Feminist Standpoint Theory Of Birth Control

If you ask anyone on the street a question about their opinions on the argument surrounding birth control, I doubt you would find someone who does not know what you are talking about. Birth control is a complicated and difficult issue within contemporary American society with several facets: should women be allowed to use birth control? What kinds of birth control? Should employers have to pay for birth control through health insurance? As well as, many more questions than just these stated here. The issue that I would like to face in particular is female access to varieties of birth control and the ways in which access is made, often, unnecessarily convoluted for individuals to maneuver. Power structures complicate the ability of women to …show more content…
Feminist standpoint theory aims to highlight this connection and they ways in which knowledge is “socially situated and partial” to those who produce knowledge. The producers of knowledge are privileged and in positions of power over those who are consuming the information and therefore have the ability to alter the available and accessible knowledge as they see fit (Mann, 1/26/16). Standpoint theory also questions the idea that all scientific knowledge is objective and neutral while also foregrounding the knowledge that is created by oppressed groups (Mann, 1/26/16). “Our social forms of consciousness have been created by men occupying positions…of ruling” (Smith, 204) is a statement that explains that the knowledge and information that we have access to, we are allowed to see by those who are in …show more content…
These doctors are “not exposed…to the actualities of his patient’s lives [nor to] the world before the practices” (Smith, 207) and thus does not understand the myriad of reasons that women may want or need birth control outside of simply lowering their chances of getting pregnant. Knowledge and language around birth control is created by these male doctors who hold power and prestige in the field and sometimes even male politicians are able to change the conversation around birth control. The conversation is not being led by female doctors, other informed female practitioners, or by the women who would utilize these products. This leads to the sharing of incorrect information, statements whose intent is to incite fear, and negative social messages against birth control that results from the partial system of knowledge that standpoint theory