it was just like, here's my side effect
and this is what I did. Instead, it's this purposely
conspiratorial thing that is so obviously being phrased in the
(22:40):
most inflammatory way to get engagement. Like The New York
Times spoke to one of these influencers who has like
just under one hundred thousand followers, who went on TikTok
and talked about birth control as being evil.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
And then said, well, obviously I exaggerate on social media.
You can't have a lukewarm take.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And I'm thinking, do you really want to be taking
medical advice from an influencer who is openly telling The
New York Times that she needs to make things as
spicy and inflammatory as possible to get views on social media?
Like do you not see the way that she's incentivized
to essentially tell the most extreme story of something as
important as your health.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Again, it goes back to also in my mind, like
they're not completely wrong when it comes to women's health.
They don't care, so they they being pharmaceuticals. I sound
very very conspiratory right now in that level of like
they do want to make money. It's the same reason
why period products are not offered for free and there's
an increase and there's tax on it because they can
(23:41):
make more money and they know that it's needed. And
instead of helping to have a cost efficient way of
treating women as well as actually researching on how the
best way to help because some of the beginning of
birth control was real gross, real eugenics what like, it
was real gross, like let's let me real clear on that,
but instead of actually seeking to help women, it kind
of had turned the other way of like, eh, we
(24:02):
don't care enough about helping people with the uterses. We
don't really want to help them, but if we're going to,
we're going to make it as least effective or as
many side effects so we can also make money and
let them know this is your only solution.
Speaker 6 (24:16):
Like there's this.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Level of like, you're not completely wrong, but instead of
helping in a right way, you're just making us go
back twenty steps.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, and bad actors are so good at exploiting that
kind of kernel of truth. That's what they do, right,
And so I get it because listen, Traditionally, margin bized people,
especially women, are often not listened to by medical professionals,
are often not treated with respect or care oftentimes when
you're talking about medicines and medical things, these are things
(24:47):
that we're not tested or researched on our body specifically.
So all of that is true, and we're right to
be pissed off about that, we're right to call that out.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
But what these content creators.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Do is that they swoop in and except like that
very real problem, that very real issue, and use it
to push potentially harmful, untrue messages about our health. And so, yeah,
I completely agree that they're not wrong, and they're not
wrong to be skeptical, paranoid all of that. But then
(25:19):
you have these influencers basically filling the void with lies,
lies that lead to people feeling more anxious and more suspicious.
When The New York Times surveyed women about how our
current social media climate is making them think about birth control,
these messages did not just make them want to stop
(25:40):
using birth control. It made them fearful, paranoid, anxious, suspicious,
specifically suspicious of their own doctors, and made them feel
more trust toward random influencers or podcasters. So you can
see why exploiting that kernel of truth would materially benefit
bad actors who are pushing these lives about birth control.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, and I think there's so much going on right
now with the erosion of trust that has been ongoing.
But you got like RFKA Junior, and he's just pushing
out all of these these things about you know, what
feel like conspiracy theories to me, but to other people
(26:22):
seem like truths. I have a friend who worked at
the CDC and she was seeing, you know, COVID really
exacerbated a lot of things because we were trying to
get this vaccine out, but every day, like what we
knew about it was changing, and so people started to
view that with mistrust. So you've got like this building mistrust.
(26:45):
And then as we talked about in the episode we
did about chat GPT and people seeking out health advice
from chat gpt, where it's so expensive to go to
a doctor or to go to a hospital, and so
people are turning to technology, and people are turning to
(27:06):
these influencers and they're telling you like, this is what
you have to do. This is like it worked for
me us, and it's very It's a nice thing to believe.
It's a nice thing to think, Oh, I could control that.
