Some radical feminist thought..

So I totally stole this from another thread on another forum that I am a member of.. http://www.thesophiahouse.com/forum/index.phpBut the other forum is mostly religious in perspective with not very many members who identify themselves with feminist thought be it radical or more conventional feminist thought... Anyway, I was interested to see what ya'll think.


http://community.feministing.com/2009/01/say-no-to.html
Say No To...


Along with the emancipation of women, sexual liberation has become very much a part of politics around the world. To the conservatives, both these issues challenge ‘family values’.
But what if there were no families? What if we say no to reproduction?
My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression. Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered (as I analyzed here) and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent money the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.


So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it , and a lot was said about that on the blogosphere recently (here, and here), but an ecological consciousness is not how I came to my decision to remain child-free.
Because reproduction is seen as a psychological need, even a biological impulse, that would supposedly override any rational concerns arising out of a sense of responsibility, ecological or otherwise, I would like to propose emotional conditioning to counter such a need or impulse to reproduce. Using my own life as a case study, I conclude that I came to a resolve not to reproduce through largely unconscious emotional reactions . I like children, but every time I fantasized of having one, I felt pangs of guilt over how for this 'impulse' of mine, someone else would have to put their body on the line.
I used the word 'felt' to indicate how there wasn't much rationalizing on my part. And this feeling went way back: I was raised in an extended family setting with a lot of women, and as they got married, I noticed their lives becoming either extremely stressed (if they chose to work) or extremely limited in their scopes, and sometimes even threatened in a pregnancy. This feeling was reinforced when people's indifference to women's condition frustrated me.
Another feeling came from growing up near the poor: married people become much less charitable when they had their children to ‘take care of’, which means expensive schools, football clubs, game consoles, etc., etc. Because of the social premium on marriage and family, the poor also have children, only their children have no future and can easily be exploited by the economic system. If families are for raising and 'taking care of' children, what about the poor and their children? With high incidence of domestic violence, child abuse and 'juvenile delinquency', there are little 'family values' that the underprivileged can realistically talk of.
Thus as I realized how the cultural imperative on starting a family was unfair to women and the poor, I felt an instinctive aversion to it. That is the emotionally conditioned response that could override our responses to needs and instincts that make us want to reproduce. And if we rule out the biological 'instinct', which is strictly only to have sex and not to reproduce, my case for saying no to reproduction becomes much stronger.








So, fellow idealists, what are your thoughts on this?

I originally said something like: So then..the best solution to the injustice in the world is to end it all? As the writer says, "So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it "

Why even speak of change, or abolishing poverty, oppressive gender roles, etc. etc. then? Why even write this article if human life has so little value at the core? If in the end, we're not worth it..

 

Well, I'm interested in any feedback so thanks for taking the time to read and reply! It is a pretty well written piece, well thought out and eloquent in it's seemingly rational appearance-- but I think it screams of emotional frustration.

I agree that the instinct is too strong for people to individually form a mass consensus to decide to not reproduce. Plus I'm not so sure that most people would go about problem-solving oppression and exploitation of one's kind and environmental exploitation and destruction by choosing to end the human race.. The whole article is a pretty intellectualized way of saying: "I give up. We can't fix any of this, let's give up."

If one is going to go as far to to suggest the extinction of their own kind to preserve the biosphere, that which sustains them by means of a mass consensus to decide on the extinction-- wouldn't it just be easier to persuade people to come to a mass consensus to change what they are doing to damage what sustains them as a species? Just seems like the most irrational bit of altruism I've ever heard of. Since all things strive to live, wouldn't it be easier to come to a consensus to live responsibly, instead of to die off responsibly? I mean, according to Occam's Razor, "The simplest solution is best."

I'm just absolutely blown away that some one can say that reproduction is the root cause of the exploitation of the poor, and since the poor can't be happy we should all stop living. It just seems crazy to be so concerned with the oppression and unhappiness of other people that the only solution you can come up with is for the human race to become extinct!

 

Real simple.
1. Equality for all people regardless of sex or gender or sexual orientation.
2. Same as above.
3. Opposing equality of a person based on sex, gender, or sexual orientation.

P.S. Thanks for resurrecting this thread! I had high hopes for it when I posted it months ago.. and it didn't seem to do much, then.

 

Equal rights and employment opportunities. Equal medical rights..

For example, a big thing issue recently is whether pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to give out birth control to customers, or whether they should be allow to try and dissuede customers from purchasing birth control or the plan B pill.

Feminist thought is that that is unacceptable. Do you see why?


Anyway. People are different, but I don't see how differences mean that there should be an inequality among them. So what do you mean by that?

 

Do you think there ever will be a male pill? Seems unlikely to me. But--were it to happen, I'm sure some men would probably get hassled by some zealots for trying to purchase it.

So you believe that contraceptive pills (which, yeah, are hormones) should be forbidden due to environmental issues? That's really interesting, and call me ignorant--but I wasn't really aware of the environmental damage caused by producing contraceptives... Anyway.

Ok. All that aside... Aside from environmental issues, there are women who have been denied the pill because their pharmacist had a moral dilemma in handing them over. Do you think that's fair?


Also, here's a site from abc http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/Story?id=7021986&page=1 covering this.

About legislature: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/1372/29/

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/130293235

And these are interesting, too: http://www.feministing.com/archives/011744.html
http://www.womenstake.org/2008/06/pro-life-pharma.html

 

You're right; no one should betray their conscience. If that is the case--they probably shouldn't be pharmacists, then.

How can the use of contraceptives be irresponsible sex? Regardless, one person's moral dilemma shouldn't determine the actions of another individual.

Why should a stranger get to decide whether a woman has sex or not? And why should a stranger get to determine whether the sex is irresponsible or not?

 

Denying them the pill won't stop them from having sex, though.