Is the Child Free movement anti-feminist?

[GothAnneGeddes]

Not sure how to word this, but while I absolutely agree that there is nothing wrong with not wanting children, this whole idea of a movement (with a lot of men in it) that seems to despise mothers and children with a visceral repulsion and also encourage women to remove their reproductive organs is very unsettling.

What do you think?

I said (twice) that those forums members look mentally ill to me because I've read them. I likened them to the anorexia forums, which I've also read. In both cases there's an overwhelming hatred of the female body, its natural softnesses and its reproductive functions. Such hatred, in a woman, is mentally ill because the woman is reviling basic qualities of her own body and identity.

I am childless. I've said I resent the social exclusion and public interference that comes with my dependent-free state. I've agreed there is too little discussion about this, and also that there's too little about social categorisations of women by marital & reproductive status. Please don't make it look as though I said I think childfree women are all mentally ill, or that it's mad to want to discuss one's childfree condition.

Not directly relevant, but can I briefly climb on one of my soapboxes here?

nobody needs to die of the diseaes of malnutrition any more; every year untold millions of people do just that

The malnutirion that kills millions is rarely caused by lack of food. It's caused by lack of micro-nutrients. You can be fat and malnourished. To be fair to the multinationals, many of them do add vitamins & minerals to the foods they export (including baby feed) and are investing in bio-engineering to develop staple grains that provide a greater range of nutrients.

Poor quality food and water is a bigger problem than insufficient quantity. Please bear this in mind when supporting food missions.

Thankee.

SGM!

We may have to disagree on the mental illness issue - mental illness being a social construct and all that - but it's certainly true that a great many male woman-haters are attracted to things like this. And get some kind of kick out of persuading women to hate themelves that much.

There's a persistent sound coming from the fashion industry - though it's very quiet, due to commercial muffling - of fashion workers complaining that the skeletal body ideal is imposed by male designers, who only really like the bodies of very young men. Wonder if there's a related motive to the 'breeder-haters'?

Towards the end of my wedding, my noncommital smile had turned into a snarl when yet another well-wisher asked me when we were starting a family! Poor Princess Kate, she's got the whole world asking her

Re the gay women's-body-hating fashion designers, the thing is,
an emaciated, starving woman's body doesn't really resemble a healthy muscle-bound young man's body. So I wonder about that one.

Women are not just mothers and until we are respectred for being women first and foremost, we will continue to be second-class citizens

Oh I disagree with this. You're saying we have to be defined in relation to men, according to how men see the world, before we can have any value. Motherhood, though not compulsory to womanhood, is an intrinsic part of womanhood. TO separate the two is folly. The most brilliant feminist minds, most of whom were childless, pointed this out.
You are talking about fighting for the right for women to be divorced from their sex, to dissasociate from our sex first and be respected as wombed creatures second . As de Beauvoir said, women are still the second sex but we have now earned the right to disassociate ourselves from it. Liberation ain'T going to happen that way because the desire to separate our wombs from our personhood is buying into male terms of what constitutes a human being.

To say that motherhood is an intrinsic part of womanhood suggests that unless you are a mother, you are not "whole" as a woman. For women who choose to be childless, being a mother is not an essential part of being a woman, although I can see that a woman who wants to have children, but can't for whatever reason, may disagree.

I'm getting uncomfortable with this. Would you mind if I rephrase your last sentence, SGM?
It starts from the perspective that women have value because we are people; not for our wombs.

"To make it the primary reason for respect, is to leave out huge numbers of women who are not mothers."

Don'T be ridiculous Where did I say it should be the primary reason for respect? I've repeatedly said that the most brilliant feminists, those deserving of the most respect for their work ever: VIrginia WOolf, Mary Daly, Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin are childless

I've never said women should be defined solely as mothers either. That's a male POV.

I've said that divorcing our potential to give birth, our life creating potential, from our personhood (whether we choose to have children or not, whether we are able to have children or not) will never be the route to liberation. We must incorporate our image of ourselves as the bearers of life, and expect men to respect us on our terms
Saying to men, "oh we can do everything you can,see, but we can have children too" is a no go, because you're defining women in relation to men.

Ahem. I am a female person!! By suggesting that "I am a person" is tantamount to saying "I'm a man", do you not think you might be succumbing to the patriarchal value you reject?

This might look different to women who are mothers -- i dunno, I'm not a mother. But I'm starting to feel very, very uncomfortable here

garlicbutter - I'm sorry but I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Why don't you want to be defined as a woman but are happy to be defined as a female person?

I do not "have value" because I'm a woman, unless you exepct me to say that men have less value. I'm a valid, worthwhile human being - and so is that man over there.

That's entirely different from saying I don't want to be defined as a woman, which is bollocks. Of course I'm defined as a woman, I've got the bits & stuff (well, most of them.)

That was in reply to SGM above: No, I meant we have value because we are women. Men already have value for being men and women are treated as second-class citizens. I am saying our sex/ gender is important but that we deserve equal value and not simply for being people.

I'm perfectly happy to have value for "simply" being people. I find it exraordinary that anyone doesn't, unless they're either a male supremacist bastard or a female supremacist ... well.

I can't tell whether you're asking me to believe I can only be a person if I deny my gender, or that men don't think they're people, or that a mother is a superior kind of woman who transcends humanity. I'm not sure you want me to believe any of the above, but you've lost me if not.

Keep bringing what up over & again? [confuded]

You said: we have value because we are women; not for our wombs

I asked if I could rephrase that as "we have value because we are people."

You took issue with that, for reasons I'm still trying clarify. In your explanation, you said we have value because we are women

I've tried to point up that my value is not due to my gender!
It still looks to me that you were suggesting human value must be gender-based (I realise it's impossible you think that) but am still completely stymied as to what you mean by saying I'm not a person or am more of a woman than a person, or something ...?

we deserve equal value and not simply for being people
... can you really not see why I'm confused?

Am also most mystified by "keep bringing this up over and over again", not to mention my supposed insistence that someone has said men have less value than women.

Odd

At the risk of rerailing the thread I do think that considering the raving screaming nutjobs on some of those fora as representatives of the whole childfree 'movement' is along the lines of saying that all feminists are lesbians or all Muslims are bound to be in mourning for Osama or something. Every movement or alternative viewpoint attracts bucketheads. And there have always been strands of the childfree movement who do not hate women at all and do have a feminist perspective: as others have pointed out, a woman who is choldfree by choice gets loads of shit on a daily basis, concescension, intrusive questioning and outright abuse, so there is bound to be some resentemtn and indeed some of the posters on the childfree fora are just enjoying the opportunity to vent unreasonably.
Because motherhood is revered by the partirachal society. That doesn't mean they support mothers in any way, or want to give them any practical help, they just say motherhood is sacred so you can't criticize it or ask for aspects of it to change for the actual benefit of mothers, or anything...

Phew, thanks for that SGB! What you said.

SGM: I think you know how well aware I am of existing power imbalances between men & women on a personal, communal, national, worldwide and even spiritual level. It feels odd that you seem to be suggesting I don't.

I still don't know why you took issue with my saying women have value because we are people, but given that we're both human and both women (and that Lois Griffin is my favourite cartoon character), perhaps we'd better just settle that your identity is woman first, person second, and I do the reverse for mine.

I'm confused by this entire conversation. I can't separate myself off into woman and person. I am always a woman.

SGB, do you have any links to a representative child-free movement website. I've had a look but all I can find are broken links and webpages of people who don't like the child-free movement.