Posted on 07/18/2012 12:16:54 PM PDT by Morgana
Slate magazine, an online publication that caters to an upscale “pro-choice” readership, got what it asked for when it invited readers recently to rhapsodize about their self-induced sterility and willful barrenness. In a series of articles culled from responses emailed to Slate, the magazine gives us a glimpse of the mindset of the sexual narcissists who frequent its pages.
Perhaps the most crassly frank of the responses came from one Heather Gentry, an unlikely resident of the family-friendly state of Georgia. In an article entitled “No Kids for Me, Thanks: I Don’t Enjoy Alien-Parasites,” Gentry calls pregnancy “unnatural and abhorrent,” and asks why she should like to, “have my body distorted beyond recognition for an alien-looking creature to live there for nine or 10 months and use up my food and energy storage?”
Gentry adds that a child “is a proud role model for any parasite,” noting that after birth it “it eats my food, lives in my house, and takes up my energy.”
Margaret Ganong, a 55-year-old divorcée, thanks her “lucky stars” that abortion was available in the 1970s so that she could avoid the consequences of her youthful sexual adventures.
“In 1974, I went off to college, fiddled around with boys, and thanked my lucky stars that Planned Parenthood and Roe v. Wade were a hard-fought reality,” she writes. “Without them, I and countless others would not have had the opportunity to discover our bodies and ourselves without paying the high price of young parenthood, diminished expectations, and diapers.”
Twenty-nine year old Shannon Chamberlain, who calls herself “upper middle class,” says she might have wanted to have children if she had lived in early-20th-century Britain, where “you barely saw your kid until he/she was in striking distance of a university fellowship.”
After reviewing the inconveniences of parenthood, Chamberlain admits that perhaps having a child would turn out to be “transcendent, like all of the mothers that I know say it would be.” However, she suspects that her friends are really just lying to her, claiming that “the people who make that argument have their own interests, their own reasons for justifying an irreversible decision to me and to themselves, and in the end, I just don’t believe them.”
One Brad Carty says that children would cramp his economic style in “No Kids for Me, Thanks: I Value My Professional Mobility.” Rejoicing in his decision to reject children, Carty notes that “I was able to travel, go to concerts and the theater, and buy myself nice things while others were paying for orthodontia.”
He then “married a woman who felt as I did” about children, and “for the past 10 years we’ve lived in various cities in Europe (again, I can change jobs whenever I wish). I can’t imagine any other life—I certainly can’t imagine it being any better than the one I have.”
Many of Slate’s readers expressed their enthusiastic support in the articles’ comments section, while others seemed uncomfortable with such a cavalier rejection of children.
“Other of my less tied-to-the-house friends w/o kids has written 3 books. I don’t know who these people are who are urging these people to have kids, but I say, just ignore those who want to control your uteruses…uteri? Trying to talk people into having kids is as bad as being one of those pro-life protestors (sic) who stand outside of clinics,” wrote one.
Another left a warning for the practitioners of Slate’s egoistical sexual ideology:
“The mother of my children visited her 97 year old self-described ‘maiden’ great-aunt in the hospital. The bedridden great-aunt looked up at her and asked tearfully ‘Why did I live?’ As a parent and grandparent I have an answer that satisfies me. I hope Margaret and the others who wrote is this series don’t find themselves asking the maiden great-aunt’s sad question.”
I’ll bet these women are real pieces of work.
... And the Gods of the Copybook Headings with Terror and Slaughter return!
“They don’t. They merely give legal, medical, and moral justification for women to do it to themselves.
If a woman wants to cultivate a depraved mind, to become “without natural affection”, there’s no shortage of support groups to assist her. “
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I went to Slate’s site and read further. I found my answer. This one blows me away. Here is copy of one of letters sent:
Name: Heather Gentry
Age: 26
Location: Summerville, Ga.
In a college bioethics class, my classmates and I were asked how we would feel if we found ourselves temporarily attached through tubes and wires to another person for almost a year, while he or she depended on us for food and protection. It’s a parasitic relationship, we discussed. The host organism gets nothing out of the relationship and is in fact hindered by needing extra nutrients and energy to support the parasite. The lesson was to illustrate how a mother, maybe a rape victim, felt about her unborn and unwanted child.
That hypothetical scenario was the first time I was able to put into words how completely unnatural and abhorrent pregnancy seems to me. To have my body distorted beyond recognition for an alien-looking creature to live there for nine or 10 months and use up my food and energy storage? To have doctors poke and prod at my most private places because that’s where it’ll be born? Then, to be free of the creature on the inside, but to have to care for it for years and years, while it eats my food, lives in my house, and takes up my energy? A child is a proud role model for any parasite.
