I'm really gutted that the liberalism and freedom we once thought was such a good thing got exploited in these ways, and that women are instrumental in it. It's a huge lesson - there are always men (and it's most often men) who will exploit any gap they see in women's and children's boundaries, and there are always women who get duped into helping men do it. People fundamentally fall into the same categories everywhere and at any time throughout history.
(I realise this is an old post, not sure why it came up)
" there are always men (and it's most often men) who will exploit any gap they see in women's and children's boundaries.."
To be fair, the majority of men have always been hammered for wanting such patriarchal monstrosities as traditional nuclear families, with SAHM as biology intended. It has primarily been women who have demanded 'progress' away from nature and traditionalism.
And that is what progressivism is - the progress of TECHNOLOGY. Progressivism has exploited the complaints and ambitions of progressive women to justify the expansion of technology into every facet of our lives.
Today's homes and 'communities' are full of technological gadgets, but most of the time they are now devoid of mothers, children, real food, cooking or family life. All of this was achieved by exploiting the desires of a minority of women (feminists) who wanted to live more like men. Eventually those women pulled ALL women into a more masculine lifestyle, working in factories and office cubicles all day while their own children were put in orphanages all day long and raised by strangers.
'Progress' liberated women from the horrors of motherhood, cooking, homemaking and being of unique value to society as a woman.
And now that we are only 20 years away from artificial wombs the church of progress is already busy promoting them as a gift for progressive women and gay men.
The surrogacy stuff, much like the trans stuff, is just a stepping stone and a distraction from the actual destination which is a unisex population with artificial wombs replacing natural motherhood. This is everything feminists have been (tricked into) demanding all along - true liberation from the horrors of being a woman!
We can ALL be grey office drones and consumers now. True gender equality. A feminist utopia!
Nooooo, women wanted choices and some of the more easily confused, dumb, I mean dumb, thought choices outside of the home meant no choice to stay in the home. As a nearly 50 year old woman, I have not had one conversation with a fellow woman where she felt that motherhood wasn’t a valid career choice. Not one. We talk about how it means a break in the resume or significant financial dependence on a partner that may choose to leave and not honor the contract. But never that it is less than. I think that is massively overblown in the wider culture. I’ve know a couple of women who chose to work outside of the home with a couple or more little ones at home. They did it because they would have gone nuts if motherhood was 24/7. That’s important because they were barely breaking even with the childcare costs. By the time you hit two young kids it is typically going to be a better financial decision to stay home. Childcare, reducing food costs, healthier family because mom is able to shop, cook, clean, handy woman around the house. A good stay at home mom is bringing in the equivalent of a very nice salary. We are way past the 70s women lib movement. We worked out those growing and learning pains. Now feminism is a built in feature for a large number of women. They don’t even know they are feminists as they change diapers. Feminism is about female choice and respect for those choices. Including stay at home mothers.
"Feminism is about female choice and respect for those choices."
Feminism is primarily about accusing men of oppressing women throughout the ages. It is a hate movement. Pure sexism. "Kill all men". This hate ideology is protected by the soft outer shell of 'moderate' ('coffee shop') feminists who insist feminism is nice and gentle and just about 'choice'.
In action (in reality) feminism has pushed the most destructive laws and policies and created a 'war of the sexes' for over a century, but whenever it is scrutinised feminism reverts back to flowers and puppies and 'choice'. This is called a 'Motte and Bailey' tactic, after the old system for defending a village.
The only relief that mothers have ever enjoyed has been a consequence of new technology and better infrastructure (running water, electricity, supermarkets, refrigeration, washing machines etc). All of these amazing gifts were built and maintained by men. It was men that gave women broader lifestyle options, freedom, choice and better living standards.
It was men's brutal manual labour for centuries (coal mines, factories, steel works, railways etc) which liberated women from a life 100% devoted to housework and childcare.
Instead of showing appreciation for men's huge efforts and sacrifices over the last 5000 years and honouring men's stupendous achievements during this time, feminists accused men of 'oppression' and then urged all women to attempt to live more like men and adopt a more masculine identity in order to compete with men on their terms (so called 'empowerment').
This has effectively neutralised all the gains that took 5000 years to create, so that in the space of just a few generations most women can no longer afford to raise their own children. Instead they have to work like men, and hand over their children to orphanages during the day. Women's mental health is plummeting. Children are so traumatised that they are self harming and ejecting themselves from gender altogether. And men no longer have the autonomy, respect or motivation to support women and children as they once did.
Until feminists stop their demented war on women, men and children society will continue to slide down the toilet.
I do not share your definition of feminism as a "hate movement" against men. I do recognize that patriarchal capitalism is bad for men as well as women because it locks in both sexes to rigidly defined roles that serve those at the top of the economic hierarchy, while harming us as individuals. And without the diligent care of woman as mothers, no boys would survive to manhood to be making any "huge efforts and sacrifices".
