The “don’t get pregnant” only applies to non-white women. White women must get a rich sugar daddy by the age of 16 (!), so they can start to churn out babies ASAP.
Double standards under conservative societies are not bugs, but features.
I have no problem with the "don’t get pregnant"s. I do have a problem with the “Quick Get Pregnant!!” It’s essential both to treat people kindly and also to prevent them making irreversible, resource-extensive mistakes.
A lot more fun is dealing with this as a can’t get pregnant couple.
We’re a never pregnant by choice couple is and it’s a non-stop onslaught of “you’ll change your minds.”
We won’t. It’s been many years and we have no interest. Doesn’t stop friends/family/strangers asking about it constantly.
We enjoy our disposable income, free time, and naps without alarms. I show up to work well rested everyday surrounded by coworkers we’re are exhausted, overextended, and barely getting by. Not exactly the selling point people think it is.
My father’s counterpoint is asking who will take care of me in old age. I genuinely feel a degree of disgust knowing that reason played a decent part why he had children. Maybe he should have tried to be a better parent and spouse before thinking about that.
Edit: a letter.
I’m already exhausted overextended and barely getting by. How tf could I add a kid to that?
I think we will see a large US population decrease over our lifetime if the middle class continues to be squeezed.
The single income supporting - 4 kids, a house, cars, and annual vacations is a distant memory. We are firmly in a two-income economy without any pathways to affordable childcare or elder care. It is unlikely that we would ever sink our money into kids. We watched our parents have kids they couldn’t afford out of pressure from boomers. They now haven’t saved enough for retirement and likely will work until they die or be impoverished.
We’re already at population decreasing levels. We’re not Japan bad, but we’re bad.
My wife and I liked to commiserate about how she got these and I got “hurry and get someone, anyone pregnant” like we were not involved in the decision or process
How irresponsible, having a baby when you can’t provide for it and don’t have stable housing. How dare you?
How irresponsible, trying to improve your income and achieve stable housing instead of having a baby. How dare you?
Women are criticized no matter what decisions they make. This is a way that patriarchy reinforces itself.
Edit: relevant essay: https://www.sevanoland.com/uploads/1/1/8/0/118081022/there_is_no_unmarked_woman.pdf
It’s exhausting.
Yup. This is why I can’t tell if I’m trans or if I just want to be unmarked.
This really hits.
Like, ok, my OS didn’t ship with gender.exe, that’s an aftermarket DLC consisting of 95% cosmetic skins, and I’m busy trying to roll out kernel patches. Sorry about that! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I only run it to avoid social issues and/or because it’s the path of least resistance. And even then… I’ve only ever thought “I am doing A, B, & C, and avoiding X, Y & Z because they expect me to and it’s just easier”.
I know I don’t want to change my gender – there’s not much there to speak of in the first place. I simply want to do what I like. On the other hand, I know that this is “not normal” because most other guys seem way more attached to their gender, like it’s an existential threat to them if I cross an imaginary line while existing next to them. And they act compelled to know “what” other people are, as if they’ll implode because they won’t know how to be around them!
So the best thing for me to do is to get around people who care about other people LARPing at gender just as much as I do.
(To be clear, I have absolutely no problems with anyone else wearing the gender layers of their choice, and wearing them proudly. As long as they’re not an asshole. I actually kinda envy this, because for me it’s like wearing a parka in a hot car. Changing its color won’t do anything, I actually just don’t even want it, I want to live my life without carrying around these heavy rulesets for what color my shoes need to be. LMAO, hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Oh damn I’m the same way, but female. I just figured it was all the body trauma from my body betraying me by bleeding everywhere, forced pelvic exams to get birth control, chronic pelvic pain and compulsory sex.
I just want to do what I want to do, which doesn’t involve bleeding out so I can go swimming, being able to enjoy sex without fear of UTI or pregnancy, and just being allowed to exist like before puberty when I felt like a human.
I don’t care what pronouns people use for me. I’d transition as an excuse to get rid of these cursed organs. I don’t really care how people perceive me.
I think it’s a type of agender called cassgender, when you just don’t care.
In my case though I don’t know if it’s because the trauma has made me entirely disconnect from all that and just left me indifferent.
Yeah, I feel similarly. I would very much just like to be seen as a robot/friendly ungendered alien by society. I’m happy wearing super gendered lingerie when I feel it’s called for, but that’s private. I’m also happy wearing a binder at home, but don’t want to wear one in public.
