Which led to one member of the audience saying she didn't want the Muslim population in America to take over because she didn't want girls learning to be second-class citizens.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. ::facepalm::
Yeah. So. What you felt was a bit "off" about this panel? Racism. This is my biggest problem with the childfree people. Well, I should clarify that I have several problems with them, including:
a) Many of them hate children, not just for themselves but for anyone. I'm not a big proponent of any movement that's rooted in hatred of other human beings -- even if they are noisy and annoying.
b) As on this panel, they feel there's some quintessential unfairness in maternity/paternity leave (and other parental "privileges") and the fact that there's no corresponding leave for people who choose not to have children. But there's a reason for that -- people who choose not to have children don't experience many situations that are as comparably life-changing and health-damaging as new parenthood, short of long term illness/death in themselves or a family member. (And there's usually leave for that.) A sabbatical doesn't correspond -- the purpose of a sabbatical is to allow time/energy for creative endeavors. The purpose of maternity leave is to allow time/energy to recover from the lifestyle equivalent of being hit by a Mack truck. Technically a creative endeavor too, but that's not what the leave addresses. So I find such complaints disingenuous because they smack of envy, not any real desire for fairness.
c) As you've described here, there's a deeply creepy racist contingent within the childfree movement which couches its racist language in eugenics or population control terms -- though only of Third-World, brown-skinned, lower-class, or other "undesirable" populations. Muslims, for example. I almost never hear these people calling for zero population growth in the US and other Western countries -- even though the people born in these countries grow up to be grotesquely disproportional consumers of the world's resources. No, they want to get rid of the people who have next to nothing, and are struggling just to have that -- because of the people born in the wealthier countries. So what makes more sense -- producing more people whose greedy consumptive habits will make the world a worse place? Or producing more people who at least know how to live within their means? ::growl:: Once you scratch beneath this surface, you see the same rabid nastiness that you see in the KKK. This is just the liberal pseudointellectual version.
This is not to say that all the childfree are jealous, phobic racists. I happen to agree with the principle of the movement (though I personally want kids); the choice not to reproduce should be respected, especially since the world doesn't really need more people of any kind. I just have a real problem with the way a lot of childfree people express and execute their beliefs.
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Date: 2008-06-10 04:21 am (UTC)WHAT. THE. FUCK. ::facepalm::
Yeah. So. What you felt was a bit "off" about this panel? Racism. This is my biggest problem with the childfree people. Well, I should clarify that I have several problems with them, including:
a) Many of them hate children, not just for themselves but for anyone. I'm not a big proponent of any movement that's rooted in hatred of other human beings -- even if they are noisy and annoying.
b) As on this panel, they feel there's some quintessential unfairness in maternity/paternity leave (and other parental "privileges") and the fact that there's no corresponding leave for people who choose not to have children. But there's a reason for that -- people who choose not to have children don't experience many situations that are as comparably life-changing and health-damaging as new parenthood, short of long term illness/death in themselves or a family member. (And there's usually leave for that.) A sabbatical doesn't correspond -- the purpose of a sabbatical is to allow time/energy for creative endeavors. The purpose of maternity leave is to allow time/energy to recover from the lifestyle equivalent of being hit by a Mack truck. Technically a creative endeavor too, but that's not what the leave addresses. So I find such complaints disingenuous because they smack of envy, not any real desire for fairness.
c) As you've described here, there's a deeply creepy racist contingent within the childfree movement which couches its racist language in eugenics or population control terms -- though only of Third-World, brown-skinned, lower-class, or other "undesirable" populations. Muslims, for example. I almost never hear these people calling for zero population growth in the US and other Western countries -- even though the people born in these countries grow up to be grotesquely disproportional consumers of the world's resources. No, they want to get rid of the people who have next to nothing, and are struggling just to have that -- because of the people born in the wealthier countries. So what makes more sense -- producing more people whose greedy consumptive habits will make the world a worse place? Or producing more people who at least know how to live within their means? ::growl:: Once you scratch beneath this surface, you see the same rabid nastiness that you see in the KKK. This is just the liberal pseudointellectual version.
This is not to say that all the childfree are jealous, phobic racists. I happen to agree with the principle of the movement (though I personally want kids); the choice not to reproduce should be respected, especially since the world doesn't really need more people of any kind. I just have a real problem with the way a lot of childfree people express and execute their beliefs.