Mind the Pleasure Gap

What matters to you when choosing a birth control? Effectiveness, ease of use, safety…what about how it affects your sex life? It’s not uncommon to remove sexuality from conversations about choosing contraceptives, even though people who feel their birth control method has a negative effect on their sexuality are more likely to discontinue the method.

Jenny Higgins, PhD, professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discussed why birth control research that doesn’t consider pleasure and sexuality is bad science, and why she thinks there’s hope for closing the pleasure deficit.