Childfree vs. Childrights: Neither Side is Feminist
reason, many of these people have chosen to willfully ignore privilege, anti-choice laws and situations, sexism, and many other mitigating factors in favour of blaming the woman who “chose” to have children.
“Moos”, “breeders”, and all such words are inherently sexist (and speciesist, which is a point that many feminists, still caught up in their own internalised anti-animal feelings, miss), not only because they are typical insults towards women - calling a woman a “cow” is not an uncommon thing to hear - but because they reinforce stereotypes both about women and animals: that they’re stupid, amoral or immoral, sluts, "clown cars", and just too dumb to make any sort of choice for themselves. (Obviously none of this is true for either group.)
All of these words and anti-woman prejudice have a goal: to make women take responsibility for men’s systems and actions.
A common thread in the childfree community is that women have a choice, and mothers were just too dumb to make that choice. This ignores the fact that the anti-choice movement has been progressing steadily in taking women’s bodies away from them and putting them back into the hands of men who want to control them - rendering a meaningful amount of “choice” an impossibility for most, and an outright fallacy from those who use this argument. There is a parallel between how women and animals are treated here (as usual): society - not just men, but men often give their approval to the women who agree - blames them for a choice they are not able to make.
The word “duh”, applied to male parents (who are not necessarily “fathers” in any real meaning of the word) aims just as much at women. By casting the paternal side of the equation to be slack-jawed idiots, the childfree movement once again implicates women - this time using a much older part of the sexist mythology: that of the carnivorous woman, the woman who wants only to prey upon men and devour them (or their “seed”, as it is said - as if the sperm were the only active part of the process), devour their money, devour their time - the same myths that the MRAs (Men’s Rights Assholes) propose to stave off actual, terrifying equality. (It also implicitly encourages the abandonment of women who will not or cannot abort, lest one be thought of as “stupid”.) There is much to be said of the “oopsed” mythology in the childfree movement - particularly of how it is always applied to women, yet when men do it, it is almost always a sign of abuse. (Aside from being abuse in and of itself.)
In this, the childfree community allows men to get away scott-free with their own actions; they forget, or willingly ignore, that women can only bear one child accidentally (or, at most, two) - and they also forget or willingly ignore that there is a massive push in the United States to put women back in the home, where they are safely neutralised by diapers, dirty floors, and PTA meetings. (This is not true of all women - but we should not expect them to be “supermom”.) The fact that women have been increasingly turning away from college despite becoming the majority of people to graduate is not a mistake.
When one looks at the childfree movement on their own - though I understand that they are not so spiteful when around other people (though whether this is because they are polite because of self-preservation or otherwise is up for grabs) - there are immediate warning signs to anyone who harbors the slightest feminist leanings (and I shall leave you to discover most of these on your own, as they are far too many to list) - the most obvious of which is the amount of vitriol that is aimed at parents (read: mothers) who neither have the time or the money to support children entirely on their own.
To this argument I say: what of it? In an inherently corrupt system (capitalism) in which someone - or rather, many someones - must be the losers, why are we bogging ourselves down in petty critique of people who have little, if any, choice and socioeconomic mobility? It is like blaming the river for the flood when some guy blew up the dam.
Still, I do not accept the argument that procreating is a part of our DNA and therefore we are helpless to not do it; the same is said of meat-eating and dairy-eating, violence, rape, polygyny (note: not polyamory, but polygyny, its traditionally woman-hating marriagement counterpart), and the list goes on. And yet we live perfectly good, if not better lives without indulging in all of these supposedly DNA-commanded obligations.
Here are the facts: for someone in an industrialised country to procreate at this time is inherently harmful to all women, animals, children, and the planet herself. By procreating, we create another mouth to feed - and more importantly, who will consume. “Teaching morals” does not matter as much as you’d think: the second-wave feminists largely did not succeed in passing down their wishes to the next generation. Each new child is a luxury to anyone in an industrialised country while they are a necessity to those in developing countries, usually women, and each new child in an industrialised country takes more than their share of resources - resources that belong to the women and children of developing countries. The language that says that children are a right is utterly fatuous; the language that says that women have a right to their own bodies completely and utterly correct.
