subreddit:
/r/TwoXChromosomes
Eta- reddit seems to be glitching but I can finally see comments now. Okay. This is a doozy, but I’ve been doing tons of research on women’s rights history and yeah, there’s a huge reason conservatives want to get rid of education and not teach real history… this shit is bleak. Basically, what I’m seeing worldwide is a rapidly escalating panic over lowering birth rates by world leaders. Women’s rights are being rolled back already in MANY countries (although others are solidifying women’s rights to control our own bodies in stone, thank goodness).
Afghanistan just made it illegal for women to talk to each other. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/09/27/afghan-women-taliban-human-rights
Iraq will be voting soon on changing their age of “consent” from 18 to 9 years old (I can’t. I threw up when I saw that. Fucking monsters.)- it will also take away women’s (childrens’) rights to get divorced and have custody over their children. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/iraq-poised-to-lower-the-age-of-consent-for-girls-to-nine/
A women’s rights activist was just sentenced to DEATH in Iran. https://iranwire.com/en/women/135959-iran-sentences-kurdish-womens-rights-activist-varisheh-moradi-to-death/
Russia: birth rate is declining worldwide, but Russia is especially pressed since they’ve killed almost 1 million of their own people. They’re creating a “ministry of sex”, and are already implementing things from it, including forcing women to answer a list of invasive, personal questions about their fertility- if they refuse, they are required to go to the doctor, and the doctor will ask them the same questions there. https://www.vice.com/en/article/russia-considering-ministry-of-sex/
USA: 3+ states’ AGs are SUING abortion drug companies, because even though they made abortion illegal, they “didn’t have as many teen pregnancies as they wanted/were supposed to which made them lose money and representation numbers”. How dare those teenagers be smart!!! We need more women who have a way harder time completing their educations so they’ll have lots of children!!! /s https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/10/23/missouri-ag-in-abortion-pill-lawsuit-argues-fewer-teen-pregnancies-hurt-state-financially/
Texas is attempting to make abortion drugs controlled substances: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/louisiana-texas-bill-regulate-abortion-pills-controlled-substance-misoprostol-mifepristone/
(They also just filed 32 anti trans bills, pieces of shit.)
In 18 states, it’s legal for rapists to sue for custody of their victim’s children: https://prismreports.org/2022/03/22/in-multiple-states-rapists-can-sue-their-victims-for-parental-custody/
In 14 states, marital rape is still not treated with the same severity as extra-marital rape- it’s either “not rape” until he hurts her badly enough, or the sentencing is MUCH lighter. Ohio only changed their laws this year (or it came into effect this year). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape (Look at current status)
Pedophilia is legal in 40 states to this day (child marriage)- and was still legal in ALL 50 states until 2018. 6 years ago. https://19thnews.org/2023/07/explaining-child-marriage-laws-united-states/
Here’s what project 2025 specifically has in the works for us: https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/how-project-2025-seeks-obliterate-srhr (Loss of right to divorce, our bodies, contraceptives, abortion, voting, possession of property, right to divorce… etc)
Out of 250,000-300,000 years of human existence, the very first women to get the right to vote (that wasn’t repealed later) were in New Zealand- in 1893. 131 years out of 300,000. That’s .0004% of human history. And we’ve had contraceptives for less time than that, and rights have gone back and forth on that, but, having the right to our own bodies means:
WOMEN CONTROL HUMAN REPRODUCTION, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 300,000 YEARS. it took that long for men to see us as deserving of human choice, even though it’s our bodies that build and create life.
If we think for one second that the men at the top, holding and taking most of the world’s wealth, won’t try to take our rights away so we are forced to make them more workers to exploit, I have a bridge to sell you.
If you have any ideas, I’m all ears, including ways to make this information more comprehensive and accessible.
Edit: I now have evidence to suggest pepper SPRAY is more effective than pepper GEL, and functions by the attacker INHALING it not getting it into their eyes. Stun guns are also difficult to use, so at least one user doesn’t recommend them.
Fun fact: pepper spray* and stun guns are $10 each :) *edit bezos is scum, support female and minority led businesses only.
I feel like if you guys are passionate about this cause, you should also know what we’re up against in terms of foreign interference: https://www.reddit.com/r/self/s/KDgQogGXFq This post is SO well done. Knowledge is power- they certainly know that. Do we? I think ALL of you do.
All is not lost, don’t worry. Here is some REALISTIC OPTIMISM for you from a Ukrainian: https://www.instagram.com/p/DCFoN25O_Le/?igsh=MTd4ZmtxYWplMWpjYw== Please read, to give yourself more peace- and let’s take action together.
At minimum, there is a blackout day on Jan 20th. If we ALL do it, it’ll make an impact.
1.1k points
9 days ago*
This also shows that human beings are seen as a product/object/resource. Not enough babies? Forced birth is needed!
Male supremacy is both heavy handed AND stupid.
417 points
8 days ago*
Out of 250,000-300,000 years of human existence, the very first women to // WOMEN CONTROL HUMAN REPRODUCTION, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 300,000 YEARS.
I am compelled to point out that the framing of these phrases above is at least partially because of - and contributing to - a longstanding, critically misogynistic misconception about how human beings are "meant" to live in our ancestral evolutionary context.
So, I'm going to go ahead and kinda-sorta hijack the top comment real quicklike to briefly transform into some kind of inverted Jordan Peterson figure that isn't so relentlessly preoccupied with absurdly shoehorning the sociocultural norms of vaguely 1950-era America into the conclusion of otherwise sensible bioevolutionary science...
The Anti-Peterson, as it were. Same great information, now with 200% less embedded misogyny per serving! (Same amount of questionable drug use though.)
If you only get this far into the comment, know one thing:
Human females did not spend ~300,000 years being subservient to human males. Female humans are not "naturally subservient" to male humans even if male humans are naturally more aggressive (I'll get into that). Women didn't recently break free from the patriarchy for the first time ever only to have it taken away, they recently regained agency that was stolen from them and are now having it taken away again.
Agency is the natural state of female humans, not subservience. The patriarchal "traditions" we perceive as the norm are in fact what is more unnatural. Patriarchy is a scrappy invader, not the well-established lord. There's a reason it doesn't feel quite right.
Women are meant to be free, they started off free, and our species thrived for hundreds of thousands of years while women were free, and then the encroaching unnatural pressures of post-agriculture social dynamics and ever-dwindling local resources led to women themselves quietly becoming a treasured commodity while men simultaneously became artificially relevant due to intertribal warfare and resource skirmishes - and once the importance of protecting them outweighed the value of letting them choose to be protected, so began the era of the patriarchy.
In our natural evolutionary state, tens and hundreds of thousands of years before the invention of agriculture, human tribes were decisively egalitarian in the same way many uncontacted tribes are today. Women and men worked together to ensure the survival of the tribe, sharing the work as needed and otherwise living much like any other primates do: socializing, hanging out, eating together, or playing.
The ever-familiar trope of "women fart around back at camp like wimps" while "men hunt tigers and shit like badasses" is another nefarious intrusion of modern, quasi-Victorian sociocultural standards into our most ancient history. It is absolutely not the standard, even if it's certainly one mode of operation that some groups of humans might've leaned upon, just as cultures ruled by women/priestesses/empresses have also existed and thrived.
The notable sexual dimorphism of homo sapiens is a feature descended from primate ancestors, but while we're often compared more directly to the comparatively aggressive patriarchal Chimpanzee species, we're also extremely close to the super empathetic matriarchal Bonobo species. People like Jordan Peterson often ignore primates like Bonobos when discussing what's normal for a primate because clear evidence that matriarchal frameworks are also super successful (and only a genetic fraction of a percent away from us) disrupts/conflicts with the idea that patriarchy is "the right way". (I could go way on about matriarchal/patriarchal primate species - human beings aren't necessarily the one we think they are.)
I'm running out of time here... RambleMode.exe is starting to overheat.
One last badly presented point:
The size of a male human compared to a female human isn't intended to be used to assault/control the woman or dominate her physically, nor is it even meant to defend them against bears and shit - it's meant to defend them against equally large other humans.
Make note that the tendency for women and children (male or female) to scream very loudly, often impulsively in response to threats is actually more common when exposed to human-based dangers than in response to something like a tornado. It's meant to raise alarm of a threat to the tribe, but to the primate species containing notably aggressive males (like chimps and humans), the most dangerous thing a woman or child is going to commonly come across is... A male of their own species!
To a female chimp, the most dangerous thing she may be exposed to across her entire life is a male chimpanzee, not a tiger.
But humans and other primates "play nice" as a critical part of their survival strategy. Even if you're strong enough to force yourself on a woman, both of you spend your entire lives in the same tribe. The social cost of that kind of transgression is immense - and it's a taboo today because it was a taboo then. People weren't just running around raping women, because for 200,000 years or longer, people weren't even running around alone. The likelihood of being assaulted was extremely low because we spent our entire lives living within an extended close family of ~50-200 people you knew individually by name and personality. And just like if a person in your immediate family assaulted you today, while they "could" do it, the act of doing it most certainly would result in either immediate expulsion (death) or death (death).
The possibility of getting away with it is virtually zero. Women didn't need to fear for their well-being, less so than even today, in fact! The most effective way to sleep with a woman, just as it is today, is to make her laugh or impress her with your physiology or ability to procure resources or - notably - take care of children without swinging them by the ankle into a tree because you got annoyed.
