Cute kids, now dead
I’m beginning to love IBTP commenter Christopher with a passion not entirely appropriate for a patriarchy-blaming blog. He disagrees with me just enough to spark my interest, otherwise frittered away watching corny BBC comedies, in scrawling vituperative essays that take unpopular positions. For instance, Christopher approves of pumpkin pie! This is a horror I will have to address soon.
Here he remarks that “good parenting doesn’t rest entirely on the parents,” and goes on to describe a common situation in which people have to work such gruelingly long hours just to make ends meet that it’s only reasonable to cut’em some slack if their kids can’t sit still.
To which I am duty-bound to respond, in the general zero-population-growth spirit of I Blame The Patriarchy, that if you don’t have the resources to raise kids, don’t have the damn kids.
Now I bet you think I’m about to rail on overextended parents whose backs are up against the wall for shunting their brats off on overworked public school teachers. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy that, but maybe later.
At the moment, I daresay that nobody has the resources to raise kids.
For I can never resist the opportunity to remind everybody that there are already 6.5 billion humans in the world (roughly half of whom live in Austin), and that all these comforting ideas of globalization and industry and free trade–”sustainable development”–turn out to be incompatible with the biophysical reality that the earth, a closed system with finite resources, can’t keep coughing up the goods indefinitely. “Renewable” energy is a crazy myth!
A study I read once on the Discovery channel website but can no longer find but I swear it really existed showed that in order to prevent apocalypse in the shape of disease and starvation, humanity will have to decrease its numbers by a factor of 1000, ay-ess-ay-pee. Other sources, such as this piece from AAAS, maintain that for H. sapiens to scuttle on unfettered by the threat of looming annihilation, only 4 of the 6 billion have got to go, a reduction of a mere 66 percent.
Either way, this means that reproduction, a thing many insouciant earthlings regard as a “human right”, is actually an act of violent self-interest and appalling hubris. Each cooing little bundle of joy brings the species that much closer to extinction. As the always-ebullient Voluntary Human Extinctionists say, “procreation today is like renting rooms in a burning building.”
It’s already happening. Apocalypses occur daily. According to the Rehydration Project, 40,000 kids under the age of 5 die every single day from malnutrition and vaccine preventable disease.
Just an F.Y.I. from your crackpot spinster aunt.
Carry on with your bad selves.
Yay! I love putting a harsh on babymaking!
I direct you to the Church of Euthanasia which has a buttload (Sodomy Rocks!) of beautiful and savage screeds, including your very own referenced S.C.U.M. Manifesto—which for me is kind of like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, or Consumer Reports Best Pick–always fresh, always relevent. Under e-sermons or resources or something is “The Case Against Babies,†an enjoyable essay by Joy Williams.
I don’t know how to do the linky thing, sorry, do a google on “Church of Euthanasia”.
It is NOT for the literal-minded, so those who do not appreciate a good jeremiad, a good Dada-esque provocation should not click over, although it does seem like the literal-minded enjoy getting angry and righteous about all sorts of picayune issues: Hairdressers and gym teachers want to get married! It’s the End of the World! It says in the Bible! Forget war, starvation, despoiling etc. So in that case, click away.
I do miss what I thought of as a “twistyism‖the segue between “getting along side†(is that the right phrase?) a particularly tasty taco and a particularly blameworthy patriarchal institution.
Yours, etc. B. Dagger Lee
Don’t forget also- with the rate the earth is heating up, there’s going to be a massive migration in this century away from the equator to parts north and south, as well as away from flooding coastal areas… packing us all together even more uncomfortably. I used to get violently depressed at the thought of our species’looming die-off and possible extinction; but watching my grandmother decline recently I wondered why, if I can accept the fact that I and everyone I love is mortal, I demand of the universe that our species last forever. There’s going to be a lot of misery for those last few generations, of course, but the world has always been a miserable place for the majority of us anyway. And there’s also the satisfaction of imagining the last few fanatics trying to hold out in Jeruselem under a 130 degree sun, waiting for their Lord and Savior to pop out of the sky any day now, fulfill the prophecies, and save their asses.
I’m beginning to demand of the universe that our species encounter some nasty little incurable virus that sterilizes us before it kills us, preferably painlessly and with a minimum of fuss, perhaps by inflaming the pleasure centers of the brain to the point where we are unable to feed ourselves. It would be nice if this virus were communicated by way of credit rating or Fox News watching, but that might be asking too much.
Barring that, a pathogen that caused men to die in childbirth might do the trick.
I’ve demanded all kinds of things from the universe, and even on occasion tried asking nicely… all in vain, of course. I’d love to blame the patriarchy, but the problem may go deeper…
I went to a party at Twisty’s house in my dream last night. Twisty was a really stylish dresser, I called her by the wrong “real” name, my mom screamed at the top of her lungs and embarrassed me, and in the back of her house, Twisty had dozens of keyboards and synthesizers set up like a music store.
Oh, and here was the weirdest part. Anticipating this post, I also dreamed Twisty had a baby.
Well, you got the music store part right. I used to be a stylish dresser, but nowadays I consider it a strike for good taste if I manage to notice, before the day is over, that my sweatpants are on backwards.
I’m OK with this as long as no one gets to have kids.
In practice, unfortunately, you wind up with situations where poor women of color, in third world countries, are forcibly sterilized - maybe given a bag of rice in exhange for the loss of bodily integrity - while the middle class consumers in countries such as ours, who consume a disproportionate chunk of the earth’s dwindling resources, are encouraged to breed away.
But, perhaps I’m taking your modest proposal too literally.
Your comment about your sweatpants almost made me spew beverage all over my computer. I think it was the phrasing “a strike for good taste” that did it.
To be clear, I’m no eugenicist. Everyone just stops, right now, having kids. Even honkys, I tell ya! A fortunate side effect of this is that women would be liberated from incubation duty and household drudgery.
But if everybody stops having kids right now, who’s going to change the soiled bedsheets of yesterday’s patriarchy-blamers, come 2060? Who’s going to wipe away our drool and listen to our ranting and bring us cocktails in the gazebo when we’re even wrinklier? And what’s a gazebo anyway? NURSE!
Sooner or later, some generation or other is going to have to die in its own filth. It may as well be us. We’re the ones who made most of the mess.
Come peak oil, there will be no bedsheets anyway.
Just the other day I was reading Jared Diamond’s argument that the genocide in Rwanda had more than a little to do with people being aware that they had overpopulated & needed to reduce their numbers somehow. He neglected to mention that being severely overpopulated makes people batshit insane, but that case certainly counts as heavy evidence that it does.