Unfortunately, the least gendered choice is sometimes the most marked. Like, I would have had to answer a question about it every time someone saw a wedding photo of me if I’d worn a suit, so I wore a dress. I didn’t care much, and it was so much easier to just go along with expectations.
From what you described, it sounds like you may be agender, ie don’t have a gender. Not that you have to use a label or anything, but if you want to explore it further, it might help too know what to look up ;)
Have you heard of maverique? That might be you. https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Maverique
I learned something new today! Thank you for linking this!
No prob. I did a bunch of flags for pride month, so I only just learned it, too.
I suspect there’s pressure from peer women too. Are there any non-partriarchal societies to check for it?
I don’t know of nonpatriarchal societies, but there have always been women who enforce patriarchy. Consider, for example, “tradwife” influencers. Or look at the moms who let their sons get away with murder with a “boys will be boys” while reprimanding their daughters for not being responsible.
The Jewish culture is semi-matriarchal
Documentary about Jewish women trying to divorce their husbands.
emphasis on the “semi”
there’s still a lot of male privilege and overt male control
Do jewish matriarchs demand children from their daughters / daughters-in-law ?
The Internet doesn’t give me a definite answer on that matter 😔
They absolutely do
Generally, yes. There is pressure from older generations regardless.
I got a hysterectomy last summer and now people don’t ask me about kids much anymore. People who don’t know me well think that I am upset over losing my ability to reproduce. The people I know well know that I had a small party after I got rid of my reproductive organs. I had a custom cake made and everything.
10/10 best medical decisions I’ve ever made for myself
My wife had a hysterectomy due to extreme endometriosis a few years ago. We had a Yeeterus party. Our friend made a uterus shaped piñata to bash.
I hesitate to ask what prizes were inside the piñata.
Just regular candy…
Missed a chance
Cream pies
Swedish fish
I’d do a search for reproductive organ candy, but I really don’t need that in my history. Or my eyeballs.
I’m not sure if a king cake would have been appropriate here. Fortunately they’re shitty cakes in addition to being a dental hazard.
Someone asked us if we’re planning kids at some party recently and some other friend quickly said “you shouldn’t ask questions like that, it’s rude. you don’t know what people could be going through”. The other person simply said “you’re right” and moved on.
People are slowly learning.
Asking people if they’re planning to have kids is like asking an unemployed person if they’ve found a job yet.
I’m sure it must be great not having to deal with your body beating itself up for not getting pregnant that month. It might be invasive and feel free not to answer but im curious, have you noticed any other improvements or issues since then?
18-20 is the typical age for the most healthy children, and lowest maternal problems. At the same time, economic health doesn’t peak until well into the 40s.
It makes for a social tug of war thats never easy to handle.
When society and biology don’t align, we get a birthrate crisis.
Who could’ve ever predicted making it very hard financially to be young person and making it practically impossible to buy a house and start a family would mean people stop having families /s
Okay, according to wikipedia
as it’s my favourite source for lazy researchin 2024 we had 132 million/year births and it says currently (whatever it means, I should probably read the source book but have no time) we have 63 million deaths per year.Where is the crisis exactly?
My parents had children they couldn’t actually afford, so they spent most of their time at work instead of raising us. Somehow, they expect me to be grateful to them for not being there and for bringing me into slave world.
I wish I hadn’t been born.
Same, but I went another way with it. I decided to have kids and be a better parent than them. Since my brother didn’t have kids I was able to break the cycle and put better people into the world than my parents did.
If we don’t try to put better and smart people out there then we are destined to fulfill Mike Judges prophecy.
I love kids, being a parent was the only “dream” I was really sure of when I was younger. But I can barely afford to support myself, and as a woman in my upper-30s I can see the door of opportunity closing rapidly.
Thankfully, not all is lost. Working in education means I get to do my part to “put better and smart people out there” without having my own kids. It still hurts that I can’t have the life I wanted, but at least I have the ability to positively influence future generations.
Adoption can still be an option, maybe?
I don’t think that their problem is not being able to reproduce, it’s that they don’t have enough money to afford life if they have children.
The “door of opportunity closing rapidly” in the upper thirties suggests she’s worried she won’t be able to afford kids before she’d have trouble with pregnancy.