It is too simplistic to blame all of today's societal problems on feminism, or on any single-issue movement.
"I do not share your definition of feminism as a "hate movement" against men."
Imagine if we told all children that their parents hate them. That's pretty cruel right? Feminists used to tell all adults that men hate women - enough to systematically oppress them throughout the ages. That's what 'patriarchy' means according to feminism.
When feminists got into universities and started to teach this ideology it was common for young women to react by attacking their own natural femininity - cutting their hair short, dying it purple, wearing ugly clothes, getting ugly tattoos and piercings and adopting a very hostile, 'prickly' confrontational attitude. This is the same kind of reaction that abuse victims often display. Feminism tells young women that men abuse (oppress) women, that we live in a 'rape culture', that gender roles were imposed by men to oppress and exploit women and give unfair privilege to men.
The effect on young men is also extreme. Many men become shameful and guilt ridden. Feminism tells young men their natural and healthy sexual drives are actually the urge to rape women, and that they must suppress this urge for their whole lives. The men who believe this find it hard to have functional social or sexual relationships with women.
When feminism began to be taught in universities (as a bona fide academic subject, and the default narrative on gender) that was bad enough, but when it began to be taught in schools to young children (around the 2000's) it created an even more profound reaction. Many of those children went on to reject gender completely, identifying as non binary or asexual, and they did all they could to erase the thing that feminism defined as the problem: masculinity/ femininity.
So yes, I think it's fair to say that feminism is a hateful movement. It is not a hateful movement against women though. It is a hateful movement against ALL of society - men, women and children.
"I do recognize that patriarchal capitalism is bad for men as well as women because it locks in both sexes to rigidly defined roles that serve those at the top of the economic hierarchy, while harming us as individuals"
I don't know what 'patriarchal capitalism' means, but every culture throughout history has put women at the heart of society and made it men's responsibility (gender role) to provide resources and protection to women. The most brutal work (construction, transport, factory work, mining, policing etc) was always men's responsibility and this is the work which created a safe and comfortable world for women (electric lights, paved streets, indoor plumbing, hot water, supermarkets and shopping malls, elaborate clothing, beauty products, cars, trains, internet, television, computers, smartphones and the energy needed to run all these things).
Without 'patriarchal capitalism' we would all still be living in stone huts and women would have to spend all day washing clothes by hand, tending to the fire, skinning rabbits, plucking chickens, mending clothes etc. The men would be out all day ploughing fields with horses, or mining coal with pick axes.
Feminists (generally) show zero interest in living such rough lives, and most feminists work in academia, offices or service industries where they are protected from the weather and don't have to do any manual labour.
I have never heard any feminists ever provide an alternative set of gender roles which would have been (a) more beneficial to women (b) practically viable.
"It is too simplistic to blame all of today's societal problems on feminism, or on any single-issue movement."
Feminism ITSELF blames all societal problems (real and imaginary) on men (the patriarchy). That is why it is so heavily criticised.
That’s a very narrow ‘man’ perspective, even if you say that some women agree with you, which no doubt would be near the top of any defence of your position. I won’t proffer a counter-argument or discussion, though, as I feel you’re in a place it would be impossible for me to reach.
I am just trying to put it all in a broader context, that's all :)
The bottom line is we are mammals and we are driven to save calories. Every new bit of technology has enabled us to be more productive while expending less energy. The spear, the shovel, the horse and cart, the tractor, the washing machine, the dishwasher.... and soon the artificial womb.
It is all progress. The question we now need to ask is "how much more progress do we want?" (how much more progress can we take!)
Most people (certainly most progressives) have never even thought to ask this question.
I think it's fair to say that progressive women have been the most thirsty for new and dehumanising technologies, and it has been traditionalist women who feel comfortable baking, mending clothes, raising children at home, cooking food from scratch etc who have drawn wrath from progressive women for refusing to join the Church of Progress, and remaining in touch with nature and biology instead. And for having a sense of moral duty to honour biology instead of striving to erase it.
I am not really passing judgement on anyone, but just pointing out that we are now at a crossroads. So far we have mostly benefited from new technology. Who doesn't appreciate electric lighting, paved streets, indoor plumbing and proper drains!?
But if we want to survive as a species - or maintain our humanity (including our distinct gender roles and identities) - we might have to begin rejecting new technologies as often as we embrace them.
Many people are already rejecting smartphone technology to save their mental and physical health, and spiritual wellbeing. Plus they are terrible for the environment. Modern drugs are also causing an epidemic of autism, chronic ill health and no doubt are playing a huge role in transing the youth (autism and a trans identity are very closely linked). Many people are rejecting the Rockefeller drug based healthcare system and going back to the traditional healthcare paradigm, and becoming 'anti vaxxers'.
The latest miracle technology called 'the mRNA covid vax' has caused a 15% decline in live births already and may well have sterilised a whole generation. We won't know until 20 years from now, which is also when artificial wombs are supposed to be hitting the marketplace (just a coincidence I'm sure).