Having less babies, or no babies, is sure as hell more appealing than solving it that way.
Come peak oil, there will be no bedsheets anyway.
I’m going to miss the sen-syoo-us feeling of oil bedsheets against my skin. But it looks like I’ll be spending the period 2050-2070 (approx) covered in my own shit anyway, so that’ll be the least of my worries. Twisty, I hope you’re going to unveil Euthanasia The Patriarchy-Blaming Way at some point, and put us out of our misery.
There is good evidence that people reproduce less often when they have more money and other resources. Send me $1 million now or I’ll breed!
So, it’s less “zero population growth” and more “zero population”…
…yet I’m called “selfish” because I don’t want any kids, now or ever.
Dianne:
There is good evidence that people reproduce less often when they have more money and other resources. Send me $1 million now or I’ll breed!
I’ve heard this is true of women. The more resources and opportunities women have, the fewer children they have.
But there are some vested interests that don’t like the idea of women having resources and opportunities.
Collectively, these vested interests are known as… but I know you know. Starts with a P.
That’s why blaming the Patriarchy is good for the earth, and this blog is doing a great public service.
This is when good ole mother nature starts weeding us out with various plagues, natural disasters and the like.
I give her so much credit as a living organism, this planet has a suvival instinct and the bottom line doesn’t include us humans. People are like bacteria crawling all over the planet and it will sooner or later have it’s immune system response and fight back.
I too demand my million for not breeding.
Our patriotic duty demands that we populate this country at a greater rate. Our birth rates are well below those of the Mongrol hordes that wait at our gates.
More babies for Bush!!!
I want my million for not breeding! Although if I don’t get it I won’t breed anyway, cuz I’m selfish and immature that way. Why does not wanting a screaming brat who defecates all over itself and who I have no patience for make me selfish? Not to mention the horrendous rates of sexual assault on women and kids, and the fact that there are too many of us all ready. Yeah, that’s it I’m the selfish one. Sure.
Nancy, nail-hammer-BANG.
Patriarchy will choke and kill the earth. When women are given education and opportunity, they have fewer kids. But patriarchy would rather send us all down the path to extinction than attempt to better women’s lives.
The torture, deprivation, murder, and dehumanization of women is more important to the patriarchy (and to the living, breathing, flesh-and-blood fuckwads of whom it is composed) than the survival of the species. Put simply, our species (mostly the males that rule it like giant tantrum-throwing brats) would rather wallow in shit and starve than emancipate women. That’s how much their hatred of us matters to them.
When you look at it that way, we really should wallow in our own shit and starve, and we can’t do it soon enough for this tired old earth.
Sorry to have to rain on this parade a little, but I have to put on my Marxist/Gramscian hat for a second:
Malnutrition and starvation today are not a product of their not being enough food or resources, they are a product of inequality and exploitation. There is enough food to feed everyone on Earth, those that cannot acquire food are not able to overwhelmingly because they cannot afford it not because there isn’t enough.
This, however, doesn’t serve to invalidate the wider ecological concerns about the size of the human population, it’s just that w.r.t to food, the problem is capitalism not the human population.
I’d settle for getting a Child Tax Credit for not breeding.
Think of all the tax money we’d save on schooling and doctoring* and jailing children if we didn’t have so many. We’d be able to spend it all on better teeth and hips for our senior citz, and have money left over for a big celebration each International Womens Day internatinal holiday (with added bonus of more women free to take part in it).
All the shops dedicated to consumer goods for kids would become low-cost housing, or ripped down to create new urban food forest parks!
Cars would be smaller. Cafes would be serene. Landfill would contain fewer “disposable” nappies. There would be no child slave labour.
Gradually as the population decreased, the hole in the ozone layer would heal over, and the sea levels around small abandoned pacific islands would drop again, creating space on the sunblock displays at pharmacies, and valuable real-estate, respectively.
George Bush and John Howard would grow old and live together in a faraway place, taking as their destination the furthest place from any of the dots on that map o’ world this website was playing with a few weeks back.
*applies in countries with state-based health care.
Now, now Twisty. Having kids isn’t a choice–it’s what happens to us breeder types if we have sex. Not having ‘em is a choice, but b/c sometimes fails.
Much longer rant on this subject here.
doesn’t serve to invalidate the wider ecological concerns about the size of the human population, it’s just that w.r.t to food, the problem is capitalism not the human population.
Please explain how capitalism caused the Soviet famines of 1921 and 1932-33, and the Chinese famine of 1958-61.
As anthropologist Marvin Harris pointed out, Marx’s ideas were hobbled by the Hegelian dialectic and his rejection of the insights of Malthus. So don’t go promoting Marxism as the solution to human hunger. The communists have not covered themselves in glory on that issue.
Not that there was ever any doubt, but this post certainly cements you, Twisty, as a spinster certifiable.
Congrats.
I was wondering if pro-natalist Bitch PhD was going to get into this.
I had a tubal ligation when I was 24. I never had to worry about pregnancy again.
If you’re serious about not having children, you can do something about it. We breeders aren’t the hostages of nature anymore.
As long as you assume that current agricultural and marine species harvesting practices can be sustained, and that it is fit and pleasing to convert ecological productivity to those pursuits in order to feed ourselves, yes.
We’re in for a rude shock on that score, however, somewhere between 2010 and tomorrow morning.
Dr. B., if all we were talking about were kids born as a result of birth control failures, we’d be playing a whole different ballgame. And Pseudonymous Kid would be able to see Siberian tigers and polar bears in the wild when he’s 50. Which he will not be able to do at this rate.
Nancy, every December we buy presents for a pill baby, an IUD baby, and an irreversible surgical sterilization baby, all of them in the same family. Nothing is failsafe.
I just love disagreeing with both sides in a dispute.
But not the abortion baby.
Some things are pretty failsafe.
And plenty, if not all, of cultures throughout human history relied on infanticide - direct and indirect. If people are desperate enough they will find a way to avoid rearing children.
Not that I’m advocating infanticide…
But not the abortion baby.
The Fred Phelps joke thread is that way.
er, I mean, good point.
Oh, and breeders can have sex without risking pregnancy.
Just not vaginal intercourse.
But I guess that when Bill Clinton said “I did not have sex with that woman” he was reflecting a not-uncommon hetero concept of exactly what “sex” is.
I just wanted to cheer you all up with the news that a current side effect of pesticides and other pollutants is male sterility. So maybe it’s all going to turn out alright after all.
