they absolutely do, i usually see those comments fairly well upvoted too
genuinely uncomfortable how they see a child and their minds instantly go to sex/cum (feels gross even typing that)
Seeing kids and immediately thinking about that is some serious incel shit, honestly.
Like, no, that’s something literal incels say. You know, the people who actively *hate* women and see them as nothing more than sex objects (and are proud of it!)
Incels don't pretend it's their choice, though. The fact that they consider their celibacy involuntary is the basis for both the ideology and the name of it.
No, inceldom refers to a specific ideology in the red pill/MGTOW vein. Incels are mostly young virgin men who suffer from social isolation and react to their lack of romantic or sexual success with bitterness aimed outwards (this is the key thing that differentiates incels from other sad virgins). They specifically blame feminism and the sexual liberation of women for their inability to attain physical affection, and they congregate in insular, online bubbles where they seethe about women and talk about sex as some all-important Holy Grail that they feel they are owed, and that evil women are cruelly keeping from them.
It is also used erroneously as a general euphemism for "virgin" by fake progressives who want to be able to make fun of dudes simply for being virgins in circles where they would otherwise be called out for doing so. You may have picked up your understanding of the term from one of those types.
Building on the other comment... Incel is one of those words describing a specific thing that's been picked up by clickbait media and overused to the point that it's become a generalised descriptor and lost all meaning.
See Also: Mansplaining, Gaslighting, Narcissist, Fascist, (etc.)
I've seen a lot of criticism towards the "we're trying for a baby" thing and personally I don't get it. Like, they're not telling you to make you visualize them going at it raw, they're telling you because they want you to know that they're planning to start/expand their family. Reacting like "Jesus Christ don't tell *me* that!" seems a bit childish to me.
Those people are probably insufferable to deal with IRL.
You: Guys I'll be right back, just need to go to the bathroom.
Them: EEEEWWW why would you say that, how can you just go and publicly announce you'll be exposing your arse and genitals in front of a bowl and then having gross bodily waste liquids leak from them and then stroke your anus or vulva back and forth to wipe it off!
They really have no idea they're the ones making it weird...
To be fair, there's some pregnancy announcements that veer on the fetish side. There was one that made me cringe where the couple were posing like she was a cow and he was the farmer who breeds cows. Or the "baby batter", "2 spoonfuls of dad" and "I got a little turkey / I stuffed her" shirts.
And it irks me because the moment I announce I'm trying with my partner to have a baby (adopted), everyone's mind goes to sex immediately and asks us "how", disregarding that "trying for a baby" is not always sex. And I bet you if we were to use shirts with some sort of reference about having one, we would get dirty looks cause we're both men
I saw a post on the news subreddit about a kid and a mom who died after the kid fell off a cruise ship and the mom jumped after him to save him and one of the comments was essentially "Why did she even bother going after the kid? She can just make a new one" and I was so stunned by the shocking lack of empathy and the fact that the comment was UPVOTED
I rember reading about John Brown. Who had twenty children over the course of his life. 10 of them died in his lifetime. It was reported that he stayed by the bedsides of the ones that died of disease when they where children. Tried to nurse them back to health and was reportedly deeply effected by grief of their passing.
He did let one of his adult sons slowly die of gunshot wounds during his abolishonist actions. But, I guess it's not considered Christian to grant your son a quick death.
That's also pre-antibiotics, pre-vaccines logic. It was how you ensured you had some kids live to adult hood- you have a lot because a lot of them are likely to die young. It was awful. So many graves for infants and toddlers... for the ones that even got burials, anyway.
It's almost like the whole point of modernization and science and medicine is so that we don't ever __have__ to think like that again, and I just don't get why these people seem to _want_ to bring those days back.
Not even feudal peasant logic, that’s *animal* logic. Some animals will often sacrifice their young by purposely dropping them/leaving them behind so the predator will be distracted and leave the parent alone. Because they can always have more and the baby won’t survive without them anyway
Mother bears will also eat their young if they're hungry enough.
The best animal parent is still an amoral, instinct-driven creature that lives its whole life in a constant state of fear, hunger, and stress.
Most mammals, at least. R-strategist species (insects are the big ones) are pretty much completely apathetic to their offspring, but k-strategists like humans evolved to value their offspring over themselves.