So, it turns out, in their general and most commonly-encountered states, neither side is truly feminist. One must look not just at choices, but at results - and situations.
“Moos”, “breeders”, and all such words are inherently sexist (and speciesist, which is a point that many feminists, still caught up in their own internalised anti-animal feelings, miss), not only because they are typical insults towards women - calling a woman a “cow” is not an uncommon thing to hear - but because they reinforce stereotypes both about women and animals: that they’re stupid, amoral or immoral, sluts, "clown cars", and just too dumb to make any sort of choice for themselves. (Obviously none of this is true for either group.)
All of these words and anti-woman prejudice have a goal: to make women take responsibility for men’s systems and actions.
A common thread in the childfree community is that women have a choice, and mothers were just too dumb to make that choice. This ignores the fact that the anti-choice movement has been progressing steadily in taking women’s bodies away from them and putting them back into the hands of men who want to control them - rendering a meaningful amount of “choice” an impossibility for most, and an outright fallacy from those who use this argument. There is a parallel between how women and animals are treated here (as usual): society - not just men, but men often give their approval to the women who agree - blames them for a choice they are not able to make.
The word “duh”, applied to male parents (who are not necessarily “fathers” in any real meaning of the word) aims just as much at women. By casting the paternal side of the equation to be slack-jawed idiots, the childfree movement once again implicates women - this time using a much older part of the sexist mythology: that of the carnivorous woman, the woman who wants only to prey upon men and devour them (or their “seed”, as it is said - as if the sperm were the only active part of the process), devour their money, devour their time - the same myths that the MRAs (Men’s Rights Assholes) propose to stave off actual, terrifying equality. (It also implicitly encourages the abandonment of women who will not or cannot abort, lest one be thought of as “stupid”.) There is much to be said of the “oopsed” mythology in the childfree movement - particularly of how it is always applied to women, yet when men do it, it is almost always a sign of abuse. (Aside from being abuse in and of itself.)
In this, the childfree community allows men to get away scott-free with their own actions; they forget, or willingly ignore, that women can only bear one child accidentally (or, at most, two) - and they also forget or willingly ignore that there is a massive push in the United States to put women back in the home, where they are safely neutralised by diapers, dirty floors, and PTA meetings. (This is not true of all women - but we should not expect them to be “supermom”.) The fact that women have been increasingly turning away from college despite becoming the majority of people to graduate is not a mistake.
When one looks at the childfree movement on their own - though I understand that they are not so spiteful when around other people (though whether this is because they are polite because of self-preservation or otherwise is up for grabs) - there are immediate warning signs to anyone who harbors the slightest feminist leanings (and I shall leave you to discover most of these on your own, as they are far too many to list) - the most obvious of which is the amount of vitriol that is aimed at parents (read: mothers) who neither have the time or the money to support children entirely on their own.
To this argument I say: what of it? In an inherently corrupt system (capitalism) in which someone - or rather, many someones - must be the losers, why are we bogging ourselves down in petty critique of people who have little, if any, choice and socioeconomic mobility? It is like blaming the river for the flood when some guy blew up the dam.
Still, I do not accept the argument that procreating is a part of our DNA and therefore we are helpless to not do it; the same is said of meat-eating and dairy-eating, violence, rape, polygyny (note: not polyamory, but polygyny, its traditionally woman-hating marriagement counterpart), and the list goes on. And yet we live perfectly good, if not better lives without indulging in all of these supposedly DNA-commanded obligations.
Here are the facts: for someone in an industrialised country to procreate at this time is inherently harmful to all women, animals, children, and the planet herself. By procreating, we create another mouth to feed - and more importantly, who will consume. “Teaching morals” does not matter as much as you’d think: the second-wave feminists largely did not succeed in passing down their wishes to the next generation. Each new child is a luxury to anyone in an industrialised country while they are a necessity to those in developing countries, usually women, and each new child in an industrialised country takes more than their share of resources - resources that belong to the women and children of developing countries. The language that says that children are a right is utterly fatuous; the language that says that women have a right to their own bodies completely and utterly correct.
So, it turns out, in their general and most commonly-encountered states, neither side is truly feminist. One must look not just at choices, but at results - and situations.