Does not having access to birth control count as a b/c failure?
“Please explain how capitalism caused the Soviet famines of 1921 and 1932-33, and the Chinese famine of 1958-61.”
Can’t help you with the Soviet famine, but I was reading ‘Mao - the unknown story’ last night. This puts the 58-61 famine down to Mao initiating huge food exports to the USSR and Eastern European countries, basically for political and military capital. He gave the Soviets food - they gave him weapons. So, capitalism, in a communist sort of way.
I have told my mother never to expect grandchildren. However much I love children, the idea of bringing another sentient being into this shithole of a world does not rest easy on my conscience.
And just don’t get me started that you can get (limited) IVF on the NHS…
“Does not having access to birth control count as a b/c failure?”
Ha!
Does not having access to birth control count as a b/c failure?
Yep. A political rather than technopharmacological one.
Nancy: The blackmail attempt (give me money or I’ll breed) was, of course, a joke. But the evidence that wealth and education, especially wealth, education, and autonomy for women, leads to a decreased birth rate is dead serious and incontrovertable. If we really want to drop the birth rate, we need to increase the level of wealth, autonomy, and education for girls and women in the third world. And one of the best ways for doing that is, in fact, to make sure that they have access to birth control so that they don’t spend their whole lives sick from pregnancy and raising kids that they don’t want and therefore don’t treat well. Bush, of course, is into decreasing the availability of birth control to poor women, both in the US and abroad.
“every December we buy presents for a pill baby, an IUD baby, and an irreversible surgical sterilization baby”
I believe that there is at least one case report of a baby born to a couple in which the man had had a vasectomy and the woman a tubal ligation. Some people are just too fertile for their own good.
Wow, a compliment!
That actually means a lot coming from somebody whose intellect I admire so much.
I can’t disagree with you about this one, though.
Just to clarify, for this discussion, the VHEMT website is concious of the fact that in some societies there is a lot of pressure to breed, both socially and economically, which is why they talk about reproductive rights.
Which is a continuation I’d make of my point above; even the choice to breed doesn’t happen in a vacuum; outside pressure is put on people to breed, and there’re some serious lack of education about birth control. Not to mention the stigma of abortion.
So, while people need to take responsibility for their existing kids, or ideally, responsibility for not having kids, society also needs to take responsibility for having them take responsibility.
I do wish the VHEMT website would address the problems of a society where all members are over 70. Call me an optimist, but I really do think we can find a way for humanity to end other then in pain and squalor.
Christopher, I seriously don’t think there would be more pain and squalor in a society where everyone left was over 70 than there is now. It would just be distributed a little differently.
It’s not necessary for the dying to be alone, unless they want to be. It’s not necessary to breed or fuck one’s loved ones and friends. When conditions get too unrewarding for anyone personally, one can check out painlessly; we certainly have the means. But it’s amazing how much the application of simple machines, on the level of pulley and lever, can do to make even the feeblest of caretakers capable of moving inert bodies enough to keep them clean. Of course, quis custodiet ipsos custodians? in their turn, but IME it’s more than age at work; everyone won’t collapse at once.
Alzheimer’s is an interesting complication; a species-level vow of nonbreeding wouldn’t preclude more work toward a cure, but also I personally know/knew people who I’m pretty sure (from remarks reported to me by their next-of-kin) would’ve opted for suicide early in the course of the illness if there weren’t so many strictures against it — this is in spite of their having fairly comfortable surroundings now/when they died. Most don’t get violent, so mostly what it would take to keep them in relative comfort would be a circle of friends in shifts and a couple of locked doors anyway. And heavy tranks for the fearful stage.
I’ve been dealing with rather a lot of elderly people lately, and thinking about how to do things otherwise. For one thing, Joe and I don’t have kids, and can’t quite bring ourselves to do to somerandombody else what his mother in particular did to us. And it’s only because I have a bunch of valiant siblings that we didn’t have to do that for my mother too. And I can;t say either of them, despite everyone’s efforts, had a happy ending.
Heh, I’m “pro-natalist.” Who knew?
I’m actually entirely neutral on the having kids question: have ‘em, or don’t. You get my backing either way (I’m sure everyone feels much better now). And god knows I’m pro-abortion access and pro-birth control.
I just don’t think that it’s consistently feminist to be anti-reproduction. Feminist gains, I think, result in women having fewer kids, which is surely good for society, the planet, and the women themselves: yay! And I’m certainly interested in talking about the problem of how to coordinate feminist gains, which in practice usually means moving women to a higher standard of living, with sustainability, which presumably means moving all of us (at least the industrialized world feminists who currently enjoy the highest standard of living of any women in the world and the lowest birth rate) to a lower standard of living. ‘Tis a complicated problem.
But I think that a hard-line no-child argument is inevitably going to be unfeminist, in that it is women who have children. Arguing that women ought to be sterilized, or avoid p-v intercourse, is too much like eugenics or “abstinence-baesd sex education” for me to seriously consider either.
On the other hand, a social policy that took seriously the needs of kids and their parents would, I think, go a long way towards a recognition of just how resource-intensive children are. The problem with the “if you can’t support ‘em, don’t have ‘em” argument is that it avoids a broader social recognition of that fact by pretending that individuals are solely responsible for the species’ young: if anything, the logical consequence of such an argument is that people should try to bogart *more* resources in order to ensure the survival of their offspring.
I agree with Dr. B and love the essay on her site. It describes my feelings and situation perfectly.
I’ve tried everything besides complete and utter abstinence to NOT become pregnant. The pill could have killed me. After that, many condoms broke resulting in: 1. a Child, and; 2. an abortion. I then used the IUD which worked, by all accounts, unless you consider that I was constantly worried about punctures and strings and whether or not the little bugger was wandering around my middle unfettered.
Now that I’m committed for the long haul, my partner has been snipped.
What I want to say is this: The largest part of the zero-birth rate movement or the child-free movement or whatever you’d like to call it is a respect for nature. Sure, often it is dressed up in doom and gloom about Ma Nature’s ability to look after herself against this parasite we call the human race. The irony for me is, after she whooped my ass in the fertility vs. technology department, I gained a new understanding of her real power.
Do we really think it’s possible to fool Mother Nature? It seems to me the Dr. B is correct. Our task is to fix society - not nature.
I guess what I’m more concerned about is maintaining infrastructure. You know, power, food distribution, sanitation.
