Originally posted by mswas:
“Everyone I know who is childfree revels in it, goes to live in France for one month and California the next. They party all night, hop from bed to bed if that’s their thing.”
"It seems like a spoiled brat ideology for people who are pissed off that they don’t get coddled like children anymore. That’s all I can see in it. "
“Go fuck and suck your way across Europe, or whatever your pleasure is, stop whining about how people who are far less free than you are live.”
“take your Dink ass sailing around the Caribbean and be hundreds of miles from any children for days at a time.”
It looks like there is indeed bigotry in this thread, but it’s not coming from the childfree people.
That’s nonsense that exists only in your own head. I don’t have contempt for people who don’t have kids. Only people who whine like little babies about it, and show contempt for people while asking the same people they are openly insulting to to validate their lifestyle.
‘Feels somewhat offensive’. It feels somewhat offensive because you’re a self-obsessed narcissist. It’s not offensive in any way. I’m sorry if the English language is formulated where it emphasizes the negative tense. I assure you it’s not a conspiracy to invalidate your feelings.
In my experience get someone who cares about the distinction between childless and childfree, and talk about the subject long enough and they’ll inevitably start trash talking parents.
Nah, it’s not a big conspiracy it’s just, ‘validate me’, multicultural leftist pablum. The idea that all of society should adapt to your extremely narrow subculture. ‘We prefer to be called…’ Childless has been the normally used word throughout all of English ‘herstory’.
Seriously the childfree are NOT an oppressed subculture. Not by a long shot. It’s laughably absurd and disrespectful to people who actually are oppressed to say that they are.
Wo/Man up, and accept that not everyone is going to validate your alternative lifestyle.
Someone gave birth to you, and if you have no respect for that, then you are unworthy of respect. And that’s just how I see it. If nothing is sacred other than your imperative to enjoy then your life is hollow and vapid as far as I am concerned. Wake up and taste the blissful freedom of not having children, and ignore the minority of people who question your choices. If a lot of people around you question your choices, then stop hanging out with those people. If it’s your family, deal with it, everyone’s family is obnoxious in some way.
It’s bigotted to mention that my friend gets travel a lot and gets laid all the time as a result of his not having children?
That’s some pretty odd insecurity you have there.
Sure, for childfree bigots who complain and bitch and moan that the news mentions children, and who wish that children would die or be denied medical care. Yeah, this is what I think of those people.
Telling a person to enjoy their freedom is bigotted?
Telling someone to use their extra income to go on an awesome vacation is bigotry? Dink means Double-Income No Kids. It’s not a derogatory term.
Nope it’s definitely from the childfree people. After all, it was you who was making the nasty jokes that precipitated this thread. There’s no changing that. Of course you won’t cop to it. So I’m going to call you childless until you apologize for it. You don’t get to be insulting and derogatory and then demand respect. Apologize for congratulating **jackmanii **on his cliche ‘genuflecting’ comment or get used to me referring to you in particular as childless. Simple as that. You want respect you have to give respect. You aren’t entitled to it.
You’ve got some serious problems, and none of them are oppression at the hands of parents. I’m sorry you’re not comfortable being childless and need to find a scapegoat group to lash out at.
Anyway, I’ve made my point. Go ahead and live the fantasy that you are being oppressed by people who don’t really give your life any thought most of the time.
I’ll stick to hanging out with childless people who don’t have a chip on their shoulders about it and who take maximum advantage of their freedom.
That’s why wrote “I guess” - “I’m not sure, but it sounds like…”, you know? Trying to be polite, to make sure it wasn’t just miss-communication? No?
Erm. Okay. And here I thought you were somewhat reasonable. Ah well.
Respect? No. I’m kinda happy for it, obviously, but respect? Why? Did my parents ask me? No (duh.). Did they consider the economical future and wanted to do something for todays society? No. Could they be sure whether I’d be a benefit or a hazard to the people? No. I have respect for the way they raised me, for the values they have and all, but respect for the decision itself? No.They wanted a child. That’s why people get children. They want them. Because that’s what people do. It’s biology. Chemistry. That does not make the whole thing any less wonderful, but it’s not a selfless sacrifice.
But to demand respect from the children you decided to have because you had them? Why on earth? Thats crazy.
It’s completely unreasonable to tell people that they are being offensive to you by using a standard English term. If you are childfree you are still childless by definition.
Selfless sacrifice isn’t the only thing worthy of respect. Basically you are saying that unless your parents were Jesus, they don’t get respect. 99.9% of all human action is self-serving. Respect in this case is a reverence for life. A reverence for the way you came into this world, for where you came from, for the people that came before you. A respect that billions of years of hardcore motherfuckers clawed their way out of the slime to allow you to exist.
It’s not crazy. It’s normal. It’s basic. Those same people could’ve birthed you and left you to starve too. But they didn’t. This whole ideology shows a hatefulness, begruding your own parents respect, your own ancestors respect. Respect for life.
What’s irrational is to only respect selfless acts. It’s just an excuse to be niggardly with your respect. Again, why should I respect your choice if you don’t respect mine? Why should I give a shit what you ‘would like to be called’, after all your choice to not have children wasn’t ‘selfless’. So why do you deserve respect for not having kids but I don’t deserve respect for having them? All this nonsense about overpopulation is really a post hoc rationalization.
Not having children is, in itself, a morally neutral proposition.
If you don’t want any, perfect. I love mine and my having children, in itself, does not make me morally superior.
