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The Darwinian Dead End: Feminists Subtract Themselves From the Future

Posted on | May 23, 2014 | 79 Comments

“To live for the moment is the prevailing passion — to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity. We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future. . . .
“Narcissism emerges as the typical form of character structure in a society that has lost interest in the future.”

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

Earlier today, I mentioned Amanda Marcotte’s revulsion toward motherhood — “this homicidal impulse, this horrifying hatred of the mere thought of having babies” — as symptomatic of the mental illness that inspires much of feminism. Meanwhile, Melissa Langsam Braunstein calls our attention to still more symptoms:

Many adults can’t stand kids. The tragic thing is that some of them are already parents.
In honor of Mother’s Day, feminist website Jezebel scoured anonymous social media site Whisper for posts from parents who regret procreating. One parent shares, “I love my kids so much . . . but I regret having them every single day.” Some Whisper mothers miss their pre-kid social lives and others bemoan their post-birth bodies. There is also this incredibly jarring admission: “I hate my son. I didn’t want a boy. I wanted a girl.”
I can’t imagine ever saying anything like that. I’m thrilled I’m having a second girl, but having experienced a miscarriage last year, I’m over the moon to simply be carrying a healthy baby. . . .

Read the whole thing. Of course, no sane person can imagine saying such things about their children, but these are feminists, eh?

The swirling vortex of modern madness that makes some people envision a future of cannibalism manifests itself in other ways. Or maybe you didn’t hear the news about the Miley Cyrus tour.

“Every time you get in your car, you’re going to hear my fucking song on the fucking radio, you piece of shit. That’s right. And then I’m gonna take all my clothes off, I’m gonna sit on a big, giant dick . . . and then I’m gonna hold the record for the most-watched music video on Vevo . . . So then — you know, you can tell a lot about a person — I think you can tell how big their dick is by how much confidence they have usually, and if I was a dude I’d probably have a really big dick, ’cause I feel really good about myself now. So I’m gonna tell those motherfuckers that broke my heart — particularly one — to suck my fat dick and to enjoy hearing this song for the rest of your life.”
Miley Cyrus, May 10

This obscene tirade — accompanied by Miley’s use of the, uh, interesting stage prop — was widely interpreted as a denunciation of her ex-fiancé, Liam Hemsworth. But let’s face it: Miley has been having a public nervous breakdown for the past year or so, and this was just her latest psychotic episode. Although she’s getting paid quite well to indulge her exhibitionistic perversion, one must wonder if her acts of self-degradation are somehow a cry for help.

Psychologically healthy people don’t do such things, and the unraveling of Miley Cyrus’s broken mind — she apparently no longer has any sense of personal dignity — is painful to watch. But this is just popular entertainment “in a society that has lost interest in the future.”

Sex is naturally about the future.

Procreation is the biological purpose of sex, after all, and as the Contraceptive Culture encourages us to have unnatural sex — to thwart the natural purpose of sex — it also disconnects sex from love, marriage and parenthood, so that sex becomes a meaningless recreation of no more ultimate consequence than a video game.

Like the pornographic career of “Belle Knox,” the weirdly sexualized performances of Miley Cyrus in some sense express the inherent nihilism of what sex becomes when it is treated like a commercial commodity, a leisure amusement or — as with Miley’s “suck my fat dick” gesture — a competitive sport with winners and losers.

Feminism encourages and celebrates this meaningless kind of sex, telling women that motherhood is oppressive and that abortion is therefore a “right” essential to women’s “liberation.” At the pro-abortion feminist Web site RH Reality Check, Chanel Dubofsky commemorated Mother’s Day with a rant about the “childfree” lifestyle:

Mother’s Day is a great time to remind ourselves that language matters. We already know this; the difference between a “baby” and a “fetus,” between “reproductive rights” and “reproductive justice,” among other terms, are vital to pro-choice politics and the movement. Corporate media outlets misfire with regard to language all the time, and this has created a deep sense of confusion between the terms “childless” and “childfree.”
Recently, in a piece for The Telegraph, writer Sarah Rainey featured actress Helen Mirren discussing her decision to not have children, and the implications of that decision for Mirren and for other women like her in a society obsessed with having children.
“Motherhood holds no interest for me,” said Mirren.
She is referred to in Rainey’s piece as “childless.”
Here’s the problem: While “childless” means the condition of being without children, it implies that everyone who does not have children would like to have them. However, being “childfree,” like Mirren — and like me — means that one does not want to have children at all. . . .
As a woman who’s childfree, I’m not experiencing reproductive challenges. I’m not waiting for the right partner, or enough money, or the perfect geographic location. I don’t feel like something is missing from my life because I don’t have children. I don’t want to have kids. . . .
The experience of not wanting children in a world where women are defined by their reproductive desire and potential — where women are expected to structure their lives around babies — is very different than being a woman who would like a baby or would like to be a parent some day. . . . A cisgender, straight woman who doesn’t want a baby is transgressive, subversive, pathological, a perpetual mystery to be solved.

Certainly, we should not encourage feminist lunatics to procreate. If Chanel Dubofsky wants to become a Darwinian dead end — to subtract herself from the future — far be it from me to attempt to dissuade her from embracing her own extinction. She thinks she’s being “transgressive” and “subversive”? Whatever. Her delusions of significance are of no consequence, but it’s important to recognize that this is just another symptom of feminism as a mental disorder.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 

Comments

79 Responses to “The Darwinian Dead End: Feminists Subtract Themselves From the Future”

  1. Jason Lee
    May 25th, 2014 @ 3:35 am

    “ideas don’t spread genetically”

    Oh, but they do. Ideas are like viruses that insert themselves into their host’s genome and either damage their host or, in some cases, symbiotically leave a gene that gives their host a reproductive advantage (e.g., placenta-helping viral genes).

    If radical feminism confers a reproductive disadvantage, it will remain on the fringes for as long as we remain a species that reproduces biologically.

  2. Jason Lee
    May 25th, 2014 @ 3:43 am

    Christians send their kids to public school and allow their kids to consume anti-Christian pop culture in massive quantities. And Christians have been waving the white flag in the culture war over the past 30 years. Yeah, it’s kinda hard to win when you’re not fighting.

  3. News and opinions for Sunday | Walla Walla TEA Party Patriots
    May 25th, 2014 @ 4:31 am

    […] The Darwinian Dead End: Feminists Subtract Themselves From the Future […]

  4. Crunkomatic
    May 25th, 2014 @ 4:50 am

    The funniest part of the whole thing is that Chanel Dubofsky thinks she has no children by choice.

  5. Lee Reynolds
    May 25th, 2014 @ 6:53 am

    I’m convinced that what we see as ideological differences are in fact differences in innate character.

    People are who they are. Leftists find their way to the politics that correspond with their nature. The same with “feminists” and other assorted crazies.

    Conservatives and libertarians also do this. It just so happens that our ideas, when put into practise, work more often than not.

    So while it is quite true that there are deranged women out there who look to indoctrinate other women into their insanity, their message is only going to appeal to those who are predisposed.

    Unless it is the only message to be heard.

    This is also why the left tries to shout down and shut down anything that disagrees with their nonsense. The only way their ideas can hold sway is in the absence of anything else. So they use thuggish tactics to make sure there is nothing else.

  6. disqus_sBKZDGKiG8
    May 25th, 2014 @ 6:58 am

    Not everybody is going extinct.
    Our “mainstream” culture is but…
    How many grandkids does Rommey have?
    Just visited some people last night. The father, in his 70’s, a retired professor, has nine kids and 32 grandchildren, and counting. Educated and intelligent people.
    Yes. They are Catholic and Irish. They are also the future.
    So, what’s the big deal. This has happened before.
    And, about that mainstream culture? Was it ever mainstream? Or, just loud and in your face?

  7. Reader
    May 25th, 2014 @ 7:09 am

    I’d like to believe that a serious financial crisis would help end the Left, but when I look for example of left-wing countries that had financial hardships, I think of Cuba…where the government has sustained communism for 60 years in the face of terrific economic hardship. My observation is that government employees are the last ones who are going to be denied their pay in an economic crisis.