While millions are rejecting these technologies and embracing natural, traditional lifestyles instead, the progressives continue to move towards a transhuman future with their artificial hair, tattoos, piercings, social media lifestyles, drug consumption, processed foods, non binary identities, and queer everything ideology. Their addiction to smartphones is the gateway to transhumanism. At Big Tech seminars the industry has already said smartphones will not be the primary interface 5 -10 years from now. It will be inside the body by then (implants). The people who are addicted to all this will be the people who will enthusiastically embrace artificial wombs.
We may even see a split in humanity between the new cyborgs class and those who choose to stay fully organic and maintain full sexual dimorphism, and pair bond and reproduce naturally. In fact that split is already starting to happen now.
It's amazing that 15 million people are estimated to have been killed worldwide by this new vaccine technology, but the technology which has caused the most online controversy (and outrage) over the past year is an egg apron :)
Damn woman (I’m assuming you are a woman). That was a comment. I agree with you. This article just came up for me too though I realize it’s from earlier this year.
I fully agree with you. And I know there will be some on here who read that and think you’re taking liberties but I gotta say, I’d have never believe some of the things we are currently living would have come to pass. And you can see these trends rise and fall is predictably. You can tell the things we are being guided to think and adopt and purchase. I am witnessing the split happen as well.
The Sisterhood of Perpetual Victimhood (AKA, the thoroughly toxic ideology formerly known as feminism) needs to grow up and stop blaming men for all the problems created by it.
Correct, designer handbags for the perfect baby and there are already many articles out about the UK and here in the US where if there is any birth defect even possible during one of the sonograms, they will attempt to force the surrogate mother to get an abortion or they will pull all funding
I knew all I needed to know about this when I read a comment by a prominent gay male: he and his husband were trying for a baby but 'there isn't a pregnancy yet'. The woman who will carry 'their' child doesn't even get mentioned, let alone humanised. It really is like it was all happening in a beaker
Having said that I've known a couple of gay men who donated sperm for a lesbian couple and everybody's been happy. The children have been raised by their mothers but they've also had a loving and excited father figure in their lives. I have no objections to that kind of arrangement
Whenever I read about an arrangement where future children are barely even mentioned (or are totally absent), I know I am reading about adult narcissism.
To my shame, I had never really thought about commercial surrogacy from the baby’s perspective, only from the surrogate mother’s. Thank you for making me think about this type of harm.
Those are men who have women in their lives who like them. A gay man approached by a lesbian couple is a man of whom they think highly. A man who either has no women in his life who feel this way about him -- or who has actively avoided women friends because he despises women -- is a man who is going to want to go the commercial route. it's really the worst of all possible worlds for the baby.
I have a gay male friend, a lovely human, who is a loving father to a child he had with a lesbian friend. He told me as I was approaching 30 that if I wanted children I needed to get serious about finding a boyfriend / husband. he was not yet a father at the time, and is about a decade older than I am. He had started getting approached in his late 30s by multiple straight women friends his own age who wanted children but hadn't settled down and was advising me on the basis of that experience: he said no every time, and was warning me as a straight friend that I should not have him in the back of my mind as a potential back up baby daddy plan.
Gay men who really like women as humans have opportunities to become fathers (sometimes more offers than they want or are even comfortable with). Maybe not every single one, but a lot of them. gay men who dislike women make up, I think, most baby buyers. It's really depressing to think about.
This is inevitable. We assumed wrongly that everything from the past was meant to subjugate women when it was about keeping certain characteristics in men in check. Welcome to the new world. As we get closer to parity, it will get weirder out there. Now can you imagine being the son of a couple of men hating lesbians?
I was thinking about exactly this as I read. I discussed what used to be called “co-parenting” with three different women friends, in my 30s, and in all of those cases, our discussion led us to decide that we weren’t entirely sure why we felt a desire to reproduce other than an undefined sense of incompleteness. That may be a common reason people have children but it didn’t feel sufficient, and seemed unfair to a potential human being, to come into existence just to fill a mysterious hole in someone’s else’s life. We also had different ideas about how to raise children (whether they should go to church, eat processed food, etc.) and that too made us pause. Thirty years later, I realize that while I would like to be a grandfather now, I never really wanted to be a father, and staying barren was the right choice.
I am so mystified by the new “infertile gay male” concept that, like a few other things, I almost find it hard to believe it’s real. But obviously, it is. I see numerous problems with surrogacy — I wrote an article on Substack describing them in January of this year — but the most telling one is what you suggest here. These are guys who are unable to befriend women: at their most extreme, they are like the couple I discuss in my article who sued an IVF clinic for millions of dollars because they had ordered a male infant but a female one had been born.