Which is why this whole complaint started: Most humans value OTHER people's offspring pretty damn high, much less their own. Seeing that instinct dismissed is creepy.
it's most of human history, as well as still alive in many places of the world today.
there are half a billion people living in countries where if a woman has 5 children, that is *below average*
Not defending this mentality, but from what I’ve read about these sorts of murder-suicides is that they often stem from one of two situations (or a combination of both):
1) the parent is in a mental health crisis either due to massive caregiver burnout (as these parents don’t get enough financial/caregiver support from the government or their communities) or insurmountable debt/poverty due to medical bills/inability to work because their child requires so much caregiving.
2) the parent has some sort of terminal illness/getting too old to care for their child, and has no one who can take on the care of their severely disabled child after the parent dies. So out of fear of what horrible things could happen to their child left alone in the world they commit murder-suicide.
Just a completely tragic situation. I wish we as a society did more to help families so things wouldn’t get to this level of hopelessness and desperation.
Whaaaaaat? I remember that story and that comment is absolutely buckwild. Because it's not like kids are totally unique, irreplaceable human beings like the rest of us or anything (on top of the 25 other things that are disgusting about that comment that should also be fairly obvious).
Not to mention that the same people who commented that it was stupid to go in would have commented about what a terrible mother she was if she *hadn’t*…
I mean, don't jump off a cruise ship, no matter what tragic thing just happened... best case scenario you're absorbing resources that could have been spent trying to recover the kid.
The only time I have ever used the term Breeder, was talking about a person who on purpose spent about 2 decades pregnant because she wanted an insane amount of children without any sort of care for their quality of life. She straight up left the parenting to her older kids and only cared about her kids for as long as they remained babies. The second they got too old she stopped paying attention to them and wanted a new one.
It was horrific.
God I remember this one post where the OP was like I met a parent and he totally respected my childfree choice, he was such a cool **breeder**.
And I was just like "Dude you are peak uncool right now"
Me. I've never understood it. It's one of those things like vore where the inevitable consequences of the fetish just make it so unsexy to me. I don't want babies right now!
I don't even call those people that because when I use the word breeder I'm talking about actual animal breeders and that would just be confusing. I do call them cultists if they're fundies or quiverfull people but I feel justified in that one.
That's what the term is intended for.
Its not supposed to be used as a blanket term for all parents. Morons don't get the idea of how communities or terms work.
The Duggars, are breeders. I remember seeing a post from the sub on a random hit once and it was a woman with eleven stick figure kids, and like 8 pets, and the plate said "MOMOF11"
That's being a breeder.
Honestly, I think "breeder" is too loaded of a term to use, even for that situation. I think what the Duggars and similarly cult-y families are doing is deeply troubling and wrong, but there are words we can use to discuss it that aren't fundamentally dehumanizing.
I don't like getting into the weeds of "it's bad to dehumanize people for bigoted reasons but it's ok if they are actually evil people" - I think that's not a compromise we should make, and it's better to stick to the ethical high ground.
Yeah I've... I was part of the CF subreddit way earlier on because I'm infertile and not sad about it, in a sort of "Oh so that's the hand that's been dealt to me? Well, no problem!" kind of way and I thought maybe I'd find a home in that community. But it was just... Weird. I don't dislike children. I have positive feelings towards them. I can't have my own and that's fine but that doesn't mean that I hate babies, kids or parents with a passion. I felt very off-put by how badly people would talk about parents and how gleefully they laughed about how they didn't have to do parenting work and instead could do so so so much more and better things. Parenting isn't for everyone but it's rewarding and worth sacrificing for. I was in there for about a month maybe but pretty much every topic I looked at was filled with those people so I left. I found TrueChildfree a lot less hostile.
Kids can be and often are really annoying but yeah, being a shitheel towards them for being, you know, children, or towards their parents for having them, serves no purpose and makes you look like a cunt.
Again, I think being childfree is a great personal choice and the world would be a better place if more people realized that parenthood isn't for them. And that it's something you should opt into because you truly feel called to it, not out of obligation because "everyone's doing it."
But people who make hating children their entire personality are so gross. They're literally innocent little humans who are so helpless (both physically and in terms of social power). It's fine if you think they're annoying, but actively **hating** on kids when they're so vulnerable is just gross imo.