Which, yeah, adoption or fostering could address part of that - but some people also want to experience the biological part of that process, and it sucks when they don’t really get that choice
Idiocracy?
Edit: Idiocracy.
My parents had children they couldn’t actually afford, so they spent most of their time at work instead of raising us.
This is the reality for most people. I’m sorry they couldn’t spend more time with you.
Yeah but imagine if we lived in a society where they could afford to have to and had time to raise you, that would’ve been pretty cool eh?
I prefer to focus on reality. Abuse has been normalized and things need to change. Others have it worse than I do. There are more victims every day.
Recently, when I went to the doctor, the nurse was going to take my blood pressure. I told the nurse it was going to be high, because the waiting room had a child having a meltdown, and a guy blasting what to me sounded like porn from his speaker.
The nurse zeroed in on the kid having a meltdown (not the kids fault at all, a five year old getting bloodwork done can be a nightmare, I know it) and this nurse started telling me anytime her kids acted up shed “pop them” right then and there and they behaved. Talked down on parents not doing this, and I just sat there in shock, and then defended the kid.
Another parent in my neighborhood said to me so casually, yeah I hit him (his special needs son) but I gave him a choice, the belt or my hand, he made his choice. DCF(CPS) is involved with the dude, and I am just shocked he’s so open about beating his kid.
It’s diabolical out there.
Yikes! It is frightening how shameless some people are; proud, even.
When I was young, I decided I probably shouldn’t have kids. I figured that if my parents (who I loved and respected at the time) couldn’t raise me without so much pain and fear, I’d probably do an even worse job.
When I told my abusive mother this as an adult, she told me I did not actually have that thought. How convenient for her.
We no longer speak. 🥲
What birth rate crisis? It’s only a crisis for capitalism, that wants to expand exponentially, which is unsustainable. For humanity, less people means less impact on the environment allowing the human race to live longer and healthier lives. It would benefit us all having less people on this planet.
I mean I agree that we don’t need to keep growing our population. What I’m referring to is the many people my age (Gen z) who cannot, and likely will not be able to raise families ever despite wanting to.
The rate of the demographic collapse in places like South Korea is also guaranteed to cause significant social issues, like too many old people, not enough people to take care of them sort of social issues.
Careful, someone might call you an ecofascist for acknowledging that obvious reality…
It’s like clockwork - you can almost set your watch by someone responding like that to pointing out the obvious that human population is straining global resources and making life worse for everyone.
I like to phrase it as this: who is the ecofascist? The person advocating for sustainable human population, or the person telling everyone we need to tighten our belts, give up meat, eschew fossil fuels and personal transportation, and live like a pauper in a cheap cookie-cutter dystopian apartment complex to prevent overconsumption? I would argue it’s very much the latter.
Personal ethics aside (not everyone wants to eat meat and burn gas), everyone could live like a modern-day billionaire if there were fewer people. Everyone could have beachfront and slopeside property. Can’t do that with 8.3 billion people. Isn’t that the goal of fully-automated luxury gay space communism?
I mean, I’ve always said that the population is a real problem with no good solutions. People are uncomfortable talking about it because there are no good solutions, but that’s no reason to pretend it doesn’t exist. But people act like even mentioning it is the same as proposing or supporting an unethical solution.
Too many people are too brainwashed into that “do everything right now and fix everything right now because problems cannot be accepted” mentality which I blame on capitalism and the fast-paced modern lifestyle it imposes.
People treat me like I’m the one who’s wrong for being okay with a slower pace of life, for being okay for acknowledging problems without insisting on an urgent need to solve them all right now. Sometimes we need to just accept that there are problems, sometimes we need to stew in those problems because nothing can be done about them. But that’s so taboo these days that people won’t even consider it a possibility, they can’t comprehend someone who thinks like that, so they assume that I mean “no, we must solve these problems even though the only solutions would be evil.” That’s not what I mean at all.
In effect, it becomes taboo to even mention uncomfortable problems with no good solutions. Everyone wants to pretend they just don’t exist. That’s precisely what allows fascism to sneak in. People want to pretend everything is okay, and they’ll crucify the messenger who says “everything is not okay,” every time, until it’s too late and there are no messengers left, but the things they were trying to warn about have already become the new reality.
Some people get upset when you mention climate change. Some people get upset when you mention overpopulation. But these aren’t separate or mutually exclusive problems. They feed on each other, compound on each other in a feedback loop. They crash into each other violently.