It seems to me that as the population gets older and frailer that it wil be harder and harder to actually keep these kinds of things running. And things will be even worse in third world countries, where most of the population has to engage in manual labor.
I guess it’s the manual labor that gets to me; There’s a point in most lives where you become too frail to exert yourself physically as much as you used to, and yet you may still have ten or twenty years left before you die.
And if the VHEMT succeeds, at some point the vast majority of the populace is going to be at this stage in life. I’m simply not sure that the remaining fully able-bodied people will be able to support everybody else. And needless to say, it gets worse as the population gets older.
Will a population where everybody is 90 have enough energy to farm sufficient food?
Is the last generation going to have to commit suicide?
But I think that a hard-line no-child argument is inevitably going to be unfeminist, in that it is women who have children. Arguing that women ought to be sterilized, or avoid p-v intercourse, is too much like eugenics or “abstinence-baesd sex education†for me to seriously consider either.
Is anybody here arguing that women ought to avoid vaginal intercourse? I was quibbling with your definition of sex. Your argument, that heteros don’t have a choice to have kids, only a choice to not have kids, when they have sex, only works if you define sex strictly as vaginal intercourse. But I’ve had my share of non-vaginal intercourse incidents wherein I could swear I was “having sex.”
And who is arguing that women “ought to be sterlized”? If you don’t want to have (more) kids, why not avoid possible abortion and abortion scares by having a tubal ligation? It’s a perfectly sensible option.
If you think that sounds like eugenics and abstinence-only sex education, well you sure lept over a series of gigantic hurdles to get to that conclusion.
An infrequent poster humbly submits:
Here in Guatemala, there´s a so-called ¨family planning law¨ that is currently being debated. The law says crazy things, like, everyone should have access to information about family planning.
I am horrified to report how many women (Catholic and otherwise) here have told me that family planning is an absolute sin. When I ask how women should reduce the number of children they have, I´m told that they should just talk to their husbands about it.
As if we somehow live in a world where women´s opinions, thoughts, feelings, and beings matter.
I´m blaming the Patriarchy daily (and at times hourly) in this machismo culture.
Can’t help you with the Soviet famine, but I was reading ‘Mao - the unknown story’ last night. This puts the 58-61 famine down to Mao initiating huge food exports to the USSR and Eastern European countries, basically for political and military capital. He gave the Soviets food - they gave him weapons. So, capitalism, in a communist sort of
So by your definition, it is impossible to be a communist and exchange goods. Swapping food for weapons equals capitalism. I don’t think there are many who agree with your definition of capitalism.
I´m blaming the Patriarchy daily (and at times hourly) in this machismo culture.
You are on the front line in the fight against patriarchy - that must be very hard work much of the time.
Nancy, are you serious? Where on god’s green earth did you get a tubal at 24?? I’m 23 and my local PP clinic (in Indiana) just shrugs and tells me there’s no chance when I ask.
Also, pumpkin pie is an abomination.
It’s a bit silly to suggest we stop breeding altogether, I think. We are biologically hardwired to perpetuate the species, and this is probably why birth control fails.
Yeah, okay, I just lost my train of thought because a hyperactive 8-year-old is down the hall from my office hollering, as he does every day between 3 and 4. His mother just tunes him out and my head is about to explode. When I ask him to use his inside voice, he usually says, “Why?”
Ironic, eh?
Let me unequivocally recommend to you the IUD. I believe mine is called a Paragard. Insertion is a bitch, but it’s a one-time event, one expense, ten years of freedom, and no hormones. And my insurance covered most of it.
I also had something to say about the Catholic church undermining all efforts at ZPG, and spreading their insidious teachings ever wider.
Man, that “biological hardwire” is some hard-ass wire! I confess to being a little tired of it as an excuse for deportment that is insane (or destructive or violent). Men are “hardwired” to ogle boobies. Women are “hardwired” to come unglued at the sight of a pair of baby shoes. Faugh. I buy it not. But the fact that so many people do is all the data I need to predict the extinction of the species by gruesome die-off.
Nancy, are you serious? Where on god’s green earth did you get a tubal at 24?? I’m 23 and my local PP clinic (in Indiana) just shrugs and tells me there’s no chance when I ask.
Why not? I’ve never regretted it.
And there’s no reason why your PP clinic should withhold a tubal from you. Is that even legal?
We are biologically hardwired to perpetuate the species, and this is probably why birth control fails.
That is probably why infanticide has been so popular throughout the ages.
Being wired for sex in no way translates into being wired for child-rearing. That’s why wealthy women throughout the ages farmed out child-rearing to others.
“Why not? I’ve never regretted it.
And there’s no reason why your PP clinic should withhold a tubal from you. Is that even legal?”
No no, I would never insinuate that a woman should regret a tubal–just wistfully dreaming of a state in which I, too, could get one at such a young age.
As to the PP clinic, as I understand it, they don’t do tubals themselves, and don’t know of any doctors/clinics around here that would give one to such a young woman anyway. So they’re just like “meh, try again in 10 years.” It is goddamn infuriating.
Here is a stunning example of the patriarchy at work.
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2006/02/and-people-ask-why-im-feminist.html
Let me throw in my own situation in support of Bitch Phd and when b/c fails –
When I was twenty, my boyfriend and I were having protected sex. Every time, repeat, EVERY TIME we had sex, we used both a condom and spermicide. I also tried to make sure that we weren’t having sex when I was ovulating. I did not want to have a baby. In fact, I’d decided that I never wanted to have children at all. I wasn’t taking the birth control pill because it made me sick and messed with medication I took for Graves Disease.
YET - yet - there I was, 20, pregnant, and coming from a family where abortion was considered a mortal sin. Now, ten years later, I know in the same situation I would choose abortion, no matter how much I love my little girl now. Back then, I didn’t feel I had that option.
After I was pregnant, my mother shrugged and said, “Women in our family are as fertile as rabbits! I thought you knew that.”
I’m wiser now and lucky to only have one child, but I will never again believe that I can outwit my own biology.
ah, “biological hardwiring” - I meant as a species, not as individuals. I don’t think being designed to breed (physically) means we should all do so, or that any single individual is designed to breed & nurture. Just that nature is a lot bigger than all of us and *all* species are hardwired to perpetuate their DNA.
Obviously humans are more than capable of acting against their biological programming, and can and should do so as often as we wish.
I just think that spending time planning the demise of the species is wasted, as evolution will take care of that eventually. Mother Nature can be a bitch and when she’s got a plan, no amount of weeny human planning is going to counteract it (whether it’s species-suicide or species-perpetuation).
