Dorothea Salo wonders about how it works that one is perceived differently by different people. She has enthusiastic admirers, and there are also people from the far end of the lunch table who dislike her writing or her forthrightness and opinions. And there are some who criticize her not for what she writes, but for what she is: childfree. One blogger considers me anathema (is there a word stronger than anathema? if there is, this blogger would use it of me) because I don’t make any particular secret of not liking ill-behaved children and not wanting children of my own…
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Personally, this horrifies me on so many levels: Arkansas Family Expecting 16th Child How can someone justify this large a family as a moral imperative? Our country consumes the bulk of the world’s resources in fossil fuels and yet are behind other nations in the percentage of our gross national product that we donate to poor countries. We don’t donate 0.7% like some of our peers. “Extreme poverty can be reduced, and indeed eliminated, in our generation,” Sachs told journalists last week in a national conference call. “What it will take is increased investment.” How much? To the American who…
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What I chose to do with my life and my body is my business, as long as I’m not infringing on other people’s rights and privileges or expecting them to pay for my choices. Maybe the real question to be asked is not “Why am I CF” but “Why are you so worried that I am?” Chances are I know this website’s author from the old days – it’s a nice WordPress site, too. I got there via one of the blogs at the *beep* blog listing of the local newspaper The Daily Herald.
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The Good Wife Strikes BackBy: Elizabeth BuchanOkay, uncle uncle already. Or auntie, auntie, same deal. I give up on this book. I bought it based on the cute, charming cover art and assumed that it would turn out to be a cute, charming tale of a lady of a certain age who Finds Herself just in time. It had some sort of British/Tuscan storyline hinted at in the jacket, and that seemed like a good start. Currently there are a number of books and movies in circulation featuring charm, villas, good food, good wine, ladies who live large and well,…
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It means “a society without children.” Supposedly it means economic disaster. A former prime minister who is in charge of the governing party’s committee on population famously told women to stay at home and breed. Fightin’ words, dude. Your economy would be better served by more working-age adults in the workplace, not by sending half of them home to make babies and letting the other half stay out til all hours “working” (actually, drinking with their cow-orkers).
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But when straight people feel the need to flaunt their lifestyle choice in front of God and everybody, I simply have to draw the line! Heterosexuality tends to lead to excessive breeding and higher rates of divorce, neither of which I think ought to be encouraged. Why can’t they just be happy comprising roughly 96% of the population, and leave the rest of us to live our simple lives, unencumbered by the burden of birth control?? Is that so wrong?? (That last line ought to be read in the voice of Harvey Fierstein.) Song: Judy Garland: “You’ll Never Walk Alone”…
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Via Clack: Don’t think for one minute that it’ll stop with just abortion. Some pharmacists refuse to dispense birth-control pills on moral grounds. There are legal protections for pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control, too. They’re supposed to make arrangements for another pharmacist to fill the scrip, but some even refuse to do that. Which makes me wonder if the RTL movement has been quietly working to get a lot of pharmacists into their tent… if you object to birth control on moral grounds, one way to stop it is to cut off the supply at a convenient choke…
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I don’t happen to think our leaders’ ideal republic has a lot of room for overeducated lefty feminist childfree gay-friendly non-religious Spanish-speaking ex-Jewish librarians, either. I’m with you, Dorothea – right up to the Spanish-speaking part, and I’m quite friendly with the final two constituencies, too. And I’m definitely in the “It’s a womb, not a clown car” club. I saw a Discovery/Health show on the Duggars brood the other night – the combination of fundamentalism with fecundity gave me the heebie geebies just before the election, so it was just great timing. Oddly enough, I have some rooibos tea…
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Keyes was also asked about another comment he made last week critical of gay marriage in which he declared: “Where procreation is in principle impossible, marriage is irrelevant.” Keyes said the logic of that statement would not preclude elderly people past child-bearing age from getting married. Overshare Alert! Well, in my case “procreation in principle is impossible,” because reproduction has been permanently circumvented. However, this doesn’t stop us from fooling around anyway. Yay! Therefore, I’m childfree, and Alan Keyes would think I’m a monster, with an irrelevant marriage. Apparently, he would have people who are unable or unwilling to have…
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BBC NEWS | Americas | US children ‘abandoned in Africa’ An adoptive mother of 7 abandons her kids in Nigeria and heads to Iraq to work as a private contractor. Even I don’t hate kids that much.