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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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I can't imagine feeling better that I was possibly unwanted and merely tolerated over actively wanted. But you do you.

I didn't say "better", I said "don't care".

My mother is here the beneficiary of my soft bigotry of low expectations. I don't expect good life choices or coherent cost-benefit-analyses out of women in their 20s, especially when they're hysterical from pregnancy hormones.

"Actively wanted" means fuck-all. It can just as easily apply to "I wanted a child who would be happy, successful, and popular - but I got you. You've been a disappointment to me all your life, and it's worse because you were an intended pregnancy".

Most people have been born because their mothers got pregnant at some time that wasn't timed down to the minute. "Actively wanted" pregnancies are a result of the pressure on women not to have babies until it's convenient for the economy, when their employer has obtained maximum return on them. Now that you're in the final years of your fertility and it's 'now or never' to have a child, then you are graciously permitted to try for one.

Would you be in favor of removing taboos on infanticide for these reasons? Many parents go through quite stressful times when raising a small child. This stress causes a not insignificant fraction of those parents to desire no longer having said child. Some fraction of those parents consider the possibility of killing/abandoning their child to remove such concerns. Some fraction of those parents actually do the deed, regardless of the current social pressure against it.

You may feel comfortable believing that you were actively wanted in some period between approximately -9mo and -3mo. After that time, say, between -3mo and +2yr, perhaps a very substantial portion of that time, you could have been very unwanted. Perhaps you were very barely marginally merely tolerated, and that only due to the extreme quantities of social pressure exerted on your parents.

Do you think the world would be a better place if we removed all that social pressure, so you could make sure that you were, like, actually actually wanted?

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