Her Loveliness Revealed
Here’s an idea! Change your parents’ bad voting habits by refusing to breed.
In the pages of Slate, Christina Cauterucci, whose enthusiasms include “gender and feminism,” wishes to share her wisdom:
The prospect of harnessing one’s sexual and reproductive powers for social good is a tempting one. So, I’d like to present what I humbly consider a much better proposal: Instead of a sex strike, let’s try a grandkid strike.
It’s a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,” says Ms Cauterucci, and “exactly the kind of radical response today’s radical threats to equity, justice, and humanity demand.” Specifically,
It’s time to demand that baby boomers and Gen Xers decide which they’d rather have: their vague attachments to policies that have poisoned the earth and will soon make it difficult for anyone but the obscenely wealthy to live healthy, happy lives, or a pack of adorable munchkins in itty-bitty suspenders ready for unlimited tickle fights and cookie-baking sessions.
This is followed almost immediately by,
I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,
Which, for the purposes of Ms Cauterucci’s article, is somewhat convenient. This reproductive decision was, we’re told, arrived at because,
Child care is extravagantly expensive, and paid family leave is a rare luxury. Bringing a new set of chubby cheeks and wonderfully incomprehensible babblings into the world is the most destructive thing one couple can do to the planet. It seems certain that today’s babies will be tomorrow’s survivors of famine, water shortages, unprecedented natural disasters, and refugee crises.
And furthermore,
It’s unethical, what with climate change and all. And it’s too dangerous—you’ve seen the news reports on school shootings and know how easy it is for violent men to get their hands on guns.
Um, okay then. Apparently, the thought of becoming a parent immediately conjures mental images of famine, earthquakes, shootings and death. Proof, if more were needed, that the exquisitely woke are just like thee and me. Not unhinged in any way.
One person’s decision to have a child or not have a child won’t make the difference between cool breezes and boiling seas. But you know what could make that difference? Lots of people dangling their potential future snugglebugs in front of the noses of their right-wing, centrist, or politically complacent parents to cajole them into supporting policies and candidates that have a hope of redeeming this planet before it becomes one big overheated sandbox.
Those “right wing, centrist, or politically complacent parents” – the parents you love, presumably – must be purged of their “ill-informed allegiances,” and made to conform politically, with the threat of never seeing grandchildren. Which is how well-adjusted adult offspring behave, of course.
Just imagine: Your Republican parents are lukewarm on Donald Trump but will probably support his re-election, or maybe they’re Democrats who’ve sworn they’ll never elect a “socialist.” They’ve been bugging you and your partner to have kids for years; perhaps they’ve even kept your old sandbox and bedtime books in their basement in hopes of breaking them out again when you decide to breed. You sit them down and break the news: You’re not going to make any grandchildren anytime soon.
Yes, a world in which unhinged lefties don’t reproduce in order to spite their own parents. Imagine the horror.
Your parents pause to envision the lonely quarter-century ahead, a far cry from the years of trumpet recitals, slumber parties, and trips to Disney World they’d long imagined. They ask what they can do to ensure their own legacies in the form of a pudgy little sweetums in a romper. They plead with you, promising to do everything in their power to help ease your concerns. Lucky for them, you have an answer: radicalise.
At which point, it occurs to me that the words cult-like behaviour may not be entirely inappropriate. If Ms Cauterucci’s fantasy scenario isn’t sounding sufficiently like the rambling of someone in need of specialist help, it continues,
It’s up to you to set the parameters of your own grandkid strike. Maybe you’ll be satisfied if your parents prove to you, via voting booth selfie or supervised completion of an absentee ballot, that they voted for the sufficiently progressive candidate of your choice.
This goes on for some time.
Maybe you’ll give them a coupon for a weekend with your hypothetical child for every lobbying day they attend on Capitol Hill or the nearest statehouse.
And,
Maybe you’ll have an extra kid for every act of highly visible civil disobedience they perform, like chaining themselves to the Statue of Liberty or scaling a flagpole to remove a Confederate flag.
And,
Maybe you’ll promise them one FaceTime session with your spawn for every call they make to a legislator.
Ms Cauterucci’s parents are no doubt proud of their daughter and her charming, terribly enlightened fantasies of coercion, in which children are imagined primarily as a form of political leverage, a tool of rather sadistic emotional punishment. And all in the name of progressive piety.
Maybe you’ll promise them one FaceTime session with your spawn for every call they make to a legislator.
Someone needs medication.
You’re too late, poppet. Europe is already well below replacement levels and falling. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t have children you won’t have grandchildren either.
I blame the parents
Someone needs medication.
Well, when you’re publicly sharing lengthy, elaborate and openly sadistic fantasies of people coercing their own parents, using access to their grandchildren as leverage, to enforce political conformity, and with no thought for the preferences and wellbeing of the children, all supposedly in the name of piety, then… I think it’s fair to say something sounds awry.
As someone quipped in reply via Twitter, Ms Cauterucci’s article unwittingly confirms the image of self-righteous ‘progressives’ often having dysfunctional relationships, being bedevilled by urges to punish anyone who disagrees, especially the elderly, even their own parents, and happily indulging in grotesque emotional manipulation to enforce conformity and make themselves feel powerful.