I also suspect that male couples who do the IVF/surrogacy thing approach the decision to become parents the way they would approach buying a boat or a house, like a purchasing decision. I highly doubt they are thinking first from the baby’s point of view. And if they are framing this as a “right” to which they themselves are entitled, I would be surprised if they are also raking across their consciences and considering how they’re going to respond to an an adolescent meltdown a decade and a half down the road, when they’re asked “Why was I even born?”
I don’t think it’s all that rare for straight fathers to, in essence, consider their children more as accessories in their lives rather than as independent, willful, conscious beings trying to find meaning in their existence. I admit a bias toward mothers, but it’s not irrational: a mother who has risked her life, her own existence, in order to secure your existence grasps your personhood in a way that a father can only imagine. When a mother dies from childbirth, and the baby survives, it’s an unmistakeable tragedy. This trend among certain affluent male couples, with its intentional elimination of motherhood apart from the mechanics of reproduction and birth, is a planned tragedy, imo, and any extra money I’ll be paying for health insurance so that it can proceed is really an inconsequential and tiny matter in the bigger picture.
I don't believe that anyone involved in surrogacy is engaging in this with any consideration of the human rights of babies. Deliberately creating a new human with the express intention of causing trauma to satisfy a want is immoral. If you examine surrogacy from the point of view of babies (which no one ever does), than you wouldn't be doing something that severs the mother/baby dyad. Because this is the foundational relationship for every human who has ever been born and it is obvious from looking at other situations (like adoption and maternal death), that birth mothers are not replaceable for optimal development.
I wish I could remember who said this, but the best description I read was purposely creating a child who will have a less complete family so that you, the adult, can have a more complete one.
It sounds like you and your friends were really thoughtful about this and it's not incidental that ... you have women friends. I have often been grateful to my friend who sort of pushed me to think actively about what I really wanted; I think he saw a series of single straight women friends turning to him after too much time sort of figuring what they wanted was going to fall into their laps and then it didn't.
A couple of months ago, I started hearing so much more about IVF in the news. I couldn’t figure out why it was becoming important for it to be part of an insurance benefit until I heard Dr. Marilyn Singleton on America Out Loud talking about how gay and lesbian partnerships and marriage are sterile. Suddenly, it all made sense and then I understood why IVF was so important.
Scotland has ratified the UNCRC into law. I would suggest this is a terrible thing for children and for our country. Whilst it contains the good things you refer to - which in Scotland were already illegal therefore making the treaty redundant (on that level)- it has also been used as a Trojan horse for the trans movement as children it is used to allow children to self id behind parents backs. It very much is set as a wedge between parents and children wherein children are raised from nursery to see themselves in a ‘rights’ framework. Also that child law gets subsumed to an international unelected court. The UN is nefarious to its core. They have just raised an amendment to allow child porn as long as ‘consensual’ consider that also in the UNCRC program is a huge push to teach children about their ability to ‘consent’ (note: they cannot). Many countries who have embedded UNCRC into law are pushing surrogacy- here in the UK it is scheduled to be discussed soon-ish and crazy enough despite us being a ‘Rights Respecting Nation’ the rights of the baby don’t come up once.
It is however used to push the ‘rights’ of LGBTQ kids. Which justifies a whole host of programming in schools and funding for rainbow clubs. (Whilst community centres closing left right and centre which would benefit all kids) Funny that.
There was a case where the gay couple paying for the baby wanted the mom to abort but the mom didn’t want to. Said she would take care of the baby herself.
There was also a case where due to a sudden and unexpected cancer diagnosis, the purchase (aka the baby) had to be delivered at 25 weeks. The buyers were unprepared to buy damaged goods or to pay for any care, so this baby was allowed to die. I presume they went out and found another surrogate to "create their family".
This is why, after that totally normal Alabama case that caused all that outrage this spring, where the Alabama Supreme Court simply said that you can sue IVF if they damage or destroy your embryos that suddenly there became a huge push to not just reverse the decision with a new law, but to also get Trump on the record as promising to support financially IVF through insurance mandates
And they fell for it. It didn’t help that the media constantly blanketed the airwaves with lie.
Brilliantly written. Thus was always the path once babies became not a natural result of the act of intercourse but a commodity, the time and place of which was to be meticulously chosen by the adults and if inconvenient, dispose of it via abortion.
The Catholics were right all along, and I say it as an avowed Protestant pro lifer but fair is fair
I'm really gutted that the liberalism and freedom we once thought was such a good thing got exploited in these ways, and that women are instrumental in it. It's a huge lesson - there are always men (and it's most often men) who will exploit any gap they see in women's and children's boundaries, and there are always women who get duped into helping men do it. People fundamentally fall into the same categories everywhere and at any time throughout history.
So well said!
(I realise this is an old post, not sure why it came up)
" there are always men (and it's most often men) who will exploit any gap they see in women's and children's boundaries.."
To be fair, the majority of men have always been hammered for wanting such patriarchal monstrosities as traditional nuclear families, with SAHM as biology intended. It has primarily been women who have demanded 'progress' away from nature and traditionalism.