Just as the world is struggling to maintain the balance of its delicate ecosystems, we’re increasing the load we’re placing upon it. That in turn accelerates the demise of those ecosystems.
Land becomes uninhabitable, glaciers melt and rivers dry up, sea levels rise, storms become more violent, coastal areas flood, rains become sporadic and erratic, arable land decreases, swaths of the globe bake. These things destabilize populations, give momentum to dictators, create resource wars, ethnic cleansings, displacements of people, mass migrations. People then coalesce in the most habitable regions, whose infrastructure and resources aren’t ready to handle the influx. This creates local pushback and empowers more dictators. All while powerful people accelerate global warming to try and mitigate the symptoms it’s causing, instead of addressing the underlying causes.
It’s all predictable. Scholars have been writing about this for decades. I remember reading about it in the early tens, long before we crossed the event horizon. People were warning about this every bit as much as they were warning about global warming.
It’s something that needs to be discussed. That doesn’t mean we need to enforce birth limits, or kill masses of people, or let them die by famine, plague, and war. But throughout history you can see that whenever the population began to strain the resources of the land that contained it, these things happened and the earth found ways to restore some balance.
People don’t like to think about that either, because they think we’ve conquered nature. We haven’t. We depend on nature, and we always will. Only now, there’s nowhere left to run. No new lands to expand to. No more new frontiers.
And the destruction is unprecedented, existential even. This is the first time we’ve strained the planet to the point where it itself might collapse.
And yet we still keep carrying on, pretending that’s not an issue.
Unless we find a way to colonize an earthlike planet, or a moon that contains water (maybe borrowing some oxygen from a gas giant like Jupiter), then I don’t see any ethical solutions to the population issue until the planet takes it into its own hands and we bring about our own extinction.
But even if we move to another planet or moon, isn’t that just a new place to exploit? Wouldn’t the population just keep growing, until it eventually strains those resources as well? Or would we be bringing life to an otherwise barren wasteland? Is that a moral quandary, or our inescapable destiny? Is that the purpose of life, to expand into new realms, just as the earliest microbes came to earth from far, far away?
Should we harvest iron from mars and use it to build space colonies at various lagrange points? Would that be exploiting the resources of mars, or is it just a dead planet with no claim to what it holds? Regolith from asteroids, hydrogen and oxygen from Jupiter. Are these resources there waiting for us to take hold of, or do they belong to something else? Can an inanimate object like a planet truly have a claim to those things?
Cutting to the core of the question, is it worth it to take advantage of those resources if it means saving the jewel of our solar system, the earth where life abounds (at least for now)?
Smart people stop having kids, let’s make a movie about it!
(I know IQ isn’t only genetic ofc.)
When society and biology don’t align, we get a birthrate crisis.
The birthrate “crisis” is also in large part due women’s access to contraception and control over when they have children and how many.
Even in Nordic gay space communist countries where all the needs of mothers are provided by the state, there is a birth rate crisis (met with immigration).
I think many of us uncomfortable with the dawning reality that achieving the replacement rate of humanity requires oppression of women. Bearing children is an enormous pain in the ass and without pressuring and grooming women into it, we don’t get to the maintenance target of 2.1 babies per woman.
There are probably ways societies could THEORETICALLY adjust to make child-bearing more emotionally attractive without social coercion, but, fuck, man, society can’t even maintain platonic friendships these days, how are we going to figure out how to have every woman average 2.1 babies?
People need to give up on the idea that the replacement rate needs to be met all the time, everywhere.
It is ok, and natural for populations to decrease intermittently.
We have too many people. We can’t find affordable homes for the people we do have. We can’t meet the energy demands of the people today, without borrowing from the well-being of our planet’s future.
People are correctly looking around at the world and deciding they don’t need to be bringing more people into this world as it currently stands.
Our system is simply not set up for declining populations.
I’d like to think the declining birth rates are a natural correction, and that with fewer people, real estate will come down, and tuitition will drop, etc., but I think the problem isn’t scare resources, it’s wealth inequality.
And if we decided to move back into liveable cities, we’d have plenty of resources.
Our system is not set up for anything other than to make the richest people richer, by exploiting the labour of the rest of the people.
Our real system, the closed system known as planet Earth is not set up for endless growth of a human economy. All populations go through growth and crash cycles. The longer we push off the decline, the harder the crash will be.
