Dak
mentat
I'm guessing that Tweeter has never been known as someone who is "compliant". She's accurate about women like her burning the country to the ground though.
If Mort Divine ruled the world
- Thread starter Zephyrus
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Einherjar86
Active Member
I take it you feel that this description of women's liberation is far from caricature. If that's the case, do you actually believe it's a widespread cultural problem? i.e. that women's liberation will lead to the sterility of humankind? I'm asking because I apparently live in the hotbed of women's liberation, yet most of my female friends have married men and plan to have children. It's neither my experience nor my intellectual opinion that women's liberation means liberation from biology; so I'm curious what value you perceive in a comment like this.
Dak
mentat
Anecdotes are sometimes valid references. Not in the case of TFR. TFR in the West is almost entirely if not entirely subreplacement. While 3rd world TFR is still high and the population exploding, global TFR is projected to drop below replacement by the end of the century. I believe this to be wishful thinking, while I do think the total population will start to drop due to 3rd world populations being unable to maintain necessary resource extraction/production/logistic systems necessary to support ongoing population growth. Current systems and technologies are too complex for ~90% of the population to comprehend, much less manage, and that goes to 99.99+% of the 3rd world population.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Abortion and contraceptives are literal interruptions of, and thus liberation from, the biological process. The pill was revolutionary for women in that it liberated them from the biological process in the 1960's.
If you consider that a good amount of the inequality women have faced was justified biologically by societies, "women are weaker, therefore" etc, liberation from biology makes a lot of sense. This has also lead to progressive women wanting transwomen to be treated like actual women, to TERFs being treated like the devil because they hold a biological standard for what is a woman, for transmen (who have vaginas) being sent to prison with actual men, lesbians being shamed into having sex with transwomen (who have penises) and demanding that transwomen be allowed to fight or compete against actual women in sports.
In some cases the liberation from biology has been noble, in other cases they have simply liberated themselves from reality.
Dak
mentat
Einherjar86
Active Member
Dak
mentat
Subreplacement fertility is species sterility, just not right this second. Act like you've got that brain you have. Relatedly, the planet isn't even remotely overpopulated - relative to the quality of the population. If the population is all Dirtworlders who can't escape the Malthusian trap, then by 2100, it might be overpopulated.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I'm sorry, overpopulation is the wrong word. I'm not sure what the right word is; but I mean one could argue the world is overpopulated if said population requires industry to sustain them that simultaneously contributes to anthropogenic climate change.
On a different note, it sounds to me like combating sub replacement fertility rates means depriving individuals of personal livelihood. At least, that's what's happening in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, etc. They're effectively taking steps to force women to have children. I don't believe species replacement is worth forcing women to have children.
On a different note, it sounds to me like combating sub replacement fertility rates means depriving individuals of personal livelihood. At least, that's what's happening in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, etc. They're effectively taking steps to force women to have children. I don't believe species replacement is worth forcing women to have children.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
> "They're effectively taking steps to force women to have children"
> "It's neither my experience nor my intellectual opinion that women's liberation means liberation from biology"
> "It's neither my experience nor my intellectual opinion that women's liberation means liberation from biology"
Einherjar86
Active Member
I take issue with your phrase "freedom from biology," but didn't feel like getting into a little semantic pissing match.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
Sorry, "liberation from biology"--but it means the same thing. To be liberated from something means to be freed from it.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
It's not my phrase though, it's from the Tweet Dak shared that you then commented on, repeating the phrase, so I'm just playing into that conversation here. To allow women to intervene in the biological process ("family planning") is essentially to be liberated from biology, because the alternative is to be enslaved to a biological process of procreation (like an animal).
Not sure why you would be bothered by such a phrase.
Not sure why you would be bothered by such a phrase.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Again, I apologize, I'm just trying to avoid writing long responses because I don't want to spend time responding to others' responses to my long posts.
I take issue with the phrase "liberation from biology," as it's used in the original tweet and as it's continuing to be used. Every technology created liberates us from our biology. That's the point of technology. It's curious to me that our politics routinely demonizes birth control technologies while ignoring erectile disfunction medication.
The experience of selfhood isn't reducible to biology. There's nothing bad about technology that allows us to circumvent biological constraints. I know you've said that liberation from biology can be noble; in the case of birth control, it is.
I take issue with the phrase "liberation from biology," as it's used in the original tweet and as it's continuing to be used. Every technology created liberates us from our biology. That's the point of technology. It's curious to me that our politics routinely demonizes birth control technologies while ignoring erectile disfunction medication.