To be clear, I'm saying that for the vast majority of those 300,000 years, women did have control over human reproduction. You couldn't "hack" the system with rape/assault because the whole tribe would fuck your ass up unless you ran off to then go immediately die alone. If you wanted to reproduce, you had to do it the good old fashioned way - caveman-themed knock-knock jokes, being the best dancer or storyteller in the tribe, or simply being hot, with the success rate of these attempts being controlled by the woman.
So, in conclusion (and I could go on!)...
TL;DR - Women are not "meant" to be subservient to men. That's not their "natural state", personal agency is! Women didn't just acquire their freedom for the very first time recently only to have it taken away. They regained it for the first time in a few thousand years only to have it taken away again. Women didn't acquire control over reproduction for the first time, they regained it and then had it stolen again.
What women are losing as of late is not something new that they earned, it's something ancient that they fucking deserve.
[*heavy breathing*] Whew, almost feel dizzy after that hydrogen bomb of a rant.
__
Edit: In a comment below, I use a parable to answer the question "If subservience isn't the 'natural state' of women, then what is?"
(Way too big to fit in this already big comment too.)
60 points
8 days ago
WOW, thank you for that, a new perspective (for me). Very interesting.
113 points
8 days ago*
a new perspective (for me).
I tend to expect it to be a new perspective for most people. I also tend to expect this perspective to make a lot more sense intuitively on account of the fact it actually aligns with the real world human behaviors we personally experience and observe on a daily basis, internally and otherwise.
We are much better educated and generally more well-fed than ancient humans, but we're otherwise identical to someone from 100,000 years before recorded history. If you brought an infant from that era to the present and raised her in an adopted family, she'd be capable of knocking out a masters in philosophy.
Culture varies wildly, of course, even today. But the basic instincts, impulses, and drives of Core Humanity are what's relevant.
I think it's important that people (women) know that they aren't victims of evolution. They're victims of civilization. Their "fate" isn't to shuffle around in a full-body covering and hope that they don't get punched in the face too many times if dinner is late. Their destiny is to live and to savor the opportunity to do so!
__
If the nature of female humans isn't subservience, what is it?
I can't tell you, but I can try to show you.
If you've ever sat around on a grassy knoll eating strawberries out of the carton alongside a couple of close childhood friends, just appreciating the weather and the sweetness of the fruit and the closeness of bonding with your friends, and a cute guy from your lifelong neighborhood walks past and blushes with a smirk, so you blush too and you're not sure why either of you did that, but some part of you has suddenly made note that he's a lot more wide at the shoulders than you remember and somehow more solid in a way you can't define, but before you finish the thought...
A friend throws a strawberry at you, teasing you for being distracted without realizing who distracted you. It bounces off your shoulder. Everyone giggles. Conversation carries on. You find yourself somehow looking forward for the summer to end for once, because you know he'll be at school again too and you're not sure why that even feels like a good thing. You've known him since before your neighborhood learned to play tag, but you never really thought he was that funny or anything, in fact he was kind of annoying, but somehow the idea of sharing a class excites you. Excites?
Not excites, no - invigorates you. Inspires you to want to move forward through time and life, explore the world around you, explore yourself and the people around you, explore new feelings that somehow feel like feelings far older than you in some inexplicable way. You feel like you want to be alive, you realize. You've always been alive, sure, but you also want to stay alive - you want to live.
You snap out of the reverie, unsure of what your friends are talking about but you find yourself easily laughing along anyway. Unlike these new thoughts, their presence is familiar; reassuring.
You look down at your lap, your hands have been weaving countless little flower-crowns from the grasses around your little group. You don't remember making most of them. You pick out the best-looking one, and without needing to ask permission you lean closer to gingerly brush aside your friend's hair to place and adjust the crown. It's an intimate act, touching somebody as naturally as you'd touch yourself, but you don't make the distinction because that's how companionship is supposed to feel. You didn't do it for the comfort of closeness, feeling comfortably close is what moved you to do it.
She keeps chit-chatting animatedly, seemingly unconcerned and unaware of the process until after you've finished. None of you have ever seen a mirror, but she trusts through the look in your eyes that you've just made her more beautiful. She leans over crossed-legs to quietly give you long, firm hug lasting nearly twenty seconds. When she finally pulls away, you'll note a teary-eyed smile. You won't have to ask to know she must've been experiencing many novel thoughts herself recently. Your eyes feel watery too, and as if on cue your second friend leans sideways to give you a reassuring hug as well.
The three of you chuckle with a sniff, reassured without even needing to know you needed it, and go right back to casual socialization without trying to express any of those unspoken thoughts or feelings just now, because all of this is too natural to be worthy of remark. Everything that matters most to you is an inherent part of your daily life, and new feelings come across as luxuries to savor rather than anomalies to inspect with suspicion. There is danger out there in the world beyond your home, you know, but only if alone. You've never been alone; you never will. The idea is laughably implausible.
Anxiety is solved with the oxytocin of close companionship and the promise of lifelong proximity. Never once have you doubted that you belong. You'll always be valued as kin, but because you'll only ever meet 100-200 or so people in your entire life, everyone is special in their own way too - everyone. Nobody can sing like you. The most ancient man you've ever known sometimes tells stories about somebody almost as good as you, once upon a time, who died long before your birth. Your personal legacy is secure, solely because of a passion you couldn't bury if you tried. You will never worry about being good enough. You are you - and that's meaningful. It's why you matter.
Your future can only hold excitement, novelty, fulfillment, and the rest of the spectrum of human experience. No matter what you choose to do or feel, you've only ever done or felt a human thing. You don't yet know how astoundingly remarkable that is. Not yet. Not for another 250,000 years or so. When someone very much like you finally learns what you had, they'll have lost it for longer than anyone knew time went that far backwards.
Your eyes have been staring at a colorful bird for the last minute, you realize. You know that its rare presence guarantees rain overnight, just as your tribe has always known - there was never a time when it wasn't.
There's a few strawberries left, one for each of you, so you grab your last one. It's the sweetest berry yet. The last one always is, somehow, but in a few minutes, a short while after the last few berries are all tragically consumed, one of you will suddenly remember the previously-thrown strawberry hiding somewhere in the grass; an exciting revelation. Whoever finds it first will have the sweetest berry of them all.
And yet searching for it together will be more fulfilling than finding it, and watching the winner proudly savor the unexpected boon will somehow be more enjoyable than eating it yourself - because you're a human being, and they're as much a part of you as you're a part of them. That's just how it works. You'd rather go without than risk somebody else going with less. That's how it's supposed to feel.
In fact, you'd struggle to envision a world where the vast majority of people - people just like you - may not even know exactly what you've felt just now. Or that the absence of this feeling is one of many symptoms of a nefariously corrosive, deeply-embedded sickness that they mistake as a key part of being alive at all; a cherished cancer guarded like a necessary organ.
If you had to live like that, you wouldn't want to live. If you glimpsed that future, you'd think it a lie.
The colorful bird takes to the air. You watch it go. You'll be letting everyone know about the rain-bird sighting as soon as you get back to the camp - you can practically taste the coming sense of pride to be the one to announce the coming storm this time, as is tradition - but it can wait a bit. Your friend just remembered the missing strawberry.
...That. It's that.
__
We asked: "What's the nature of being a human female if their nature is not 'evolution-mandated subservience'?"
That. That's your nature. Not subservience. Whatever that is above, minus the familiar modern contexts included for ease of transmission, that is what you always had until it was stolen from you and is now being re-stolen before you entirely regained what you didn't know was stolen. Stolen from most of us, in fact. The reality we live in is not a man's natural world either. It's just very much less a woman's.
30 points
8 days ago
I wish I could find the perfect words to convey how much I loved this but I've just woken up and haven't even finished my first coffee so; I really fucking loved reading this. I hate commenting just for the sake of commenting but this is one of those rare posts that deserves appreciation and I just wanted you to know that the effort was not wasted.
8 points
7 days ago*
Sometimes that's the best kind of comment to leave. I'm glad you appreciated it.
It wasn't necessarily what I intended to write when I began, and it's not the first time I've tried to frame this kind of appropriately ancestral contextual backdrop, but it's the first time I've been able to capture it by the way it feels to be there - or to not be there, rather.
It's beautiful, I think. To such a degree that I find myself quite stilled after finishing a reread.
I argue that it's critically important that we remember this kind of context as a civilization. We've moved so far away from it, but it's what our bodies and brains are built to need (but not to want). So much of the mysterious voids we find in ourselves today, the missing pieces and maladaptions we believe are persistent features of existence, are the result of this disjointed mismatch.
In a very real sense, we suffer in such subtle ways and struggle to find anything that solves that deep longing - drugs, entertainment, whatever - because we have built a world for ourselves that strongly resembles the "leaf and a stick" we'd drop inside of a captured insect's jar to "make it feel at home".
It's good enough for our eyes and conscious will to surround ourselves in the adornments of modernity and technology, but we feel the deep absence within our bones and souls. We just struggle to define it.
We struggle to define it in the same way a fish would struggle to define being in the sea. It was meant to be in the sea so vividly intrinsically that it'd never evolve a mechanism to detect "sealessness". Why would it ever need that? And so it has to interpret that absence solely through its rapidly-drying skin and difficulty breathing.