And that is what progressivism is - the progress of TECHNOLOGY. Progressivism has exploited the complaints and ambitions of progressive women to justify the expansion of technology into every facet of our lives.
Today's homes and 'communities' are full of technological gadgets, but most of the time they are now devoid of mothers, children, real food, cooking or family life. All of this was achieved by exploiting the desires of a minority of women (feminists) who wanted to live more like men. Eventually those women pulled ALL women into a more masculine lifestyle, working in factories and office cubicles all day while their own children were put in orphanages all day long and raised by strangers.
'Progress' liberated women from the horrors of motherhood, cooking, homemaking and being of unique value to society as a woman.
And now that we are only 20 years away from artificial wombs the church of progress is already busy promoting them as a gift for progressive women and gay men.
The surrogacy stuff, much like the trans stuff, is just a stepping stone and a distraction from the actual destination which is a unisex population with artificial wombs replacing natural motherhood. This is everything feminists have been (tricked into) demanding all along - true liberation from the horrors of being a woman!
We can ALL be grey office drones and consumers now. True gender equality. A feminist utopia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZvm0IaKA5I
Nooooo, women wanted choices and some of the more easily confused, dumb, I mean dumb, thought choices outside of the home meant no choice to stay in the home. As a nearly 50 year old woman, I have not had one conversation with a fellow woman where she felt that motherhood wasn’t a valid career choice. Not one. We talk about how it means a break in the resume or significant financial dependence on a partner that may choose to leave and not honor the contract. But never that it is less than. I think that is massively overblown in the wider culture. I’ve know a couple of women who chose to work outside of the home with a couple or more little ones at home. They did it because they would have gone nuts if motherhood was 24/7. That’s important because they were barely breaking even with the childcare costs. By the time you hit two young kids it is typically going to be a better financial decision to stay home. Childcare, reducing food costs, healthier family because mom is able to shop, cook, clean, handy woman around the house. A good stay at home mom is bringing in the equivalent of a very nice salary. We are way past the 70s women lib movement. We worked out those growing and learning pains. Now feminism is a built in feature for a large number of women. They don’t even know they are feminists as they change diapers. Feminism is about female choice and respect for those choices. Including stay at home mothers.
"Feminism is about female choice and respect for those choices."
Feminism is primarily about accusing men of oppressing women throughout the ages. It is a hate movement. Pure sexism. "Kill all men". This hate ideology is protected by the soft outer shell of 'moderate' ('coffee shop') feminists who insist feminism is nice and gentle and just about 'choice'.
In action (in reality) feminism has pushed the most destructive laws and policies and created a 'war of the sexes' for over a century, but whenever it is scrutinised feminism reverts back to flowers and puppies and 'choice'. This is called a 'Motte and Bailey' tactic, after the old system for defending a village.
The only relief that mothers have ever enjoyed has been a consequence of new technology and better infrastructure (running water, electricity, supermarkets, refrigeration, washing machines etc). All of these amazing gifts were built and maintained by men. It was men that gave women broader lifestyle options, freedom, choice and better living standards.
It was men's brutal manual labour for centuries (coal mines, factories, steel works, railways etc) which liberated women from a life 100% devoted to housework and childcare.
Instead of showing appreciation for men's huge efforts and sacrifices over the last 5000 years and honouring men's stupendous achievements during this time, feminists accused men of 'oppression' and then urged all women to attempt to live more like men and adopt a more masculine identity in order to compete with men on their terms (so called 'empowerment').
This has effectively neutralised all the gains that took 5000 years to create, so that in the space of just a few generations most women can no longer afford to raise their own children. Instead they have to work like men, and hand over their children to orphanages during the day. Women's mental health is plummeting. Children are so traumatised that they are self harming and ejecting themselves from gender altogether. And men no longer have the autonomy, respect or motivation to support women and children as they once did.
Until feminists stop their demented war on women, men and children society will continue to slide down the toilet.
I do not share your definition of feminism as a "hate movement" against men. I do recognize that patriarchal capitalism is bad for men as well as women because it locks in both sexes to rigidly defined roles that serve those at the top of the economic hierarchy, while harming us as individuals. And without the diligent care of woman as mothers, no boys would survive to manhood to be making any "huge efforts and sacrifices".
It is too simplistic to blame all of today's societal problems on feminism, or on any single-issue movement.
"I do not share your definition of feminism as a "hate movement" against men."
Imagine if we told all children that their parents hate them. That's pretty cruel right? Feminists used to tell all adults that men hate women - enough to systematically oppress them throughout the ages. That's what 'patriarchy' means according to feminism.
When feminists got into universities and started to teach this ideology it was common for young women to react by attacking their own natural femininity - cutting their hair short, dying it purple, wearing ugly clothes, getting ugly tattoos and piercings and adopting a very hostile, 'prickly' confrontational attitude. This is the same kind of reaction that abuse victims often display. Feminism tells young women that men abuse (oppress) women, that we live in a 'rape culture', that gender roles were imposed by men to oppress and exploit women and give unfair privilege to men.
