Dear Sir,
Believe it or not, I am here
to help you and to broaden your mind’s horizons.
Your text (https://thirdwayman.com/articles/why-you-should-procreate-an-open-letter-to-every-smugly-childless-man/) annoyed me.
Not because of your gratuitous
and bland insults. I’ve been called far worse, starting from child of a woman
with loose morals that trades sex for money and ending up with parasite living
in the rectal orifice of a platypus(1) so being called a smug prick, or an
asshole means nothing.
Nor was I bothered by the
callous and mean spirited way you wrote, not caring about the damage that your
words could (and would) cause.
Nope. What bothered me were
your assumptions(2)
1 - That You know what You’re talking about.
2 - That what you wrote is the product of your mind.
3 - That you’re entitled to insult and belittle me and people
that made the same choices that I did.
Let’s start with your first
assumption.
You talk about people that at
dinner parties announce that they will not having children. Guess what? We
rarely announce it. Unless we are being cornered by a bunch of
“Thou-Shalt-Make-Children” partisans.
Let me give you a personal
example, and also teach you about the ways that some of us react to people like
you.
Last time I made such an
announcement I was at was supposed to be a birthday party. I was thirty seven
then (I am fifty three now). I was with my girlfriend that happened to be a bit
older than me (nineteen years older if you need to know). If I were the older
one, probably nobody would bother making any comments, but since I wasn’t,
everybody made sure to make a comment. And since we were all so civilized and
sophisticated, nobody mentioned directly the age gap, but everybody and I mean e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y
started to ask us when were we going to have children, how many did we want to
have, commenting that our children would be gorgeous, that we needed to hurry
before it was too late, dropping hints about hormonal therapy and fertility treatments.
There was a couple there that was the worst, bludgeoning with words, telling us
to hurry up, mentioning the possibility of a surrogate mother interjected with
praise of their perfect children, showing everybody the pictures of their five
snot nosed brats. After two hours I snapped. I coldly told everyone that I
wasn’t going to have children and to stop bothering us with their advice. I am
not sure if I ranted about the Club of Rome or how we as species were going to
overshoot, but probably did. Everybody went silent until dessert arrived. I
remember vividly the people, the light the sounds, the smells, the taste of
chocolate mousse in my mouth… and then that guy looked at the mousse, turned to
his wife and said : “look Marta. How lovely. It’s the same color of little
João’s feces.” I almost spat the mousse and would probably do or say something
that would later regret if my girlfriend - that was much more patient and smarter than me - didn’t ask immediately : “How interesting
Marcos. And does it taste the same?” Everybody laughed.
Soon after that she left me,
because she couldn’t handle the constant pressure and malice of people.
That was not my first (or
last) round with the “Thou-Shalt-Make-Children” crowd. Far from it.
And it’s funny that different
people, from different cities, and even different countries made the same
stupid assumptions and asked the same stupid questions.
During the 80’s the question
was : “ Not have any children? Are you a faggot?” By then I was a bit
inexperienced so it took me a while to find out the perfect answer. “A faggot?
Me? No. Say have you noticed that the guy on the corner is checking out your
ass?” or “No. Why? Do you want me to f*** your ass?” or “ No, but now that you
mention it, you DO have a nice ass”.
Obviously, a few times their
immediate reaction was to punch me, but it was worth it.
During the first half of the
90’s the question was : “No children? Why? Do you have AIDS or something?”
After I told them that I was
perfectly healthy they always asked if I was gay.
I used to look at them with a
slow smile and say : “ Sorry dude, I’m a ladies man, but I can give you the
phone number of a guy that will bust the cherry of your ass for free” (and I
did give that phone number in two occasions).
By the late 90’s, beginning of
the 21st century things took a sharp turn for the worse.
“What? No children? You must
be a pedophile (or a satanic pedophile)”.
I suppose that nobody expected
me to give the obvious answer. “A pedophile? Me? No. If I were a pedophile I
would make sure to have a lot of children so that I could trade them with my
pedophile (or satanic pedophile) friends. Wait… (horrified look, taking a step
back, gasping for air) how many children do you say you have?”
Of course that not all members
of the “Thou-Shalt-Make-Children” crowd are this limited.
Some, like you, talk about
population winter. What you forget to say is that people like you make the
population winter inevitable. You mentioned the plague and said that it killed
fifty million people, half of Europe’s population at the time. What you fail to
mention is that most of those victims were on urban centers, cities and
villages. Crammed people always were a treat for the dissemination of disease.