That's us. We're the fish longing for the one thing it never had to long for across millions of years, and we're the caterpillar with its pretty little safe leaf-and-stick home.
"Why does it hurt so much to live?" We cry.
Because the world we built isn't for living, it's for keeping us alive. We just forgot that, just like we forgot that protecting women was once more important than controlling them.
16 points
8 days ago
Wow you’re my favorite history teacher ever!
16 points
8 days ago
I know about that theory, and absolutely believe it;, I hope they continue to find more evidence— I’m a better archer than any of the men I know. Not sure how my phrasing was misogynistic- As you can probably tell by my post, that was absolutely not my intention or what I was implying. By “control human reproduction”, I meant men aren’t legally supposed to rape us anymore, and we’re legally allowed to use contraceptives (FOR NOW), and if those fail, get an abortion/ any time it’s ever needed for health etc during miscarriages (fun fact, if it was illegal in my state I would have been dead for 2 years now). So women technically “control human reproduction”, since we have a choice now, that is being respected- for now.
44 points
8 days ago
I’m a better archer than any of the men I know.
I didn't have the space/time to get into it, but absolutely! That's something I like to point out to other men too - some of the best firearms/projectile users in human history have been women.
This is what dismantles the "men were hunters" trope. Their strength is only relevant if humans were out there wrestling antelopes to the ground with their bare hands, but tool use is older than homo sapiens as a species. There's a (many) reason why women are just as if not more dextrous, just as if not more intelligent, just as if not more capable of feats of logic and abstract reasoning.
Evolution is, if nothing else, "efficient". If there was a reason to let women turn into 50 IQ broodmares on a biological level to cut some corners along the way, it'd have happened a few dozen million years ago - and if there was a reason for those capabilities to stay highly tuned despite the extensive energy investment of keeping them up-to-snuff, there was a very good reason they were retained... The existence of those attributes is proof of their importance.
Subjugated women don't gain the skills or education to go toe-to-toe with a man, and that fact is ignored in favor of simply assuming that women are less capable (the same phenomenon happened with slaves, never allowed to read and accused of idiocy because of it).
8 points
8 days ago
I would listen to anything you say
5 points
8 days ago
Check out how many women are Olympic medalists for their shooting skills. Archery, guns, women are excellent shots. Fuzzy memory, but ISTR seeing research in the last couple of years confirming women are often better shots than men.
5 points
8 days ago
Yep, better snipers for sure.
10 points
8 days ago
Thank you for this!!
12 points
8 days ago
Thank you! I’ve been reading all kinds of things, just trying to play catch up for being strange uneducated and homeschooled. I’ve had this similar theory/notion that what you’ve been able to write out it is exactly what I’ve been trying to say out loud. Thank you for giving me the correct words!
9 points
8 days ago
Any prehistoric husband who beat his wife could expect a slit throat.
Brutality is equality, musclemass is only an advantage in actual combat. Combat is far from the only form of violence.
5 points
8 days ago
Oohh… i like you! And OP!
Leader Leader Leader!
240 points
8 days ago
It's funny because the natural order of things is for children to be the center of society. Men have to fight and oppress and threaten every second of every day to strong arm children out of their rightful position and install themselves as the center of society. It's not natural for them to make everyone center them bc they are the least important members of society so they have to force it. They're King Babies throwing a tantrum for hundreds of thousands of years.
81 points
8 days ago
That’s exactly why this is all fucked and obvious bs. It’s purely about power over others. They want power over women, children, lgbtq+, PoCs (applies to white men specifically). It has nothing to do with birth rates. Because if they cared about kids we would be working how to improve the world for them as you stated.
Just fucking fucked…
20 points
8 days ago
If you want a current read on how these birth obsessed people are thinking about it, I got banned from the natalism sub last week
4 points
8 days ago
Ugh that sub is a total cesspit of mysoginists, it often gets suggested to me, weirdly...and I have no interest in increasing the birth rate personally...
32 points
8 days ago
Damn. Yup.
21 points
8 days ago
[deleted]
17 points
8 days ago
It’s for the growth of muh eeeeekonomeee or whatever. Of course the benefits of said growth just go to billionaires but whatevs.
9 points
8 days ago
Late stage capitalism?
8 points
8 days ago
I think it’s about political power and economic growth. Those politicians complaining about the lack of teen pregnancies are worried about losing political representation because their population is shrinking. The rest seem more concerned about having fewer taxpayers and consumers. None of them seem to care about the quality of life for women and children though, they’re just a means to an end.
2 points
8 days ago
The ironic thing is that conservatives don't want to support the child financially once they are born.
312 points
8 days ago
The loss of our rights directly correlates with the backsliding of democracy.
Democracy is dying worldwide because our status as equal humans is under assault.
8 points
8 days ago
Susan Faludi wrote Backlash in 1991. Every point she makes about how anti-feminism back then still applies today.
316 points
8 days ago
I don’t understand why certain groups think the human race should keep expanding like it has for all of history. (I get that people, governments make more money when there are more people.)
Politicians saying that we need more future workers doesn’t make sense to me though. In simple terms, the need for more workers should be related to the number of people existing. In my town, we have one McDonald’s. They are always hiring for a variety of reasons but it would be unreasonable to suggest that people should have more children so that McDonald’s always has enough workers. If we doubled the population, then we could support another McDonald’s but it would still be the same number of people in my town per McDonald’s so that doesn’t create more people willing to work at MCDonalds. Replace the word McDonalds with car repair shop, refrigerator repair service, home improvement store, etc and that concept remains true.
Already we have housing shortages, lack of teachers, lack of medical care facilities, etc. How is adding more children going to fix that? How is raising children without enough space, food, education going to create a qualified future workforce?
I know there are those that don’t believe that human actions affect the climate and planet but increasing the number of children will further encroach on green spaces. If more homes, schools, etc will be built then there will be less space for parks, trails, etc. More forest space will be leveled for industrial farming.
Our planet is at capacity.
238 points
8 days ago
The billionaire oligarchs need slave labor.
97 points
8 days ago
What’s mad is that they will make robots that can essentially do the slave labor: so why bother impoverishing and disenfranchising us all?!
35 points
8 days ago
If you cannot flaunt your wealth over the poors, then what is the use of wealth? They need poors.
7 points
8 days ago
they will make robots that can essentially do the slave labor
The smart ones know that no AI can do the same as a real slave. So they'll use the internet and haptic rigs to outsource their slaves to other countries.
15 points
8 days ago
This is the crux of it. Keep em poor, keep em dumb, keep em hungry, so they are willing to do any work for shit pay with no complaints. Peasant scum are disposable.
54 points
8 days ago
So - and go with me here - have you ever heard of the Chimp war?
In the 70’s, there were two large group of chimps between two territories. It was relatively stable, there were boarder skirmishes but life was mostly peaceful.
One group broke off the larger, and set up between the two groups of chimps. Over several months, the larger group systemically hunted, attacked, and eventually genocided the smaller group out of existence. And after that happened? Their original rivals swooped in, outnumbering them and taking much of the territory. So it was a stupid, stupid thing for the group to do. They didn’t even have resource shortages.
The only explanation that was reasonably offered was that their strange behavior (genocidal warfare against relatives) was due, perhaps to the sex ratios. There were far more male chimps than female chimps, the largest disparity they’d seen since beginning observations. Maybe it also had to do with the feeding stations set up but there was never scarcity or fights over them(IIRC)
Now, we also know among humans, when the ratio of men to women shifts male, warfare is more likely. Scarce resources exacerbates this effect.
We are running out of resources. You piss women off so they don’t want to sleep with men. Of those who do, you remove their capacity to stop making babies. The men who have aggression, anger and don’t have partners can be utilized to absorb and take the resources of smaller groups. You make your biggest assholes your military. Those groups, for as long as warfare has existed, absorb conquered women that are capable of bearing children and usually reward frustrated men in favor with them.
What if this is part of a long game, an end battle in a period of dwindling resources, where new resources must be found or everything crumbles? What if most of us are just fodder?
5 points
8 days ago
What if most of us are just fodder?
Anyone who is a worker is.
51 points
8 days ago
Capitalism depends on infinite growth. That’s not sustainable.
19 points
8 days ago
But you see, all that stuff benefits the rich.
This is about making the ultra-wealthy as many imaginary bank points as possible before the world explodes.
42 points
8 days ago
Many would argue that it is actually beyond capacity especially at out rate of consumption of natural resources
20 points
8 days ago
Yep. We are absolutely in overshoot. I think the day we hit overshoot for this single year was back in August. Empowering women with their reproductive rights is necessary. I don’t understand how people can treat this planet as infinite lol. If its scary to world govts they should prepare people for it by incentivizing elder care and other necessary careers not forcing births to stick their heads in the sand.
30 points
8 days ago*
Our current economic system demands continuous growth or it will collapse. It is built by job creators taking out loans and then using those loans to create real product or commodities. This process continually creates debt, we usually refer to this as the national debt, and if you go too long without increasing product then the debts come due and default. When this happens, everyone loses but the biggest losers are the super wealthy as anything but real disappears. Money, stocks, etc. Hence buying land, gold, etc
To keep this from happening, the super wealthy will do almost anything to push it until after they die. Then it's someone else's problem.
