The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminist Tumblr: Having Babies Is ‘One of the Most Selfish Things’ People Can Do

Posted on | January 15, 2016 | 84 Comments

Deep thoughts from a bisexual radical feminist in the Midwest:

I’ve believed for a long time that purposely choosing to have biological children is one of the most selfish things a person could ever do. It IS selfish to create another human because you want it. It’s also foolish when parents convince themselves that they’re doing good for the world by procreating. Maybe your kid will cure cancer, but in all likelihood they won’t change the world in all that big of a way. I just hate when people pretend that having a baby isn’t selfish, that it’s for the good of humanity. Own up to it! You want a human for you. It’s selfish, and it’s also fine. I say this as someone who is seriously considering trying to have kids someday, too. I wish people were more reflective and honest.

Where to begin analyzing this? If I were a psychiatrist, I’d start by getting the patient to narrate the basic facts of her own life: How many brothers and sisters do you have? Are your parents married? How old were you when you realized you were bisexual? How many sexual partners have you had? What’s the longest romantic relationship you have been in? Whenever you encounter a person with strange beliefs, you see, there must be an explanation somewhere in her past. Crazy people — and that’s most feminists are, really — don’t become crazy for no reason. Even if you subscribe to the “neurochemical imbalance” theory of mental illness, not every woman with a personality disorder is a radical feminist bisexual spewing irrational nonsense on the Internet. No, there must be an etiology of this particular case of Feminist Tumblr Syndrome:

Growing up “gifted”, exceeding in academically, and originally getting into Ivy League schools honestly f–ked me up. Now as a person with multiple disabilities who is a family disappointment for going to an average small liberal arts college, I spend every minute feeling intense shame. My adult life has been a gradual descent into a less and less able person, and I don’t know how to cope with it. Even though I (unknowingly) had PTSD, dyslexia, and epilepsy my whole life, it didn’t hold me back academically. I never learned how to study, how to cope with grades below an A, how to manage my time well, how to fail even if I worked hard.
Seriously, never build the core of your identity around being “gifted” or smart or academically capable or whatever. It could all be taken away from you and you’ll feel so f–king lost. Same goes for kids. Don’t hold them to such impossibly high standards that you leave them no room for anything but perfect performance.

Oh, that explains a lot, doesn’t it? I was “gifted” as a child, but I was always an underachiever and a troublemaker who just barely graduated high school and only went to college because my father insisted on it. My personal war against the public education system began in fifth grade, really, and a lifelong antipathy toward bureaucracy probably explains my libertarian tendencies, whereas my conservatism could perhaps be seen as reflecting a belated appreciation for my father’s better qualities. Dad was a New Deal Democrat and proud member of the Machinists union who used to argue politics with me after I turned Republican in my mid-30s, although he was nonetheless gratified by his underachiever son’s success as a journalist. But I digress . . .

We may surmise that the bisexual radical feminist’s animosity toward parenthood in general (“one of the most selfish things a person could ever do”) reflects her resentment of her own parents whose “impossibly high standards” she blames for her feelings of “intense shame” as being the “family disappointment.” And who am I, an underachiever journalist playing amateur psychiatrist on my blog, to argue with her criticism of her parents? Honestly, I agree with her point about parents who push, push, push their “gifted” child onto the academic fast-track where acceptance to an Ivy League school is the expected outcome.

The obvious problem with pushing a child toward success is that they may fail to develop an inner drive for excellence. This wasn’t my problem as an underachiever. I had plenty of drive, but the public-school bureaucracy did not recognize or reward my idiosyncratic aptitudes. In fact, I was a target for frequent punishment for failing to conform to the “one-size-fits-all” structure of public education.