Reproductive biology is part of why believe pro-choice women should also be anti-prostitution. Neither sterilization of prostitutes nor repeat abortions for prostitutes should be acceptable to defenders of reproductive rights, and with prostitution it’s one or the other.
NancyMc,
1) Please don’t confuse Marx and his writings with what was done in his name by figures such as Mao and Stalin. This is hardly the place for it, but there is a very long list of reasons that their views and policies diverged very widely from Marx’s views.
2) My point was not that capitlaism was always and everywhere responsible for famine! My point was that, unlike earlier eras where famine was usually the product of there not being enough food, that since the 1980’s famine has been overwhelmingly a by-product of not being able to afford food rather than there not being enough. I was refering to the specific situation since ~1970 in this case and there is considerable evidence to support the contention that poverty has been the primary cause of malnutrition since then rather than scarcity. This is particularly true with the redefinitions and modifications of the concept of ‘food security’ in the global South that has been attendant with globalization. Food security used to be a policy of governments in the global South working to ensure that their citizens had enough to eat, however it has come to mean the marketization of food provision in the global South as part of a global market in agriculture and has served to price many in the global South out of the market. This has even been the case in many of the countries in the global South that grow the food yet, in many cases, those who work in argiculture have come to be unable to afford enough of the food that they grow. If you are interested I could point you in the direction of a couple of articles on this subject.
Dianne:
“But the evidence that wealth and education, especially wealth, education, and autonomy for women, leads to a decreased birth rate is dead serious and incontrovertable. If we really want to drop the birth rate, we need to increase the level of wealth, autonomy, and education for girls and women in the third world.”
Yeah, the problem of resource depletion and industrial pollution can be solved by enabling women to consume more! The first world with it’s liberated women and below replacement birth rate consumes three-quarters of world energy production.
It’s interesting that none of you women criticize the techno-industrial system itself. Guess you know which side your bread is buttered.
Well, if no one is advocating that women be sterilized or refrain from p/v sex, then bringing those things up to counter the argument that sex, for straight chicks, leads to pregnancy is kind of silly. No, obviously it doesn’t and needn’t lead *inevitably* to pregnancy. But across populations, it does. Hence bringing in sterilization or non-p/v sex, in that context, is relevant only *if* we’re talking about doing it across populations, hence the eugenics/absitnence associations.
Jezebella, if I thought for one second that humans would actually and voluntarily take any steps whatsoever to plan for a happy ending for our species, I’d do the butt-dance naked at the corner of 6th and Red River. This whole blog is an excercise in futility, isn’t it? Today I got a 2000-word email from some dipshit who mistakes me for Valerie Solanas and thinks that all women “exlude the male to perpetuate her disgustingly selfish female ideals” because “without the father she can reduce the impact that masculinity has on exposing her self-centered sadistic nature.”
There is no hope. Really.
Yeah, the problem of resource depletion and industrial pollution
can be solved by enabling women to consume more! The first world
with it’s liberated women and below replacement birth rate
consumes three-quarters of world energy production.
Sin Monkey, you ain’t thinking. The first world was made by MEN, men whose entire raison d’etre was shitting on women and keeping them down. I’m not an essentialist by any means, but if you seriously think that a society can TRULY empower women without changing the way it does things, you’re nuts.
Empowering and educating women results in a lot more than just fewer births. Community awareness goes up, whether you want to admit it or not.
In this country, we have individual empowered women but NO translation of that into the power structure. Let it percolate upward for a while. It’s preposterous to expect that the first world, which has been developing for CENTURIES along lines set out in history, will suddenly shift after fewer than a hundred years of female enfranchisement and far fewer of real civil rights.
And just because I know this is going to come up:
Don’t anyone try that canned crap about how Women Would Be Just As Bad As Men If … (some implausible thing that’s never happened in the entire history of humanity). It’s junk, and the older I get, the less willing I am to take on the blame for what MEN have done to this planet just in the interest of appearing fake-fair.
There’s a wonderful little charity for girls’ literacy called “Room to Read,” for example. You know what they’ve foudn? And what I’ve seen in my whole life? When you educate a boy, he goes away and abandons his community. He sees it as something given to HIM for HIM ALONE that HE-HE-HE gets to benefit from. When you educate a girl, you find that she goes home, educates others, builds things, and takes care of her community. Sometimes I think this happens in all oppressed communities, because we dont’ expect the world to wipe out asses for us. Successful minority men will also take special pains to benefit their community — but overwhelmingly, WOMEN AND GIRLS are like this.
They found this for other primates, and other animals as well. There was the old story of monkeys on a Japanese island at whom tourists would toss wrapped treats. If a male found one, he unwrapped it, ate it, and moved on. If a female found one, somehow it was communicated to the rest of the community. Teaching and benefiting women BENEFITS EVERYONE. Even in my own life, as someone with a genetic disability, I’ve noticed a funny thing — that most of the web sites for this illness are made by women, including mine.
I’m not for the whole “women HAVE TO BE perfect angels” thing — but neither am I going to refuse to acknowledge what seems to be the plain fucknig truth: WE’RE BETTER. We think of others, whether it’s because we do the childcare or whatever. “Fight or Flight” versus “Tend and Befriend.” I dislike essentialism that paints me as a perfect little Angel of the Harth, but if you look at the world, there is NO WAY you can avoid coming to the conclusion that entire communities benefot when women AS A WHOLE are empowered. Not a few embedded in a matrix of male privilege. But WOMEN AS A WHOLE.
Sure, maybe we “might” be “just as bad,” but if that’s the case — point it out, on a big scale that matches the shit men have pulled. Where’s our Bergen-Belsen? Where’s our Dzerzhinsk? It just bugs the snot out of me that I’m expected to take half the blame for shit that we do not do.
And don’t give me counterexamples like Margaret Thatcher, either. If anything, the rarity of women in positions of male-defined power can be used to demonstrate that we are far less likely to be willing to be such tyrannical shitheads.
There are ZILLIONS of men who have been monsters in power. Saying “women would do it too” is like saying, “Well, the KKK could have theoretically lunched white people, too!!!!!!!!!”
Yeah. ONLY THEY DIDN’T.
We could theoretically be “just as bad.” BUT WE’RE NOT. Educating women benefits the entire world, to the point where we are not mere hangers-on to a male-defined environmentally destructive culture.
Sorry, but this topic sickens me at this point. I’m SICK of people acting like women have half of the blame for the SHIT that’s been done by male-defined and male-controlled structures. We don’t.