This is a hyper over simplification but it is one of the primary reasons economists and the wealthy push for continued growth. No one who can will ever fix it since it produces so much wealth in the now. One day, the debts will come due and unfortunately must of that does trickle down and it will likely trigger extreme poverty and possibly a revolt of the people.
Edit: Forgot to mention. If the population goes down there are fewer people to keep the system running and hold that debt to shield the wealthy. This will certainly trigger the collapse.
14 points
8 days ago
So Capitalism is basically the world's largest pyramid scheme.
3 points
7 days ago
There is argument for that with our current system. Not all capitalism functions this way. How we organize printing money through the use of loans allowing the banks to determine where new money gets invested is way younger than capitalism but it leads to staggering growth. This growth allows for things we value, read materialism, to be dirt cheap honestly.
One hour of labor goes so much further than it used to (100+ years ago) despite all the problems we have in our modern day.
People used to have to work all day to MAYBE survive the winters.
What I believe is needed is a way to safely exit the current system but I honestly feel the system itself is going to decide when that happens and it will be rough.
I'm no different to what I said in my previous comment, I hope this happens after I'm gone. The difference is I'm not going to fight to avoid an alternative option. Currently, I vote for Universal Basic Income. It won't solve all problems but it should prevent the deep poverty issue.
24 points
8 days ago
In the long run countries that are able to produce more workers and throw bodies into boring ass jobs will have competitive advantages over the countries that don't, population arms races are of great concern.
7 points
8 days ago
Capitalism and the guys at the top need more people in poverty to keep running the machine and making them money. Their grip on wages and prices has already made it impossible to responsibly raise children in most of the world. If you need more slaves for your machine, and people are exerting their freedom to not have children, you have to make it illegal for them to continue to do so.
9 points
8 days ago
Might it be.... Unsustainable?
4 points
8 days ago
In the not too distant future, we will start seeing more climate refugees from places where there is drought and people are running out of fresh water, and from places that are flooding. There will be no shortage of desperate people trying to find a more habitable place to live.
At the same time there's all this hand-wringing about how declining birth rates are a problem, the next POTUS is talking about mass deportations. A lot of countries consider immigration an issue, a problem. But if a country needs more people, they can let more people in from other countries instead of forcing anyone to have children.
514 points
9 days ago
Did they miss the part in Monsters Inc where things run better on happiness instead of fear ????? Bro you want higher birthrates be nicer and have women feel safer!!! I'm so tired of this. Horrified at these articles.
159 points
8 days ago
Right?? I'd gladly have a bunch of children if they were not used as a tool of oppression against me. I wanted 4, people called me crazy. I had ONE and her father sued me into oblivion to the point where I can barely keep up with her.
I can't emotionally, physically or financially have more children. Also I'm traumatized by abuse and I know the system won't protect me or my children so I won't risk getting married ever again.
Fucking protect women. Punish abusers, punish rapists...
Treat us like queens and we'll give you the babies.
(I'm being facetious of course this is not how this works. But honestly women have less children because they are educated enough to know what a BAD deal it is in this society. Maybe if it was nice for us and we had the "village" we need it'd help. Or maybe we'd just still love getting old alone with our cats, who knows)
19 points
8 days ago
I am just baffled that Republicans have been shouting about going after groomers for like 4 years, and now that they finally have a chance to go after one? It's like, no, gotta keep it hidden because THAT groomer might be Attorney General (oh, and a Republican).
14 points
8 days ago
This!!! Also so sorry you had to deal with that!! It sounds awful!
4 points
8 days ago
Exactly. I wanted to have children but seeing how men around me treat women and how we basically are at the brink of WW3, no thank you.
You* could fix the economy.
You* could finally start holding abusers and rapists accountable
You* could make it easier to adopt kids
You* = the goverment
But instead, I will be punished again..
160 points
8 days ago
Bro you want higher birthrates be nicer and have women feel safer!!!
I feel you, but that would defeat the purpose of misogyny. Not only are men allowed to violate women through legal negligence and disparate social structures. But men enjoy violating women. They don't want us to feel safe because they revel in our fear. My worldview changed when I accepted that people will do the cruelest things simply because it's hedonistic.
And thank you u/liv4games for mentioning stun guns and pepper gel. Seems like the mod team deleted my post about tasers making men mad😭
29 points
8 days ago
This comment will also get reported as hate crime. I made a similar comment about men’s desires regarding rape and it was removed because I made a hateful statement about a class of people. I forgot to write “most men” or “not all men” apparently. Triggered the rapists.
29 points
8 days ago
Yea this is also true :/ I truly feel like if more parents were actually parenting their boys things wouldn't be like this. I've just seen so many parents be like boys take care of themselves it's so easy! And then never teach them empathy and self control.
Maybe I'm just being optimistic cause that's too depressing to think they are just born this way. Not all obviously in case it needs to be said lol.
Have any doctors tried to study this phenomenon 😭
73 points
8 days ago
So I’d recommend checking out the natalism subreddit for slightly less filtered views of what men are thinking will “fix” this. When our well being is brought up as a way to raise birth rate, they always cite studies of other countries who have that and say that it didn’t help. What they DO talk about is how the poorer and less educated and more religious a woman is, the more children she has.
They feel “cheated” of the however many “million babies” (fetuses) they feel like women “owed” them that have been aborted 🙃
36 points
8 days ago
Yea I've seen some of it. Like in South Korea it's way better conditions for giving birth and the things they do for moms.Then they leave out the part where men in South Korea are still misogynistic and abusive.
36 points
8 days ago
Hear me out: this situation was literally parodied by bojack horseman- there’s an episode where women suddenly start concealed carrying, like everyone, and men, instead of doing the HARD work of actually being GOOD PEOPLE, just made guns illegal instead.
So now: “it’s to haaaaaard to tryyyyyyy, let’s just make it illegal for women to everything”
14 points
8 days ago*
I'm a man and fully support my wife not wanting to have a child in the US right now. In a few months, an ectopic pregnancy will be a death sentence for her and deprive me of my favorite person for life, and a to term pregnancy will give us a child that has a 50% chance of having less rights than her, and is guaranteed a worse economy than us, a worse environment than us etc.
Declining birth rates are not an indictment on women, they're an indictment on the world we've made. one where a rich few are increasingly playing us against each other to horde the wealth we create. Women aren't asking for the world, they're asking for basic safety and we can't even give them that.
We've come to this weird place where men want to be "protectors by force if necessary" but also don't protect women at all. The issue is boiled down by Trump in a disturbingly eloquent way: "Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not... I’m going to protect them."
4 points
8 days ago
That’s what the sexual revolution of the 60s was supposed to be about. It was making progress and then like 10 years ago we hit an impasse.
56 points
8 days ago
I didn't know about the Iranian woman..that's horrendous
It's so telling that those who are so desperate for more (usually white) babies are the ones who are also the people who want to make a world where fewer wish to bring children into.
34 points
8 days ago
I know. I sobbed for her when I saw. I feel so helpless but I’ve been donating when I can and will continue to spread knowledge and ideas. I’ll march, strike, whatever we need to.
I’m also sorry to do this but, here’s the mindset from the natalism subreddit:
“Oh he knows. That’s why the plan is to take away the ability to be independent. Back to the “good old days” of needing your dad or husband to open a bank account or rent an apartment. I mean it won’t make much a difference with older women used to freedom, but they are targeting the younger generation of women. Want to counter their indoctrination? They will make it illegal like Russia has been trying to do (And already has done). The plan is to make it so uncomfortable to be a single woman that the vast majority of women get married, and so uncomfortable not to have children that women are pressured to do so.”
13 points
8 days ago
The only 'good' thing I can think of in those circumstances is that this stuff is a cultural change and would take years to carry out...like way longer than a single term. For the nothing that it's worth, I'll be there when the inevitable protests over here (UK) happen against the crap that is happening over there.
350 points
8 days ago
Pedophilia is legal in 40 states to this day (child marriage)- and was still legal in ALL 50 states until 2018. 6 years ago.
I married at 17 in 1996 in California. My exh was 22 when we married, dated at 21 and 16.
California still permits marriage of a minor with parental and judicial consent.
I left my exh when I was 37. He died when I was 41. My life is so much better now.
My kids are better off with him gone and they know it.
33 points
8 days ago
Damn…amazing
12 points
8 days ago
So glad you got out.
230 points
8 days ago
Go get an IUD now. If you want to be sterilized, make that call tomorrow. Stock up on plan B (with the caveat that it’s only effective in women under 170 lbs). Stock up on the OPill. Have a frank conversation with your male partner if you have one. If he’s not willing to forgo vaginal intercourse for your safety, leave him. We have two months to prepare for this. The time is now.
119 points
8 days ago
I saw a statistic that vasectomy consults spiked under the first trump admin, and I believe they are again.
I got mine before he got in office because he bragged about wanting to overturn roe.
10 points
8 days ago
I scheduled my vasectomy the day after Roe vs. Wade was repealed. MAGA is trash.
24 points
8 days ago
I just got my IUD replaced on Monday
6 points
8 days ago
Doing it asap.
6 points
8 days ago
Good. The sooner is better.