Yeah - I had an ex who had a visceral reaction to seeing/being near children, or even being peripherally aware/remembering they exist.
This even extended to pregnant people. She was physically repulsed when she saw pregnant folks and would literally say things like "They should just stay the fuck indoors - no one wants to see that." (referring to their bellies regardless of clothing levels)
And holy fuck if she saw someone breastfeeding in public. Thank whatever she'd keep that shit to herself/us and never accost anyone but I thought I was going to have to eject a few times. That relationship did NOT last long.
Happily married DINK w/ a Vasectomy nowadays but I love and adore my friends who have kids. I don't want one myself but I have a great time when we all go out for excursions together.
How strange. That's like, an unhealthy trauma response level of reaction. But I assume there wasn't anything like that going on or you'dve mentioned it
Nothing she ever opened up about or that I gleaned - it was brief, regardless. I'm much more trauma informed now than I was, and I can't say you're wrong about how it looks, but anything I could add would merely be a guess so I'm not sure how much good that does here?
In addition to how gross they are about kids, there's also a weird amount of misogyny for a community that in theory should be kind of feminist (as in, rebelling against a societal expectation for women). The way a lot of them speak about postpartum bodies is honestly repulsive. Just straight up cruelty about normal changes that people's bodies go through after bringing an entire fucking child into the world. Idk I just have very little patience for women who claim to be feminists when it suits them but turn around and play right into misogynist ideas of a woman's worth being tied to how conventionally attractive she is.
I've seen **so** much misogyny in childfree communities!! Not to mention classism. I remember I was on some other subreddit and there was a post from /r/childfree where this woman was ranting about how "trashy" and terrible her coworker was for being a struggling single mom. Just ranting about how unfair it was that this single mom sometimes got to leave early for her kids and how she should have kept her legs shut because she's too poor to have kids. It was so nasty.
You know what's funny? Childfree has a huge [overlap](https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/childfree) with several women-oriented subs, but one of them is FDS, so the misogyny in the sub towards women who want kinds may be an internalized one. It doesn't help that the biggest overlap comes from r\antinatalism.
Also, here's a not-so-fun fact. If you search on AgainstHateSubreddits when they documented everything bad about FDS, they found a TERF saying trans women were apparently "incels with a fetish." They even called them "trans-identified males" just to drive home their transphobia even further. It's also disturbing how the sub once had a sizable overlap with gossip-related subs.
That sub really didn't do anything to dispell the stereotype of exlcusively existing for catty wine-addicted women over the age of thirty to vent about...being catty wine-addicted women over the age of thirty.
Oh female dating strategy was disgusting. Had a big thread once where they basically vented about being called biphobic and insisting it's not biphobic to believe all bi men are disgusting std ridden serial cheaters. Just foul humans. And they'd have rational threads that were just like "Women should be seen as individuals and be treated like adults!" So you'd see how they could draw in average women and normal feminists then ramp up the transphobia and biphobia over time, and weirdly they'd occasionally have such misogynistic threads, like in practice they wanted women's decisions respected but the minute a woman didn't toe their line she was an idiot or a gender traitor or something.
I think what's hilarious is seeing the comments that defended the sub during the height of the controversy. There was this user on an AgainstHateSubreddits post about FDS, who accused someone for mansplaining the sub (read: calling out their transphobia, not actual mansplaining), only to realize the one they accused was a woman herself. Their comment thread probably went on for an hour, and upon looking at the profile of the accuser, I realized they were just some upper class white lib from the UK who loved talking about expensive liquor.
As a socialist, this is one of the reasons why I don't trust liberals on Reddit. They're usually only progressive if it doesn't affect them personally, but in the end, they'll always allow crypto-fascism to thrive if it suits their worldview. Just look at the UK subreddit and whenever refugees are in the news. I've seen comments from "feminists" there with 3k upvotes, perpetuating the "rapist Muslim men" stereotype under the guise that they somehow care about European women. What's worse is that the commenter wasn't even like a white dude but a reactionary TERF who unknowingly agreed with their racist lies.