However, thinking that all kids are spolied out-of-control kids is a bigoted position because it refuses to see the reality that the group being described does not consist solely or even primarily of the stereotype. Furthermore, saying you do it because you want to save the planet or something like that is giving too much importance to yourself.
I agree with mswas that this is quickly becoming another issue where the SDMB is settling the issue; in this case as to not having children being superior or at least that mocking people that are proud of their children as much more acceptable than doing it with people who don’t have children.
Would you please read the thread before responding with the same straw man as everyone else? I know this is asking for you to do something way out of character. But try it.
I didn’t go out of my way. I didn’t need to. People were asking for respect in one thread while being actively insulting at the same time. I started a thread pointing it out. I did some Google searches and every single forum I found had plenty of threads about how much people hated children, wished them dead and were pissed off that people spent money on their medical expenses. It wasn’t ‘out of my way’. It’s prominent, because that’s what childfree is about.
I suspect that it is much more a case where a tiny number of posters arrive on the board bearing the wounds of various personal encounters and are willing to fight to the death to avenge themselves on various third parties who have not actually inflicted those wounds. Since people holding unpleasant opinions come in all varieties, there are sufficient numbers on both sides of the issue who have suffered such wounds, leading to bitter feuds among those small groups while the vast majority of posters look on with bemusement, wondering why such venom is expressed over rather minor issues of language.
If I spent my time hitting message boards using anti-Catholic catchwords, I would expect to see a lot of hostility directed against my beliefs. I see some of it here without actually searching.
However, I would feel rather silly to actually go looking for it, then complain when I found it.
Well for me I have no problem with the term childfree, and no problem using it. What I do have a problem with is the incivility, and then of course the larger philosophical issue of respect for life, which I do think is very important but is largely being lost in this tit for tat bullshit.
If someone wants me to call them childfree then I ask in return that they don’t speak disrespectfully of parents.
If they want to have a philosophical discussion of it then don’t get all weepy when someone uses a term like ‘free-rider problem’, and hijack the thread so that you can insult and harangue people rather than discussing the philosophical issue. Free-rider problem isn’t a personal attack it’s a description of a sociological mechanism. Saying that the childfree enter into a free-rider problem is no more insulting than saying that I have a responsibility not to have children because of overpopulation and environmental degradation. Both are valid arguments if your primary goal is to have a philosophical argument. The problem is that doesn’t seem to be the case.
What seems to be the case is that people want those who they have open hostility and contempt for to validate their lifestyle. Why should I validate one’s lifestyle when they are showing open contempt for the way I live my life?
Sure, it’s always the 5% that spill venom (on both sides of any issue), however I’d say that a majority of the observers are closer to the “having kids r teh sux0r” side.
But that’s a poor analogy. I put ‘childfree forums’ into Google. That was the search string I used. I clicked on the first several hits that came up. I wasn’t using anti buzzwords. I didn’t look up ‘breeder’ or ‘moo’ I looked up ‘childfree forum’. Are you saying that ‘childfree’ is a hate term?
Except this is a straw man. I went to the first four or five childfree forums I found and clicked on thread on the front pages. I read a few pages of those threads. I didn’t have to search hard because on most of them there were hateful screeds at the top of the list.
You’re talking to me like I did some digging. I didn’t. I just clicked on the first links that came up on my search that fit the criteria I was searching for. IE, childfree forums.
That’s why I wrote “I have respect for the way they raised me, for the values they have and all, but respect for the decision itself?”. Sure I’m happy to be here. Sure I respect parents who do good things for the good things they do. For the responsibility the take. And so on. But for the decision to have children itself? No. The have children because they want to. No other reason. And don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, neither their motivation nor the act itself. But I won’t create a mystical ideal that this is bigger than it actually is.
Still, the fact they chose to have children in the first place is nothing special. Nothing sacred. They wanted to, and they got me. And that’s okay. But that’s it. They did it well, and that’s what I respect them for.
First of all, no overpopulation from me. Yeah, that’s a bit flat, at least in the western modern world. The selfless thing…
I don’t know, maybe I’m running into the edge of my vocabulary here, but … There is “to respect somebodies decision”, as in “so you want kids, great, good luck!”, in the way of acknowledgement for a decision that you might have done in a different way, but can see the other’s point.
And there is “to have respect for somebody” in the way of an acknowledgement of something extraordinary. “Wow, he really went into the burning house again!”.
In this sense, I of course respect your decision to have children, but I don’t have any special respect for it because that would require something extraordinary (do it really well, for example, or in difficult circumstances, and I’ll have respect for that). Sure, it’s a lot of responsibility, it’s not easy, but in the end you want it. So you have it. And that’s your decision, and that’s fine.
So yes, I respect your choice, I expect you to respect mine (whatever it is, actually, I’m not so sure yet), and I can’t understand for the life of me why you can’t just be polite about the whole less/free thing.
Argh. Later:
Exactly. Can we agree on that? “We” call you how you would liked to be called, and you do the same? That’s all I wanted to get to.
I look at it this way. If the child is feral and must be taught manners than it must be isolated from the rest of the society until those manners are instilled. This is what my family did. The child stays home and out of the way of other people until he or she is quiet and well-behaved enough to be brought in public. It works very well.
And it is actually very difficult to get away from children unless you have a considerable fortune. Apartment buildings and communities cannot discriminate against tenants with children unless they are specifically retirement communities. Resorts and entertainment facilities can try subtle means of getting people with children to stay away, but with the exception of adult orientated businesses, banning them outright isn’t easy because of people with children who insist on taking them places they don’t belong.