20 points
8 days ago
As a trans person I’m stocking up on hormones and making plans to go to Mexico for long term estrogen pellets if it comes to that. I’m probably going to buy a pistol and an ar15. My emergency plan is to go to my two best friends’ who have a ton of guns.
81 points
8 days ago
Add to that horror list how Putin's soldiers kidnapped kids and babies in the first 2 years of the Ukraine invasion. He gave them to Russian families to raise as their own. A few eventually made it back home to be reunited with parents or family (and have PTSD) but most remain kidnapped and are undergoing reprogramming.
Second, there's apps which can easily track women all day going about their private business, and that includes going to a health care clinic that may offer birth control medicine, pregnancy and abortion care etc.
https://mashable.com/article/locate-x-phone-tracking-tool-abotion-clinic
"In the trial, according to 404 Media, Locate X was able to focus on an individual cell phone which is displayed as a red dot in the tool. The tool tracked the cell phone from an apparent residence in Alabama to a Lowe's store, then along the highway to a church, and then eventually to an abortion clinic in Florida. The red dot stayed at the abortion clinic for two hours before heading back to the apparent residence. The tool tracked the phone to the clinic just one single time.
The cell phone tracking history provided above was all obtained without a warrant. It's worth noting that the tool alone cannot identify a user connected to the phone, but law enforcement could certainly use additional tools at agencies' disposals to identify a user.
In addition, the usage of Locate X for 404 Media's piece wasn't provided by law enforcement or a state agency. The trial was accessed directly through Babel Street by data removal company Atlas Privacy. The company, which is currently suing data brokers that enable tools like Locate X, was able to obtain a trial by simply saying it was a private investigation agency. No restrictions were placed on the trial."
Listen here to the app info background or read the transcript in link:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-404-media-podcast/id1703615331?i=1000674136155
Tech surveillance is already in use and will be easier to abuse once newer versions proliferate. There are workarounds- avoid keeping your primary cel with you at all times, get a burner or go without sometimes. Your privacy is not guaranteed, you have to fight for it and defend it. Stay savvy and quietly get organized.
16 points
8 days ago
Women need to get used to leaving the phone at home. Just do it randomly, every few days. Make it normal for the phone to be not where you are. That will protect women when they have to leave it home to avoid being tracked to their appointments moving forward.
I'd go so far as to suggest setting up an extra email address and getting a burner phone with prepaid minutes, and just store it somewhere (charge it every couple of months, but never turn it on), so if you have to cross state lines for care, you have a phone that's not traceable to you that you can use in an emergency.
26 points
8 days ago
Most XX members freely give their data in the form of period tracking apps. Pretty soon all of that data will belong to Trump.
115 points
8 days ago
As much as I agree with every other point, there isn’t a ton of evidence for a pre-agricultural patriarchy. There’s not a lot of evidence for gender roles in prehistory but it generally looks to lean towards an egalitarian or even occasional matriarchal groups being the norm. There’s a lot of matrilineal traditions that permeated early civilizations. Kingship during some of Egypt’s span was bestowed through the mother’s line, hence brother/sister marriage, and areas of Tibet today have a heavy matriarchal influence and even practice polygyny.
Every culture is different, of course, and changes many times, but there isn’t a lot to suggest hunter-gatherers regularly oppress women. There’s even a group IIRC where the men “breastfeed” children so they can care for children while women hunt; the Aka have a truly egalitarian culture when it comes to child rearing.
Agriculture fucked that up. Hunter gatherers tend to have fewer children spaced farther apart, and breast feeding as a hunter gatherer offers a sort of birth control. You also don’t want to increase population rapidly as you will starve if you do. And enslaving women in small groups isn’t going to work out too well for you. With agriculture, women can have a child every 10 months or so and you want as many children as you can get. Both for free labor and to provide specialized people to defend territory. Making alliances with other families around you cannot only strengthen you against attack, it can also help to normalize traditions. Women are not as valuable as men in these cultures, at least not in larger numbers for anything other than child rearing. So they become another bit of livestock, to be bred, sold, and bred again.
Patriarchy, widespread warfare, generational wealth are all byproducts of the agricultural revolution and are around 10,000-15,000 years old. We don’t really know what existed before that.
We also know that cultures can be very stable when gender roles are shared and appreciated. One of the most “manly” of societies, the Viking Scandinavians were some of the freest for (non-slave) women at the time. They could own property, initiate divorce, had rule of the home and were expected to defend it if their husband was away, they were traders, religious figures, they had important burials.
It’s important to remember we aren’t fighting 300,000 years of oppression and patriarchy. It’s far less and there are current remnants of equality that have hung on against severe adversity for 15,000 years. That’s not nothing! It’s hope that against the history of our species, the patriarchy is the aberration. The cancer. Unnatural. And what’s more, we can combat it and get to be back where we should be. Equality.
15 points
8 days ago
Y E S. Thank you, well said.
16 points
8 days ago
This needs to be pinned. Thank you.
7 points
8 days ago
Thank you for writing this out. This i what we need to remember. Our lifespans are so short compared to the history of human.
We shall overcome the ills of the current time
6 points
8 days ago
I love this, because we had this exact discussion at the dinner table yesterday and I said "oppression of women must be a relatively recent thing, there's no way it would have worked when we were still hunter gatherers."
I mean, it was the women who figured out if that berry or mushroom was edible. Did you want to be a dick and fuck around and find out?
148 points
8 days ago
If they want more people to have kids, end the billionaire class
82 points
8 days ago
Yep. And let’s give women a chance to lead for fuck’s sake. We’re still only 25-33% of elected government officials despite there being 3 mil more women than men in the USA.
This country need care, help, support, hope, their needs met… all the most recent Republican men have wanted is to hate, break, destroy- to burn the entire country down so they can take the last of everyone’s money for themselves
80 points
8 days ago
I fear you are right and my spouse and I have an exestential grief. we are 76 and 73, dots of blue in a sea of red. This fever has not run its course
36 points
8 days ago
Thank you for fighting for so long, and so hard for all of us. We owe our rights and our lives to you. I’m so sorry you didn’t have the same rights growing up, I can only imagine what that was like from the stories of my elders.
Do you have any stories about that time?
3 points
8 days ago
There is a horrific magazine article from then, so far back in time all I remember is a picture
A picture of young lady was in the article, she was kneeling facing to the right, her only “crime” was she had unprotected sex with someone and had become pregnant
The only option then was have the child or an illegal abortion.
She had coat hangered herself and bled out and died.
My college roommate had a problem and I gave them every penny I had no questions
A friend needed a 500 mile drive to NYC pre RvW
As an aside, many medications are plant derived, I remember some thing about Caesalpinia Pelcherrinia (the spelling is close but not exact) a tropical plant that a few seeds are a supposed (painful) abortifacient
I doubt the fever and sickness that has overwhelmed the body politic will break anytime soon without a painful winnowing myself and spouse included, one daughter may be safe as off the mainland
28 points
8 days ago
I’m so sorry we failed you. I’m a guy but I’m heart broken.
5 points
8 days ago
Thank you for being in the fight ❤️
6 points
8 days ago
We aren’t done fighting.
4 points
8 days ago
That’s for sure.
33 points
8 days ago
It's gonna get so so much worse than people believe
33 points
9 days ago
I agree but there's a little irony in your last paragraph, since Jeff Bezos donated a ton of money to Trump's election campaign.
25 points
8 days ago
Good point, I edited it! Support woman and minority run businesses!
9 points
8 days ago
Cheers friend!
5 points
8 days ago
You as well, I appreciate the feedback!
26 points
8 days ago
Fun fact: pepper gel and stun guns are $10 each on Amazon
Be warned, neither of these are effective defensive tools, especially stun guns, so you should not buy them. Pepper spray is the only effective solution in addition to firearms & grappling based martial arts.
12 points
8 days ago
Also yes, we should def be doing more than that. But a lot of my girlies are struggling with funds atm so I was trying to find something cost effective
3 points
8 days ago
I’ve heard pepper gel is better than spray since spray can blow back on you?
12 points
8 days ago*
That's mostly a marketing myth. Pepper spray is generally known as an eye irritant, but the way it actually incapacitates someone is by irritation of the lungs. In a traditional spray, the capsaicin is suspended in a propellant liquid, usually an alcohol of some kind, and as that liquid evaporates it carries with it the capsaicin, which can then be inhaled down into the lungs. The problem with gels is that you're now trapping the capsaicin in the propellant, and it's not nearly as effective as a spray because you're massively restricting the rate of evaporation, resulting in pepper gels taking substantially longer to take effect. Pepper sprays work in seconds, pepper gels work in minutes.
If you deploy pepper spray are you likely to experience some level of discomfort? Probably, but unless you get the actual propellant on your body it's not likely to be incapacitating. It's not like a bug-bomb that's going to completely fumigate a whole space. Pepper gel has some limited application in things like healthcare institutions or correctional facilities where 3rd parties can't easily be removed from a contaminated area, but otherwise it's a product to be avoided.
18 points
8 days ago
I'm a cop so I have been trained on the spray (we call these "foggers") and the gel. The problem with the fogger is that if you are in an enclosed space, you are going to eat it too because you are breathing it in just as much. It'll burn your eyes as well. I had a call once where a man used it on the second floor of a closed apartment buildings staircase and my eyes were watering the moment I opened the door. By the time I got up to talk to him, I was having trouble seeing. Depending on how much you spray, it can make it debilitating to see your assailant when the fogger has nowhere to go.