I find it hard to understand how a progressive North American woman could intentionally make a baby, and especially make more than one. One American kid uses FAR more resources than, say, one Burmese kid. Increasing the number of Americans just increases the burden on people who are already getting screwed.
From an ecological standpoint, American parenthood is self-indulgent. I realize how much work a kid is and how much parents sacrifice. In fact, parents around me and online seem to complain quite a bit about how much they’re sacrificing. What they fail to see is how much people around the world will be sacrificing as this kid grows up to shop shop shop and drive drive drive. No matter how enlightened the parents are, this new human will need to consume resources.
The only parenthood I’ve ever considered is adopting a kid who’s already made. There are plenty of them out there, and they need parents more than the world needs new consumers.
Well, if no one is advocating that women be sterilized or refrain from p/v sex, then bringing those things up to counter the argument that sex, for straight chicks, leads to pregnancy is kind of silly. No, obviously it doesn’t and needn’t lead *inevitably* to pregnancy. But across populations, it does. Hence bringing in sterilization or non-p/v sex, in that context, is relevant only *if* we’re talking about doing it across populations, hence the eugenics/absitnence associations.
Nobody is advocating that women BE sterlized - but I recommend women (and men) have themselves sterlized.
What has that to do with eugenics?
And abstinence associations are anti-sex. Recommending non-vaginal intercourse sex is not anti-sex. In fact, non-vaginal intercourse is consider by many still to be a naughtier form of sex than intercourse.
So we’re not talking about abstinence.
So why did you mention eugenics and abstinence?
And what do you mean by “across populations?”
Please don’t confuse Marx and his writings with what was done in his name by figures such as Mao and Stalin. This is hardly the place for it, but there is a very long list of reasons that their views and policies diverged very widely from Marx’s views.
How many times have I heard that? Well capitalism isn’t pure Adam Smith either. In any case, the issue at hand isn’t whether pure Marxism was subverted by dictators, the issue is that capitalism isn’t the only problem in food distribution.
2) My point was not that capitlaism was always and everywhere responsible for famine! My point was that, unlike earlier eras where famine was usually the product of there not being enough food,
I certainly don’t think that capitalism is perfect, or even necessarily the best economic system. But to say that the problem isn’t the Earth’s resources, it’s just a case of bad distribution over-simplifies the situation. And that’s what I thought you were doing in your first post.
I find your “cute” and “ironic” captioning use of that photograph racist, unethical, and repulsive. Sign me an ex-fan of your blog.
NancyMc,
I certainly don’t think that capitalism is perfect, or even necessarily the best economic system. But to say that the problem isn’t the Earth’s resources, it’s just a case of bad distribution over-simplifies the situation. And that’s what I thought you were doing in your first post.
I understand. Yeah, I was making a much narrower point, which I should have made more clear in my initial post, that specifically food distribution specifically since ~1970 has primarily been a problem of distribution rather than scarcity. I’d emphasize that this point is not more widely applicable to other resources.
I have three young children and I am a stay at home mom. I can’t imagine anything that I would want to do more…the only occupation that comes close in an illustrator. I see some comments stating that parents who can’t take the time to get their kids to behave probably shouldn’t be parents to begin with (not in those exact words, but hinted at…especially in the blog article). Well, just because a child misbehaves in public doesn’t mean that they have a parent that is lax with discipline and teaching. It takes time to raise a child to be a civilized adult (probably about 15-18 years) and it takes time for a child to learn to be well behaved.
Futhermore some children that you may see acting out or throwing tantrums in the store or restaurant may be disabled. I have a five year old son with autism. Mostly he is well behaved at home and in public, but sometimes he is not. Little things that wouldn’t bother you or I can set him off. When he yells, cries, or screams I don’t even look at other people because I know they are giving me dirty looks (probably thinking I am a horrible parent that doesn’t discipline him), I just concentrate on calming him down. Now some people probably would say that I shouldn’t take him out in public, because seeing him makes them uncomfortable. Yet I don’t want to return to the days when we kept our disabled people hidden away at home or in institutions. Mostly I just want to say don’t be too quick to judge that mother at the store with the screaming child. I use to judge her too before I had children, but now I look at her with empathy.
~Courtney
Hey Courtney,
I don’t know how familiar you are with this blog, but I recommend not taking it too personally, or expecting too much in the way of decency or human compassion. After all, according to Lily in #71, I am an unethical repulsive racist.
Please note that, as much as I wish they’d keep them out of my yard, I don’t blame individual parents for having individual kids. I blame the dominant culture for inventing the nuclear family, an unworkable and inefficient system that cannot help but result in neuroses all around.
I also don’t judge women in grocery stores with screaming kids, although when I put my fingers in my ears and move away, they always give me the stinkeye, like I’m some sort of race-traitor for coddling my tinnitus.
Autism, of course, is a whole nother can of worms. But surely you are not suggesting that, in callling for a moratorium on reproduction, I am somehow advocating keeping autistic kids locked up. That’s a bit of a stretch, even for the stretchy readers of this blog.
Hey, that’s nothing. According to comment number ten to this post, you hate the Jews too. Stop denying the Holocaust, Twisty! JUST STOP IT!
“Hey, that’s nothing. According to comment number ten to this post, you hate the Jews too. Stop denying the Holocaust, Twisty! JUST STOP IT!”
So, do you think Meryl would so not make out with me?
I sure hope this whole blog isn’t an exercise in futility, Twisty! Not that we’re taking down the patriarchy this week, but every little bit of defiance helps.
Righteous indignation can be quite satisfying, and my recent visits to this blog actually inspired me only last week to tell an old man, to his face, that he was condescending and sexist when he called me a “girl” (in a condescending and sexist manner). I usually let that shit slide, seeing as I’m living in Mississippi, but he was patronizing me and I had the temerity to disagree with his asinine pronouncements, so I didn’t let it slide. I know it ain’t much, but hell, it’s something.
Imagine my dismay when the 50-ish woman we were talking with said she wasn’t offended by being called a girl, since it made her feel young. Ugh.
Well the problem is, there’s a lot of people who want to dismantle the patriarchy as much as you do who get a little bit frustrated when people can’t get it through their heads that being a racist and an elitist is only going to reinforce the same hierarchies you supposedly hate so much. This isn’t a case of you being attacked by some horrible antifeminist, this is a case of you alienating a lot of women who are just as feminist as you are. I find the fact that you cannot address this head-on, but instead resort to more idiotic hipster sarcastic fluff pretty telling. You don’t take accusations of racism seriously, even coming from another feminist. If you took it seriously, you could explain to me why the hell you’re justified in using depictions of violence against people of color as a form of “ironic” commentary for your blog.