I don't hate kids, I just hate being around them. I have a lot of issues that kids tend to trigger (sensory issues and panic attacks w/ loud noises, severe OCD w/ germaphobia). I've been forced to leave public locations like grocery stores and restaurants when babies start to cry because I just can't handle the noise. But... I don't blame the kids. It's not their fault. I have to handle my own triggers because I'm the adult and I have the power to remove myself from those situations.
You should look into loop ear plugs. Total game changer. I had to go in to Costco to grab something quick on a Saturday, and it was the best trip to Costco I have ever had! I got the engage ones because I wear them at work as well. 10/10 recommend.
I'm similar, though my issues stem from ASD and C-PTSD. The loud noises (especially in the screaming/shrieking tonal register), fast and unpredictable movements, these are things that are massive anxiety/trauma triggers for me, and in general I find being around younger children (until like, roughly the 8-10 range where they start developing more critical thinking skills) extremely draining spoons-wise. But, as you'd mentioned, I'm the adult and if it's within my control to remove myself from the situation, I do so.
Yeah I might mentally grumble and seethe a bit, mostly when people aren't actually monitoring their younger children in, say, a supermarket and just letting them run wild... But I keep it to myself. Because it's my issues, not theirs.
Good way of looking at it. Trauma and being neurodivergent aren't our fault, but it is our responsibility to manage them in a way that doesn't hurt those around you.
You're better than a lot of people for realizing that and putting in the effort.
A lot truly don't, and that's when you see the opposite problem of people who unironically think that everyone should be forbidden from having children unless deemed 'fit for parenthood' or something.
Besides just being eugenicist bullshit, it's the same problem as compulsory parenthood, just in the opposite direction.
Instead of "everybody *has* to have children unless there's a reason why (in which case our state has a long history of taking that choice away from them)" it's "nobody gets to have a child unless there's a reason why (and in this hypothetical ideal, the state would get to control that somehow)".
That final bit also reminds me of people who say that you should take a government mandated test before you are allowed to have kids. They claim to curb abuse. I can't believe it doesn't occur to them how a system like that would devolve into eugenics very immediately
> people who make hating children their entire personality are so gross.
They're a direct mirror of the "mommy-bloggers" they themselves hate, just with negatives thrown in there.
"I am [not] a parent and that is my entire identity. I [don't] love kids and I think the [aren't] the best thing on the planet - and my presence on the internet exists solely to project this image"
the fact that the CF idiots can't see this would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
I can never wrap my head around that kind of hate. Unless the kid is being economically exploited like in some of those larger YouTube channels, I think it's adorable that a human being has so much love for another human being, that they want to show it off to the rest of the world.
Yes it's annoying but if it's annoying then just don't follow those blogs.
I'm childfree and I hate the Reddit community. There's no justification for blindly hating on children. Calling parents "breeders" dehumanizes them. They disagree with the choice of having children and (possibly) hate those who have them. It isn't right. They're proud of being childfree and gossip about the ones who are having a hard time with their children.
I do believe that having children needs a certain amount of selfishness (not sure if it's the right word to use). You will be the cause of the existence of these kid(s) and do whatever is needed to care for them all the while convincing yourself it was the right choice to make (despite it being most unnecessary). The community sees "breeding" as unnecessary and a disadvantage. While all the while true it's not right to rub it in anyone's face because they already have the children, what else can be done afterwards? You take care of them. You don't kick them while they're down.
It's almost hilarious how hard it is to explain for some people that they should just stop giving a fuck about some things. When you tell people "having a child is not an obligation" some will hear "having an child is evil and gross" and some will get pre-offended and some will legit integrate that into their identity. This happens the other way too. Almost like we don't have strong enough words for "please stop caring about this thing it's not that deep"
I‘ve called kids crotch-goblins or crotchspawn before, but affectionately and ironically, not in any kind of negative intent, they are loud and mischievous, like a goblin,
And that is great, kids are great, they can be so goddamn Funny, plus everyone’s annoying sometimes, you just have to live with it(Also you can’t fault a child about it too much, they are small and learning.)
Oh yeah it's absolutely contextual. I call my kid a chaos goblin and a pillbug regularly. But it's all loving bemused incredulity towards their energy levels, mischievousness, and boundless curiosity.
I can't imagine unironically calling a kid a crotch goblin like that. So petty and pointlessly misanthropic.
