Fear Of Pregnancy
On one of her many social media platforms, JojoFromJerz delivers a righteous rant about pregnancy, after a notorious Republican suggested that women should be taught “fear of childlessness” instead of “fear of pregnancy”.
Dear Republicans,
No one is “teaching” us to fear pregnancy, but maybe, just maybe, you should ask yourselves why we might.
Setting aside the fact that it might be because miscarrying women are being forced to contend with sepsis or even die before they can get medical care, what else could it be?
Could it be that they’re afraid of bringing a child into the world YOU’RE currently building?
A world where you’ll let a starving child go hungry at school, let a 6 year old access a loaded firearm at home, or let an 18 year old future school shooter buy two AR-15s and more ammo than an army would need in the span of a few days?
Could it be that you’ve rolled backed child labor laws, armed teachers, banned books, whitewashed history, sane-washed fascism, encouraged discrimination, and stoked intolerance all while trying to impose Christianity on children at the same time?
After nine more paragraphs of similarly furious questions, this:
Young Americans are lining up to get sterilized as we speak. They don’t want to bring babies into the world Republicans are creating. And frankly, who could blame them?
The very idea of starving hungry kids and letting them get Polio makes most of us women, much like Ben Shapiro’s rather unlucky wife… Bone. Dry.
As for me? I’m still stuck on the authoritarian implications of “we should teach fear of childlessness.” What exactly would that sort of pedagogy look like? What goes on in that reeducation camp? Speak up!
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=33467
Handmaid’s Tale?
Since you beat me to that I’m going for The Stepford Wives.
In some countries the men have weaponised the women’s wombs to drive a population explosion. Not because the women want huge families, but so the rulers have more soldiers. Many women want children of course, but ask them how many and the number is likely to be less than that of a ruler needing bodies, especially if the women are educated and the country has a half-way decent healthcare system so giving birth 2-3 times is likely to result in 2-3 adults in 18 years.
These men are not strong, they’re weak and rule through fear. And men like them are gaining power around the world, including in my small corner of the world, we may lose the right to a legal abortion in the next four years, to placate some regressive farmers and religious people.
The collapse in fertility rates affects the whole northern hemisphere except Afghanistan, so I would look for common causes like the lack of affordable housing, the attacks on workers, or the decline in testosterone and sperm
Also, a lot of religious conservatives spent decades teaching high school students in the USA that if a woman has sex outside of marriage she will get pregnant and infected and die in poverty. So if you unpack this I think there are hints about forced marriage as well as forced pregnancy. Public healthcare and public housing would make having children more affordable but the parties that fret about low fertility don’t like that solution.
At the rate fascism is growing in this country, it’s just a matter of time before women will be valued as breeding stock or as “comfort women”. They have the option to choose now by getting sterilized (or not), or leaving the country (or not); but who knows for how long?
People who have money are leaving the country *now* if they are an oppressed minority (queer, people of color, etc). They can come back later (or not) depending on how things go.
Personally I’m in the camp where when I look at the poor uneducated dumb ignorant misogynistic bigoted deplorables who voted for people who couldn’t give a shit about them; and the clutching their pearls progressives who couldn’t bear to vote against fascism because the current administration doesn’t represent their idealist ideals and I figure this country got what it deserves.
-sad and cynical and oh yes, bitter.
Fuzzy, I share many of your fears.
Right now, slavery in this country is legal as punishment for crime under the 13th Amendment; thus prison labor and chain gangs.
As the fascists begin to apprehend the true bite of a demographic crunch (which they will parse as “too many childless cat ladies unpatriotically refusing to reproduce”) how much of a stretch is it to fear glitzy prison brothels run by the private prison companies and (for the elites) leased “involuntary reproductive labor assignees” (code for sex slaves) chosen from among inmate populations? If you squint hard and hold your nose, these are legal right now.
(We must assume that “slavery” in the 13th means the same thing it meant under the USA’s long dark history of chattel slavery prior to the amendment’s enactment; and if so, that means involuntary sex and forced reproduction, both of which were the common lot of slaves, are still on the table for modern inmates.)
I wish everyone who was fighting misogynists and fascists where they live could share a hug. We won a battle in Poland last year. Lets keep the (literal and metaphorical) bondage sex and master/slave relationships for games.