The effect on young men is also extreme. Many men become shameful and guilt ridden. Feminism tells young men their natural and healthy sexual drives are actually the urge to rape women, and that they must suppress this urge for their whole lives. The men who believe this find it hard to have functional social or sexual relationships with women.
When feminism began to be taught in universities (as a bona fide academic subject, and the default narrative on gender) that was bad enough, but when it began to be taught in schools to young children (around the 2000's) it created an even more profound reaction. Many of those children went on to reject gender completely, identifying as non binary or asexual, and they did all they could to erase the thing that feminism defined as the problem: masculinity/ femininity.
So yes, I think it's fair to say that feminism is a hateful movement. It is not a hateful movement against women though. It is a hateful movement against ALL of society - men, women and children.
"I do recognize that patriarchal capitalism is bad for men as well as women because it locks in both sexes to rigidly defined roles that serve those at the top of the economic hierarchy, while harming us as individuals"
I don't know what 'patriarchal capitalism' means, but every culture throughout history has put women at the heart of society and made it men's responsibility (gender role) to provide resources and protection to women. The most brutal work (construction, transport, factory work, mining, policing etc) was always men's responsibility and this is the work which created a safe and comfortable world for women (electric lights, paved streets, indoor plumbing, hot water, supermarkets and shopping malls, elaborate clothing, beauty products, cars, trains, internet, television, computers, smartphones and the energy needed to run all these things).
Without 'patriarchal capitalism' we would all still be living in stone huts and women would have to spend all day washing clothes by hand, tending to the fire, skinning rabbits, plucking chickens, mending clothes etc. The men would be out all day ploughing fields with horses, or mining coal with pick axes.
Feminists (generally) show zero interest in living such rough lives, and most feminists work in academia, offices or service industries where they are protected from the weather and don't have to do any manual labour.
I have never heard any feminists ever provide an alternative set of gender roles which would have been (a) more beneficial to women (b) practically viable.
"It is too simplistic to blame all of today's societal problems on feminism, or on any single-issue movement."
Feminism ITSELF blames all societal problems (real and imaginary) on men (the patriarchy). That is why it is so heavily criticised.
That’s a very narrow ‘man’ perspective, even if you say that some women agree with you, which no doubt would be near the top of any defence of your position. I won’t proffer a counter-argument or discussion, though, as I feel you’re in a place it would be impossible for me to reach.
I am just trying to put it all in a broader context, that's all :)
The bottom line is we are mammals and we are driven to save calories. Every new bit of technology has enabled us to be more productive while expending less energy. The spear, the shovel, the horse and cart, the tractor, the washing machine, the dishwasher.... and soon the artificial womb.
It is all progress. The question we now need to ask is "how much more progress do we want?" (how much more progress can we take!)
Most people (certainly most progressives) have never even thought to ask this question.
I think it's fair to say that progressive women have been the most thirsty for new and dehumanising technologies, and it has been traditionalist women who feel comfortable baking, mending clothes, raising children at home, cooking food from scratch etc who have drawn wrath from progressive women for refusing to join the Church of Progress, and remaining in touch with nature and biology instead. And for having a sense of moral duty to honour biology instead of striving to erase it.
I am not really passing judgement on anyone, but just pointing out that we are now at a crossroads. So far we have mostly benefited from new technology. Who doesn't appreciate electric lighting, paved streets, indoor plumbing and proper drains!?
But if we want to survive as a species - or maintain our humanity (including our distinct gender roles and identities) - we might have to begin rejecting new technologies as often as we embrace them.
Many people are already rejecting smartphone technology to save their mental and physical health, and spiritual wellbeing. Plus they are terrible for the environment. Modern drugs are also causing an epidemic of autism, chronic ill health and no doubt are playing a huge role in transing the youth (autism and a trans identity are very closely linked). Many people are rejecting the Rockefeller drug based healthcare system and going back to the traditional healthcare paradigm, and becoming 'anti vaxxers'.
The latest miracle technology called 'the mRNA covid vax' has caused a 15% decline in live births already and may well have sterilised a whole generation. We won't know until 20 years from now, which is also when artificial wombs are supposed to be hitting the marketplace (just a coincidence I'm sure).
While millions are rejecting these technologies and embracing natural, traditional lifestyles instead, the progressives continue to move towards a transhuman future with their artificial hair, tattoos, piercings, social media lifestyles, drug consumption, processed foods, non binary identities, and queer everything ideology. Their addiction to smartphones is the gateway to transhumanism. At Big Tech seminars the industry has already said smartphones will not be the primary interface 5 -10 years from now. It will be inside the body by then (implants). The people who are addicted to all this will be the people who will enthusiastically embrace artificial wombs.
We may even see a split in humanity between the new cyborgs class and those who choose to stay fully organic and maintain full sexual dimorphism, and pair bond and reproduce naturally. In fact that split is already starting to happen now.