The experience of selfhood isn't reducible to biology. There's nothing bad about technology that allows us to circumvent biological constraints. I know you've said that liberation from biology can be noble; in the case of birth control, it is.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I agree on both. What I was trying to point out with my initial response to you was that you're missing the point of women's liberation if you think saying it was more a liberation from biology than men is incorrect.
On the one hand you say; "most of my female friends have married men and plan to have children" and then immediately go on to say "it's neither my experience nor my intellectual opinion that women's liberation means liberation from biology" when we both know that "plan" in this context involves methods that are synonymous with being liberated from biology via technology. It's surely not "planning" in the religious sense of abstaining from intercourse until you're ready to be pregnant and carry to term.
It doesn't mean that biology evaporates, it just means that the biological processes can be manipulated in ways that allow women to not stay shackled to a birthing bed.
Sorry for derailing and unnecessarily pressuring you to respond, but I can't understand how you don't see your own contradiction here. A married couple "planning" to have kids someday is liberation from biology in practice.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I see what you mean; that's a great point. And I didn't see that as a contradiction because I assumed that planning to have children in the future was still performing a biological function. But you're right, the planning in and of itself is a form of liberation.
I think my issue can be summed up as follows. The original tweet is insinuating that birth control is an undesirable form of liberation from biology because it's imposing sterility "upon the whole of humanity." So the implied argument seems, to my eyes, to be that birth control methods are bad elements of women's liberation because they allow women to avoid their biological responsibility to procreate (or something of the sort). I was confused because I didn't (and don't) see how simply postponing childbirth to a future date is circumventing childbirth (entirely, that is).
But again, you're right that even being able to plan ahead, so to speak, is due to technological advances.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
The real downside I see to liberation from biology via technology is that we are slowly becoming more and more detached from our decisions.
I'm not really sure how to take that Tweet. On one hand I agree that women's liberation wasn't from men but biological processes that had shackled them to a singular kind of existence for a lot of human history, on the other hand I don't really even necessarily care if this technological liberation renders mankind sterile in the sense that given this new freedom, women will choose to have less and less kids, essentially rendering mankind as a non-reproductive species.
I may not be a Malthusianist but I'm also not a biological determinist, and part of me wonders whether this sterility referenced to won't leave room for another species to rise. I dunno, but breeding just for its own sake seems ridiculous to me, especially if we're talking about a sterility that won't truly impact the human species for thousands of years.
According to the IUCN, an endangered species is one that meets any one of the following criteria: a 50–70% population decrease over 10 years, a total geographic area less than 5,000 km2 (or local population area less than 500 km2), a population size less than 2,500 adults, a restricted population of 250 adults, or a statistical prediction that it will go extinct within the next 20 years.
I think we'll be fine.
I'm not really sure how to take that Tweet. On one hand I agree that women's liberation wasn't from men but biological processes that had shackled them to a singular kind of existence for a lot of human history, on the other hand I don't really even necessarily care if this technological liberation renders mankind sterile in the sense that given this new freedom, women will choose to have less and less kids, essentially rendering mankind as a non-reproductive species.
I may not be a Malthusianist but I'm also not a biological determinist, and part of me wonders whether this sterility referenced to won't leave room for another species to rise. I dunno, but breeding just for its own sake seems ridiculous to me, especially if we're talking about a sterility that won't truly impact the human species for thousands of years.
According to the IUCN, an endangered species is one that meets any one of the following criteria: a 50–70% population decrease over 10 years, a total geographic area less than 5,000 km2 (or local population area less than 500 km2), a population size less than 2,500 adults, a restricted population of 250 adults, or a statistical prediction that it will go extinct within the next 20 years.
I think we'll be fine.
Dak
mentat
It isn't circumventing it entirely (well, until it is). Egg and sperm quality decline with age, and waiting until 30+ to have children leaves a narrow window for having children if you are still able to achieve pregnancy. So even if women decide they might want more than 1.7 children, they may be unable to.
The effect on the species will be much faster than thousands of years, because the ramifications extend beyond simply "less people are being born now than before."
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
Your main concern is isolated to what you perceive as the sub replacement fertility rates of educated, well-to-do families--hence your earlier comment about "quality of population."
If that's your concern, then why is adoption not enough to boost its (let's say) reproductivity rate? It strikes me that simply having a child, whether biologically or through adoption, adds to the potential for future fertility.
Also, I should just say that I don't believe in reproduction for reproduction's sake, like CIG said--especially if it impacts people's personal livelihood.
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