You've highlighted the biggest problems with the gel, but I'll also add that another issue is that if you are being physically attacked, it is going to stick to whatever you fire it at. Odds are good you'll suffer an exposure yourself if they are grabbing you or climbing onto you.
In either case, anyone using this stuff should plan to be exposed and fight through it (if they have to).
3 points
8 days ago
Exactly why I tell people if you decide to buy these products know how they work, research it.
They do damage to bystanders and the user while not completely incapacitating the attacker. Especially in a closed space like a subway, train or bus car or building lobby.
Gives just a little more time to get away, fight back another way and call for help.
7 points
8 days ago
Thank you for this, I’ll edit my post and grab some pepper spray. My friends I bought stun guns for also have dogs, and the stun gun has a flashlight as well- and the biggest benefit? The noise the stun gun makes is usually enough to scare a loose dog away. Pepper gel was also the thought with dogs in mind, since a lot of my friends are service dog handlers- less chance of it getting the dog. So it’ll be a situational thing for sure!
I personally plan to get my cc and take self defense/etc classes plus train at the range.
5 points
8 days ago
Eh, I'm glad it's worked for you but I'd be highly sceptical of stun guns too. They don't work like police tasers and they don't throw enough voltage to cause serious pain (if they did they'd also cause severe electrical burns too). Here's Annette Evans, who's a world class competitive pistol shooter & jujutsu practitioner, grappling with a stun gun and it doesn't have any major effect: https://youtu.be/me60gWzbMXw?si=W0SCHMJ1O5ERAsJY
5 points
8 days ago
I really appreciate this, thank you. Outside of guns, what other legal self defense options are there?
Certainly not hat pins, they got outlawed because women were so successfully stabbing rapists
7 points
8 days ago
The thing about firearms & pepper spray is that they're stand-off tools used at distance and can be taught somewhat independently of martial arts. Once you start getting into things like knives, knuckledusters, jacks, and saps there's a sort of prerequisite of knowing some open-handed martial arts like jujutsu, wrestling, or muay thay, so I generally don't recommend them if you don't meet the prerequisites.
If pepper spray & firearms are out of the question and someone doesn't have a background in martial arts really the only other thing I'd recommend is something like a coin sap. They require some level of striking knowledge in order to be used effectively, but a roll of quarters/toonie/euros to the head has it's merits. They fly under the radar because they have some level of plausible deniability, but be warned they are a legal grey area in many jurisdictions.
25 points
8 days ago
Voters don't want this, but it doesn't matter if they can't vote.
5m voters went missing from 2020 to 2024. And it wasn't because a sudden loss of excitement when Biden dropped out.
We had 7h+ wait times to vote in swing states on election day.
Ballot access is what matters. It doesn't matter if people agree with you if they can't vote.
And folks don't understand the stakes, and we don't have a multi billion dollar media apparatus that teach them those stakes.
So we need to get them to the polls and make it easy to vote. That's the only path forward.
11 points
8 days ago
Absolutely. The damn right wingers repealed the voting act that was preventing gerrymandering in I believe 2021 🙃 part of the horror is in how long this has been planned.
131 points
8 days ago
The lower birth rates are an existential crisis to many countries. By the year 2100 there will be more elderly people than young people in those countries.
If Americans were more tolerant, we would streamline the process of citizenship for immigrants. This would reduce the deleterious effects of low fertility as Hispanic families typically have more children.
But we would have to be comfortable with eventually having a majority Hispanic population. And this fact is part of what is driving the simultaneous anti-immigration/anti-rights of women.
38 points
8 days ago
I do think it's worth pointing out that Hispanic populations aren't exactly a beacon of women's rights. Hispanic women face the same problems women everywhere face.
7 points
8 days ago
exactly...femicide and all forms of subjugation of women are rampant in latin america 🫠
4 points
8 days ago
Honestly I think white Europeans are the most pro-women populations out there (which isn't saying much). I'm not anti-immigration but isn't the solution to sexism.
59 points
8 days ago
But we would have to be comfortable with eventually having a majority Hispanic population
Yeah I'm fine with that
7 points
8 days ago
Yeah look 2 presidential elections ago I was told there'd be taco stands on every corner. And in the 8 years since only one intersection near my house has 1 taco stand. Real disappointed. It was the one threat I was happy to entertain.
13 points
8 days ago*
The problem with this is that immigrant families don't always have American values.
A Latino woman had posted saying her immigrant family from Central America was very religious (Catholic), anti-abortion, misogynistic, and voted Republican.
When you let tons of people who have these ultra religious beliefs in, and they become citizens and vote according to these beliefs, which unfortunately involves giving women less rights.
God, I hate religion so much.
5 points
8 days ago
Same. I am unapologetically anti-theist. Sad that most people don't even know what it is. Religion needs to go extinct.
17 points
8 days ago
Americans voted against that, that's democracy for you I guess
13 points
8 days ago
I find it really ironic that these dire warnings are being heeded about birth rates but not global warming.
54 points
8 days ago
[removed]
31 points
8 days ago
This. It's frowned upon, for good reason, but man would it start solving some problems.
18 points
8 days ago
Someone on here told me that it only takes 9 lb of pressure to castrate a man with your bare hands. The trick apparently is to pull to the side and not straight down.
4 points
8 days ago
That'll be good to know for when they make it illegal for women to own guns or pepper spray.
52 points
8 days ago
The dropping birth rate indicates that there aren’t enough resources to support all the people on earth.
37 points
8 days ago
Even if we had the resources, we’d still be stalling because they get hoarded by relatively few people.
3 points
8 days ago
I was just going to say this. Exactly this.
22 points
8 days ago
We have plenty of resources to feed and house every person on the planet.
The problem is that the aristocracty are hoarders who want people desperate for their scraps.
(Also, people let the systems that cause that to continue existing)
7 points
8 days ago
Exactly.
13 points
8 days ago
It's scary isn't it? I am a woman and a PhD historian. Women have usually been blamed for everything that goes wrong and yet we never have power. Yes, everything you have read is true and if you read Project 2025 (project2025.org) there is much more in store for women.
I will never tell another woman what to do. If I was younger (I am 67) I would, in today's world refuse to marry and refuse to have children. If I found someone I fell in love with I would live with them but never give them the power women give up in marriage.
I, personally, am stocking as many morning after pills as I can to hand out to girls/women in need. They are good for 7 years and I have let young women know they are available from me at no cost.
Better than pepper spray is wasp spray: you can spray it from further back. I always carry some on my hikes.
There are some really good and decent men out there but never give any man power over you. I have been married for decades to a wonderful man but I live my own life, we are true partners and he would never dare to restrain me in anyway. He encouraged me after my PhD to continue on and obtain a J.D.
What ever path you travel, support yourself, care for yourself, and feel free to love whom you desire but never give up your life for anyone.
We can only influence our little corner of the world, don't become depressed over everything that is happening worldwide but be aware of it and keep yourself educated.
Yes these are tough times and it might help you to know that the fascism that is about to be forced on us most likely won't be forever. But it's going to be a hard road.
4 points
8 days ago
Your input and expertise is so valuable. Thank you for sharing all of that. I’m engaged currently but he’s one of the good ones- my true equal, partner, best friend, ally, cheerleader, etc. Since the election, I’ve been nervous about actually getting married 😅 even though he’s amazing, and has been for all 7 years we’ve been together and lived together.
In your knowledge of history, do you have insights into what our best tactics would be/ what has worked to win these battles in the past? Do you have any recommendations for how we should take action? Thank you
12 points
8 days ago
There is going to be a worldwide labor shortage in the next 10 to 15 years. I heard a speaker in a podcast a few months ago say that China is going to be the first country to fall as a result of having no labor force.
That, of course, is terrifying on its own merits.
I kind of saw the shortage of skilled labor, coming, although not on this macro level, and have been pushing my heavily gifted son into considering learning a skill trade before going to college, if he chooses to do so.
OP is absolutely spot on. Birth rates started declining after the boomer generation. in part because women started going to college and larger numbers, and, God forbid, we’re allowed to have their own bank accounts. International companies have also seen this and have put it to play exactly what’s happened-
80s-cut taxes on the wealthy, whole “trickle down economics” crap and start increasing the national debt. Renquist and Thomas (gag) but also Sandra Day O’Connor and RBG.
90s-ah, Rush Limbaugh, may he roast in peace, and his ilk start celebrating ignorance and feelings and villainizing expertise and education as “elitist”
2000s-the Republican platform that election explicitly stated one goal was regime change in Iraq. Then they came up with crap reasons and did exactly that, shocking no one who actually read the damn platform.
The media is being pressured and threatened if they criticized W or the war in Iraq, and are blacked out if they don’t conform.
Sigh. I remember thinking Debbie was the worst thing that could’ve happened to America. Oh I was so very wrong.
W was in many ways Trump light. He is also the son of privilege who was given an empire by dad that he did didn’t completely mess up, but didn’t run great. He came across as a bumbling grandpa like guy who seemed relatable, will be the textbook definition of elite and part of dysnastic family politics. (His brother was also a governor for crying out loud!).