If I just stopped taking birth control, then maybe I
will be more in control of my body. And you know,
(27:28):
you couple that with like lack of sexual education. It's
just a real mess that we have going on right now.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
And I think I like that comparison to the chat
gept example, because you know, I don't want to shame
anybody who was using chat gept or doctor Google to
figure out what's wrong with them in a climate where
just having access to medical care is so inaccessible. However,
the answer to me is not here, take this unreliable
(28:01):
tool chat youpt and use that. The answer is, let's
make healthcare more accessible for everybody. And I think similarly,
the answer here should not be, oh well, let's just
have an entire ecosystem of podcasters and influencers who are
personally incentivized to make people fearful.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
It's let's have a medical.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Industry that actually listens to people and that people feel
like they can actually trust, Like it's it's such a
it's it's just not a real solution. I understand how
in a climate where it is confusing to figure out
decisions for your own health and your own body, and
we have people who I would say are influencers at
(28:40):
the highest level of government making our health decisions, I
understand it is a funky climate. But the answer is not, oh,
just empower the influencers and podcasters to essentially act as doctors. Now,
it is how do we have a more reasonable climate
that people can trust when it comes to our health
and our bodies.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Absolutely, And I really found this next part you have
in your outline really interesting because I never heard of
it before. I'm very familiar with the placebo effects, but
I was not familiar with its polar opposite.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yes, the no cibo effect.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
So that comes from doctors Rebecca Webster and Lorna Reed,
the co authors of a first of its kind study
in a journal called Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
So they coined the no cebo effect, which is kind
of the opposite of the polacebo effect, where when people
start taking a medication, they then start associating that medication
with negative impacts. Right, So placebo effect is I have
(29:40):
not been given a medication.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
But I think it's working for me.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I think I have positive impacts because of it, even
though I didn't really take it. The opposite of that is,
I am genuinely taking the medicine and now I am
associating it with negative impacts.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And so their.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Study found that the no cebo effect involved four psychological
factors that were associated with women having a negative experience
of her birth control pills. They were an expectation at
the outset that the pill would be harmful, low confidence
in how medicines are developed, a belief that medicines are
overused and harmful, and a belief that they are sensitive
(30:13):
to medicines. So, yeah, it is interesting that you know,
when people are taking medication, they would then be reporting, Oh,
it has made me fearful of this medication, and it
has made not trust this medication.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
And social media.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
We almost kind of can't talk about this phenomenon without
talking about social media because it's definitely a factor. Earlier
this year, a study by public health researchers at Latrobe
University found that among the top one hundred TikTok videos
about reproductive health, just ten percent were from medical professionals.
About fifty percent of creators made comments rejecting hormonal contraception.
(30:50):
The top one hundred most popular tiktoks about birth control
had to mass some five billion views. And so think
about that.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
There's just there.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
It's just that much more difficult for accurate content, lot
alone accurate content that is being made by an actual
healthcare professional to get traction when you're talking about a
climate like TikTok, where overwhelmingly the content that is doing
well and performing well and being a surface for folks
is content that is made by influencers and content creators
(31:21):
that is not based an actual fact about reproductive care.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Yeah, I'm starting to getting a lot of stuff on
my specific TikTok where I'm like Oracle, I feel like
it's already having a.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
Lot of influence.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And I'm sure Bridget you may have already talked about
it on your show or you're thinking on it, whatever
whatnot with the whole new takeover with the company that
is very much associated with the Trump administration, Peter Pill,
all those people, and then there's even more bet worst
players that I can't remember their name because they're so dark.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
To me, it's funny that you mentioned Peter Teal because
that podcaster I was talking about that the time spoke
to Alex Clark from the conservative wellness podcast Culture Apothecary.
She says something that I hear quite a bit. She says, Oh, well,
I don't use birth control, and you don't actually need
birth control if you just track your period. She says,
(32:14):
we are not given full informed consent when it comes
to the pill. Clark began taking her monal birth control
as a teenager and stop in twenty eighteen, eventually switching
to tracking her menstrual cycle on her phone. She says
she has used the app's Flow and twenty eight the
last of which was founded by the creators of the
conservative EV magazine, which we talked about you and I
all on the show, and backed by right wing kingmaker
(32:36):
Peter Teal. Both are a fast growing, multi billion dollar
market for women's health technology. So this is something that
I often hear in this space, like, oh, you don't
need birth control if you just track your cycle, and
conveniently you can use these apps owned by billionaire Trump
crony and if you watch that South Park episode, like
(32:57):
anti Christ expert himself Peter Tea, or apps like Flow,
which just this year, a California jury found that Meta
illegally collected user health data from Flow, violating the state's
wiretap law. This verdict found that Flow, Google, Meta, and
another app analytics company called Flurry we're collecting people's private
(33:18):
menstrual health data without consent for targeted advertising. So yeah,
super convenient. Don't use hormonal birth control because it's so dangerous.
