The Other Heartbeat Isn’t Yours
I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist.
In the video linked above, feminist “theorist” Sophie Lewis informs us that the foetus, a nascent human being, is “violent,” does violence to “gestators,” and that abortion is a corrective killing, an “unmaking,” a means of “going on strike against gestational work.” “We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins,” says she.
So far as I can tell, and despite Ms Lewis’ theorising, mothers-to-be don’t generally feel a need to parse their pregnancy in terms of “abolishing the private nuclear household” and “global regimes of colonial and commodity exploitation.” Or indeed to champion abortion, via drugs or dismemberment, as a form of “anti-violence.” But that’s probably because – to borrow a phrase from Joan – they haven’t been tugging on the intersectional crack pipe.
Ms Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family. When not arguing for the destruction of the unborn, and the “abolition” of the family – which is to be replaced by comradeliness, apparently – she “participates in the Out Of The Woods anti-capitalist ecological writing collective.”
Update, via the comments:
In this laughably pretentious review of Ms Lewis’ laughably pretentious book, we learn that the author wishes us to embrace the disintegration of the family – our families, all families – “until they dissolve into a classless commune on the basis of the best available care for all.” As if the “best available care” would somehow be an obvious result of family disintegration, despite decades of real-world evidence to the contrary. Supposedly, we would learn to love the “plural womb,” “radical disinheritance,” and “a world beyond propertarian kinship and work alienation.” The children we have will no longer be ours, it seems, and this will apparently make us happy. It’s a “queer, communist, speculative future.” A narcissist’s experiment. And we are to be the guinea pigs.
Via Mr Muldoon. Somewhat related.
Depraved.
Depraved.
I can’t help thinking that the mannered, pseudo-technical language, the reference to the elderly and “dying well,” and the nervous grin, probably tell us something. But hey, perversity plus callousness equals “winning radically.”
Pregnancy is one of many subjects on which feminists tend to reveal themselves as head-turningly perverse. See, for instance, Zoe Williams. Or Polly Dunning. And, of course, the charming ladies featured here.
So foetuses do “unacceptable violence” to the mother, and can therefore justifiably be killed? I can’t help but think we are getting increasingly close to the point where all the other things people like her find unacceptably violent (certain types of speech, being male, white, etc.) will be punishable by death. I would have thought that possibility unthinkable just a few years ago, but now it seems like just a matter of time – if such calls for murder haven’t already been made. Thinking on it, I’ve been hearing people saying for a while now that some adults ought to be “aborted” for various reasons such as having unacceptable political views, which I assumed was a joke. Perhaps we ought to take them seriously.
“Chilling” is an over-used expression, but I did just get a chill thinking about this.
It sounds like she’s been watching *Alien* too many times.
“I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist”
“We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins,” says she.
Hmmm. I wonder why…
In other feminist news.
@Ian
As Kurt Schlichter says: They want you dead
See also the incredulousness of Cathy Newman when JP compares the crazy intersectional leaders with revolutionary socialist murderers. It’s a difference in degree, not in kind.
Hatred, othering, struggle sessions, purification, cleansing, ends justifying means – we’ve been here before, many times.
“Don’t bore me with details. I want what I want, and fuck you.”
Judging by her Twitter feed, Ms Lewis seems to spend a lot of time calling people racists and white supremacists, seemingly at random and without explanation. Imagine the surprise. She also says that “binary gender” is “violence.” Oh, and race and class, obviously.
She’s really challenging the stereotype of the screwed-up feminist.
She’s really challenging the stereotype of the screwed-up feminist.
Ain’t she just.
Twitter reply of note:

@prm,
I enjoyed Kurt Schlichter’s People’s Republic but tend to think him a bit OTT most of the time. This wave of leftism, however, does not seem to be about uniting one’s country behind it in a democratic way but ostracizing and beating up those who disagree; and once violence is sanctioned even a little bit, the principle is gone and they are merely haggling about the price. Come to think of it I do recall some leftie, possibly quoted here, talking about a white genocide or something.
Adorable little revolutionaries. This from MIT…and Ms. Sophie of course.
Her biography at versobooks.com:
“Sophie Lewis is a writer, translator and feminist geographer living in Philadelphia. Her translations include Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (MIT, 2016, with Jacob Blumenfeld)…” and “…a queer feminist committed to cyborg ecology and anti-fascism.”
You Brits must be so sad that she left your country for the US.
Big Oil, Big Pharma, and now Big Baby™, Gestationoco™, the leader in the “commercial surrogacy industry”, “Bringing You Tomorrow’s Babies Today”.