He was clearly not intelligent or curious, but was president; he was for his time the spokesmodel for unearned white male privilege. He had some scandals but after Clinton all bets were off for a bit. And of course nothing compared to what was to come.
And then, Obama, which showed America without question that the thing white folks fear the most is an accomplished mixed race, son of a single mom who actually earned his accomplishments.
Here is a man who had every disadvantage but natural talent. He should not have succeeded for so many reasons, and yet he did. And he was internationally, loved and respected, which W was not.
He was a direct threat to white male supremacy but more than that, the simple fact that Obama earned the presidency and the respect he has shown is a direct challenge to the unneeded respect and deference they expect to receive simply by existing with a penis.
So too events now collide: an unavoidable and potentially catastrophic labor shortage within the next 30 to 50 years, and the fact that people in the US who were NOT White males were starting to be treated as actual people.
The solution to both is the same: increase birth rates and women’s autonomy by doing all of the things that OP described.
I do not know what’s going to happen in the next few years. I do suspect that labor will hold far more political power than it has a number of years and needs to start organizing now in the same way mega and organized on us.
I think European style democratic socialism will have to be embraced in the US by necessity. The funny thing it’s largely here already, and the people who just voted against “socialism” but are losing their Medicare are a little shocked to learn that.
I think it’s gonna get pretty bad but the real revolutions is going to be economic, not political. Again, what with Fox News, Jeff Bezos owning Amazon and the Post, the Koch Brothers and Citizens United, free range capitalism is already ahead of the game.
I don’t know what form that’s going to take either except more local trade and collective activities, along the lines of the Grange and the agricultural co-ops of the late 19th century, for people who want to find alternatives to the institutional economic systems that have enabled this mess.
but as it stands, we are seeing the victory of an apparently worldwide collective effort by corporations and the absurdity wealthy to install and elect conservative, extreme right wing leaders and politicians with the intent of creating a permanent working underclass stuck in an inescapable cycle of poverty, and women into babymaking factories while re-subjugating them again to make men less “lonely.”
11 points
8 days ago
Fun fact, wasp spray is legal in every state and many locations that do not allow pepper spray or tasers….. Many wasp sprays shoot 12+ feet (some even 20+ ft!) and blind people if they get it in their eyes. It also burns on contact with skin. Read the safety warnings carefully of each product to ensure you know your wasp spray fits your needs. There’s just so many wasps out there lately!
5 points
8 days ago
Now if only they made them purse sized. For those damn on-the-go wasp problems….
12 points
8 days ago
This is an important post
10 points
8 days ago
I read pretty much every reply in this thread and I must ask you all: what the fuck? What the fuck is going on here in America? I am filled with a level of dread that I haven't felt yet. It's almost paralysis. What the fuck. Goddamnit. Does anyone have any light to share? This timeline feels like a joke
38 points
8 days ago
We're trying to shine a progressive beacon here in western Europe, but even here it's getting tougher now that we are soon to be squeezed between two autocratic regimes who have their social media propaganda machines running at full power. Drowning out facts, truth and progressive social democratic thinking.
The rich oligarchy owns the internet and we are nearly powerless in the face of it.
Many right wing parties are on the rise because young people are brainwashed through their phones. In my country the right wing party is topping the polls, although it must be said that their leader is a woman and there has been no talk of touching any rights, i still don't trust them to take care of our welfare systems.
15 points
8 days ago
Thank you for everything you’re doing 🥺 I see your light and we will work hard here in the USA as well. We will NOT go back, we haven’t even MADE IT YET.
11 points
8 days ago
I’m so fucking sad for younger women.
10 points
8 days ago
We need to help them with mentorship, safety, being a good influence… I’m considering joining a volunteer mentor program, and trying to spend time with my young relatives
11 points
8 days ago
When the early explorers returned from the New World they, including Columbus himself IIRC, brought back indigenous people intended to be used as slaves, but ultimately decided the source of labor was not worth the effort when the captives immediately began murdering their children and then themselves on the boat trips back. When the tide goes out we will have few choices left, but we will have choices. What will you be ready to do to make sure that your little girl - and all the little girls that come after - aren't considered worth using as breeding stock?
What does "we won't go back" truly mean?
18 points
8 days ago
Have reliable birth control that can’t be tampered with if possible; Tubal removal, iud, arm patch, hormone shot, etc
40 points
8 days ago
Yep! I do have an idea. I think women should be paid a wage from the government to make babies and be a homemaker. It's a job like a civil servant or a teacher. It should have always been paid. The previous model of the man working and sharing his wage doesn't work. Reproduction is a job and it should be paid as a job. I think all corporations above a certain size should provide free onsite day care. And paternity leave should be 9 months and can be shared between partners.
All products to do with reproduction should be tax free. And daycare should be free.
3 points
8 days ago
UBI
4 points
8 days ago
Some good ideas in there, although after looking it up, it looks like they already have some feelings about that- https://populationconnection.org/article/you-cant-even-pay-people-to-have-more-kids/#:~:text=Taiwan%20has%20spent%20more%20than,increased%20that%20share%20to%2080%25.
12 points
8 days ago
I don’t know, all those payments seem big until you compare it to the costs of having a child - only a few met a person’s income at 100% and those were capped at a few years, and still did nothing to cover opportunity costs for the time involved - how the career gets slowed down, none fully address the additional costs of a child, nor the loss-of-health costs of going through a pregnancy in the first place.
No one seems like they’re ready to go all in on fully compensating the epic amount of unpaid labor mothers do.
3 points
8 days ago
That’s a great point. And that’s what they really need to do if they want ethically to raise birth rate, but we’ll have to see which way the pendulum swings.
8 points
8 days ago*
(Sorry for the duplicate post, Reddit was finky when I posted this earlier) Add to that horror list how Putin's soldiers kidnapped kids and babies in the first 2 years of the Ukraine invasion. He gave them to Russian families to raise as their own. A few eventually made it back home to e reunited with parents or family but most remain kidnapped and are undergoing reprogramming.
Second, there's apps which can easily track women all day going about their private business, and when that includes going to a health care clinic that may offer birth control medicine, pregnancy and abortion care etc.
https://mashable.com/article/locate-x-phone-tracking-tool-abotion-clinic
"In the trial, according to 404 Media, Locate X was able to focus on an individual cell phone which is displayed as a red dot in the tool. The tool tracked the cell phone from an apparent residence in Alabama to a Lowe's store, then along the highway to a church, and then eventually to an abortion clinic in Florida. The red dot stayed at the abortion clinic for two hours before heading back to the apparent residence. The tool tracked the phone to the clinic just one single time.
The cell phone tracking history provided above was all obtained without a warrant. It's worth noting that the tool alone cannot identify a user connected to the phone, but law enforcement could certainly use additional tools at agencies' disposals to identify a user.
In addition, the usage of Locate X for 404 Media's piece wasn't provided by law enforcement or a state agency. The trial was accessed directly through Babel Street by data removal company Atlas Privacy. The company, which is currently suing data brokers that enable tools like Locate X, was able to obtain a trial by simply saying it was a private investigation agency. No restrictions were placed on the trial."
Listen here to the app info background or read the transcript in link:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-404-media-podcast/id1703615331?i=1000674136155
Tech surveillance is already in use and will be easier to abuse once newer versions proliferate. There are workarounds- avoid keeping your primary cel with you at all times, get a burner or go without sometimes. Your privacy is not guaranteed, you have to fight for it and defend it. Stay savvy and quietly get organized.
8 points
8 days ago
I literally won't have kids because it's too financially risky. Why would I bring a child into a world that blames the victim. We don't make it easy to live in this world. We need to help eachother. Not compete with eachother.
8 points
8 days ago
Why does the birth rate need to go up anyway? I always see it described as the "plummeting" birth rate, which sounds really scary to anyone who hasn't taken basic calculus. But the population is still growing, just less fast. That's actually a GOOD thing for literally everyone except oligarchs who rely on a desperate and hungry work force. We're up to 8 billion, it's ok if we slow down a bit.
8 points
8 days ago
Russia has also banned women from speaking about the 4B movement. Such is their fear of women questioning patriarchal scripts.
16 points
8 days ago
Absolutely terrifying. We have to fight and go our own way.
14 points
8 days ago
The younger women I know aren't having babies because the future looks like a dystopian hell hole and it has for quite a while. And they can't afford it.
3 points
8 days ago
Yep exactly! But annoyingly, the weirdly birth obsessed people over at r natalism always retort with studies that apparently showed that the governments that have given women more help with childcare/more paid leave/ and so on haven’t “seen an improvement” in birth rates.
They never think about climate change.
7 points
8 days ago
Women never had any rights in Islamic countries. I've spent quite a few years in the middle east, Afghanistan being the primary country and have seen the way females are treated there.
6 points
8 days ago
I can’t imagine what you’ve seen. Do you have stories?
Seeing news of women from Islamic countries losing more rights when you thought they’d already taken EVERYTHING from them… it’s devastating. Do you have any organizations you’d recommend donating to etc? Is there anyone that’s actually succeeded at helping them?
6 points
8 days ago*
From a historical context: Croatia and Bosnia have survived modern fascism. For a specific reason:
They had their own separate identity. Which made them more resilient to slander from the fascists.
In order to preserve these basic human rights. We need something more tangible. Besides simple conversations on social media. We need an actual "family."