No doubt. Media is rich people propaganda 100%. If anyone has any economists speaking against perpetual population growth, let me know.
how are we going to figure out how to have every woman average 2.1 babies?
Taking away abortion rights and forcing women out of education and careers to stay home.
Well, that’s how they’re trying to do it in the US right now.
Yup. That’s exactly the play.
I was hoping for a more liberal-minded solution, but it probably requires radically smaller communal living, more intergenerational. Even if everything’s paid for, having two kids is a real sacrifice, but triply so if you’re living alone and your grandparents are dead and your parents live an hour away.
Also check out Britt Hartley’s video on Christian men. Religion is traditionally the place for women to have babies and be communal and shit but Christianity is so besotted with female oppression that the light is turning on in the minds of Christian women: Christian men are NOT safe partners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTCMbGBnDh8
And you’re absolutely right. The terrifying thing is that toopush women into having babies again–at least by force–you have to strip away 100 years of rights and close every avenue and loophole out to an independent life and an independent mind. Just banning abortion is not enough. You have to close schools, forbid employment, ban loans, etc.
Women, especially you majority-Trump-voting white women: take note.
It gets really frustrating seeing the conversations around falling birthrates. Everyone only wants to talk about the economy and social safety nets while ignoring the real driving cause - women’s rights.
This is a manufactured crisis in order to control women.
I think the crisis is as real as any crisis we’re currently ignoring. The left can use it to argue for their policies, and the right can use it to argue for theirs. Neither side is willing to let it go as long as it has political utility.
People have more babies when their economic needs are met.
Sure, but not enough. Would it be the worst thing in the world if people could continue the human race without working 120 hours a week? Nope! But it might not be enough to get 2.1.
It might not, but it might, but it also doesn’t matter because the birth rate is only important to capitalism
And everyone that lives under capitalism?
When I refer to the crisis the real crisis part of the crisis is not people who don’t want kids not having them, it’s people who DO want kids not having them.
Our governments should absolutely do more to support families.
I don’t think the birth rate is ever going to go back to earlier rates because when given the choice, women have less children than before and they give birth to their first children later in life. Women should maintain access to these rights over their own bodies and lives.
Support families and women because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’ll make women have more babies.
Birth rates are plummeting across most of the world, including more equal places. I believe some of the poorest countries continue to have higher birth rates.
That’s not to say there’s no economic component, but it’s clearly more complicated than that.
Yeah, a society that doesn’t take into account biology can’t possibly last. The hard discussion is that a lot of it is because we, as a modern society, expect certain things now: access to contraception is good, women having equal ability to enter college and employment is good.
But it’s unavoidable that when an increasingly large share of the population are getting established in their careers in their late 20s or early 30s, the window of time to date, marry, and start a family is so much shorter than it used to be. Add in increased housing and living costs, and the window gets even smaller. Also, heaven forbid any step in the process takes longer than planned…
Yeah, a society that doesn’t take into account biology can’t possibly last.
It is also important to take it into account in a positive way. In the ‘past’ women were disqualified for certain jobs because they might get pregnant and that would require giving them leave and that would cost the capitalist machine profits!
Sometimes I wonder if women’s lib was only successful because it happened to align with the capitalist desire to double the labor pool. Is that too cynical? Maybe we still would’ve gotten there otherwise.
It’s irritating that you used to be able to run a 2.4 children household on a male breadwinner, and now two incomes is often not enough. We’ve normalised everyone working and noone able to focus on home and the family.
I guess the idea of the “stay at home dad” didn’t take off enough to normalise a single worker after women were able to leave the house.
(I’m aware of the broad strokes hetronormative language here, but it’s relevant)
I guess the idea of the “stay at home dad” didn’t take off enough to normalise a single worker after women were able to leave the house.
Part of that is women’s wages didn’t rise to match men’s wages.
My understanding was that the best time for women to have children was between 20-30 years old, not 18-20.
From what I’ve read, 20-30 is when women have most of their eggs at the best quality, and have the lowest health risk in pregnancy.
Where does the 18-20 come from? Like I guess you’re most fertile at 20 but that’s the only metric I can see thats best at 20. Hell, a lot of sources even say you have the best chance of natural conception in your late 20s.
It comes from men being attracted to teenagers and wanting to justify the attraction.
