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?

Now your just talking about could bes/would be's/maybe's as though it's fact, thing is neither of us know what might of happened. We do know whoever know what did happen and we are benefiting from the developments of people in the past now.

To write off all developments that have had male input just because it had male input is bizarre to say the least. Especially since many of those developments save lives or improve the quality of life so much better than it was in the past.

There has never been some golden age where everything was perfect people have struggled always and they have tried to minimise that. When people were making all these things they didn't know that it would damage the planet it's only after that people realised but by then the product is already incoperated into society.

If salt/cigarettes were discovered today it would be a banned substance because of the numerous health complications it causes. Banning it now though wouldn't work and would probably piss off loads of people.

You talk about Oil yet oil is what keeps the world functioning at the moment, imagine it just disappeared right now what would happen. No power, no transport, without transport how will food/medicines be transported to where people need it there isn't enough space everywhere to make loads of farms where the people are living.

i can't imagine why feminists get accused of being man-haters. no, really.

some of you need to get a grip.

this thread has really shocked me, actually. so many times we ponder why women are put off feminism, and apparently can't understand it at all.

well, y'know, as a pretty committed feminist, i'm beginning to see their point about the man-hating thang!

not all tanker designers build tankers that leak. some tankers leak. to link that into a patriarchal plot to destroy the world is a tad too bonkers for my tastes, whether you choose to call that cognitive dissonance or not.

i maybe have a closer grip on the understanding of causation.

nobody is denying patriarchy. and nobody is denying some pretty awful things have happened which have been at the hands of men. nobody is even denying that if women were involved some of them might have been averted.

but to wrap everything up neatly into a conspiracy theory doesn't really beckon the crowds to the cause imo. not the more rational ones anyway.

(oo, there we go again, reason is a pretty patriarchal construct, isn't it? no. reason was attributed as a male characteristic by men to denigrate women, but women are equally capable of it too - i'd take it over hysteria any day)

ok. happy to disagree.

was thinking more of the whole enlightenment thing - and women being hysterical/ men being the voice of reason. probably got the terminology wrong.

but sakura did say 'men as a group are out to kill all life on the planet.'

the 'out to' suggests deliberation. intent.

that's what i'm vehemently disagreeing with.

and we have no way of knowing whether a female tanker designer would have produced a similarly flawed design.

it's the deliberation i'm referring to.

but i'll take my pathetic men's rights activist brand feminism outta this here thread, before (imvho) i have a hand in putting off any more women from the feminist cause.

it's obviously way over my pretty little head to even begin to understand the obvious fact that men are out to destroy the world. deliberately.

and clearly not bright enough to bother formulating an argument. or getting to grips with logic.

whatever.

I occasionally watch Mathew Wright in the mornings - ch5 9.15am, who is voiciferous in his anti-child views and can often be found ranting about 'breeders' etc.
I often wonder how he justifies accepting the services of other peoples children ie the Dr, the Dentist, the Police, Ambulance etc. All the people who have been born to and parented by the 'breeders' he seems to despise.
He objects to his taxes funding education and yet he neglects to mention how he benefits from this education every minuete of every day.
Perhaps Mr Wright and his fellow believers should be dumped on an island and left to fend for themselves and become extinct - naturally

madwomanintheattic

"the 'out to' suggests deliberation. intent.

that's what i'm vehemently disagreeing with."

If you look at before women had a vote. Why didn't men turn round and say "What are we thinking of? Of course women should have the vote. There you go."? They didn't though did they? Women had to fight to get the vote. It wasn't handed to us. That was a very deliberate intent on the part of men to keep women in their place. If it wasn't deliberate why didn't they just right the wrong when asked or even before being asked? Why did women have to die in order to get it?

The 'out to' comment was about men destroying life on this planet.

But they're not doing it entirely by accident are they?

Some of it must be intentional, by the law of averages.

You are probably right Ormirian. I had got the impression that madwomanintheattic didn't feel that men's intentions were ever deliberate towards oppressing women. But re-reading I think you are right she was just meaning the point about destroying the planet.

It's sort of reassuring in a way that the tinfoil-hat brand of feminism is alive and well. The illuminati are just giant penises, after all.

Ooops, sorry. Tinfoil hats are not worn by extreme feminists because tinfoil was invented By The Patriarchy. Maybe cowpat hats would do the trick.

Oh I'm quite aware that some people do dreadful things in the pursuit of profit or power, or because they reckon their imaginary friend told them to do it. But insisting that All Men want to destroy women, children and the world whereas All Women are nurturing empathetic wombs on legs is ridiculous.

I think that many people who belong to dominant groups deliberately behave in ways that reinforce their dominance and someone else's subordinate position all the time. I see it most clearly in the dominant groups I belong to; it is easier to see if you belong to the group because people are less likely to keep up the facade in your presence if you have membership of that group.

It isn't all about complex systems, capitalism or religion. It is very premeditated ways that huge swathes of people choose to behave because it personally benefits them (although there are pros and cons to the personal consequences of provoking misery in others, but people seem more capable of seeing the pros). Many dominant groups would collapse if their less influential members didn't keep propping up the dominance with everyday acts.

And in a lesser way, many people don't challenge what they see happening every time it happens. I know I don't, because often the costs of challenging something, even within your own group, are huge.

So a lot of it is not the 'system' - it is ordinary people being hateful in a very ordinary way.

If men hold all the strings of power and the are hellbent on destroying the earth they are doing a singularly bad job at it.

Some of them fought against Hitler (I guess they didn't get the memo?). The ones doing using the oil tankers to sytematically pollute the seas seem quite incompetent at sinking them. The ones in medicine seem to getting worse at letting disease desimate the population as the years go by.

Ah well, our sons, fathers, boyfriends, husbands, colleagues and friends may all be evil maniacs working on a dastardly mission to destroy the world, but at least they are not evil geniuses or we'd really have to get worried.

The latest I read was that the earth is going to recover from global warming in a fairly short time scale, in terms of historical climatic fluctuation. It is a longer time scale than is meaningful to humanity, but still, we are only at real risk of destroying our own species, not the entire planet (unless there is a nuclear war).

I was unaware though, that more people have access to adequate medical care than in previous generations. I was under the impression that more people globally were dying of treatable conditions now, so I'm pleased to hear that is not the case. It is nice to hear some good news for a change.

missing the point as usual HImalaya. I am talking about the fact that men are incompetent at running the world. This is a proven fact. To say otherwize is cognitive dissonance.

The sooner the patriarchy falls the better it will be for women, children, all life on the planet, lesbians and gays, trans women and anyone else who is suffering from the fucked up way men go about abusing their power.

CAn we have this revolution already?