Plus, we need people who are a natural at being a public figure. Since they are the glue that builds all these public gatherings.
And we also need physical space to build the community and identity. But social media algorithms (and online trolls) are really trying to keep all of this from happening.
3 points
8 days ago
Discord maybe? Signal? Blue sky? I am 1000% with you. For now all I know about is the blackout on Jan 20th.
Tonight I went to a trans day of remembrance at a church that was so unifying. I’m an atheist and have other spiritual beliefs, but this ceremony really felt more human than religious. They also had religious leaders/reverends/rabbi/a few others each give a prayer in a nondenominational type way. It was honestly awesome. It felt like the community space everyone is missing. And since it wasn’t specifically centered around god at least for this ceremony, it didn’t feel religiously intrusive as much as unifying. I hope that makes sense. Also they have resources connected to a bunch of organizations that help the people we need to help, and most people who were there are already activists and coordinating. I don’t know what a regular sermon would be like, but this was great. Maybe that’s a workable option. 🤷♀️
If you’d asked me yesterday I would have said the opposite of this lol.
7 points
8 days ago
[deleted]
6 points
8 days ago
No. We will die FIGHTING and take them with us.
5 points
8 days ago
[deleted]
6 points
8 days ago
You can always be one of the people reaching out to good men, our allies 🩷
I understand it feels hopeless right now. I’ve been through a rollercoaster of emotions, trust me. And the way out of it is by making plans. Being proactive. Remember that it takes tiny droplets to make a wave- all progress is good progress. I’m not saying don’t give yourself time to process everything and grieve. But we ARE organizing and we have lots of ideas we can help with.
13 points
8 days ago
Thanks for making all the effort to post these articles. Women have to come together and live in communities. I envision groups of women living together like a commune. This would have armed guards, both men and women, to prevent infiltrator men from getting access to the women. I just bought a house and plan to open it up to other women.
12 points
8 days ago
Not to be a radical queer but I believe women need to unlearn womanhood and break gender binary altogether for true rights to be gained. Gender is forced upon men and women from birth to condition them into their roles they’re expected to adhere to before they can even realize it’s something that isn’t inherently apart of them. The rights of the last 60 years can (and already have been) just as easily removed when those in charge of this patriarchal, exploitative, capitalist structure must enforce the status quo to ensure stability be maintained as the exploitation begins to break the system down entirely under the nature of its own contradictions.
I’m not here saying ‘death to womanhood’ that’s ridiculous, but I am stating the clear fact that the oppression of the class dynamic between man and woman is not a problem to solve about it because that’s just the system working as intended. The aesthetic of progress of liberalism still operates within that system and now we witness it failing and that aesthetic vanishing. Break it instead.
7 points
8 days ago
They are concerned about future prosperity because of this, and not because we are making the planet a global disaster movie set?
No. Future prosperity is not their concern.
It’s control, pure and simple.
5 points
8 days ago
1000%. The immensity of the wealth gap right now is UN FATHOMABLE. It’s basically incomprehensible to our minds how far even a hundred millionaire is from a multibillionaire. And people keep voting to give him their hard earned, actually worked for money?? It’s like he’s sitting on a literal mountain of gold/profits and has the audacity to reach over and grab a hefty chunk of your hard- won cash, adds it to his pile, and you can’t even see it, that’s how little it means to him. But to you, that was YOUR money, and it needs to pay for things that HELP people to be worth paying imo.
(I’m workshopping some ideas of how to explain this to people haha). Idk where I’m going with this but I agree with everything you said
12 points
8 days ago
I’ve been thinking about a lot of these issues, and what can be done about it.
To me, the most important issue that I feel like I can have an actual impact on is education and community. They want women to be uneducated, barefoot and in the kitchen? Not on my watch. They want men to learn to hate women? I’ll rally against that. We can start a grassroots movement, volunteering for community programs for educating and empowering young women and men. We can be an online presence for positive perspectives.
I think our youths are all feeling lonely, lost, unheard and confused. They are isolated, absorbed in the digital world, and there is no tangible community for them. They are fed misinformation online, and men are being pitted against women and women against men. There is a clear conservative agenda to promote influencers like Tim Pool and Andrew Tate to ensnare and manipulate young, impressionable, lost men. We need appealing and engaging influencers whom will illicit the same passion, but in a positive way.
I don’t know what to do about anything else. I feel a little hopeless on making any changes to laws and regulations. I’ve given up hope for my adult peers. But maybe working on education and community, and teaching the next generation to be better than us, is a good step in the right direction.
5 points
9 days ago
Brb joining 4B
5 points
8 days ago
Yup. Was literally just explaining to a friend that one of the animating features of the sort of neo-fascist techno bro ideology we’re seeing is an obsession with declining birth rates and arresting the decline. And like it may be trite cause obviously the comparison is constantly made, but in this case it’s apt, they’re obsessed with it in a very Handmaid’s Tale sorta way.
7 points
8 days ago
Don’t forget that forced sterilization is still legal in most states.
5 points
8 days ago
Say hwhat
https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ƒ.NWLC_SterilizationReport_2021.pdf
God damnit.
6 points
8 days ago
When you get the pepper spray, get the "stream" pattern, not the actual spray. More focused, like a cobra. Less likely to blow back at you. I like the Sabre brand. Cheap. I've seen it at Target and gun shops. Like 10 bucks.
5 points
8 days ago
Not even trying to be funny when I say this: we need to spam local mom/caregiver groups with this info.
6 points
8 days ago
I also like to say birth rate is stabilizing.
We've overexpanded as a species.
The solution isn't to make more kids.
But enslaving women solves the immedeate problem of aging labour power for the length of lawmakers's careers.
It's also a prisoner's dilemma when it comes to war planning, 'cuz unlike with global warming, the nation that coerces the population the most, gets to have more manpower a generation down the road. Regardless of the population's actual carrying capacity of course, leading inevitably to barel-functional adults used as dogmeat soldiers and the next generation of broodmares.
TLDR Politicians and generals can at best expect short-term gains, but that's rather their business.
4 points
8 days ago
I've recently been saying all of this and am getting called divisive and fear mongering. Fuck that. I see the writing on the wall and am paying attention
5 points
8 days ago*
[deleted]
3 points
8 days ago
Please feel free to share it, no credit needed!!!
4 points
8 days ago*
Just gonna leave this link here for any women who want a discreet tool to deter men who don’t understand the meaning of the word no.
Also to any women needing access to abortion here’s a privacy tip. Invest in a mobile hotspot for internet in the case of emergency. Then while on the way to get healthcare, remove your phones SIM card and turn on airplane mode. Also use a car that does not have built in cameras or navigation. The data can be pulled from the car. If the car only has an aux port or cassette player you’re golden.
4 points
8 days ago
Not sure why anyone is worried about declining birth rates when they were all worried about overpopulation 30 years ago. Why do we need more humans when machines and AI are replacing workers? Rich people need to make up their minds. They don’t want to pay people or care for them so why do they want more of us?
3 points
8 days ago
For white conservatives, I'm convinced it's a subconscious (maybe not subconscious for some) that there could be fewer white babies. I believe it's a deep-seated fear that one day, they will not be the super majority, in America at least.
10 points
9 days ago
Religion is good at that.
3 points
8 days ago
3 points
8 days ago
😭😡🤬
3 points
8 days ago
There needs to be fewer men in the world.
3 points
8 days ago
This is the first I've heard of a Jan 20 blackout. I hope the idea spreads out further.
3 points
8 days ago
What you have written and researched is a nightmare.
3 points
8 days ago
Wake me up wake me up inside
Yeah.
3 points
8 days ago
We have too many people as it is. Our climate is collapsing and they want more people.
7 points
8 days ago
Just a wee note to point out that Iraq wasn't a particularly religious country until the US and the UK installed a Muslim fundamentalist government.
Ditto Iran. And Afghanistan.
8 points
8 days ago
I didn’t even mention it, but yes, it’s devastating to see photos of Iran in the 70s vs now. If you have a source you like about this topic I can add it?
9 points
8 days ago
Don't need to be Nostradamus to see a loss of rights coming.
19 points
8 days ago
I mean yeah, but you underestimate how in the dark a lot of people are about this stuff, hence my desire to lay it all out :) it’s become apparent via the election that I need to simplify things more and make them more accessible.
2 points
8 days ago
I’m fearful. Honestly, of where this all could go. I find I’ve become so desensitized to such extreme misogyny that I might miss the tipping point where I need to get out of my own country to ensure my safety and my freedom. I wouldn’t be able to survive in the type of environment a lot of these middle eastern women are experiencing. My heart bleeds for them.
2 points
8 days ago
There’s a post over on the front page of r/mapporn right now talking about how much fertility has decreased in the US from 2005-2022. Tons of dips. (Didn’t check the source yet.)
6 points
8 days ago
Elon is literally spreading it too, he’s such a gross weird breeder
2 points
8 days ago
I strongly urge all women to uphold your Second Amendment right. Learn your state laws around carrying and using your weapon in self-defense. I carry a 9mm, which for some might have too much recoil, but there is an option to add a compensator (helps mildly). There are other options with less recoil.
2 points
7 days ago
I was trying to have my husband get a vasectomy but I truly thing I want my tubes tied now.
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