I'm wondering if anyone else on this forum has similar opinions and/or feels that there is some kind of "class warfare" going on where some of the rich and powerful are trying to undermine the poor and disenfranchise who should be getting help but are not. — dclements

Jane Mayer documents this in her book Dark Money. TLDR: in the last few decades, enormously wealthy billionaire dynasties (the Kochs, for instance) in America have financed countless political action committees, think tanks, lobbying campaigns etc in an effort to abolish government intervention in a ludicrous right-wing libertarian "free-market" capitalism that could easily be described as fascist.

Just finished Dark Money by Jane Mayer

One reason such polling hasn't been done on that issue is because there's no such thing as artificial wombs. It's just a science fiction hypothetical you've created. — Hanover

Consider environmental technology, which itself started out as a science fiction hypothetical, and was attacked by conservatards for this and other reasons. Just because it's hypothetical doesn't mean we can't have an opinion on whether or not it would be worth pursuing.

I also don't know what evidence you have that women consider pregnancy oppressive. I think many find the whole process hugely rewarding. — Hanover

Pregnancy is like the #1 thing that pregnant women complain about. It fucks up your body both during the pregnancy and for the rest of your life. If there was some alternative to going through this whole ordeal, I'd be willing to bet most women would prefer to do that instead. Lots of women find the prospect of becoming pregnant to be scary, too. I mean take a step back and really think about what pregnancy entails, it's a massively traumatic experience.

I won't deny that pregnant women may find parts of pregnancy rewarding - particularly all of the social benefits that come along with being pregnant. Conservative society LOVES pregnant women, it perpetually pumps out propaganda that exalts them as ideal women.

That is to say, no one is interfering with the discovery of new neo-natal treatment options and everyone is hoping for the day when neo-natal care is good enough that it can save babies in all stages of development. — Hanover

Right sure everyone is hoping things will work out - but so far none of the technology has really improved women's condition wrt pregnancy. There's pain killers and sanitation and whatnot, but fundamentally the core experience remains the same - the body is used as a factory for creating new people, and this wreaks havoc on it.

Conservatives aren't actively promoting R&D into artificial wombs, and they are the ones that seem to care the most about the survival of all the millions of proto-babies. They aren't doing that and there's a reason why - because they don't want science interfering with the female condition (or they never even thought about it, but that itself means they don't really care that much). This isn't the first instance conservatives object to science meddling in their sacred safe spaces.

If neo-natal care pushed viability back to the earliest moments of gestation (as you're suggesting with the artificial womb), then under the Roe logic, the woman's right to terminate the pregnancy would be reduced more and more, with the right existing only for a very limited time. Such is the problem with the trimester framework, which might offer another reason not to be so in favor of Roe. — Hanover

Fair enough. Roe v Wade accomplished the right thing the wrong way, IMO. It got the job done but it wasn't rock solid, given how it's been overturned.

Anyway, a question to throw back at you: If there were artificial wombs, if a pregnancy were terminated in the first week, would either parent have the right to refuse having the embryo placed in the artificial womb on the basis they didn't want to give birth to a child? — Hanover

Fundamentally the point I was making is that the pro-life position, if it is to be coherent, should support the development of artificial wombs. In a pro-life society without artificial wombs, there are two options for a pregnant woman: go through the pregnancy, or have an abortion. Artificial wombs provide a third option, which makes it less likely that a woman will choose to have an abortion (she doesn't have to go through the pregnancy, and the fetus gets to live and presumably get adopted or something later).

In a more enlightened society that doesn't believe in magic, a woman would not be shamed for having an abortion when there are artificial wombs available. She can choose to go through the pregnancy naturally, put the fetus in an artificial womb, or have an abortion, and there's nothing wrong with either choice (ignoring antinatalism, which I would prefer if this didn't devolve into a discussion of that).

Materialism has always had difficulty defining what it means to be material. If you mean what I think you mean by it - no "spooky stuff" - then that's just naturalism.

Besides this, probably the most significant challenge to materialism is the Kantian transcendental aesthetic, which holds that space and time are not things in themselves but are pure forms of sensibility. Pairing this with Kant's epistemology leads to the result that not only is the "external" and "material" world beyond space and time, it's completely inaccessible to knowledge, which makes metaphysical claims about its nature (like materialism) empty of any meaning.

Right-wing women are the class traitors par excellence - willing to masochistically sacrifice their sisters at the altar of phallocracy, just to get the meager privileges and honors bestowed upon them by the patriarchs. Collaborationists and cowards to the core, right-wing women fiercely cling to their masters, and jealously despise any women who has the courage to live for herself.

So, if abortions are available, why would one build artificial wombs? — Bartricks

That's the point though, safe abortions aren't available in conservative shitholes, pro-life cretins have made sure of that.

Simply banning abortions is not going to prevent all abortions. If you actually care about fetuses, then you should support the development of technology that will make it less likely that a women will choose to have one. But nobody in the pro-life movement supports this, because they don't actually care about fetuses - they care about keeping women controlled. They don't want women to be relieved of this crucial weakness. They want women to be vulnerable to becoming pregnant and make up a bunch of bullshit about the rights of fetuses to obscure it.

but then why be in favour of artificial wombs? — Bartricks

So that women don't have to get dangerous backstreet abortions in conservative shitholes like Texas.

Artificial wombs are just an extension of the process of de-mystifying procreation which has been in progress since science first started to uncover the actual reality of reproduction. The magical aura of motherhood is a cultural artifact that belongs to an age of ignorance and superstition.