There’s at least one man in this very thread defending this. That men arent predatory to impregnate teenagers because that’s when women are most fertile/have the healthiest babies.
Ugh that’s so fucking gross and literally not factual.
Any man interested in teens is 100% predatory and no amount of pseudoscience is gonna make up for the fact that
A) teens’ bodies are not equipped to carry a baby without complications
B) teens are not mentally equipped to be parents
C) they only like teens because they’re predators and teens are the only ones naive enough to fall for their shitty manipulation tactics.
teenagers
English isn’t my first language nor am I from Western country, so a question: 18 and 19 are also teenagers?
Yes.
From thirteen to nineteen they are teenagers.
Yes, “eighteen” and “nineteen”
They’re considered “teens” both linguistically and culturally?
Culturally they’re in a transitory stage. Legally adults, but they’re new to it and it’s frowned upon to sexually pursue them if you’re much older because they’re new to adulthood
Yes. 18 year olds are technically adults in the US, but that doesn’t mean their bodies can support and birth babies as well as when they’re older.
that doesn’t mean their bodies can support and birth babies as well as when they’re older
I think they are restricted in that regard biologically way less than psychologically.
Pregnancies in teenagers carry additional risk. The healthiest age range for women to be birthing babies is a little higher than 18-20. More like 20-30.
Yeah, I’m not sure why this person has so many upvotes while being so easily demonstrably wrong.
18-20 is not the “typical age for healthy children”, it’s in the oldest part of not being that and very youngest part of it. No one that young should have children anyway. Your, objectively wrong, view of this borders on very creepy.
I’ve heard the argument that it’s sexist or predatory or whatever, and often people say that 18-20 is still too young physically and carries risks. But if what you’re saying is true, then it contradicts that
Mhm, pushing that teenagers have the healthiest children and lowest maternal problems helps foster beliefs like this- that men significantly older than teenagers are not sexist or predatory for impregnating them. This is a comment from this very conversation thread.
In reality it’s around 25-30, especially with a younger father since paternal age also matters. It’s a pretty narrow window for the best possible outcomes for both the mother and child.
Well that is why the traditional family setup in many parts of the world used to be: marry young, have kids young, work your soul out while the grandparents raise the kids, repeat.
[off topic]
Old science fiction novel. “Podkayne of Mars” by Robert Heinlein.
In the future Martian colonial women are encouraged to get married young and have a bunch of kids. The children are placed in cryogenic stasis until the parents can afford to raise them.
Heinlein always had a knack of finding core societal issues as well as the most deranged solutions to them.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
My personal favorite is from his ‘Double Star.’ It’s never discussed in great detail, but the quick version is that voters get to choose what non-geographic community they live in.
Instead of picking your Member of Parliament based on your physical address, you can opt to be part of the community of ‘Farmers’ or ‘Teachers’ or ‘Military Veterans’ or ‘Gamers’ or ‘Soccer Moms.’
It would be cool if we changed society just a little to help with this.
Not so much that it affects the rich though. That would be asking too much.
I mean, sure, we could make the world a better place, but like six very rich guys would be sad so we can’t.
if woman didn’t date me for financial security they wouldn’t date me at all!
I meant more in the sense that we could tax the very rich and give everyone housing but Elon Musk wouldn’t be a trillionaire anymore so we can’t do that.
Problem is as fas as the rich are concerned, ANY change affects them.
Too young mentally as well. Which could be from society, but even in times where people were forced to be an adult early (working and having children), they did it from necessity and not because they were ready.
I have a cousin who had a baby at 14, back in like 2005.
Her life, uh, didnt turn out well.
The economy just plain doesn’t work
Is that why in the past women would marry men 10-20 years older than them? Theoretically the man would be established in a career and have the financial security, and the woman would have the health and energy for childbearing.
I’ve heard the argument that it’s sexist or predatory or whatever, and often people say that 18-20 is still too young physically and carries risks. But if what you’re saying is true, then it contradicts that
In the past women were forced to marry whoever wanted to claim her, be it an old man of wealth, or whoever her father wanted to “give her away to”.
I had a great uncle from PR who married my great aunt. My aunt died in her late 60’s. He, a 70 year old man, remarried right after. He traded a peer of his, his old farm truck to marry his 34 year old mentally challanged daughter. This was in like, 2003. Blew my mind. She was nice, but didnt want to be there.
