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Notes -
How about a pallet cleanser?
In the other thread a few people brought up surrogacy, and maybe I've spent too much time with TERFs, but am I the only one that overwhelmed with the feeling of Lovecraftian horror whenever it's brought up? The feeling is even more uncanny, because it's like I slept through some great societal debate where everybody decided it's actually a lovely thing that should be celebrated. Although maybe it's not all that bad, there's a certain "how it started, how it's going" quality to the NYT headlines. In any case the casual way it's supporters talk about surrogacy freaks me out even more than militant pro-choicers.
Then there's the whole slippery slope thing:
Love is love, we have a right to get married just the same as you! - Yes I agree!
We also have a right to adopt! - Sure! I mean I have my issues with adoption in practice, but in principle if there are kids without parents, and willing gay couples to adopt them I don't see an issue.
We also have a right to biological children! What? Do you expect us to be ok with not having children?
Wait what? Yes I do! I'm all for tolerance, and living and letting live, but you're not going to make me see this as a lovely family moment, and anyway I don't remember signing on to turning a fundamental human experience into an industry when I supported the gay rights movement. Accept the limits of your biology, and move on.
Which brings me to Dase's idea "postrat «don't mean-spiritedly dunk on a rationalist» challenge (impossible)". Indeed, I can't help myself, and even though I used to be rat/rat-adjacent, I find myself having growing disdain for the entire philosophy. There's a meme that's slowly gathering momentum, that all the trans stuff, and 72 genders is just a foot in the door for transhumanism, and after I heard the idea for the first time, I can't seem to unsee it. This twisted ideology will drive us to throw away our humanity, turn us into a cross-over between Umgah Blobbies and the Borg, or trick us into committing suicide, because there's a subroutine running on some GPU somewhere, that's somewhat similar to the processes in our brains. Given the utter dominance of the trans ideology, the vindication of the slippery slope argument, and the extrapolated trajectory of these ideas, I believe we have no other choice - Transhumanism must be destroyed!
I’m trying to parse why I have such a strong reaction towards gay men using surrogates.
I mean, obviously there’s the ‘if you want kids, there is an obvious way to do that’ factor where going for a lifestyle that excludes having children then gets corrected back. But I don’t react in the same visceral way to gay adoption, or lesbians getting pregnant through whatever method(Craigslist rando, IVF, sperm donor).
I think it’s the buying people. Child trafficking in adoption is a serious problem that all sorts of people put effort into avoiding, albeit not particularly successfully. On the other hand, the homosexual men using surrogates are blatantly buying a child.
What? This gay couple compensated a woman for use of her womb, why are you comparing that to child trafficking, which involves a child already born and taken for typically immoral purposes (sex, forced labor, etc.)
Oh, this is a bit old already, but since you expressed genuine confusion, I figured I'd address it. Trafficking is engaging in trade of other humans, and surrogacy fits that definition perfectly.
This sounds like one of Stevenson's Persuasive Definitions i.e changing the meaning of a word without changing its elicited feelings. If this is trafficking, then trafficking is now not inherently immoral, as is typically implied (no one talks about traffickers as ethical people). For you to get to that point, you would have to demonstrate that surrogacy was immoral. Which is your view, I realize, but no one in this thread has put forward a convincing argument for that.
I was under the impression that it always was defined as the trade in human beings. My objection to it is that buying and selling other people is inherently immoral. Asking what's wrong with it is like asking "what's wrong with sexual exploitation?".
No, I don't think that the common usage of the term.
From DHS:
Wikipedia:
and Merriam-Webster:
So no, human trafficking by common usage is not considered to include any and all instance of people buying other people. The key point is the coercion by various means and intention to use the purchased human in forced labor or prostitution.
In my defense, in my language "human trafficking" would literally translate to "human trade".
Anyway, you're really ok with people just purchasing children? If Bill Gates started buying up kids of all ages by the thousands, it would be fine as long as he just wants to become their legal guardian, and not to force them to do anything that's not expected of kids?
I reject the use of "purchase" in both the surrogacy context and this example. It strikes me as the non-central fallacy.
In any case, if Bill Gates were to pay for surrogacy or adopt kids until he had 1000, I would be skeptical that he could provide the kind of fatherly relationship I think many people expect a father to have with his children, adopted or otherwise. More likely, he just pays for their schooling and housing and lets them grow up as if he just had one kid. Does giving 1000 kids a great shot in life negate the probably less-than-ideal fatherly relationship he may have with them? That might be an interesting conversation, but it certainly would not make sense to try and apply the negative connotation of "human trafficking" to such a situation. Not to me anyways.
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A counterpoint: Westerners
trafficpurchase children from far poorer countries all the time, as in Western countries the demand for kids to adopt far exceeds the supply (whereas the opposite is true in the host country).This is done openly and their activities are usually portrayed positively, even though children are generally considered possessions (their involuntary labor is your right as a parent or guardian) in the West for the first 18 years of their life.
What's the difference between this kind of remote adoption, enslaving workers from foreign countries (for labor or prostitution, which is what people usually mean by "trafficking"), and domestic surrogacy? Because I don't think there's a difference at all, and the argument against those things can be made, but is not defensible on strictly utilitarian grounds (because if it was, human history wouldn't contain the amount of slavery that it currently does).
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