If the world is so horribly overpopulated, why does no one suggest that the “baby boomers” just commit hara kiri before they start overtaxing our social services? You know, quit while they’re ahead. Rather than yet AGAIN trying to put the weight of the world on women’s ovaries, why not tell all the old geezers in the world to off themselves after they reach the age where they can collect social security? Oh, that might be MEAN! Yeah, because it involves telling men what to do with their bodies. For the record, I don’t think anyone committing mass suicide would be a great idea or a solution. But it’s funny that no one ever suggests it, even as they suggest yet again that those damn women need to keep their legs shut.
Any and all screeds against reproduction will be antifeminist and antiwoman as long as reproduction is regarded as “women’s work.”
You know, twisty, this: reproduction, a thing many insouciant earthlings regard as a “human right”, is actually an act of violent self-interest and appalling hubris. doesn’t gel at all with your next sentence, does it: Each cooing little bundle of joy brings the species that much closer to extinction.
Believing reproduction is a human right is actually a lot more reasonable than believing humans have the right to keep existing in perpetuity. Yet our appalling hubris leads us to think we should. Why? I suspect it’s tied to one of the reasons people have kids: it’s personally gratifying to believe you’re personally involved in continuing the line, as you’d like it to be continued. So, six of one.
Until those patriarchal labrats find out how to make baby-having into a clean test-tube proposition that has nothing at all to do with us dirty, flawed, stupid cow women, it will be antifeminist to badmouth baby-having, in aggregate or no.
The baseline of choice is that women aren’t stupid.
I have no idea why it wouldn’t be enough for you to focus your ire and efforts on making sure ALL women have REAL options to procreation, REAL opportunities for education, REAL fiscal solvency apart from having to live with impregnators, REAL control over whether or not a man puts his penis in them, REAL control over whether or not a welcomed penis makes a baby.
What viewpoint of yours does that unduly neglect…What need of yours would it not satisfy?
Your urge to be cool and have fun, to take things less than seriously and poke holes in them? Well, I like that aspect of your writing, but not when you do it at the expense of women’s reality, at which point it puts you in the company of pornhounds and a whole assortment of other blamable types. Ick.
Any and all screeds against reproduction will be antifeminist and antiwoman as long as reproduction is regarded as “women’s work.â€
Hey Lily: Can I have your stereo after Ron Sullivan eviscerates you?
Well, Chris, I can’t tell from your name if you’re a man, but I think there are more male Chrises than female ones, and Ron Sullivan certainly is a guy, so I feel it’s definitely appropriate for me to say that threats of male violence against a woman with whom you personally disagree are pretty damn distasteful. I mean, are we here to dismantle the patriarchy, or are we here to “eviscerate” women with whom one personally disagrees?
Ron Sullivan was a name I had to google, and I’m getting several hits, none of them explaining to me why it is at all appropriate that you suggest he “eviscerate” a woman with whom you are barely acquainted.
Lily, BS. Asking people to be responsible, and think of not only their own life, but the condition of the world in general before they reproduce is “put[ting] the weight of the world on women’s ovaries”? Again BS. Let me let you in on a little secret. Men reproduce too! AND men can choose not to reproduce JUST LIKE WOMEN!
And encouraging people not to breed is exactly morally equivalent to asking millions of people to just die already, yeah, right. Wait a minute, how is that not ageist? Oh, so we have to be sensitive about everything else, but the old can just go fuck themselves? How incredibly non-elitist of you.
Hey there…is my post being held? Or have things just not caught up yet? Let me know if I need to re-send. Thx.
Quoth Lily in #78: “why the hell you’re justified in using depictions of violence against people of color as a form of “ironic†commentary for your blog.”
And now maybe you could tell me what the hell you’re talking about. The picture is of some kids playing in the street with a hoop. I can’t tell what “color” they are and don’t know how you can, either. If you click the picture it will take you to the Rehydration Project’s website, which is devoted to saving the lives of–that’s right–children.
And I wonder where you get the idea that I’m blaming imminent human extinction on women. Have you even read this blog? If not, I suggest glancing at the title for the executive summary. I blame the patriarchy. Not ovaries.
Although, frankly, I may start blaming you for hurting my feelings.
Oh come on, the “personal responsibility” shtick is straight out of the Ronald Reagan playbook. Did I click the wrong link this morning and wind up on “I blame the stupid breeder cow women” instead of “I blame the patriarchy”? And yeah, you give more lipservice to the role of men than the conservatives do, but that doesn’t make your position make any damn sense in the real world. The facts of life in the world we live in is that the burdens of reproduction rest on the shoulders of women. Men CAN choose to be responsible, but they don’t and when they don’t it all lands on women. Men choose to rape, men choose to whine about using condoms, men choose to coerce women, men choose to control finances, men choose to withhold information on reproduction from young people, etc. Just *pretending* like everything is equal doesn’t make it so.
Read the comments, Wookie Monster. People are talking about how there need to be plagues to “weed people out.” Whether it was meant as one or not, that’s an allusion to AIDS, amongst other things. Such a comment definitely implies that we need to stop trying to cure people and just let ‘em die and “reduce the surplus population” as Scrooge might say. Other people on this thread certainly ARE suggesting that millions of people just die and get out of the way. The people they want to die and stop polluting their precious hipster air may not be the All-American 50 Moms and Dads, but they’re still people.
Ron Sullivan certainly is a guy
So much for reading comprehension.
Hope you don’t mind if I delay the evisceration by a day, Chris. I’m still tired from last night, and Joe and I are miraculously deadline-free for a day so we’re going out to frolic amongst the wildflowers. He wants pix of fetid adder’s-tongue. I wonder what our inventive interlocutor will say about that.
Wow, though. I’m living the James Tiptree, Jr. dream without even investing in blue typwriter ribbon!
Dear Twisty,
I found this blog about a week ago and I think it is great! I don’t expect readers to respond compassionately to my posts, I just wanted to get my opinion out there. I would never give anyone walking away from my screaming child a dirty look, I understand totally. Also about keeping kids out of your yard, I’m totally feeling you there! One of the things I really stress to my kids is not to enter other people’s property or use other’s things without permission. I have a big pet peeve about mothers who think every water toy at the kiddie pool is community property. I also use to have neighbor kids that would just come on to my porch and play with the toys out there. It use to drive me insane!
