Reality Will Do That
Lifted from the comments, via pst314:
Ms Watson, now not so young herself, tells us,
The specifics of this pressure, allegedly pervasive, overpowering and entirely social in nature, are unclear. No examples are forthcoming. The physical realities of reproduction are, however, less mysterious.
The idea that Ms Watson, or likely anyone she knows, any of her multi-millionaire celebrity peers, is being pressured by others, by a brutal society, to get married and presumably have children – and that such hypothetical pressure constitutes “violence” – is, shall we say, difficult to believe.
It seems rather more likely that Ms Watson, 35, is, like many of her self-involved peers, struggling to process her own age-related anxieties. At 35, that fertility window is closing quite rapidly and options that have perhaps been taken for granted, or deferred as insufficiently fashionable, will soon expire.
As someone quips in reply,
Update, via the comments:
EmC adds,
Well, quite. I don’t follow these things closely, but my impression is that there’s a class dynamic in play. That, for some, getting married and having children during the window of optimal viability is now considered low-status, proletarian, somewhat déclassé, especially among women with progressive leanings.
As if this time were obviously better spent pursuing a statusful career and asserting some womanly empowerment, or, in Ms Watson’s case, indulging in activism of a faintly ludicrous kind and insisting that bewigged men are somehow women.
My impression of any social pressure, any class convention, is that it goes in a different direction to the one being claimed. At least among ladies of Ms Watson’s political persuasion. Readers may wish to speculate as to whether childlessness and middle-aged regret will also, in short order, be deemed “violence” and something to complain about during celebrity interviews.
And for some reason, this came to mind:
Something about the dynamic, perhaps.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Seen that too. It’s brilliant.
People born a 100 years ago had a somewhat different concept of violence as they stormed Normandy or innumerable pacific islands.
Car mechanics notoriously being rich, famous and beautiful.
I understand disingenuous argumentation is your stock in trade, but maybe leave it at Kate’s.
Now that I think about it, I’ve had something similar said about me, years ago, by someone who’d known me before I met The Other Half. Though it was said in earthier terms. I believe her exact words were, “You’re much less of a cunt now.”
Hey, we can’t all be picky when it comes to compliments.
She can always buy another cat.
“Take your solidarity and shove it”
There’s a trend in women nowadays that’s not gone unnoticed by men.
Many women believe that they should spend their twenties sleeping around, not making commitments, and then between thirty and thirty five, they can pick one of the numerous high value men roaming around and settle down with him, and have a few children.
Of course, he has to be financially successful enough to pay for fertility treatments for her, since her fertile years are behind her.
Not surprisingly, the high value man never appears, and they are left scrambling around to find a man who will wife them up. Even less surprising is that few men are interested.
Emma can be relieved by the fact that as a result of this, birth rates are down, and countries are importing huge swaths of men from countries which don’t have low birth rates. They often also don’t have a culture of respecting women, or taking “no” for an answer.
Pressure to get married disappears quite quickly in societies where women don’t get government benefits for illegitimate children.
Let us not forget those who believe men of high value and munificent incomes should not be put off by, nay, should welcome, women whose marketable skills are in inverse proportion to the number of fatherless children they have.
A cancer on the body politic.
Again, if it needs to be said again, which it does…again and again and again and again…again, scaring young people into believing that they must, absolutely *must* go to college or they will have a meaningless existence of drudgery at dead end jobs with miserly pay was the greatest destroyer of our otherwise sane and socially productive society. That and the displacement of classical literature for the endlessly navel gazing 20th century bullshit in our secondary school English classes. Fortunately most young men just took the D and moved on. Unfortunately most of the girls took that idiocy to heart.
Shockingly.
No, wait.
From the replies, “Their utopia can only exist in a world of one person.”
[ Considers adding “much less of a cunt now” to animated banner. ]