this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
35 points (90.7% liked)
Ask Lemmygrad
805 readers
56 users here now
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
no, but a small sliver of mostly white "leftists" have picked up malthusianism but this largely exists due to their misunderstanding of reality, like yt supremacists they just accept the "not enough room for more people" lie of Imperialism
I have heard that from some, but from most I am told that it is due to global warming and the high cost of living.
Life: submit to capitalism, you're powerless to change anything, the planet is baking, sometimes there are treats, two full time incomes required to survive, everything is poison, it's only going to get worse
Me: you know who would like this? Children
Rise your kid to be another soldier of revolution!
how is that not conscription?
Maybe in some sense
Yeah those things require revolution to fix
Do we allow the bourgeoisie to practice eugenics on our classes or do we fight back?
If you think we can revolution why not have kids? I'm saying this only if such worries are preventing you from having kids that you would want to have otherwise. I understand it's not for everyone but I want to push back on people who've accepted defeat.
we fight, but we don't have the right to conscript children into that fight.
Easy for you to say when your people aren't actively subjected to genocide. The people who fight for their children's futures have little trust in the leadership of people who've already given up.
Our job today is to make sure the children born yesterday are to be fed tomorrow and when they grow into adults their role will be the same.
Sorry, are you suggesting that people subjected to genocide have a responsibility to produce new child soldiers for the cause? It's by no means "easy" for anyone to look at the material conditions of their environment and decide that they don't want to personally subject new people to those conditions.
Birth rates declining as education, income, medical care, and women's equality increase are well documented sociological phenomena across history. There's no need to reduce the phenomena to idealist anecdotes centering around the political affiliation of individual people you've encountered online.
No I'm saying nations under genocidal conditions are going to have kids because they want their society to continue, it's nothing about soldiers and I really don't like that you would reduce the will to survive genocide as "creating soldiers". Should Palestinians give up children not knowing if they'll be bombed tomorrow? Do you shame, pity them for having more kids? Why should they let Israel succeed in killing the idea of Palestinians?
Reproductive labor is necessary labor for society to function. People having less kids because they can focus resources towards fewer children, those conditions only exist for the Imperialist and bourgeois strata. For most of the world having many kids is necessary for the survival of the community.
I wouldn’t urge Palestinians to avoid having children, nor would I encourage them to try to outbreed their captivity. It’s none of my business. It should be exclusively their business. I’ll tell you if I lived in Palestine, there’s no way in hell I’d personally bring a child into those conditions no matter what anybody else thought about it.
My point is that whether or not to reproduce is a deeply personal choice that shouldn’t be viewed as a social responsibility or a political act.
The idea that individuals (by which people always really mean women) have a political responsibility to reproduce and expand their culture is reactionary shit. The only population whose breeding habits I have a political opinion about is white settlers, because I’m a white settler. I’m not having kids, because white genocide is unironically good, Euro-American settler culture is a blight on the world, and our extinction as an artificial racial category is a prerequisite for global decolonization.
I thought in such a way when my kid was before his first year. Now I love to spend time with him.
This is true of course, because kids are people, and people are annoying as hell. When you choose to be responsible for the life of another person, you sure as hell better be prepared for a little irritation.
I guess I can only envy your life being so utterly free of irritating personal interactions that the mere thought of someone else experiencing one compels you to seek them out to personally scold them
I don’t have a blanket negative opinion of humanity. I have a blanket neutral opinion of humanity. Many individual people are irritating. Many individual people are wonderful. Some are both. Kids have these same attributes because they’re people that are, by definition, learning everything for the first time.
I promise I’m not trying to smuggle in some secret “those people/kids are bad” rhetoric, if that’s what you’re inferring. I’m irritated at myself for mistakes I made yesterday. Kids are literally making mistakes constantly, because that’s how humans learn. It’s extremely easy to be irritated by tiny people that fuck up constantly. Kids require patience and empathy all day every day. Perhaps it’s fine to let people that recognize they’re not well suited to provide that self-select out of a lifelong responsibility for childcare?
And this too and also not wanting to lose ones freedom
I was not stating agreement. I was just mentioning that is another reason that I have been given. But, everyone has the right to find annoying whatever they want though 🤣
Because they are, and people can find different things annoying? I love snakes, but if somebody dislikes snakes and chooses not to keep them as a pet (most people) I am not going to think negatively of them as long as they aren't going out of their way to harm snakes.
It's fairly bizarre to think everyone has to find the same things annoying as you.
I will assume you are legitimately asking in good faith as this is a fairly common bingo we hear a lot.
Someone's age and the way they act is not the same as their sexuality. That should go without saying, but you would be surprised.
People tend to find children annoying because of...the behaviour of children, unsurprisingly. Whether that is the crying, the demand for attention, the manipulation, the risk of damage (to themselves, me or my possessions, or others). Those are regardless of race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Doesn't mean I actively wish ill on them; quite the contrary, I respect them as much as I would the life and livelihood of any other human. I just made the choice to have nothing to do with them. My partner is the same, so it's never been a particularly big issue for us. We just don't go to places where there are likely to be kids, and everyone is happy. Do I expect that in some public places there will probably be children sometimes? If it's an appropriate venue, yeah I just have to deal with it.