Instead use this app owned by a Republican technocrat. Or
this app that the court says will share your intimate
menstrual data for money.
Speaker 6 (33:35):
Oh goodness, is a nightmare in horror movie.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
I told you, I will say the cryptkeeper would never
get mixed up in any of this.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
He's very pro reproductive rights for women.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Social media has done so much for good and bad.
Like there's so many things, like we were able to
access so much more and seeing around the world and
get a little more information and data and truth, but
also a lot of the misinformation and disinformation that we
have continually had to talk about because it's only getting worse.
But like it reminds me again of like people talking
(34:19):
trying to use the ejaculation or the minute that sperm comes.
Speaker 6 (34:25):
That's killing a baby.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
I'm sorry laughing at myself in this context. And for
so long I've heard my own people, like my age
group of people, very intellectual, like even like pro choice
before tell me after they had a baby. No, yeah,
I can't use hormonal birth control because it kills you know,
it has spermicide, and that means it's killing babies, and
(34:49):
I cannot do that as a part of my religion.
But now it's flip that because it it may have
worked on a few, but it's starting to work less
and less, and so now that I feel like this
is its way of new talk, like no, no, no,
we're not gonna talk about that as the actual problem.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Oh yeah, I mean we had that.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's a very common piece of misinformation about contraceptives is
that they are the same as abortives or abortions. The
Trump administration just this year was trying to falsely claim
that certain forms of birth control are essentially the same
thing as abortions in an effort to restrict access to contraceptives.
And so there's nothing wrong with abortion, but abortion and
(35:28):
birth control, as hopefully we all learn into health class
are two different things. And so if contraceptives are trying
to prevent in like a like an egg being fertilized,
if you have no fertilized egg, it's not the same
thing as an abortion.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
But the Trump administration was trying to.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Use this sort of tricky false logic to essentially further
restrict birth control and reproductive health more generally.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Like that's really what it was.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
But so like that is an incredibly common piece of misinformation,
And yeah, it's just that we're in a place where
it's not just being traded around the back of the
bus or you know, on TikTok, it is in our government.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, and we are seeing the fallout and impacts of this.
One thing I find interesting is I do I have
some friends who are nurses, and they told me before,
you know, people come in. People have always come in
since the internet has been a thing and been like
you know, I saw on WebMD, I have this. But
(36:33):
now they're kind of coming in with this I saw
on TikTok.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
Is this a thing?
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Should I be worried about this? And it's just just
another task for them to take on of almost educating
like no, no, no, no, that's not that's not what's
going on. But there have been some fallouts, some more
measurable than others.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Right, Yeah, So the question that I had is, well,
it definitely seems like misinformation about birth control is it's
our platforms are washing it. But is it having an impact?
And it's a little bit hard to say. It depends
on who you ask. So the New York Times work
with this company trily into Health, a healthcare analytics company,
and they conducted an analysis for The Times and found
a decrease in the use of hormonal birth control pills
(37:16):
among women age eighteen to forty four. In twenty nineteen,
thirteen point one percent of women said that they use
the pill. In twenty twenty four, that number fell to
ten point two percent. But researchers at the Goutbacher Institute,
which is like an abortion rights organization, they say that
they have not seen an indication of a population level
decrease in hormonal contraceptive use per their analysis of data
(37:38):
from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
And so it's not.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Totally clear if this is having a specific impact that
people actually are abandoning hormonal birth control. It's possible that
even if they are, they're using some other kind of
birth control. But we can't not talk about the way
that this is happening against this backdrop of an administration
that is clearly just hostile toward birth control and reproductive
(38:04):
health care in general. This spring, more than a dozen
public health organizations sued the Trump administration, arguing that it
was undercutting access to health services, including birth control, by
withholding Title X funding. And then when you take into
effect things like Medicaid cuts, those things would leave millions
of people without access to health coverage, which obviously also
(38:24):
threatens to limit things like contraceptives and birth control. And
so all of this stuff is not happening in a vacuum,
and I think that that's what scholars are sort of
worried about, right this one two punch of this growing
media climate that spreads fear lies and misinformation about birth control,
also combined with these policy decisions that restrict birth control.