Women have faught for our rights. In the days of old, we were sold like livestock to the highest bidder. There wasnt choice.
In some cases I’m sure that’s happened and that’s terrible, but let’s not pretend it was every marriage that ever happened until the twentieth century.
It was probably more common among upper-class where people married for alliances and influence. And there may have been / still be some cultures where it’s more common in general to have arranged marriages, but most of those these days at least require the agreement of both spouses. Not all, unfortunately, but the only way to stop that would literally be to colonize the whole world and enforce our own enlightened morality, and that would be hard to justify.
Trading a truck for a wife is wild though
deleted by creator
I’ve heard the argument that it’s sexist or predatory or whatever, and often people say that 18-20 is still too young physically and carries risks. But if what you’re saying is true, then it contradicts that
It’s not true.
This is missing a few regular Get pregnants before the end one.
Being a man is like:
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
QUICK GET HER PREGNANT!
GET HER PREGNANT NOOOOOW!
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Don’t get her pregnant
Dude sweet shes not pregnant
Dude sweet shes not pregnant
Dude sweet shes not pregnant
Lets try for a baby fuck my balls dont work
Lets try for a baby fuck my balls dont work
Lets try for a baby fuck my balls dont work
Oh sweet my balls work!
Dude sweet shes not pregnant
Dude sweet shes not pregnant
For men it’s always “when are you getting a girlfriend” well, when I stop needing to do all sorts of shit for you and get some time for myself after work and after my own house chores MAYBE I’ll have time to socialize BECAUSE THAT’S HOW YOU GET ONE
Ow, my balls
Couldn’t stand to allow a conversation about women without interjecting “wHaT aBoUt MeN?!”, could ya?
There she goes again, so predictable
As I wrote this I knew velma will show up and say something like “don’t talk about men under posts about women”. I just didn’t expect it to happen this fast 😂
Anyway, this is not WomensStuff, men are still allowed to comment here.
Anyway, this is not WomensStuff, men are still allowed to comment here.
And we’re allowed to criticize you :)
And I don’t mind it. You’re doing important work here, keep it up :)
Your other comments expose your real opinions, but thanks anyway!
men are still allowed to comment here.
This is the future the left wants:
Oh i was looking for a different picture but couldn’t find it 😞
if you have an image of painting of a mine with male sweaty workers and latex clad femme dommes with whips send it my way please
Why does it bother you so much? What are you so scared of that you have to silence male perspective?
Are women supposed to be scared when they disagree with men? Why do you think I’m scared?
Disagreeing with someone is not silencing their perspective.
Disagreeing with someone is not silencing their perspective.
Except you didn’t disagree with me in any way. You just tried to silence me.
Technically I asked you a question.
Because you’re extremely defensive which either means you’re scared or you have an agenda. Given your second point, I now suspect you’re here with intent to dissuade male perspectives from being expressed here.
“Disagreeing isn’t silencing!” has some real “I’m just stating facts.” energy.
IMO, being a man is more like: “I can’t get pregnant. nice.”
“Yeah, but you can get her preg-VASECTOMYYYYYY!!!”
EDIT: wow guys, “to me” I guess you could replace “IMO” with “to me” as in “if I’m going to generalize my view pregnancy or whatever as a man, it’s like this”
Idk if that’s my opinion or experience. I didn’t think that hard about it. It was more about the contrast between how much women have to think about VS how little I needed to think about it.
This reads like a woman’s fantasy of a man.
IMO, being a man is more like: “I can’t get pregnant. nice.”
Most decent men can recognize when they have natural privilege, like the benefit of not having to grow and birth children with their own bodies.
“Decent men”, more shame language. Being the one to grow and birth a child is itself, a huge privilege.
They are both privileges in their own way :)
In your opinion or in your experience?
You’re right. The real victims here are men. It’s so difficult for men to have control over their reproductive rights, to have access to contraception, being slut-shamed for getting pregnant out of wedlock, murdered at higher rates by their domestic partners when they’re pregnant, having to go through birth and the risks associated with that, and then have to fear the higher risk of rape while they’re in the hospital recovering from birth.
This seems like light trolling, but you’re on the fence. Everyone here is trying to discuss things from my perspective. I understand your frustration, but try and keep it less sarcastic. This is a warning.