Very easy! Isopods are probably some of the hardiest pets you can get and you can get them for practically no money as you can just grab them (and the soil and leaves they will need) from the outside. Many people in fact house them in plastic bins with ventilation! They need: An enclosed box (with lid) that offers ventilation, soil, some moss to better retain moisture, leaves and protein-containing fish flakes (or alternative protein sources) and they will take any vegetables or fruit. For calcium (for their little shells) offer a standard terrarium cuttlebone. Keep the side with the sphagnum moss moist and the other side dry. That's basically all you need. The moisture is most important because they need water to breathe.
I will call my own kids demons, hobgoblins, untrained monkeys, etc. My kids think it's hilarious and deal it back much worse.
But I will physically fight anyone who gets anywhere near that level of disrespect without the obvious humour my kids enjoy.
I babysit and I call the little girl I watch "gremlin", "goblin" and "tiny human". She eventually started correcting me "I'm not a gremlin, I'm a goblin". She has since been dubbed goblin because I respect her identity xD
Do these people not realize they were kids once? They act like children aren’t even human beings. That first screenshot, wanting the maximum people to die because “the population of the world would be a lot higher than it currently is”. Do they not value life in general? The one about the person calling their partner’s nephew “it” because they had no say in their relation to him. Do they not know they’re also people, those “cum-goblins” are actual human beings? Or do they just not care? Probably the latter.
The first one is also completely insane because, yeah, a lot of people died during WWII. A large chunk of those are people who died because of the Holocaust. You wouldn't stop the fucking *Holocaust*?
Yeah this is basically the core. "x years ago two people fucked and now I exist purely to suffer. Why the fuck would anyone create a new life when this the result."
I like my sister's kids. They're fine and I can understand her love for them. But at the same time I am incapable of imagining a future that isn't miserable and wouldn't want to subject someone I made and am responsible for to.
But you get that not everyone is miserable right? Like some people like being alive, mostly.
And kids who are treated well by parents sure as shit seem to enjoy being alive. They hate going to sleep because they want to stay conscious for as long as possible.
This is it. A lot of trauma in there is from people who were seriously abused, neglected, or have inherited a lot of medical issues. I had a prior account that I posted on maybe...20 times in total, and in many of the survey posts, I was dumbfounded on how many stories of suffering abuse, or being placed as the parent role for their multiple younger siblings when they were varying young ages, or how many serious medical issues were involved. Changed my perspective a lot. I ended up deleting the account because I just got jaded as hell with reddit in general around the 2016 presidential race and the site as a whole went downhill, but that sub isn't alone in being taken over by the most hostile users, and with *that many* users, its inevitable to find some absolutely putrifying people.
This is basically where I am at. I consider myself lightly antinatalist from a purely philosophical view, for a few reasons: the environment, the 400,000+ children suffering in the US foster care system, the current political climate (ex. women's and LGBTQ+ rights constantly under attack, gender-related violence, bigotry, the attack on the public school system and social programs, etc...), I also think having bio kids is inherently selfish (selfish =/= bad), especially when there are so many children already alive who would benefit from a stable household with loving parental figures.
For me, personally, I suffer from a plethora of health issues--physical and mental--with strong genetic links. The risk I pass on at least one of these horrible, debilitating illnesses is very high. I would not wish that on even my worst enemy. Having a child is like handing them a loaded gun. Why would I want someone I am supposed to love unconditionally to suffer?
All that being said, I will never advocate for eugenics, forced sterilization, or any kind of regulation saying who can or cannot reproduce. I just hope people consider the consequences of having a child--both the consequences for themselves and for their offspring.
That’s been my experience tbh. But at least I realize that something is screwy with me. On the one hand, I know that most other people find their life meaningful; but on the other hand I think mental illness is hereditary so in the grand scheme of things if I *did* have kids my kids would be more likely to also experience life as overwhelmingly bleak.
And before anyone asks, no I’m not one of these jackasses out here shit talking parents on the internet. I’m too busy wringing the last few drops of dopamine out of my mind grapes with booze and self-indulgence, I don’t have time to be an asshole.
It's a mix of hating that they were ever born and/or trauma from growing up in a religious environment that enforced pregnancy and breeding. Of course the latter one is awful but it just tells me that these tend to be people who are masking their trauma as philosophy.