  8. Donald Sensing
    May 25th, 2014 @ 7:16 am

    Funny, but all the dysfunctions listed in this post (except the mindless depravity of Miley Cyrus) were predicted by the Vatican way back in the 1960s after The Pill went on the market. They already knew what we have now found out – the once procreation was technologically severed from sexual relations, all structures of human relationships would degrade. That claim was mocked and derided at the time by secular intellectuals, but who’s laughing now?

  9. Mike Del Sol
    May 25th, 2014 @ 8:20 am

    You guys gave in to political correctness when you got rid of polygamy, not to mention when you let the seed of Cain into the priesthood.

  10. TMLutas
    May 25th, 2014 @ 8:33 am

    The Vatican laughing over how it has played out? Maybe a bitter laugh, in between the tears. Those I know with ties there have little “I told you so” in them.

  11. Donald Sensing
    May 25th, 2014 @ 8:52 am

    Of course I did not mean that the Vatican or Catholics generally are laughing at how things turned out. It was the secularists back then who were laughing at the Church. The answer to who’s laughing now is “no one.”

  12. fearsometycoon
    May 25th, 2014 @ 9:15 am

    The left’s ideas aren’t winning because they’re more appealing or they have better messaging. They’re winning because they control the schools. You put your kids in the hands of leftists 8 hours a day for twelve straight years, then maybe send them off to be indoctrinated by leftists at a public university for four, and what do you expect?

    Sacrificing the McMansion to make sure your kids went to a school you supported just wasn’t worth it, I guess.

  13. louis_wheeler
    May 25th, 2014 @ 10:22 am

    Cuba is a different culture. I’m guessing that they have Community Families.

    http://www.hungarianreview.com/article/20131128_america_england_europe_-_why_do_we_differ_

    Cultures are difficult to change, no matter how hard someone tries. A trend can disturb the pattern, but it returns. It is the result of the type of family you had as a child and your expectations. You expand those on the outer world.

    America is big enough to have a number of cultures. They rise and fall against each other. They have different power centers and birth rates. The latter is important.

    Up until 10 years ago, if you saw a Jew in New York, he was a Reform Jew. He was geared toward success in the commercial world. He, likely enough, married out of his faith, if he had any, to gain social acceptance. He and his wife lived opulently in the right places and mingled in the right circles. Most of them had a single child.

    Compare them to the Orthodox Jews living in the poorer neighborhoods; having between 3 to 4 children. The ratio has shifted now; there are more Orthodox Jews than Reform in New York. There are many such shifts going on.

    Every Census, 7 to 10 members of the House of Representatives shifts from the West Coast and the Rust Belt to the South and Southwest. Some of that shift has been due to a lack of jobs in the Blue Cities, but mostly it has been a lack of births.

    There is a birth dearth in San Francisco, but not one in California. The reasons are complex; the result of interference by the Coastal Elites, who want to keep out the Riff-Raff.

    Housing is very expensive. The Elites have increased regulations to retard building, so there is a real shortage in the better neighborhoods. Add in the highest tax rates in the nation and a massive bureaucracy and you have many prospective employers leaving the state. Toyota is moving from Long Beach, Calif. to Plano, Texas.

    Most of those Coastal Elites make their money, in some way, off the government. They often are in Academia, the Arts, in businesses supplying the government or they help people avoid taxes or invest.

    The Left tend not to gain employment in engineering, production or farming. They use their contacts to fill up certain fields which give them influence beyond their numbers in Education, Media and Entertainment. This is lucrative, but also fragile in a crisis.

    The Joke was, “How do you get to Washington?” “Go to Harvard and turn Left.”

    The Left have filled up all the slots. There are no new programs and ObamaCare is not likely to last. Anything which reduces the size of the State or Federal Governments will decrease employment for the Left. Without their donations, the Left’s influence wanes.

    A financial debacle, which can’t be bought off by taxpayer bailouts, savages the Left. Every big City and State controlled by the left is moving toward bankruptcy. These are not likely to make Leftist institutions and ideas attractive to the young.

  14. TMLutas
    May 25th, 2014 @ 10:49 am

    You’re a good man and I’ve been reading you for years. The only reason I commented was that it could be read multiple ways and you clarified as I thought and hoped you would.

