Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.

Steve Bannon once declared with provocation: “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.” Though coarse in tone, these words open a window into a long history of fear and resistance to women’s autonomy. To dismiss birth control as a corrupting force is to repeat an ancient pattern—the effort to bind women not only in body, but in spirit. His statement is not the revelation of truth, but a mirror of the unease felt by those who tremble when power begins to shift from the hands of the few to the lives of the many.

The origin of such claims lies in centuries of patriarchal thought, where women’s worth was bound to fertility, obedience, and appearance. When the pill emerged in the 1960s, it shattered that old order, giving women the ability to decide the course of their own lives. For the first time in history, millions could shape their destinies without fear of constant childbearing. To some, this liberation appeared as disorder, as if freedom itself made women “crazy.” In truth, it was not women who had changed, but the structures of society that could no longer contain them.

History bears witness to this shift. Before Margaret Sanger and others fought for contraception, countless women died in childbirth, chained to endless cycles of pregnancy. The invention of birth control did not make women unattractive; it made them free. It allowed them to enter universities, professions, and public life in numbers never before seen. The rise of second-wave feminism was carried, in part, by this small pill—so feared by those who preferred women silent and confined.

The claim of “unattractiveness” speaks not to women, but to the male gaze that sought to define them. True beauty has never been submission, but vitality, intellect, and freedom. The claim of “madness” echoes the ancient charge of hysteria, a word once used by physicians to dismiss women’s voices. Bannon’s words, then, are not new; they are an echo of the old chains, spoken again in modern form.

Therefore, O children of wisdom, learn this lesson: when freedom rises, it is often mocked as chaos. When women seize control of their own bodies, there will always be those who call it “ugly” or “mad.” But the truth is otherwise. Birth control is not the death of beauty, but its liberation, not the seed of madness, but the triumph of reason. And history will remember not the jeers of those who resisted, but the courage of those who claimed their freedom.