You're a 39-year-old woman who, in your youth, had bought into the feminist ideal of living independently—free of the typical bonds of commitment, e.g, a husband and children, the notion of family: the thing that causes dedicated feminists to scream and flee in horror. But now that you're 39, you suddenly realize you've been sold a bill of goods, and your life of me-me-me materialism and non-commitment has led to nothing but sad emptiness. It's now almost too late to find a man and start a family.
In the video below, Paul Joseph Watson examines the case of one woman, whose video confession about realizing the empty nature of feminism went viral, and the case of one man who does nothing to distinguish himself as a member of the male species (he comes off as a horrific piece of shit)—two sad people who, from PJW's point of view, are losing at life.
My real reason for putting up this video is that I'm not sure I entirely agree with PJW's arguments and conclusion. I'm a pretty dyed-in-the-wool introvert, and as such, I don't suffer the pangs of need that the woman in the video describes. I'm not saddled by any urge to marry and start a family. If I die, and my branch of the family dies with me, well, so be it. Maybe I'm missing some crucial species-propagating microchip in my brain, but I'm not in any hurry to get married and become a father (I used to think I'd be good husband/father material... but I changed). Marriage and parenthood strike me as a good but fairly standard path for much of humanity, a path that some of my closest friends have followed. But I guess I've been more of a black sheep in that regard.
I also think PJW is making too much of the idea that living alone or living without children is somehow a sign of selfishness or incompleteness. Granted, PJW focuses a lot of his ire on the specific demographic currently known as DINKs, i.e., dual income, no kids. (Some Korean journals are reminding us that Korea has a lot of DINKs.) DINKs are childless couples who have jobs and just enjoy their hedonistic existence with no interest in continuing the species. I don't think this means that couples who are childless for biological reasons qualify as DINKs, but Watson's point seems to be that many of these childless couples spend their days immersed in mindless consumerism, and some of them post smug videos of themselves supposedly living the high life. So if you're a biologically childless couple who also enjoy the lack of children and live in a heedlessly materialistic way, it could be that PJW would put you in the DINK category.
What I take from the video is that DINKs (I swear, I can't get the Vietnam War-era epithet out of my head) are vain, superficial, and therefore missing out on the depths of existence and experience that are possible when you focus on higher things and have children. But I'm confused as to whether Watson is referring only to DINKs as the problem or making a larger point about anyone who is deliberately single and/or childless. If the latter, then I think Watson has missed the mark. If his focus is exclusively on DINKs and their superficiality, though, he might just have a point.
I'm not going to watch the video (sorry), but as far as I'm concerned people who judge other people for not getting married, not having children, etc., can go screw themselves. If you want to get married, that's your choice. If you want to have kids, that's your choice, too. If you can have kids and don't want them, I don't see why that should be a problem. If what he's talking about is superficiality and hyper-consumerism in general, I can get on board with that. ButI don't think that necessarily has to be related to whether someone is married and/or has kids.
ReplyDeleteNo argument here. I'm still not sure I have his argument straight, but he does seem to be attributing general unhappiness among a certain demographic to a specific cause that happens to make sense according to his ideological stance. He basically gives the one specific example of a woman who is now unhappy after having made a series of "feminist" choices, and while I'm sure she means what she says in the video, she constitutes only a single data point. I'm mildly curious to see the reactions of the people who watched the video—those for whom the video supposedly resonated (which is ostensibly why it went viral).
ReplyDeleteBasically, I'm not on board with the thesis that marriage and procreation are moral imperatives. Maybe on some vague macro level, such an argument might make sense, but at the level of individual choice, it doesn't. And how exactly is it conservative—according to conservatives' own standards—to push a pro-birth ideology onto others?
"Basically, I'm not on board with the thesis that marriage and procreation are moral imperatives. Maybe on some vague macro level, such an argument might make sense, but at the level of individual choice, it doesn't."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Yes, I know that many developed countries are struggling with below-replacement-level birth rates, but arguments that individuals thus have to step up and pump out more babies make me very uncomfortable.
And it's not just on the general social level. I assume you're familiar with the Christian "Quiverfull" movement, yes? (If not, Google is your friend.) That's obviously an extreme position, but I've heard a lot of talk in mainstream churches about how the most effective way to grow the faith is "biologically." In other words, have a bunch of kids and--not to put too fine a point on it--indoctrinate them. This has always made me very uncomfortable as well (not least because it doesn't really work).
But I ramble. There are a few topics that I probably shouldn't get going on because I tend to get carried away. The "moral imperative" to get married and/or have kids is one of them. (AI is another one, but you already know that.)
I wasn't aware of Quiverfull. Wikipedia claims that the Quiverfull membership is in the tens of thousands globally, so maybe enough to fill a single, large stadium. Small movement, but I guess they've made waves if you've heard about them.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a good name for a movement. Wikipedia says the name comes from a phrase in Psalm 127, but there's also the expression "Cupid's quiver," a not-so-subtle reference to the vagina. A bit of etymological research shows that the word vagina itself is from the medical Latin for sheath or scabbard.
Yeah, I always thought it was a stupid name, too. Vaginal references aside, it also implies that you're planning on using your children as ranged weapons.
ReplyDelete(Keep in mind that I come from an evangelical background, so I've been exposed to some pretty weird stuff.)