  15. maniakmedic
    May 25th, 2014 @ 10:50 am

    Wow there’s a lot of stupid in that comment. Not to mention racism.

  16. louis_wheeler
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:42 am

    The pattern for social change when it’s being propped up is stability with a sudden collapse. Or as Ernest Hemingway put it— ‘How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.’

    We haven’t learned the lessons yet. We don’t know how fast people’s attitudes will change until they are forced to face up to reality.

  17. RDG
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:44 am

    Because the left controls the language they control the discussion. Instead of gay say butt pilot and see how many kids follow. Gay really means anal intercourse with other men. But control the words allowed and you win the debate. That’s why we always lose. Call them butt pilot and we win. But alas we are going to lose because your sense of decorum is being used against you. There will soon be a litmus test for churches and it will involve how active they are in promoting homosexuality. Most will succumb. Following this will be the mainstreaming of pedophilia. It’s on the horizon in Hollywood right now. Trust me, they will have a cutesy term for it to control the discussion.

  18. mikehollihan
    May 25th, 2014 @ 12:31 pm

    The problems with Darwinian deadends is that they can still influence later generations. http://t.co/iCYjwQTqER

  19. mizze43
    May 25th, 2014 @ 1:18 pm

    There is no bottom
    progressivism knows no bottom
    quit waiting for a natural brake to kick in
    http://t.co/7rwd47YJot

  20. Honordads
    May 25th, 2014 @ 5:54 pm

    Remember Lot’s Wife.

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  22. louis_wheeler
    May 25th, 2014 @ 8:34 pm

    Error can prosper for quite a while. What I see happening is that the Left are needing ever more energy to just to maintain stability. The Gay Mafia attacking the views of Christians smacks of desperation. Before they would have laughed.

    Most of the Media institutions are losing viewership. You can say, “That’s Okay, we have the youth vote.” No, you had the youth vote and you squandered it. You promised them the moon and delivered nothing.

    The Low Information Voter won’t vote republican, but will he vote for you, again, after having been betrayed? Don’t think so.

  23. rennyangel2
    May 25th, 2014 @ 9:01 pm

    No matter what “feminists” say or how they pervert the language by constantly trying to change the definitions of murder, women will always want to have babies. And men will want to be the fathers of babies.

  24. rennyangel2
    May 25th, 2014 @ 9:02 pm

    The left’s ideas are dead ideas leftover from 1850. Eventually, even leftist “bitter clingers” will die out.

  25. drkennethnoisewater
    May 25th, 2014 @ 10:55 pm

    Man Liam dodged a crazy ass bullet!

  26. Donald Sensing
    May 26th, 2014 @ 11:12 am

    No prob – and thank you for your kind words!

  27. RKae
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:08 pm

    The New Testament says “each man shall have his own wife and each woman shall have her own husband.” Read your Bible.

    Polygamy is cultural poison.

  28. louis_wheeler
    May 26th, 2014 @ 2:35 pm

    This is also about the constrained and unconstrained visions of the world. The constrained vision is that Human Beings are flawed with original sin, therefore every human action must be examined for its negative consequences. Checks and balances are necessary to avoid undesirable consequences. Hence, we humans need to be restrained from doing evil and that a small evil can lead to bigger ones when we lie to ourselves.

    The Left’s unconstrained vision is that as long as our motives are pure then nothing bad can result. What this article does is to call the unconstrained vision out as the nonsense that it is.

    Naturally, the left imagines that evil results from outside influences, rather than from cause and effect. Their whole method is to point fingers at evil people when their plans fail, because people act normally.

    Conservative women took advantage of the free availability of abortion, but no where as many of them did as Liberal women. Conservative women expected that undesirable consequences might follow an abortion, if nothing more, such as regret.

    The Left are not expecting a decade long Greater Recession. Nor to have prices of foreign made goods quintuple in price when the US dollar stops being the world’s reserve currency. It never happened before, and they wouldn’t know who to blame that on, so it can’t happen, can it?

  29. richard40
    May 26th, 2014 @ 5:06 pm

    Lets just say that some men and some women want to have babies, and that in evolutionary terms they are really the only ones that count, at least in coming generations.