Do ‘progressives’ ever grow up? Serious question.
A self selecting program of eugenic improvement.
Darwin smiles.
So does Margaret Sanger.
A self selecting program of eugenic improvement.
If only. Alas, they reproduce via indoctrination, so anyone who sends children to public “education” facilities is helping perpetuate the madness.
Give her a choice: either have kids or she forfeits her goddamned Social Security. Progs setup the SS ponzi scheme so that kids pay for their parents. No kids, no SS.
Do ‘progressives’ ever grow up?
I’ll just leave this here, I think.
And this.
It’s ‘too dangerous’ to have children because they might get shot?
Not a nutter then.
…radical threats to equity, justice, and humanity…
Nothing quite says, “equity, justice, and humanity”, like “You will have party approved thoughts and deeds, tovarich”.
Your parents pause to envision the lonely quarter-century ahead, a far cry from the years of trumpet recitals, slumber parties, and trips to Disney World they’d long imagined.
OTOH, they could be having the time of their lives hanging with their pals, travelling the world, indulging in hobbies, and generally spending your inheritance shut of you, your no doubt odious partner, and what would be equally odious and bratudinous crotch fruit.
On top of all that, did anyone notice she’s (supposedly) a lesbian? Once the right wingers ban turkey basters, it will all be a moot point for her anyway.
Nothing quite says, “equity, justice, and humanity”, like “You will have party approved thoughts and deeds, tovarich”.
That.
So she wants to avoid famine by supporting socialism? I wonder if she’s ever heard of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc.
Just in case Mom and Dad were ever concerned that they’ve raised a silly little princess, here’s Christina removing all possible doubt.
Hopefully her parents had some children that lived./Full Metal Jacket.
She’s discovered the patriarchal plot. Having your grandchildren around you is the delayed reward for the hard and mostly thankless duty of being a parent. Your job as a parent isn’t to be liked by your children, it’s to prepare them to be good mothers and fathers themselves. It’s an oppressive system of man handing on misery to man, but nobody’s been able to come up with a sustainable alternative.
As for the child-free movement, since its underlying attitude, its perception of homo sapiens being an invasive species on the earth itself, is badthink when it’s applied to anyone except whites, all they’ll end up doing is replacing a white patriarchy with an imported patriarchy.
There is something going on with boomers and their slow-to-arrive grandchildren. Because boomers paid a historically low price for the transition from adolescence into adulthood – sexual freedom followed by respectable marriage, sticking it to the man followed by respectable middle class careers – many of them didn’t have the necessary mindset to guide their own children into adulthood. It’s all fun and self-flattering when your teenage children’s friends think you’re cool. It’s when your children are 30- or 40-year-old adolescents, and there’s no sign of grandchildren, that the price is finally paid.
She really can’t think two steps ahead, can she? She’s going to be sooooo shocked when the executor opens her parents’ wills, and finds all their money bequeathed to her own children – not to her – on the condition that they leave home at age 18, with the money otherwise defaulting to the Republican Party, or the NRA, etc.
I blame the parents
I bet she went to university.
Her parents should respond “No grandkids? Well, then, you have no need to inherit our estate so we are changing the will and everything goes to Sisters of Life“
Your job as a parent isn’t to be liked by your children,
I’ve said often that if your adolescent daughter screams “I HATE YOU!!! in your face and you do not dissolve into a puddle of quivering goo, you know you’re doing your parenting job right.
/Mom of 4 daughters, grandma of 5.
As so often, the author gives the impression that she’s oddly oblivious to what her own words imply about her.
Everyone I know who has grand kids has lost a large part of their brain. They become obsessed with this little rug rats with whom the share some DNA … they often work NOT in their own best interests, but rather want to be a constant part of the lives of their childrend’s families. Maybe not a great idea … maybe get a hobby and leave the kids alone.
A blue check mark, naturally.
The woman is basically a fascist. In Pol pot’s Cambodia she’d jump right into the killing. She is the reason for democracy, she has no respect for any opinion other than her own, not even the opinions of the people who raised her, put food on her table and a roof over her head. Always remember people like her are around us.
More evidence–if any was necessary–that prog-lefties lack the self-awareness gene.
A lesbian “decides” she’s not having children…and then dilates a thousands words-worth of a rationalization demonstrating an unfitness for parenthood due to her insanity.
It would be great if *every* leftist who would indoctrinate their children in their vile ideology of legitimised robbery, invasive tyranny and social division decided not to breed. Then we would just need to work out how to keep them out of the education system so they couldn’t poison the minds of decent peoples children.
I wonder if she’s ever heard of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc
“That Wasn’t Real Socialism/Communism”©
I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,
Bullet dodged.
Correcting an error a generation late is still correcting an error. I agree with Christina–don’t reproduce.