нет товарищ, I don’t think even the Norks are this hard over about kids.
For another discussion about Big Baby™ another video of this charming young lady and some more authentic frontier feminist gibberish. Honestly, I think she just says whatever buzzword pops into her head bekieving that if she throws enough in it will be some sort of compelling argument.
What struck me most is she doesn’t even really look like she believes what she’s saying. She might believe IN it. Whilst not actually believing it (if you see what I mean).
Come to think of it I do recall some leftie, possibly quoted here, talking about a white genocide or something.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2019/03/friday-ephemera-2.html?cid=6a00d83451675669e20240a44d1ccc200c#comment-6a00d83451675669e20240a44d1ccc200c
You Brits must be so sad that she left your country for the US.
There’s no need to thank us.
Well that was fast.
Corporate Rollover !. A play in two acts.
Act I.
Act II
“Requires revision” ? Why, are they going to boycott you ? Threaten you with a non-existent law about using standard definitions ? What a bunch of cheesedicks.
“I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist”
How would she feel if, in a spirit of “turnabout is fair play”, that attitude were applied to her?
it fills my whole self with reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property…Lewis asks the necessary questions, ‘Can we parent politically, hopefully, nonreproductively—in a comradely way?’
wtf did I just read?
Is oddkin something new to add to the BLTQWERTYIAAGAS thingie?
How do you parent nonreproductively? The very existence of young of the species means reproduction has taken place.
There’s no need to thank us.
Yeah, you also appear to have given us that Dr Pizza guy you linked above, so if you wouldn’t take that, “Give me…The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…” thing quite so enthusiastically, we’d appreciate it. Thank you very many in advance.
How do you parent nonreproductively? The very existence of young of the species means reproduction has taken place.
Some radfems are attracted to in vitro fertilization combined with the old science fiction idea of mechanical wombs. “Comradely”, of course, means “raised in a creche by Good Maoists and Stalinists”, with the children who resist Full Socialism being mercifully euthanized.
wtf did I just read?
I think, “…reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property…”, means having a kid through a surrogate, and then having no responsibility for little Logan 6 or THX 1138 whatsoever, but with these yoyos, who the hell knows.
Why did she go to the USA, one of the top 10 most dangerous countries on earth for women when she could have gone to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, who all scored much better
Corporate Rollover
I wonder if Dictionary dot com will be capitalizing “white” too.
Ok, not really.
“Comradely”, of course, means “raised in a creche by Good Maoists and Stalinists”
I own a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game that was published in the early 1990’s. In the section on different types of societies one might find on the Planet of the Week there’s a discussion of family and child-rearing. One of the possibilities they describe is communal creche rearing, where children once born are handed over to an enclave to be raised by dedicated child-minders instead of their biological parents. Ha ha, I thought to myself, what a silly Roddenberryesque notion. No actual real human parent would relinquish control of their own child to some drone, that’s outright violation of basic human nature.
In entirely unrelated news, my ex-wife worked at a daycare that had an entire room devoted to the 6-month-old infants. They wouldn’t take them earlier than that, you see.
“Foetus fetishists.”

Judging by her reactions, Ms Lewis seems unaccustomed to pushback on her statements, even the more, shall we say, colourful ones. Presumably, she inhabits a social circle in which no-one points out, even politely, that her opinions are alternately cartoonish in their unrealism or veering towards the borderline sociopathic.
When I find work unacceptable, I quit and find a new job.
My co-worker doesn’t need to die.
Bad analogy?
“Foetus fetishists.”
Her avocado has slipped off her toast:
I am reasonably sure from my embryology classes it is not a bandicoot, so that would make it a person, though developing.
Wherein she doesn’t understand basic biology and equates a fetus with bacteria, all of which are most certainly “on their own” as they live, die, and reproduce without being physically attached to the owner’s circulatory and respiratory (via the circulation via the placenta) systems.
Gestational communism – and she rails about “dehumanization” – Da, I am People’s Uterus No. 17 “Glory of Stalin”.
Ah. That explains her profound expertise regarding human anatomy and physiology.
We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins.
So, by her ‘logic’, murder is now a question of when the murderer determines life has begun or not.
Just what the world needs: another *&^%$#g drip.
And I despair that my comment contributes, even though in the most tiny, insignificant way, to the attention this drip so desperately seeks.
Leftist ideology is like flypaper for lunatics.
She’s killing babies.
This gentleman’s killing heavily armed people who have the same idea about him.
https://taskandpurpose.com/army-vetran-david-bellavia-iraq-war-medal-of-honor
I think if it ever comes to shootin’ war, their side has more to worry about than ours.