It's amazing that 15 million people are estimated to have been killed worldwide by this new vaccine technology, but the technology which has caused the most online controversy (and outrage) over the past year is an egg apron :)
Damn woman (I’m assuming you are a woman). That was a comment. I agree with you. This article just came up for me too though I realize it’s from earlier this year.
I fully agree with you. And I know there will be some on here who read that and think you’re taking liberties but I gotta say, I’d have never believe some of the things we are currently living would have come to pass. And you can see these trends rise and fall is predictably. You can tell the things we are being guided to think and adopt and purchase. I am witnessing the split happen as well.
Wild and interesting times.
Feminism needs to be honest and rebrand itself as The Sisterhood of Perpetual Victimhood.
The Sisterhood of Perpetual Victimhood (AKA, the thoroughly toxic ideology formerly known as feminism) needs to grow up and stop blaming men for all the problems created by it.
Very well expressed! Neither the Left nor the Right has any respect for women or for children.
Oh Lucy, you highlight how dehumanizing this new industry is—Thank you for speaking up for the victims!
I hope all this madness gets realized asap. This is a serious issue, a baby's needs should be paramount in society.
for a proportion of men (which will grow) surrogacy is the human sex toy business. collect a set! and share them with your friends!
Correct, designer handbags for the perfect baby and there are already many articles out about the UK and here in the US where if there is any birth defect even possible during one of the sonograms, they will attempt to force the surrogate mother to get an abortion or they will pull all funding
I knew all I needed to know about this when I read a comment by a prominent gay male: he and his husband were trying for a baby but 'there isn't a pregnancy yet'. The woman who will carry 'their' child doesn't even get mentioned, let alone humanised. It really is like it was all happening in a beaker
Having said that I've known a couple of gay men who donated sperm for a lesbian couple and everybody's been happy. The children have been raised by their mothers but they've also had a loving and excited father figure in their lives. I have no objections to that kind of arrangement
Whenever I read about an arrangement where future children are barely even mentioned (or are totally absent), I know I am reading about adult narcissism.
To my shame, I had never really thought about commercial surrogacy from the baby’s perspective, only from the surrogate mother’s. Thank you for making me think about this type of harm.
Those are men who have women in their lives who like them. A gay man approached by a lesbian couple is a man of whom they think highly. A man who either has no women in his life who feel this way about him -- or who has actively avoided women friends because he despises women -- is a man who is going to want to go the commercial route. it's really the worst of all possible worlds for the baby.
I have a gay male friend, a lovely human, who is a loving father to a child he had with a lesbian friend. He told me as I was approaching 30 that if I wanted children I needed to get serious about finding a boyfriend / husband. he was not yet a father at the time, and is about a decade older than I am. He had started getting approached in his late 30s by multiple straight women friends his own age who wanted children but hadn't settled down and was advising me on the basis of that experience: he said no every time, and was warning me as a straight friend that I should not have him in the back of my mind as a potential back up baby daddy plan.
Gay men who really like women as humans have opportunities to become fathers (sometimes more offers than they want or are even comfortable with). Maybe not every single one, but a lot of them. gay men who dislike women make up, I think, most baby buyers. It's really depressing to think about.
Can you imagine being the daughter of a couple of woman-hating gay men? Sends chills down my spine
This is inevitable. We assumed wrongly that everything from the past was meant to subjugate women when it was about keeping certain characteristics in men in check. Welcome to the new world. As we get closer to parity, it will get weirder out there. Now can you imagine being the son of a couple of men hating lesbians?
I was thinking about exactly this as I read. I discussed what used to be called “co-parenting” with three different women friends, in my 30s, and in all of those cases, our discussion led us to decide that we weren’t entirely sure why we felt a desire to reproduce other than an undefined sense of incompleteness. That may be a common reason people have children but it didn’t feel sufficient, and seemed unfair to a potential human being, to come into existence just to fill a mysterious hole in someone’s else’s life. We also had different ideas about how to raise children (whether they should go to church, eat processed food, etc.) and that too made us pause. Thirty years later, I realize that while I would like to be a grandfather now, I never really wanted to be a father, and staying barren was the right choice.
I am so mystified by the new “infertile gay male” concept that, like a few other things, I almost find it hard to believe it’s real. But obviously, it is. I see numerous problems with surrogacy — I wrote an article on Substack describing them in January of this year — but the most telling one is what you suggest here. These are guys who are unable to befriend women: at their most extreme, they are like the couple I discuss in my article who sued an IVF clinic for millions of dollars because they had ordered a male infant but a female one had been born.
I also suspect that male couples who do the IVF/surrogacy thing approach the decision to become parents the way they would approach buying a boat or a house, like a purchasing decision. I highly doubt they are thinking first from the baby’s point of view. And if they are framing this as a “right” to which they themselves are entitled, I would be surprised if they are also raking across their consciences and considering how they’re going to respond to an an adolescent meltdown a decade and a half down the road, when they’re asked “Why was I even born?”