Schools are run by teachers, all of whom liked school when they were kids, and schools are organized for the kind of kids who also like school and will probably grow up to become teachers themselves. The quiet, obedient, do-exactly-what-the-teacher-says type of child — which is to say, a natural-born bureaucrat — is always the Teacher’s Pet, while the creative, energetic rebel is the Problem Child. Thus it was that I learned by heart the Three Rules of Public School:

  1. Sit down;
  2. Shut up;
    and
  3. Do your work.

“Excuse me, Ms. Flood, but isn’t this ‘work’ supposed to be teaching me something? If I’m already reading at a college level, why is it necessary that I do these tedious worksheets about matching subjects with verbs and pronouns with antecedents?”

Asking such questions is “disruptive,” and punishment was by paddling in those days. Up to the chalkboard, bend over to grab the rail, and — no flinching — whap! whap! whap! whap! whap!

Trust me, no feminist ever wanted to “smash patriarchy” as much as I want to smash the public school system, which I consider a greater menace to American liberty than ISIS. If you ever want to hear me rant for 45 minutes, just ask my opinion of what’s wrong with public education — everything, basically, but I can give a detailed accounting of the system’s errors which are numerous, pervasive, and beyond hope of reform. The only way to “fix” the problem is to ABOLISH THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED SYSTEM! But I digress . . .

“The personal is political,” as radical feminist Carol Hanisch famously said, but why do women’s pet peeves qualify as a progressive political movement, whereas progressives don’t care about my pet peeves with public schools or your pet peeves with whatever pisses you off? People have been grumbling and complaining about their problems since the dawn of time, but for some reason the grumbling and complaining of women is a special case. And this bisexual radical feminist Tumblr blogger is a very special case, indeed. Take a look at some of the problems she describes under her “personal” tag. Playing amateur psychiatrist again, I’m tempted to conclude either:

A. Her medical issues are largely psychosomatic in origin;
or
B. Both her medical issues and her psychological problems are symptomatic of overall poor health.

Is she getting enough sleep? What is she eating? Does she get enough sunshine and vigorous exercise? Has she consulted an endocrinologist? You have to suspect she has some serious underlying problem to explain all the things wrong with her. (Seriously, she has a lot of problems.) The only alternative is that she is cursed or possessed by demons, supernatural possibilities that Educated 21st-Century Americans are supposed to rule out as absurd, but after you read enough Feminist Tumblr blogs, it’s tempting to wonder if Beelzebub is ultimately to blame. A girl starts messing around with a Ouija board or tarot cards when she’s a kid and then — boom! — Satan grabs her, body and soul.

Now she’s on Tumblr, telling everybody way too much about her sex life and her gynecological problems and — oh, by the way — her first boyfriend was a rapist and a sociopath:

“I was with my first serious boyfriend for two years, age 14-16, and during that time we made a lot of art together and wrote notes that we passed off at school. I had hundreds of these notes from him. He was manipulative and abusive. He raped me. He was (is) a sociopath. When I was 18, confronting my PTSD, and put on antidepressants that were making me really unstable, I tossed out all of his notes and the art we made together. I regret this. I wanted to simplify the relationship. I didn’t want the good memories around; I didn’t want to fool myself. He was a huge part of my life and those years are still a part of who I am. Even though he is a piece of s–t and I have no interest in ever reconnecting, I really wish I didn’t try to erase him entirely. It just seemed easier to paint the relationship as all bad and try to forget it. I want to get over this regret I feel for throwing all those things away. So many years have passed and I’m still sad about it.”

And there’s this:

“I attended and helped organize Chicago’s first Slut Walk.”

This proves she is a Minion of Evil. And also crazy as hell.

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

84 Responses to “Feminist Tumblr: Having Babies Is ‘One of the Most Selfish Things’ People Can Do”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 15th, 2016 @ 11:56 pm

    You know something, Feminist Tumblr is right. It is selfish to want to continue your line, have a family, be happy and successful.

    If they want to continue to pine in anger and misery, with their cats, alone, that is their choice.

  2. concern00
    January 16th, 2016 @ 2:18 am

    …says the person who has never had a child.

  3. concern00
    January 16th, 2016 @ 2:21 am

    These people have a unique ability to pathologize pretty much any experience they have ever had, whether good or bad at the time. This talent of theirs is a first class ticket to victimhood and is currently worshipped by the left.

