Twins through surrogacy - so he doesn't get lonely in old age

[OhHolyJesus]

Saw this and felt a bit ill. Kids for the single man who doesn't want to die alone. He should have got a dog.

He had said, "The only thing that gets me worried is ageing alone and not having a family to lean on when I’m physically invalid. So, that's my biggest fear in life, loneliness. I've thought about getting a dog or a child. Those are my two options. It sounds retarded but it’s true and I’ve been discussing it for a while. I think that's what I need because I don’t have a relationship."

It's very a short article but the comment about being a better filmmaker is a bit weird. Children can inspire you but kids are exhausting. I suppose he has a nanny, or two, on a low wage.

www.dnaindia.com/bollywood/report-wayback-wednesday-when-karan-johar-worried-about-ageing-alone-and-not-having-a-family-to-lean-on-2823781

Yeah. The trouble is, the baby you commission is a person, not a car or a hoover, and tends to have its own mind, life, plan and issues. You can't be certain you've commissioned a model that for example will be fully functioning and neurotypical, nor that it sees its purpose in life as prioritising providing you with leaning support.

It used to be that rich people could hire servants from the poverty stricken end of the market to do this kind of thing. Now they can hire those same people to actually breed them.

"It sounds retarded"?!

Not all languages find 'retarded' as offensive as the U.K.

His attitude seems pretty offensive, but perhaps just clumsily phrased. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Many people would admit to having a child because they want a family, someone who loves them, someone to love...

For me it was a huge (hormonal?) drive. I'm not convinced that's a better reason, tbh. I mean, I've been a committed mother, worked hard at it and they both turned out really well, but it was essentially an overwhelming need to have children.

Not all languages?! It's the same language. Perhaps you mean not all countries/cultures?!

Whether American or British English, it's offensive.

But then his selfish desire to use a surrogate is also offensive.

Ugh. So he's basically paying someone to breed carers for him?

That's absolutely disgusting.

Emma, he's a Bollywood film maker, I have no idea what his first language would be, whether he was interviewed in English or translated into English.

And different regional forms of English attach different weights to words. American English seems to use retarded far more than British English. In 'Singlish', the word shit is totally neutral and inoffensive.

I'm just pointing out that we can't really interpret his tone that well.

I agree, it's an unpleasant position he takes.

That is unbelievably vile. Literally purchasing people for your own use.
Horrible fucker.

There is a long tradition of adoption around the world. Some of the Roman emperors were adopted. Often this was adoption of compatible child, or an adult, apprenticed to the older adult. This happens today. My dmil, with no expectation of her sons having children, earned her own grandchildren, providing care to a young woman who needed her. That’s two children calling her grandma, that she deserves.
This man commissioned twins, and paid.

Wow, so that's how you solve the care crisis. Pay someone to have a couple of kids for you.

Wonder which one will be wiping his arse when he's old? The boy twin or the girl? Hmmm.

I wonder if either of them will stick around to be his carer when he's old? He seems to think that as he's bought them; they're his to do as he pleases with.
They might be of a different opinion when they grow up.

...or learn to read.

...or learn to read
God, yes . Imagine having that out there for them to find, which they will, sooner or later.
He really doesn't seem to grasp that they are actual people, does he?

He really doesn't seem to grasp that they are actual people, does he?

It's not even just that he thinks that, it's also that he is happy to say it! So convinced is he of his entitlement, he imagines that sentiment will get him a happy landing.

And, he might well be right. Horrifying.

Enslaving a woman to breed more slaves for him. Vile.

Well you can buy sentiment. You can buy hand crafted, commissioned kids apparently.

What you can't do is have them pre programmed. If, for example, one of the commissioned twins turns out to be severely disabled and in need of lifetime care, and the other one has a very non-carer type personality, spends their whole childhood fighting with you and intends to leave uni and go be an astrophysicist, I think you can whistle for your pre planned, paid for care. You can't exactly sue them for failure to fulfil the contract when you commissioned them.

This is one of the many reasons why making humans bought commodities is a really bad idea.

Enslaving a woman to breed more slaves for him. Vile.

This is exactly what it is. It's mind blowingly barbaric.

I am anti-surrogacy, and his way of talking about this is weird to me.

But I am not sure how much of that is cultural programming. I think it's factual that historically, children being there to care for elders was an element in people having children that was often much more explicit than it is for us. And that at the same time, it does not seem to have meant that people did not really love their children as persons. There was a greter sense of duty to parents and elders in general.

We don't really see that now in our culture so much - we think it's more loving to want kids just for themselves. Yet that sometimes seems to translate to seeing them as a sort of lifestyle choice or even a consumer choice for adults who can afford them.

I also wonder about the extent to which we are only able to think this way because we have depersonalised eldercare to such an extent by making it part of pension schemes, the duty of the state, and paid care. In a real way elders are still cared for by younger people but not always directly their own. Which has advantages, but some real disadvantages too. There are elderly people in care who have no one to come visit them, who really are alone. And as we've seen recently, a lot of elder care in institutions is not what it should be and that may be connected to the fact that we have commercialised it and don't have to get to close to it.

Just been following a thread of Ukrainian surrogate babies languishing in hospital (all taken away from birth mums) because borders closed so they buyers couldn’t pick up their goods. Lord only knows what will happen to these mites.

There was a link to the site of the company that organises all this. My god it was like looking at some sci-fi film - created lives for sale.

Just been following a thread of Ukrainian surrogate babies languishing in hospital (all taken away from birth mums) because borders closed so they buyers couldn’t pick up their goods. Lord only knows what will happen to these mites.

1. Karan Johar is gay and living with his partner (possibly husband) in Mumbai. He has never officially come out due to anti-gay sentiment across the middle east and Asia (the market for his films) but it’s an open secret. So he probably had kids like anyone else - because he wanted a family.
2. Karan Johar is very sarcastic and the comment about looking after him in old age would have been just that (he has previously said he wanted the good karma of giving a daughter away in marriage / continuing the family line - which are all Hindu concepts). Nobody asks a married Indian man / woman why they had kids, but it’s still not considered socially unacceptable for a single person to have them and so a reason must be given.
3. Surrogacy in India is part of the Hindu religion and features in many ancient stories, and has always been considered socially acceptable for married people.
4. Elder care for a rich person like Johar would be very different in India. When the time comes he’ll probably get a suite at the Taj or whichever of his mansions his son lives in, a team of doctors and nurses, and his family would only need to fulfil the social demands of care.

This kind of attitude is extremely common in many cultures. The expectation that children will care for their parents in old age (no matter how vile) they’ve been is often backed up by threats of disinheritance. My mother would often refer to the money that she spent on me as an investment (in the expectation that it would increase my earning potential and result in a better standard of living for her in her old age). It turned out I was a bad investment. Not that I have poor earning potential, sue just never saw any of the money. Always read the fine print when making financial decisions folks.

The twins were born in Mumbai so I guess he must have had a female relative have the children for him as commercial surrogacy is banned but also banned for single people too so I think blind eyes have been turned to laws only passed a couple of years ago. He is also not infertile:

In December 2018, after almost two years of debate, an Indian surrogacy law was passed that:
• Made commercial surrogacy illegal
• Only allows altruistic surrogacy for needy, infertile Indian couples
• Requires intended parents to be married for five years and have a doctor’s certificate of their infertility
• Restricts women to being surrogates only once, and only if they are a close relative of the intended parents, are married and have a biological child
• Bans single parents, homosexuals and live-in couples from surrogacy

That's interesting context, Grumpy.

I've just watched Nest. I was already against surrogacy, and Nest has led DH to agree with me.