I don’t think it’s all that rare for straight fathers to, in essence, consider their children more as accessories in their lives rather than as independent, willful, conscious beings trying to find meaning in their existence. I admit a bias toward mothers, but it’s not irrational: a mother who has risked her life, her own existence, in order to secure your existence grasps your personhood in a way that a father can only imagine. When a mother dies from childbirth, and the baby survives, it’s an unmistakeable tragedy. This trend among certain affluent male couples, with its intentional elimination of motherhood apart from the mechanics of reproduction and birth, is a planned tragedy, imo, and any extra money I’ll be paying for health insurance so that it can proceed is really an inconsequential and tiny matter in the bigger picture.
I don't believe that anyone involved in surrogacy is engaging in this with any consideration of the human rights of babies. Deliberately creating a new human with the express intention of causing trauma to satisfy a want is immoral. If you examine surrogacy from the point of view of babies (which no one ever does), than you wouldn't be doing something that severs the mother/baby dyad. Because this is the foundational relationship for every human who has ever been born and it is obvious from looking at other situations (like adoption and maternal death), that birth mothers are not replaceable for optimal development.
I wish I could remember who said this, but the best description I read was purposely creating a child who will have a less complete family so that you, the adult, can have a more complete one.
It sounds like you and your friends were really thoughtful about this and it's not incidental that ... you have women friends. I have often been grateful to my friend who sort of pushed me to think actively about what I really wanted; I think he saw a series of single straight women friends turning to him after too much time sort of figuring what they wanted was going to fall into their laps and then it didn't.
I'll look for your substack piece.
A couple of months ago, I started hearing so much more about IVF in the news. I couldn’t figure out why it was becoming important for it to be part of an insurance benefit until I heard Dr. Marilyn Singleton on America Out Loud talking about how gay and lesbian partnerships and marriage are sterile. Suddenly, it all made sense and then I understood why IVF was so important.
I disgusted that men think they can buy and order kids.
There is an app for that. Women buy and order kids as well. I don't condone either but this is true equality.
Scotland has ratified the UNCRC into law. I would suggest this is a terrible thing for children and for our country. Whilst it contains the good things you refer to - which in Scotland were already illegal therefore making the treaty redundant (on that level)- it has also been used as a Trojan horse for the trans movement as children it is used to allow children to self id behind parents backs. It very much is set as a wedge between parents and children wherein children are raised from nursery to see themselves in a ‘rights’ framework. Also that child law gets subsumed to an international unelected court. The UN is nefarious to its core. They have just raised an amendment to allow child porn as long as ‘consensual’ consider that also in the UNCRC program is a huge push to teach children about their ability to ‘consent’ (note: they cannot). Many countries who have embedded UNCRC into law are pushing surrogacy- here in the UK it is scheduled to be discussed soon-ish and crazy enough despite us being a ‘Rights Respecting Nation’ the rights of the baby don’t come up once.
It is however used to push the ‘rights’ of LGBTQ kids. Which justifies a whole host of programming in schools and funding for rainbow clubs. (Whilst community centres closing left right and centre which would benefit all kids) Funny that.
I personally do not believe there are "trans kids", but there are many impressionable young minds easily indoctrinated with adult fantasies.
💯 true. Impressionable minds. They need to have a childhood and not be sexualised. Time enough
I agree
There was a case where the gay couple paying for the baby wanted the mom to abort but the mom didn’t want to. Said she would take care of the baby herself.
There was also a case where due to a sudden and unexpected cancer diagnosis, the purchase (aka the baby) had to be delivered at 25 weeks. The buyers were unprepared to buy damaged goods or to pay for any care, so this baby was allowed to die. I presume they went out and found another surrogate to "create their family".
Because babies are designed handbags to them.
This is why, after that totally normal Alabama case that caused all that outrage this spring, where the Alabama Supreme Court simply said that you can sue IVF if they damage or destroy your embryos that suddenly there became a huge push to not just reverse the decision with a new law, but to also get Trump on the record as promising to support financially IVF through insurance mandates
And they fell for it. It didn’t help that the media constantly blanketed the airwaves with lie.
Omg 😢
Super on point. MHB gives me the heebie-jeebies. Imagine what their conferences are like!
worried that one of the two dads of this purloined child seems to be a vampire if his ears are anything to go by
It’s rent a uterus
When governments 'empower' us to live in a state of unreality, you can be sure that reality will bite back.
Brilliantly written. Thus was always the path once babies became not a natural result of the act of intercourse but a commodity, the time and place of which was to be meticulously chosen by the adults and if inconvenient, dispose of it via abortion.
The Catholics were right all along, and I say it as an avowed Protestant pro lifer but fair is fair
Thank you! I feel many times as if I’m the only person who disagrees with gays having and raising children, especially through these artificial ways.