  4. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:34 am

    Their cats are allowed to continue their line, but we’re not.

    And…on a completely unrelated topic, apropos of nothing, yesterday was my birthday, and here’s how a Scottish geek with a Chem degree does celebratory whisky shots…in a wee erlenmeyer flask. Hahahahaha!

  5. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:35 am

    Thank God for small favors.

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:47 am

    Happy Birthday!

  7. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:58 am

    Wow, there were tons of typos in her statement, but I fixed it.

  8. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 5:14 am

    Thanks! Wish I couple push you a cud shot in a wee erlenmeyer flask. But maybe I could ship you a nice salt lick or a bushel of bluegrass hay on your birthday, in lieu of. 😀

  9. Fail Burton
    January 16th, 2016 @ 6:18 am

    Hulk smash patriarchy.

  10. RS
    January 16th, 2016 @ 8:38 am

    I suppose there is a small kernel of truth in asserting that having children is a selfish act, if we define “selfish” as satisfying a personal desire. But, so what? So is everything else a person does to provide themselves with personal gratification or happiness. Satisfying a personal desire is not morally blameworthy, whether it is having children to perpetuate the species or making a sandwich to alleviate one’s hunger.

    What I think she confuses is the desire to have children without the realization that with children, one’s self suddenly takes a back seat to one’s kids. If parents view children as accessories to their own lives instead of brand new immortal souls who need constant guidance and attention, then there will be problems.

  11. Stacy McCain: Feminists be crazy and shit – If You're Left
    January 16th, 2016 @ 9:20 am

    […] Yes, CRAZY as a pet coon […]

  12. Zhytamyr
    January 16th, 2016 @ 9:24 am

    She does realize that us “breeders” have the long game locked up?

  13. Kay Dunn
    January 16th, 2016 @ 10:01 am

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  14. Dana
    January 16th, 2016 @ 10:19 am

    This actually touches on one of my pet peeves. It’s completely natural to wan to have children, but some people simply cannot, not without artificial inspermination (a Picoism, not a typo) or some type of surrogacy arrangement.

    To me, those people were put on earth to adopt children who need parents, not to spend tens of thousands of dollars to find some way to have children themselves. I would not make such things illegal, but I am wholly disgusted by them.

    Of course, the government could help, by making adoption much simpler and easier.

  15. Dana
    January 16th, 2016 @ 10:29 am

    As for the lady in question, in a society in which forcible sterilization was performed on defectives to prevent them from reproducing, she would be one of those sterilized.

    And she’s probably ugly, too.

  16. RS
    January 16th, 2016 @ 11:18 am

    What’s silly is that I would bet dollars to doughnuts that this young lady never met a social redistribution program she didn’t just love, love, love. She fails to realize–because our educational system hides this truth–that such programs require a large number of working people to pay the bills. Simply stated, if you want to do your part to shore up Social Security and the legion of other such giveaways, have a big bundle of kids.

  17. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 16th, 2016 @ 11:21 am

    I’ll be more than happy with the water of life.

  18. Zhytamyr
    January 16th, 2016 @ 11:31 am

    It also assumes that the govt won’t take the funding from said redistribution programs & blow it all on garbage, only to take out loans from the local shark irregardless of the vig.

  19. kilo6
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:17 pm

    Happy birthday!
    Cheers for your chem geekynesss as well. My daily coffee mug is a 500ml heavy glass beaker

  20. Steve Skubinna
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:25 pm

    I found mugs with the periodic table on them and picked some up.

    Because I am not, but I have some geeky friends.

  21. Steve Skubinna
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:27 pm

    One rule of life I try always to keep paramount is:

    Get over yourself.

  22. Steve White
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:34 pm

    “…it’s tempting to wonder if Beelzebub is ultimately to blame”

    I am soooooo going to borrow that…

  23. marcus tullius cicero
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:39 pm

    …Your excellent articles make me; a) sad and b) scared… I have decided not to read them so I will not be grumpy the rest of the day…
    mtc.