…or veering towards the borderline sociopathic.
I think she has veered towards that border in much the same way the Wehrmacht veered towards the Polish border in 1939; I give you Cyborg uterine geography: Complicating ‘care’ and social reproduction.
You can read the whole thing if you want, and it it too long to fisk in toto, but if you really want I can provide some more snippets for you, because I am a caring giver.
I am going to go out on a limb and guess that “most geographers” would read this and ask WTF she is banging on about.
First, all humans, other primates, and rodents all have the same type of placentation, and animals routinely die because of pregnancy, so, no we are “not exceptional. Of the 300K women who do die annually, only 1% are in the developed world – that other factors thing mentioned yesterday.
Once again, demonstrating a bizarre notion of how pregnancy actually occurs, and, amazingly, all of a sudden that which is usually derided by this crowd as a “clump of cells”, is also an evil mastermind, deliberately destroying the mother – sorry, gestator.
Victims, but of course. Brought to you by the Department of Obligatory SJW Boilerplate.
Enough of the nonsense. The whole thing is an incredible mashup of poorly understood basic biology, Marxism, social justice Choctaw, and feminist boilerplate. How anyone can take this seriously staggers belief.
A fetus does violence, migrants don’t.
Abortion is a corrective killing, trapping wolves is evil.
All unborn are criminal, and for their crime they should pay.
Sophie (ha!) Lewis was once a fetus, but her past, of course, is forgiven.
It sounds like she’s been watching *Alien* too many times.
A different sort of villain came to my mind:
https://youtu.be/P2EQ0FlVks4
Corporate Rollover:
Thus begins their introduction to their essay on why it’s so important that they keep the Newspeak dictionary up to date. It’s not often that you see the battle lines drawn out quite so obviously! I’m hopeful that JeffG will pick up the case now that PW has returned, as this is his bread and butter, and a big reason why I started reading his work in the first place.
She is clearly mad.
I suspect she will top herself within five years.
Though I disagree, I understand the pro-choice position, and even sympathize. As a father I can very easily understand the unique existential dread that the prospect of having an actual real-life child brings. And the fear of what your life will be afterwards. So I totally understand it when people say they don’t want kids or that killing their fetus is acceptable, even if I strongly dissent.
What I cannot understand, however, is how someone can dedicate their life to the killing of the unborn. Not only that, but to actively seek celebrity from such activism! Moreover, to fetishize the practice to the point that you depict human fetuses like the US Government depicted Japs in WW2 propaganda.
The Great Shit Test continues, with scant pushback detected.
It’s an odd thing to celebrate or use as a credential of righteousness. An odd thing to exult in.
An odd thing to exult in.
There has to be something reasonable between “No way, no how” and “Let’s make the kid comfortable while we decide what to do”, but it is equally odd to make it your sole political concern. Unfortunately I know several otherwise very smart and accomplished people of both sexes (I can’t say I know any of the other 847 political genders) who don’t care about the economy, national defense, or anything else that affects the country, except abortion. “In the news today, all US cities over 500,000 have been nuked, but the Planned Parenthood in San Pedro is still open”; “Yay !”.
From the link about Miss Marcotte:
I guess I need to watch more network TV, I seem to have missed those.
David, did you change your e-mail? If so, what is it? When I used to send you things you would always reply with ‘Heh.” Then you stopped, so I don’t know if you changed your e-mail or if you got them and Britain is laboring under a Heh shortage caused by global warming.
Things to wonder about:
So, when Sam Gamgee’s kids say “ What did you do in the war, Dad?”
how long do you think it takes him to answer the question?
What about Luke Skywalker’s kids?
😄
My favourite twitter comment by Ms Lewis, in response to , “Admitting that it’s violence implicitly concedes that the fetus is a living being on its own.” (MyselfAnonymous)
No, it doesn’t. There are plenty of “living beings” in a human body, none of them “on their own”. To be human is to be (in) a multispecies relationship, teeming. The fetus is a human entity AND part of another human entity’s body. The latter is a person, the former isn’t.
The term ‘ad hoc hypothesis’ springs to mind. It really sounds like this is all being made up as she goes along.
Now if you will excuse me, I am going to commit genocide by showering all the bacteria out of my pits.
Sophie Lewis: “Blah blah blah blah word blah another word but quite unrelated blah blah grin like a frog who just farted blah interminable blah and finally, in closing, blah.”
It really sounds like this is all being made up as she goes along.
It’s the rule of Righteous Abrogation.
I’m hopeful that JeffG will pick up the case now that PW has returned
Wait, what… {O.O}