Further to Guy Dammann’s regard for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, Darleen has unearthed another display of unspeakably radical selflessness over at Feministing:  

Along with the emancipation of women, sexual liberation has become very much a part of politics around the world. To the conservatives, both these issues challenge ‘family values’. But what if there were no families? What if we say no to reproduction? My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression.

Sorry, I should have warned you; there’s quite a bit of boilerplate.

Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.

Families with children are selfish, see, and squanderers, and prone to consumerism. I hope you’re taking notes.

So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it.  

But of course. Again, note the approving nod to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, the ultimate goal of which is “phasing out the human race.” Until that glorious scenario is achieved, VHEMT strives for a world in which the human population is, ahem, “less dense.”



With density in mind, readers may be interested in several comments by Feministing regulars:

I definitely agree that both nuclear families and reproduction have got to go. As long as parenting is seen as a private endeavor, there will always be child abuse and neglect that go unnoticed. As long as there is inheritance, equality is just a hollow word.

And,

I think most people would agree that it is wrong to intentionally cause suffering and death to others just because you feel like it, yet they have no problem with intentionally reproducing, which is exactly the same thing.

There are, of course, curious tangents too:

[A]dvertising is inherently set up to subordinate people-who-are-looked-at to the needs of people-who-look.

The author of the piece, “Freethinker,” describes him/herself thus:

I’m a freethinker against organized religion and social hierarchies, a radical feminist, a social anarchist, an antiestablishmentarian – revolutionary to the core.

His/her website bears the following announcement,

Read as I perform an archaeology in the mind, the society, and our cherished convictions, and talk about why things need to change.

and features further rumination: 

[M]arriage and family are social institutions that like other institutions, work mostly to the benefit of the dominant class – men with wealth and power… Married life is often about ‘getting settled’ and that means you’re not free to take chances with your life anymore. For me, it’s a commitment that will only hold me back from the academics and activism that I want to apply myself to.

Based on the seamless arguments above, I’m sure academia will be thrilled.

















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