It might sound like I ain’t got a dog in this fight, since at the moment there is no cure for autism and if one were to be discovered it would be priced beyond our (and everyone’s) reach (though I suppose we could join the Insulin Caravan to Canada and buy our Fukitol* while our fellow bus-riders were buying their insulin), but I think everyone has a dog in this fight, or at least everyone who thinks they may get old has a dog in this fight. Our businesses have already decided they’d rather automate everything. A machine never calls in sick, and it works cheap. So there you sit in the nursing home, in 2049, and you’re getting pretty darn hungry because, due to a computer glitch, nobody’s been fed in 3 days, and no one can get into the kitchen because the Safety First! software won’t allow Valued Residents into the kitchen. And nobody can get out, for the same reason, or call 911. (Nursing homes have to have strict precautions in these areas because they house dementia patients.). You literally have nobody to call even if you could—your contemporaries are dead, that’s why you’re here, and your daughter and her husband are at a Vipassana retreat where they had to surrender their phones.
Sure would be nice if anybody had grandchildren in the area who might decide to pop in…
* The name of a fictional Big Pharma drug, coined by http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/ , whom you should add to your blogroll right now.
Instead of a sex strike, let’s try a grandkid strike.
I’d write that sadistic little Stalinist out of the will: It would leave her a copy of the Black Book of Communism, plus a brief explanation of why that was all she was getting.
“I think everyone has a dog in this fight…Sure would be nice if anybody had grandchildren…”
Yes indeed. But what can you do when your children long ago decided to treat you as a Class Enemy? As the gloomy aphorism goes, in war the enemy gets a vote too.
Ah the angry child, who, on not getting her way, cries herself to sleep, telling herself, “I’ll run away from home and never come back and that will teach them.” It’s all so melodramatic.
My favourite is Ralphie’s “blind fantasy” in A Christmas Story.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
It’s a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,” says Ms Cauterucci,
Honk! Honk!
“I’ve…I’m not having…” followed by apologia. So, not being selfish for alleged selfless reasons, then.
Okey dokey.
“That Wasn’t Real Socialism/Communism”©
The difference between Nazi and Communist is when you say how horrible Nazis have been, they don’t say, “Well, real Nazism has never been tried” Kate at Smallseadanimals.
We have a private ballot in this country. Unless you’re in the booth with them, how do you know for sure who or what they voted for?
…a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,”…
To riff on the old saying, progressivism, ideas so good they have to be weaponized to
ram them down your throatsget people to accept them. What’s not to like ?But what can you do when your children long ago decided to treat you as a Class Enemy?
This is why parents, even if they are cool to religion themselves, absolutely should attend church or synagogue regularly when the children are little.
There’s nothing in the Bible about being obligated to love your parents; however, one of the Commandments is that you must honor them.
Find a pastor or rabbi that will stand up to Leftcult SJWs and be a part of that denomination.
Unless you’re in the booth with them, how do you know for sure who or what they voted for?
The goosestepper writing says she’d require proof …
Democrats already have practice of this with ballot harvesting drives. They especially enjoy trolling nursing homes to register and “help” the residents vote absentee.
odious and bratudinous crotch fruit.
I like Terrence Popp’s “vaginal turds” myself, but “crotch fruit” is good too:-).
Give her a choice: either have kids or she forfeits her goddamned Social Security. Progs setup the SS ponzi scheme so that kids pay for their parents. No kids, no SS.
So she pops out a bastard child, raises him to be a self-loathing parasite, and suddenly she’s entitled to other people’s money?
Better: abolish SS. Let people who are still working keep their own money. Tell people who’ve planned their retirements around a hypothetical future government of selfless bureaucrats keeping the promises of former generations of vote-buying politicians that they were suckered and are entitled to nothing (see Flemming vs. Nestor). They can go ask their kids for help (hah!).
Yeah, it sucks to be robbed in exchange for empty promises, but that which cannot go on forever, won’t. I’ve long since resigned myself to never getting one red cent of the next generations welfare taxes, despite having had my own paychecks garnished for the past 30 years to pay for the Boomers’ old age welfare.
…you know you’re doing your parenting job right.
My mother, an elementary school teacher, told me (and I assume my five siblings heard this too) “My job is not to look after you, it is to make you able to look after yourself.”
She died before any of her grandchildren were born.
So you won’t chunk out grandsprogs ? Problem sorted.
She sounds nice.
tomorrow’s survivors of famine, water shortages, unprecedented natural disasters, and refugee crises.
No, no, you silly shrew. That was my generation that inherited Beyond Thunderdome, just like we were told.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
And the most eager enforcers in Islam are often the female relations. This is not coincidental.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
“Social justice” posturing does seem to attract a high concentration of absurd, obnoxious women. More than chance would allow.
I think this article might have been intended as humor. Unfortunately SJWs are only funny when they are not trying to be.
”I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,…”
What a wonderful choice. The fewer lefty-loonies breeding the better. Indeed there are too many unwanted children in the world, so not having children is both humanitarian and good for the environment.
As for ”… the most vicious Maoists are female?” That makes sense. I used to have three GSD bitches and their fights were a sight to behold. I suspect its a nature-nurture thing with the females being immediately responsible for their young so have to be prepared to fight. That’s my wife’s theory anyway, but she’s not a mother and states she has no maternal ”gene” in her. Hormones and emotional state may have something to do with it.
Jim