I also wasn’t trying to suggest that anyone on this blog wanted autistic children locked away. It is just a gerneral feeling I sometimes get out in public. Other times people are really supportive about my son. There is more of the latter actually and that is a good thing. I am glad that some people are getting more comfortable with disabled people being out in public with them.
I also don’t begrudge anyone their decision to reproduce or not. I think it is fine is someone doesn’t want children…some days I actually envy you and wish I had made the same decision. Yet I also think it is fine if someone wants children and I don’t want any type or race of person to kill themselves or die of disease. I don’t wish that on anyone!
~Courtney
On reflection, the “evisceration” remark, while intended only metaphorically (and I trust regular readers here knew that), was inappropriate as my intent was too easily misinterpreted. I apologize, and assure Lily that I intended no physical threat whatsoever.
All I meant to say was that her sloppily constructed and ill-founded argument is of the sort that women such as Ron regularly tear to shreds without batting an eyelash, seeing as it defines feminism to exclude them.
Sorry for the ill-considered choice of words.
All I meant to say was that her sloppily constructed and ill-founded argument is of the sort that women such as Ron regularly tear to shreds without batting an eyelash, seeing as it defines feminism to exclude them.
Sorry for the ill-considered choice of words.
Chris, nobody in their right mind thought that by using the word “eviscerate” you were advocating the physical removal of anybody’s entrails.
Lily is on the prowl for any excuse to be offended. To a degree that makes me question what Lily is about.
Well gosh, I don’t know all your goddamn friends by name. I’m sorry, but I have no idea who the hell Ron Sullivan is, so I did a google search, the first result was a director of “adult films” and the next few were various academics. All male, so far as I could tell. Maybe I should be eviscerated for not being able to read your mind?
I’m sorry, but I have no idea who the hell Ron Sullivan is, so I did a google search.
How about reading her comments in this very thread?
In #43, written by Ron Sullivan:
For one thing, Joe and I don’t have kids, and can’t quite bring ourselves to do to somerandombody else what his mother in particular did to us.
That sentence clearly indicates that either Ron is female, or is a homosexual male. Occam’s Razor would indicate the former, if one was prone to reading for comprehension.
Twisty, yes, I’ve read your blog for a while and up until now it has been one of my favorites. What I meant with the violence remark is that your captioning implies violence. Here’s some cute kids, they’re all dead now, ho hum, hahaha on about my merry cynical way. You may not have intended it that way, but that is how it reads.
When someone uses images of children of color as part of a screed on “overpopulation,” they are aligning themselves, purposely or not, with a preexisting agenda and set of images, arguments, and biases. Even if the person’s actual words differ severely from that agenda, the symbol still contains meaning by itself. Sort of like if I post a huge image of a thin, blonde naked woman doing something sexual on my blog for “shock value” in a post on sexuality even though I am personally anti-objectification. I have to think about the preconcieved notions I am playing into when I use that kind of image.
If I post an image of a naked, sexed-up blonde woman on the top of an entry on rape, for instance, and say “here’s a pretty woman, now she’s dead” and follow it up with a post full of cynical wit and banter about rape and some glib suggestions on how it could be so easily “prevented” by simply saying “stop getting raped,” I’m not treating the topic with the seriousness it deserves and I shouldn’t be surprised if people mistake me for an antifeminist.
I’m hurting your feelings? Frankly in light of the comments people here have been making in this thread I find it pretty funny that you’d think that’s something to take into consideration. No one else’s feelings seem to be considered, here, what with all the light-hearted banter about “euthanasia” and “weeding out” and so forth. Ill-aimed cynicism and satire hurts people’s feelings too, and worse.
Lisa, I read this blog for the topics Twisty covers, not to become intimately acquainted with the lives and loves of her fans, with or without the use of Occam’s razor.
Well gosh, I don’t know all your goddamn friends by name. I’m sorry, but I have no idea who the hell Ron Sullivan is, so I did a google search, the first result was a director of “adult films†and the next few were various academics. All male, so far as I could tell. Maybe I should be eviscerated for not being able to read your mind?
“Ron Sullivan” is a common name, and many who post online don’t use their real names. Do you?
You can’t possibly believe that you’ll learn anything about the person who posts here under that name by doing a Google search. Either you’re full of it, or you’re completely clueless.
I’m still unclear on the offense that the picture’s causing. It links directly to information from UNICEF, an organization not particularly known for its kid-hating ways. There are children of color in the picture, yes; is it racist to state that most child refugees are children of color? That more infants and children of color die of preventable disease than white, western children? That more women of color die in childbirth due to inadequate medical care (or no care at all)? Would blond kids from Winnetka or Tulsa be a more accurate or less racist depiction of international child poverty?
Saying that there are too many people in the world, and that those who bear the brunt of this are poor and non-white and often women and children doesn’t seem to be a controversial statement to make, so I’m puzzled by the reaction to it.
Chris, nobody in their right mind
I know, Nancy, but a careful writer writes for all of his or her readers.
Lily, either you are amazingly stupid or just looking to pick a fight.
BTW, the fundie idea of “personal responsiblity” (basically take responsiblity for the good things, but anything bad is someone else’s fault) is bunk, but the idea of people actually taking responsiblity for their own actions and how they effect society is a pretty damn good idea. I can (and want to) take responsibilty for my own reproduction if I have the freedom to do so. But aparently according to you I’m supposed to hand over the choice of whether or not to have children to some man, becuase men aren’t always responsible about their breeding. Fuck that, I’m going to do what I need to do to ensure that I don’t have children regardless of what any men in the vecinity do, because it’s my life and I have to live it, so yeah, I’m going to take responsibility for my own reproductive future not matter how easy some dude may get off, because I’m going to take care of me. Sorry if you see that as, “blam[ing] the stupid breeder cow women” but I think you’re full of shit.
Nancy, someone I have never spoken to before says something about a person named Ron Sullivan eviscerating me. What do I make of this? My thoughts are, “who the hell is that?” since I don’t have the name of every single computer-literate individual who comments in “the blogosphere” down by memory. I figure since he’s referencing this person is such a cocky way, perhaps it’s the name of some kind of well-known figure. Now, you have definitely proven that I am not an “insider” in this blog, if I were I would probably have recognized the name. By “insider” I mean someone who comments with regularity and is well known. I mostly read the main body of the posts here, I don’t always come to the comment section. You have proven that I tend to read the content of the comments on blogs first, and go back and look at names later, if ever, since it’s not usually something I keep close track of&