Fair enough and I’ll heed it. Thanks!
np, it looks like you guys are figuring out a way to discuss with each other. Its kind of a master class (not sarcasm).
More than one person can be a real victim of something, why do you want to silence male voices?
Disagreeing with someone is not silencing their voice.
But the way you disagree, is. But you already know that, don’t you?
It’s ok, you lemmings can continue to send me DMs telling me all about how women shouldn’t participate here and that I’m holding women back.
I’m not going to stop sharing my opinion that not everything needs to revolve around men and their feelings when we’re talking about women.
I dont think they were going on like that, just confused by the IMO, IMO.
I’ve run into this user before.
You got all this from my question? Wow.
I was just wandering if that’s @riqusimo experience because in my experience and from what I see vasectomy is not an easy fix (pun?) for men. Most of them are still expected to reproduce when time comes. More and more women never want kids but majority still does. Very few men will get a vasectomy before actually forming a family which is after the danger of causing unwanted pregnancy mostly passed. Even older men will be questioned about their motivation and doctors may simply refuse to perform it for younger men that don’t have kids. Not to mention that in some countries vasectomy is simply illegal (Poland). On top of that we have decades of laughing at vasectomies in media and equating it with impotence. For some stupid reason many people still think being infertile means you’re somehow less manly or something - another reason many men will thing about it twice.
So… not really as simple as riquisimo makes it sound. I wander what’s his experience and why it’s so different than mine.
But yeah, sorry for offending you with my question…
Women are often refused permanent birth control until their husbands sign off on the procedure.
There’s space to talk about the issues men face when it comes to reproduction and birth control. Taking over a post talking about women’s bodies and pregnancy issues to complain that men have it as difficult as women will come off as insensitive and sealioning to some.
Taking over a post talking about women’s bodies and pregnancy issues
This is community about twitter, not about women’s issues. I know you don’t like it but we’re still allowed to talk about our experiences here, regardless our gender. No one is “taking over” posts here. We’re just talking.
to complain that men have it as difficult as women
No one said this, you’re just making stuff up now. Taking about men’s issues doesn’t invalidate women’s issues. I don’t know what’s the point of silencing men and dismissing their problems. It’s not helping anyone.
will come off as insensitive and sealioning to some.
No idea what that is.
I said this post, not this community.
In my late 20’s the urologist recommended I wait, as I was still pretty young. Ok, so I waited. 4-5 years later I went back and scheduled the appt, but then my primary care told me I should wait because I still wasn’t married (though he had a med student training with him that day and she was supportive of my decision) At that point I really didn’t care what he thought, I wanted to go along with it.
Ultimately, I postponed again because of a discussion I had with my partner. Who is the only other person who’s say should have any influence on my opinion.
So yeah, there’s resistance everywhere. Ultimately I took a little advice but was going to do what I wanted anyway. I don’t care if movies make vasectomies look less manly. Movies make it seem like a manly endevour is to get laid. If you’re getting a vasectomy it’s because you’re getting laid. Shaming it is dumb.
So that’s my experience for whatever it’s worth.
So yeah, there’s resistance everywhere. Ultimately I took a little advice but was going to do what I wanted anyway. I don’t care if movies make vasectomies look less manly. Movies make it seem like a manly endevour is to get laid. If you’re getting a vasectomy it’s because you’re getting laid. Shaming it is dumb.
Yeah, it’s incredibly stupid but the idea is there. Many men will be worried about it…
So as I said, it’s not as simple. By the time doctors accept you know what you’re doing you are usually old enough to support family. Vasectomy doesn’t protect 20 year olds from getting someone pregnant by accident.
Unasked for opinions from everywhere when you have the ability to grow and birth babies.
Yup! My ex had this happen to her all the time especially from a church community we were part of. She would always say her doctor advised her not to have kids and if that didn’t work she’d go into detail about her body and why the doctor said she’d have problems carrying a child. Most would stop there but there were still some that would give her the “don’t you believe in miracles if you have faith?” type responses. We left the church after it kept happening.
I’m sorry she (and you) had to deal with that.
When people perceive you have the ability as well. Tons of women who can’t give birth who get asked awkward and uncomfortable questions all the time.
Being a woman is like - stop trying to tell me what to do. Keep your opinion to yourself. No one asked you.
Same for men although those ages differ and I guess it’s, have a kid instead of get pregnant.
Being a woman is like:
Be female
Don’t be male
