The Death of Shulamith Firestone and the Inevitability of Machine-Based Human Reproduction

[jordan179]

Shulamith Firestone (1945-2012) was found dead on the 28th, an event of which I first learned from reading Nicola Griffiths' blog entry "RIP Shulamith Firestone."  Griffiths' entry is something of a commemoration:  my own opinion of Firestone and her effect on society is a lot lower.

Firestone was one of the founders of "radical feminism," a

Comments

[pasquin]

Technology may enable outside-of-womb pregnancies, but what of our brain OS?

Until the underlying programming changes, I wonder if male female relationships will change? How much is because of culture, exclusively?

[jordan179]

The very reason why I think that we will still tend to have majority-hetrosexual familial-based reproductive systesms, despite the development of uterine replicators, is that we and our social customs are set up for our old biological limitations. The drift away from them will be slow and constrained by the need to culturally-evolve viable alternatives not merely in the primary but in many secondary details.

On the abortion question

[marycatelli]

I once saw a prolonged feminist discussion online where one woman admitted that if the baby could be removed with no more todo than for an abortion, they had no right to an abortion. Another woman stated that since it was her body they were removing the baby from, she had the right to demand that the baby be killed in the process of removal.

Re: On the abortion question

[jordan179]

Happily, I think that the vast majority of women will be willing to let their fetuses live if they could be carried to term outside their bodies, to the point where the number of women insistent on unecessarily destructive abortions will be such a tiny minority that we can simply ban that as a procedure.

Re: On the abortion question

[marycatelli]

There's a sizable proportion that would not. Witness that most reasons for having an abortion revolve about the post-birth part -- and by most, I mean 95% or more. For which there is the option of adoption even nowadays.

Then, perhaps we get through the law banning the procedure before it dawns on them that by banning lethal abortions, it includes the lethal abortion they want.

on the sexual evolution question

[marycatelli]

There is the little matter of actual evolution. In vivo is still overwhelmingly the cheapest way of making babies. You still get news stories talking about homosexual couples who procure one child through artificial means, and that's not even reproducing at replacement rate. If nine couples had a child artificially, and one couple had eleven children naturally, you have replacement rate, but the last couple is the one that really passed their genes on.

Of course, artificial reproduction is not the only factor. Abortion and contraception are busily breeding for people who want to have children and preferably lots and lots and lots of children. Furthermore, the structures of cultural evolution which managed to override the preferences of those who didn't want children lead to a lot of their genes being passed on; those are being selected against, hard, right now.

Re: on the sexual evolution question

[jordan179]

You are quite right that today alternative reproductive systems are too expensive for mass application -- and of course right now a true artificial womb would still be in the realm of biological science fiction. As technology advances, though, we will see alternative reproduction systems become cheaper and cheaper, until eventually the added cost of choosing such a system becomes so trivial that it ceases to be a significant economic factor.

How long will all this take? Many decades, perhaps several centuries? I'm just guessing.

Abortion and contraception are busily breeding for people who want to have children and preferably lots and lots and lots of children.This sentence should be inscribed in marble and outlined in gold and planted on monoliths to be erected before the doors of all organizations which imagine that we can voluntarily and through non-economic cultural factors reduce the rate of human reproduction. Indeed this selection is happening so rapidly you can see this in your lifetime, which is possible only because it

Re: on the sexual evolution question

[xuenay]

This comment sparked the thought that the earliest users of artificial wombs might be highly-paid women, whose employers find it cheaper to subsidize an exowomb for them rather than to have their capability to work reduced during their last months of pregnancy.

If the following controversy and criticism from feminists doesn't manage to tar the practice too badly, this seems likely to make exowombs into a status symbol and greatly promote their adoption among the wealthy.

Re: on the sexual evolution question

[marycatelli]

Yeah, but there's still the child-rearing aspect of it. Until the robot nanny, highly paid women still are going to have to make choices.

[fpb]

Well, I have no interest in your view of Utopia. But one can have a little sympathy for this person - what parents can possibly have been so cruel as to name a little girl "Shulamith"?

[expanding_x_man]

She was from an Orthodox Jewish family and I think Shulamith is a Jewish name. If I am not mistaken, I know a woman named Shulamith who is also Jewish.

[jordan179]

The development of alternative means of reproduction is purely technological and driven by the rather evident desire of many women to have children without going through the difficulties and dangers of pregnancy, coupled with our advancing mastery of biochemistry and electronics. Whether such technologies enable benign tolerant utopias in which even the infertile can have children and all can control whether and when they have children; or malign totalitarian dystopias in which the State dictates childbearing to all -- that is a matter of human choice.

And yeah -- "Shulamith" is merely an odd-sounding Hebrew name. I'm guessing she went by "Shula" or even "Shelley" growing up.

[fpb]

Us religious weirdies read the Bible and know that Shulamith is the female protagonist of the Song of Songs. It is still a bizarre name to give a twentieth-century American child and enough to make anyone grow up angry.

[maxgoof]

All of these predictions forget one amazingly important fact:

Children grow best when raised by the people who conceived them.

Eliminating pregnancy will also eliminate the desire to raise the child.

Society will collapse when that happens.

[ford_prefect42]

You really think it'll take that long? looks to me like the collapse is going pretty apace now.

[marycatelli]

People can adopt and raise children quite happily.

Though, to be sure, the question is whether society is not merrily collapsing already, so that this is just icing on the cake.

[jsl32]

the shakers are a pretty good test case for adoption being just as good, since all their children were adopted/foundlings.

there are 2-3 (can't remember if one died recently) remaining.