Even as a middle school parasite-child, I knew I didn’t want children. I have two little sisters. They weren’t bad kids, but I never knew what to do with them. They were young and alien, speaking strange languages and far too hyper and loud. Even with my parents there to buffer me from the worst of the crying fits, potty training, and sleepless nights, I just wasn’t interested in going through that again.
But I do live in the South, where there is a certain amount of expectation and tradition, and I fell prey to it in high school. With hormones flying and love blinding me, my high school sweetheart and I dated for three years, and yes, during that time we planned our wedding and named our kids. Four of them. Gross.
In college, I succumbed to another yet newer tradition—the starter marriage. I was married for two years to a man who was six years older than me and ready to settle down. Part of what made me leave was that he wanted to have children, and I just wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with the idea. Then came the divorce and the corresponding re-evaluation of values and worldview that comes from such a disruptive and never-thought-that-would-happen-to-me event. And I realized: Wait, I don’t have to have kids with anyone. I can choose to be with someone who doesn’t want to force me into that role.
It was a revelation to this Georgia peach.
So now I cheerfully tell anyone who mentions it—friend, family, co-worker, overly friendly stranger—that no, thank you, I will not have kids/parasites for reasons that will probably insult you. These include eww, gross, I-have-better-things-to-do-with-my-time, and there-are-7-billion-people-in-the-world-why-add-more. But if I can suffer through your alien ultrasound photo on Facebook or grin at your crying kids without vomiting, then you can be grateful that women like me will always be around to organize an occasional girl’s night out and to keep the population in check.
That’s probably the reason the original article doesn’t seem to have any images of the “contributors”.
What if Gentry's mother felt that way?
I am Blessed with 6 children, 8 grandchildren, 6 nieces and nephews, and 2 grandnieces, and I’m only 57. I can’t imagine my life without them.
How do these people justify their “high life” with all the emptiness that surrounds them?
You assume that "maternal instincts" currently exist as a genetic imperative. Up until the last century, there wasn't a need for women to have a genetic imperative to procreate.
Up until the last century, most women had no choice. There was no birth control. If a woman had sex enough times, you got pregnant. If a woman didn't have sex, there was little incentive for a man to keep her around, she starved, and the issue was mostly self-correcting.
Up until the last century, most people had a family farm or business, which got handed down to the eldest son (or husband of daughter). No children meant nobody to take care of you in your old age. If the child didn't feel like taking care of the parent, he didn't inherit (which provided another incentive).
“How do these people justify their “high life” with all the emptiness that surrounds them?”
That’s easy. They don’t see the emptiness.
Then after that, they turn teenager. 8-)
NOT ready for that!
The problem with that line of reasoning is that Liberalism (and Conservatism) are not passed on in the blood stream. They are purely products of the mind and upbringing. We've all heard of conservative parents (Greatest Generation anyone) who brought up crazy-stupid-liberal kids.
“They don’t. They merely give legal, medical, and moral justification for women to do it to themselves. “
Never forget the impact of Culture. They took over the culture and this is the result.
If you don’t want to have children, that’s OK, but it is too bad really because our country is becoming more and more selfish, less about the family, and more about my quick satisfaction.
Continuing our reproduction rates, whites will become a minority in the USA in our lifetimes. We only reproduce at a 1.6 per couple rate, not enough to maintain our population.
That being said, any moron who refers to a baby as an alien parasite is either joking sickly, or mentally unsound. In either case, I would rather this person not procreate.
First they convince them the unborn child is not human.
Then they teach them that infants are an inconvenience that will forever ruin their lives.
From there it isn’t too difficult to teach them that all children are just expensive pains-in-the-a$$es right up to the age where they - too - can rely on Planned Parenthood.
Mammals, including humans,should/do have a maternal instinct (normally). It is completely aside from any economic/social/medical imperatives.
We have raised a couple of generations of largely self-centered, my happiness is the highest goal, kids are at best an inconvenience folks. And that’s how you get the Heather’s of the world. And problematic social security funding.
Heaven help us all.
Then they get their drivers licenses.
Typical left wing STUPID adult. I wish her mother thought that way and ABORTED HER!
Makes me sometimes wish we can perform very post-birth abortions on these twits! Yeah, what a great defense for murder! /s
Congratulations! You will experience joy these idiots will never have. Hug those little rugrats every chance you get. And tell them you love them.
I wouldn't call the so called "greatest generation" ......you know the one that voted FDR as their king four times in a row, "conservative." (social security, WPA, CCC, TVA, etc etc etc). That would be the same FDR with his 2nd Bill of Rights that strangely resembles the USSR's constitution.
Untold blood and treasure was spent fighting socialists abroad just for them to vote it in at home.
Of course, with all the romney bots around here lately, I could see how some would say that was conservative.
And yet lots of young ladies go on to bear children and love them.
The blame, then, would have to rest with the woman, not the medical lies about child-bearing. Wouldn’t you say?
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