  24. Valerie Stewart
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:43 pm

    “If parents view children as accessories to their own lives … then there will be problems.”

    Took those words right out of my mouth.

  25. kilo6
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:49 pm

    would you settle for Dunecat?

    https://i.imgur.com/qplc9O2.jpg

  26. robertstacymccain
    January 16th, 2016 @ 12:50 pm

    Feminist Tumblr is Satan’s domain.

  27. Quartermaster
    January 16th, 2016 @ 1:02 pm

    Nah. Reading RSM is like watching a train wreck. You just. Can’t. Take. Your. Eyes. Away.

    If such things are effective for you, try Bourbon.

  28. Quartermaster
    January 16th, 2016 @ 1:02 pm

    Certainly a small part of it.

  29. Quartermaster
    January 16th, 2016 @ 1:05 pm

    If you hold a STEM Degree, you’re geeky.

  30. Valerie Stewart
    January 16th, 2016 @ 1:12 pm

    Happy Birthday!

    Huzzah! A fellow female chemist and geek! I’ll drink (extra strong coffee) to that! Cheers!

  31. kilo6
    January 16th, 2016 @ 1:22 pm

    I learned how to work with borosilicate glass in chem lab, having a coffee beaker (with a handle you attached yourself) was a thing back then, I guess I never got bored with the idea.

  32. robertstacymccain
    January 16th, 2016 @ 1:41 pm

    And she’s probably ugly, too.

    Actually, she seems to have no problem attracting lovers of both sexes, so my guess is she’s not too bad-looking. Her much deeper problem — and she has so many problems, really, but this is the larger and fundamental issue — is a badly damaged ego that manifests itself as a lack of core identity and a profoundly low self-esteem. Her parents are divorced and (if you read down through her “personal” tag, you’ll see) she accuses her father of sexually abusing her as a child. Obviously, we have no way of verifying that claim. It may be, as in some other cases I could cite, that she is making this claim as a rationalization of her problems, or in a bid for sympathy. Nevertheless, without being able to determine whether this assertion that she is a victim of incestuous abuse is true, it is relevant to understanding her problems. We can interpret this, at a minimum, as evidence that her parents’ divorce was acrimonious and that she has a hostile attitude toward her father. Of course, she is also hostile toward her mother, and this kind of alienation from one’s parents — whatever the cause might be, and without judging whether the parents are actually as bad as the child says they are — is always a danger signal, a flashing “check engine” light on the personality dashboard, so to speak.

    What we see is that she, like any ego-damaged woman, is a very bad judge of character and has a preference the Bad Boys. Her first boyfriend was (according to her) abusive and manipulative. That relationship lasted two years and ended badly, as might be expected, and she has never really gotten over it. If you read what she writes about her current relationship, you see that she has once again chosen an untrustworthy partner who, among other things, decided to snoop through her computer and read her files. “The dog returns to its vomit,” as Kipling said, and the woman who likes Bad Boys will always manage to find them. She will spurn any interest from decent and honest men, not only because their virtuous nature makes them seem dull to her, but also because she secretly feels unworthy of a decent man’s admiration.

    What she cannot seem to do is what any wise adult would tell her to do: AVOID MEN. Stop chasing after “relationships” and get over the narcissistic thrill of demonstrating your attractiveness. YOU ARE BROKEN — your mental health is as bad as your physical health — and you cannot find happiness in a relationship until you fix what’s wrong with you. Most importantly, STOP BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE FOR YOUR PROBLEMS.

    It does not matter, in the here and now, how you got as “fucked up” as you admit you are. What is past is past and, while understanding how you got here is certainly important to recovering from your problems, the blame game doesn’t work as a way of moving forward. Rather than sit around brooding over my sixth-grade teacher Edna Flood or any other perpetrator of my “education,” instead I have striven to protect my children from the monstrous inhumanity of the public school system, and have urged others to do the same. But before I could do that, I first had to recognize my own problems, repair the damage and remediate the deficits of my education to the best of my ability. I tell the story of my own recovery from the damage inflicted by public education not just because we should DESTROY THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED SYSTEM — and really, we must — but also in order to inspire others to realize that, if I can get over this nightmare that happened to me, you can get over whatever happened to you.