(38:48):
The New York Times spoke to Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist
at the University of Colorado Boulder, who said those two processes,
stigmatization and legal restrictions, are mutually reinforcing.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
And I guess I would say the piece of this
that I find.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
The most interesting to me and the most telling is
just sort of the way that social media has reinforced
being critical or skeptical or not on birth control as
a kind of identity. And here's how Doctor Jennifer Penna,
the chief medical officer for the reproductive telehealth platform WISP.
(39:23):
She says that she sees dozens of patients each year
who come to her with worries rooted in misinformation. They're
asking her things like, is an IUD going to make
me infertile if I go off birth control? How long
will it take me to get out of my system?
How can I do this naturally? With an aora ring?
I want to be pure, right, like all of these
things that seem so identity based, And she really traces
(39:43):
that back to these online wellness influencers. She says, there's
a cry for identity. Social media is becoming the algorithm
for education, and once there's a trend, it becomes the
norm for topics of conversation inside clinics. And I think
that's really the thing, is that people are watching all
of this content and the same way that I, you know,
(40:04):
I'm like, oh, maybe I'm somebody who should start.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Wearing more ath leisure, or maybe I'm somebody who should
drink smoothies.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
The same way that social media can influence me in
that way, it is also influencing people to be incredibly
critical and concerned about this medication. And doctors are saying, listen,
we have people coming in asking us these questions that
I know are rooted in online misinformation about birth control.
Speaker 6 (40:27):
That work pure. That's such a red flag. I want
to be pure.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
It's bad.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
And what's so funny to me is that the piece
talked to another young woman, like a black college activist,
who was like, listen, I worked my ass off working
retail to pay for birth control when I was in
high school myself, because I wanted to have the freedom
that birth control allowed me in my life, and I
wanted to have the control that it allowed me of
my life and my choices. And so she talked about
(40:58):
how going to colleg now and hearing from her friends
who are the same age as her, who are basically
saying like, oh, I don't want to be on birth control.
I don't want to, you know, put that stuff into
my body, and how.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Sad it makes her that.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
In this day and age, this way of helping us
control our lives, our finances, our plans, our futures is
being so stigmatized and demonized that it makes her sad.
And so she became a college activist who tables on
her campus to help people get access to birth control.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And she described it like this.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
She said, the biggest thing I see on social media
is this earthy, green girl lifestyle type. Shebang, It's like
a trendy aesthetic. And I guess that is my point.
If you speak to a doctor and birth control is
not for you, more power to you. But I don't
think that rejecting birth control should be a trendy identity
(41:53):
aesthetic that you get from TikTok. Right, these are healthcare
and medical decisions. This is a decision whether or not
to take a prescription drug. That is a decision that
you should be making with your doctor, not with some
rando on TikTok. Because you liked her green, earthy girl esthetic, right, you.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
Got a fifteen second glimpse of her made up and
seemingly happy in the Golden Hour shot.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
That is not truth.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, and who knows what her life is really like?
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Who knows why she is telling you this? Right?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
And I just think that we should really be concerned
about what happens when rejecting birth control becomes this trendy
identity aesthetic on TikTok. More and more women are going
to be losing control and autonomy over their bodies, their plans,
their futures, their finances, and their lives without even necessarily realizing.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
That that's what's happening. Right.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
The woman that The New York Times spoke to, Ashley,
who was like, I wonder who I am if I'm
not on birth control a parent who had a child
before her and her partner were ready to have that, per.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Her own description of the situation.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
And by the way, after having her child, the New
York Times check back in with her, and she was like, oh,
I'm on birth control.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Now I can't have another kid, you know.
Speaker 6 (43:04):
Yeah that was that was a follow up.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
I really wanted to know, honestly, And now you're back
on Are you good now?