Tokyo alone has 9,3 million people. New York 8,7 million people, São Paulo 17
million (not counting with the people that live in the favelas, the slums).
Take a look at the slums in Shanghai, Mumbai, São Paulo. Think, if you dare,
about what the combined element of overpopulation and poverty will cause. And
considering that we live in a finite world with finite resources, a
continuously growing population implies continuously growing poverty and social
tension. This inevitably leads to brutality and war.
Of course some people, like you,
have faith. Glorious Human. Where others see a mouth to feed you see two hands
and a mind. True. But those hands need food to be able to work and the brain
needs a proper education. How will you accomplish this? How many potential
Einsteins are now starving and living in abject poverty, without access to
food, water, shelter, education, health care? Take a look at the poor neighborhood of your own city, of your own country. Multiply it for the world.
Some people believe that we
will reach for the stars and that the excess of population will be transferred
to Mars. Others believe in the rapture, others yet believe that any attempt to
reduce the population growth is a sin, or that a child genius will come up and
solve all our problems, completely conquer Nature and take us to a blazing
future away from this world and conquering the Universe. What are these but
pipe dreams? And don’t answer me that someone will think of something.
Me… I have never seen a path
to Utopia that didn’t end up in a blood bath.
Now let us look at your second
assumption.
The assumption that those are
your own thoughts and words.
They’re not. They’re the words
and thoughts of a parasitic meme/thought form that is five thousand years old
and infected entire cultures. The meme of Empire.
Expansionist warrior cultures
always ruled the reproductive freedom of others.
The sexual laws of the Old
Testament make sure that married men could only have sex with their wives on
their fertile period. If you think that I this is a lie check for yourself. http://www.jewfaq.org/sex.htm
Lo, children are an heritage
of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is
his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a
mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his
quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the
enemies in the gate
But the kingdom of Israel was
far from being the only one.
In Sparta any adult citizen
that was not married was forced to parade naked on the streets of the city,
during the winter, shouting it´s crime. Marrying (and fulfilling the duty of impregnating
one’s wife with a future Spartan warrior or warriors) was mandatory. That
mindset traveled through time until our days. The first thing that an Empire
state (or an Empire state wannabe) does is to use propaganda to turn the women
into breeding machines. I am sure that you can come up with several examples
yourself, but none is more appalling and more insidious than your own country.
Make no mistake. I have been
several times to your country. I have friends in the US that are like family to
me. But as an outsider I can see things
that you are too close to see.
Your whole culture, all your
memes are infected with the idea that people have an obligation to have
children. Do you think that I’m exaggerating? Far from it. Look at your
television series. Look at Grey’s Anatomy. They killed the character that
didn’t want to have children. Some of the minor characters that weren’t
interested in kids ended up married to people that had children. Look at
Private Practice. The character that didn’t want children ended up with a
stepson and pregnant with triplets. In fact the final episodes smelled of baby
barf. All the women pregnant or with children, The one that was not pregnant
and was childless, endured nine months of pregnancy to give birth to a
brainless child, that was used to have it’s organs removed to save the lives of
other babies. He (or she) was nothing more than a bunch of spare parts. She
fulfilled her patriotic duty to the Empire.
Other television series?
NCIS. Gibbs had a wife and
daughter. Fulfilled his obligation. Anthony
DiNozzo got Ziva David pregnant. Fulfilled his obligation. NCIS LA.
Sam Hanna the prototype of the American hero has several children. Fulfilled
his obligation. Granger had an affair with a North Korean spy, got her pregnant
and later made his daughter defect from North Korea to the US. Fulfilled his
obligation big time. Do you want more examples or those are enough? The
propaganda to make children is pervasive in your culture. People end up
convinced that those are their own thoughts. They’re not.
And television is supposed to
be liberal.
Your third
assumption.
The
assumption that you have the right to insult and belittle people like me. You
are not alone in that mindset. In fact a recent study shows that most people
feel morally outraged by people that decide not to have children. That is why
the fight for reproductive ( or non reproductive) rights is a never ending war.
But in my
opinion (and correct me if I’m wrong) we are dealing with two things here. One
is the idea that an individual has the duty make children. The other is the rage that people feel
against someone doesn’t just talk the talk but also walks the walk. I and many
others believe that the world can’t support so many people. We believe that it
is required a reduction of the number of people. We have chosen to not have
children and we have the courage and integrity to implement that choice.
If it bothers you that’s your
problem.
(1) This sounds far better in English than it sounds in my native tongue
(2) Assumption is the mother of twins, and they’re called Mistake and Failure.