  33. Valerie Stewart
    January 16th, 2016 @ 2:18 pm

    I hope that the radfem blogger is not the type of person to use her child as a tool of revenge and a revenue stream, because I knew a woman who said/thought and did just that.

  34. Dana
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:14 pm

    Our esteemed host wrote the one thing which feminism cannot tolerate:

    Most importantly, STOP BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE FOR YOUR PROBLEMS.

    The entire premise behind feminism is that whatever problems individual women, or women in general, have were caused by someone other than themselves, whether an individual male or Teh Patriarchy® as a whole. If a girl — I cannot bring myself to refer to this Tumblrina as a woman; that would imply some maturity on her part — labels herself a feminist, she has, by definition, blamed some, most or all of her problems on men.

  35. Valerie Stewart
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:18 pm

    “I’ve never learned … How to fail even if I worked hard.”

    Arrogant, much? Here’s a super easy way to fail: just don’t do your homework. If you do for some reason, then intentionally write the wrong answers.

    And then these radfems wonder why the “regular people” don’t take them seriously, because there’s the omnipresent implication that “my (worst) flaws are better than you.”

    Normally I’m a calm and understanding person, but right now that line is ticking me off.

  36. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:38 pm

    Amen.

  37. Fail Burton
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:42 pm

    Did she mean “one of the selfishist…”?

  38. Finrod Felagund
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:43 pm

    There’s a one-question geek test, in the form of a joke. If you laugh at the joke, then you’re a geek.

    The joke– a VW Beetle with the license plate: FEATURE.

  39. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:45 pm

    We have large beakers (and large erlenmeyer and florence flasks) we drink out of at home, pipettes we use in the kitchen, and one of those big Fisher Scientific periodic charts on the dining room wall. When my daughter was young, she mentioned these things to her science teacher (before we homeschooled), who said, “Your parents are cool.” The girl was dubious about that assessment, though, lol.

  40. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:50 pm

    For the sake of full disclosure, I didn’t run with my chem degree, but went on to get degrees in electrical engineering and math. For awhile I worked as an engineer, but now I work as a mathematician…”data scientist” by title.

    I’m well-rounded in my nerdiness, lol.

  41. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:52 pm

    The eye photoshop is a nice touch, I must say.

  42. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:54 pm

    In engineering school we used to say that if a thing wasn’t broken, it just didn’t have enough features yet.

  43. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:56 pm

    Slow day in Beijing, apparently.

  44. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 3:59 pm

    Sort of like what we’re currently doing, you mean?

  45. Zhytamyr
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:05 pm

    Just that.

  46. DeadMessenger
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:08 pm

    She might be confessing here that she’s a crybaby who has a tantrum when things don’t go her way.

    In other words, she works hard at something, but fails anyway, then has a meltdown because she can’t handle her failures.

    I hate to try to read any kind of logic into a feminist Tumblr blog, though. That’s just a fool’s errand.

  47. daialanye
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:45 pm

    “Seriously, never build the core of your identity around being gifted…” and good-looking, charming, whatever.

    NOW she tells me, decades too late.

  48. Finrod Felagund
    January 16th, 2016 @ 4:50 pm

    For some of us, it’s all we had to hang our hat on growing up. I managed to parley it into an early entrance to college at age 14, myself, thus skipping that horrible wasteland known as high school.

  49. Valerie Stewart
    January 16th, 2016 @ 5:09 pm

    Good job. I wish I could’ve skipped high school and went straight to college; I would’ve avoided a ton of social BS.

    Sadly, my family was not wealthy enough to do so, and it was public school *shudder* for my brother and I.

  50. NeoWayland
    January 16th, 2016 @ 6:09 pm

    Um, pardon, shouldn’t that be “She-Hulk smash patriarchy?”