But if she freely got pregnant, why doesn't she owe it to the person she summoned into existence the continued use of her womb? — Bartricks

If she wanted to, she could go drop off the creature at the local artificial womb clinic. Or get an abortion, it's not a person so it doesn't matter if it gets terminated.

And she didn't "summon" it into existence - a man was involved in some way as well.

Re-read my original post.

Possessing the only means of reproduction is an insanely heavy burden and crucial weakness in women, which is easily exploitable by men. The only future in which men and women are truly equal is one in which the means of reproduction are completely separated from the bodies of women. — _db

But of course the pro-life chuds won't ever support artificial wombs, it would release women from their bondage as reproductive factories.

Oh, I see you edited your post. I didn't see the second question.

Why do you think it would be wrong for a woman to abort if there was an artificial womb available then? — Bartricks

Uhhh, I don't...? Are you trolling

Presumably you think it would be immoral to abort if there was an artificial womb available because abortion kills an innocent person who does not deserve to die? — Bartricks

Nope, dunno where you got that from.

What, by having an abortion? No.

Yes to the first question, no to the second.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, Bertram Gross

If a red state with a majority of people who are against abortion, isn't that democratic? — Judaka

Fundamental human rights should not be up for debate, full stop.

Right-Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

From father’s house to husband’s house to a grave that still might not be her own, a woman acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence.

Why was my post title edited?

RIP SX

This privately owned situation is near impossible to change. — schopenhauer1

Capitalist realism just isn't compatible with Marxism, let alone an antinatalism motivated by capitalist realism. Don't believe that capitalism is a metaphysical (re: necessary and immutable) order, rather than a historical one that can be replaced.

Gotcha, yeah Sinclair's book has a couple chapters dedicated to the philosophical ideas surrounding death (he claims that "death from old age" isn't real and is just a label for untreated illnesses) and the social implications of radical life extension, but you're right in that it's focused mostly on the science behind aging. The philosophical arguments themselves I felt were generally weak and naive; IIRC at one point he even hopes that in the future everyone will have microchips installed in their bodies that would monitor their vitals and inform the authorities if something is wrong :brow:

I made a post about this book (and the philosophical issues surrounding aging/death) here, in case you wanted to contribute.

Interesting...you might like Lifespan by David Sinclair, similar topic.

The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner.

Still making my way through The Second Sex.

nah, I doubt it

But as soon as a war breaks out, those same "anti-war" people will suddendly start braying for blood like their life depended on it. — StreetlightX

It sorta seems like a lot of people secretly want there to be at least one big war in their life that they can watch on TV. Peace is boring, meh who cares, they want death, blood, fire, genocides, bombs, rapes, pillaging, destruction, jihads, executions, coups, butchered babies...the more dramatic the better. Lotta people back Ukraine not out of sympathy but because they want a team to cheer for in a gladiator pit. rah rah rah, whatever gives them the best opportunity to release all this repressed frustration...

The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
The Order of the Death's Head, Heinz Höhne

:cool:

Doesn't seem bloodthirsty to me. Why did the poster convey to you the idea the ape, or German soldier, drank blood or was thirsty for it? — Ciceronianus

There's blood on the club and the hands, though you're correct, "bloodthirsty" is an embellishment in the same vein (ditto) as the OP.

Understanding a thing is to arrive at a metaphor for that thing by substituting something more familiar to us. And the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding. — T Clark

:fire:

Yeah I've read parts of Jayne's book, I don't think his theory of consciousness is taken that seriously anymore, though it was a cool idea.

Interesting stuff, thanks. Always a cool feeling when you learn that you're not alone with your puzzlement.

If analogy is such a prevalent thing in our cognition, then it would seem to be necessary (though perhaps not completely possible) to find some way of talking about this phenomenon without participating in it, in order to reach a true understanding of it and the world in general. Any true proposition cannot be self-contradictory (e.g. "everything is subjective", "nothing is true", "all propositions are metaphors", etc).

In what way are analogies different from hallucinations? Believing that John is a monster is different from believing that John shares characteristics with monsters; metaphors allow us to say the former while meaning the latter. But a lot of the power behind analogies seems to come from the way people forget that they are analogies and take them to be identity claims, which would seem to make them hallucinations. It is easier to kill a German if you think they literally are a club-bearing ape, etc

The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

mfw someone tells me they believe in "god":



pov of a theist when they tell me to "prove a negative":



this about sums of the intellectual merits of new atheism, imo. there is very little to be impressed by

fish in a barrel and all that

Sexual Politics has to be one of my favorite reads this year, it's engrossing, powerful, and refreshing after my disappointment in the last two feminist books I read. I'm only half-way through; it's definitely a bigger commitment, but well worth it.

Whenever you rely on somebody else that person has authority over you. — HardWorker

And if this person relies on you, in a reciprocal relationship of mutual aid, do you not have "authority" over them? Or does authority cease to be a distinction?

Voluntary associations imply that each party freely chooses to participate; each party could survive on its own, but each chooses to cooperate for the mutual benefit obtained in doing so.

The conspiracy to eliminate males is taking place at the chromosomal level. It is not a conscious thing. — Gregory A

But even then there would be the death squads, be they on horseback, hunting down males and their male offspring, a bounty of say... $10,000 per 'scrote' (scrotum) their commission. — Gregory A

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

You gotta be trolling.....

The only conjunction of wonderment and Heidegger that I know of is the wonderment that Heidegger continues to be worshiped as much as he is.

Moving on to Sexual Politics, Kate Millett

Would like to hear your thoughts, when you're done. — StreetlightX

Here's a link to my goodreads review of it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4624457569

I didn't really like it.