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (43:09):
I mean, she like, I it's s I really don't
want to make it seem like I'm saying everybody should
be on birth control. But the same thing that we
talked about with the tradwives thing we should not be
pushing young people into giving up autonomy and giving up
the things that give us choices. And even if you're
(43:30):
not somebody who wants to or needs to be on
birth control, we should not be creating a climate where
it's stigmatized, where somebody who does need it is going
to look twice at it, or I think that's that's
unsafe for me, that's dangerous for me. If I put
this in my body, I am I might turn bisexual,
or I might be making myself infertile, or any other
kind of junk that is being amplified on social media
platforms so responsibly right now when it comes to birth control.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Right and again this comes back into this bigger layer,
like we probably need to do a playlist of all
of these episodes with you, because to connect these thoughts
once again, there is a connection to the Chadwives conversation
that we've had the misinformation about abortion from the jump,
the misinformation from things like WhatsApp who tell you it's private,
(44:13):
but it's not using things like this as well as
this conversation, like this is a bigger chain. This is
a bigger picture in a small detail that they don't
actually they don't tell you that, but when you start
looking at who's behind that and why this information is coming,
it is a bigger picture and it's propaganda.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah, I mean, these bad actors aren't wrong.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We are being lied to you, just not the people
they necessarily want us to be fearful of. And I
think that's exactly my point, that all of these things
are related.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Tech companies are tech.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Companies, and bad actors are materially benefiting from all of
us being fearful and less informed about these choices that
are so important for the way that we live our lives.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
And you know, I birth control.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
I'm at the stage of my life where it's not
a huge concern for me in general.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
But that's just the thing, birth control.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
It's not just about side effects or hormones or the
ability to have sex. It is about those things, but
it's also about autonomy, the ability to make informed decisions
about our own bodies based on facts and not fear.
You know, that is something that generations of women fought for.
My own mother or my own late mother, God rest
of your soul, she fought for that. And I just
(45:28):
don't think we should just give that up because an
influencer told us to. And I think that as these
algorithms get louder than actual medical experts, it is really
worth asking who is benefiting when we stop trusting our
doctors and start putting our trust in influencers and podcasters instead.
And so if the question is who are you without
(45:48):
birth control? Hopefully not just content for somebody else's wellness
grift right our wellness brand. The better question is who
could we become when we start demanding care and content
that is honest, evidence based and actually centered on us
and our bodies and what we truly actually.
Speaker 6 (46:06):
Need big on the centered on us please, yes.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Oh absolutely well a very a very spooky episode indeed,
and as always, so many other things we could talk about.
We always love having you on. Thank you so much
for coming on and hallucinating these things for us as
much as they can be in our wild times.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, my pleasure. And yeah, if anybody, if the cripkeeper,
if you're listening.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Oh yes, let us know about me out call me.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Don't call me, and you probably prefer to get called
by the ghostream voice ghost space.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
Yeah, there was a hot line right when the movie
was coming out that you could actually send a message,
So I put Annie's in photo she got that call.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
It was fun, yes, and we played it in the episode.
It scared me very very because you told I would
never answer a number that I didn't recognize, and you
sent me a text, Samantha that was like, answer the call.
Speaker 6 (47:18):
You need to answer this fun call.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
It was a New York number. Dream Yeah, like.
Speaker 6 (47:22):
You have it. You need to answer this call.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I did, and it scared me and I loved it,
so thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Well.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I hope that you have more excellent horror movie times
Halloween times, uh, and we're looking forward to talking to
you again. But in the meantime, Bridget, where can the
good listeners find too?
Speaker 5 (47:42):
Well?
Speaker 2 (47:42):
You can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC.
You can find me on TikTok at Bridget Marie and
DC on YouTube at there are no girls on the Internet,
and you can listen to my podcast there are no
girls on the Internet. If you like spooky conversations about
our social media landscape, sure, I mean.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Honestly yes, yes, Oh well go do that, listeners, if
you haven't already, if you would like to email as
you can or email as hello it's stuff I never
told you. We're also on Blue Skype moms to a
podcast or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I Never
Told You. We're also on YouTube. We have new merchandise
accomp Hero, and we have a book you can get
wherever you get your books. Thanks so start a superducer,
(48:22):
Cosine or executive pducer my undercontributor Joey, Thank you and
thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told You
is fuction my Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
a podcast wherever you listen to your favorite show.
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