The biochemical woman: inventions of the feminine from discourses on the contraceptive pill

Abstract

The contraceptive pill, the most used reversible contraceptive in Brazil, becomes, in the media, motivation for the production of discourses about women. If its invention allowed the dissociation between sexual practice and motherhood, the drug is currently considered harmful in some contexts. From the theoretical perspective of genealogy, we analyze which inventions of the feminine are possible base on the discourses on the pill today. As methodology, we used the analysis of the discourse of reports of Veja magazine and of posts from non-hormonal contraception groups on the social network site Facebook. The results show that, in the reports, the drug appears as the motor of emancipation of the woman; while in the groups new activisms raise the flag of body without pill as a political action for the conquest of freedom. We conclude that, in the regime of contemporary knowledge-power, the rescue of the natural female body reconfigures itself as a device of freedom against the control of medicalization.