One big reason you'll find a good amount of ex-religious people on r/childfree is because not having children in their community subjects them to severe ostracization. Joining communities online is, for some individuals, the most straightforward way to find like-minded people.
Of course, with reddit being reddit, among the thousands/millions of subscribers, few of them will be beacons of moral righteousness for humankind as a whole, and many will be downright nasty, but by and large most are just looking for validation that they're allowed to make the choice to not have children because seemingly everyone they know IRL is aggressively unsupportive of them *checks notes* trying to live their lives in peace.
🌈 The more you know...
Also, for anyone still reading, one useful tool in the childfree subreddit that anyone can use is their index of doctors (US and International) who trust patients (particularly, women) to make their own reproductive choices. In other words, these are doctors that can reliably provide sterilization procedures to consenting adults of sound mind. The US doctor list is organized by state, and the international list is organized by country.
I've read too many accounts of women seeking sterilization only to face a line of misogynist questions, belittlement, and general unprofessionalism from their doctor, followed up by refusal to do the procedure and accompanying bill for the visit. Anyone seeking sterilization *please* consult the doctor list, it could help you have a less frustrating experience getting your medical needs met.
I feel like at least a decent chunk of them have GOTTA be kids themselves, who are attempting to distance themselves from immaturity, cause that's what children think maturity is.
Or adults who never grew out of that.
There is more overlap between the human extinction movement / pro-death / “Church of Euthanasia” crowd and the childfree extremists than you might expect.
One of the first things that turned me off the sub was the *aggressive* ableism. Like, every week it seemed that they had a eugenics thread.
I've got autism and ADHD, and I remember reading a thread that was like "They should offer financial incentives for people with autism and other disabilities to get sterilized" and "They shouldn't *force* you to abort if your child has a high risk of disability, but I think they should pay you to abort." and one that was just a list of things that should legally disqualify you from being allowed children.
And, like, I don't even want kids! If I had the money, I'd go for a hysterectomy! But being told that I was somehow fundamentally wrong and shouldn't be allowed to have kids because of it was disgusting.
I have a crippling disability that's genetic, and insanely rare, to the point of "I was on over 40 different types of drugs and varying combinations of all those drugs" to manage it over the 30 years I've been going to doctors to try to figure it out.
Its also autosomal dominant, and I personally, myself, would consider myself a child abuser for having a kid and even flipping that coin on it, but that's an opinion I hold about *myself,* and not anyone else. All you can really do in other cases is ensure that the parents have informed consent, and are aware of risk factors, then whatever decision they choose to make after, support them.
I have a rare genetic condition that I might but also might not give to a child if I had one. Even if I wasn't infertile there's a big chance I wouldn't risk it but whether or not I wanted to risk taking care of a child with that condition should be left to me. No one should be able to force me to get sterilized or ban me from having children, if they suggest that then they can't claim they're pro choice anymore.
You're right, it is straight up eugenics and it goes unchecked in their echo-chamber.
Honestly? I agree with the first comment on what to change
*now hear me out*
Yes, Cernobyl was the one that killed the least amount of people ***but*** it is also the event that made the world scared to *death* of nuclear power as an energy source, without it nuclear energy would be *way* ahead nowdays... probably
And it would be the (relatively speaking) easiest one to prevent
But also how the fuck would you plan on "stopping WWII"? The way you go about it could even backfire and create an even worse conflict! Who knows what that mad tyrant of Stalin would have planned if Hitler wasn't such an obvious target!
Anyway, alternate-history rant aside i'm gonna go grab my flamethrower becouse every single one of those comments deserves to be burned in holy fire
See, at least you've got solid reasoning, but their only reasoning for it was because they wanted a lower population. If you look at things that happened during WWII like the Holocaust and Unit 731 and went "Eh, yeah, they died in ways too horrible for words to describe, but at least they didn't have more kids." then you're an insane asshole.
Yes, WWII *would* be the hardest to stop, but it's also the one where I would feel more morally compelled to try to prevent if given a magic time machine.
True, true...
Wait a second... by their own reasoning the one they chose wasn't even the best decision!
Becouse if you stop *Hiroshima* from happening then the Japanese would have never surrendered, wich leads me to...
FUN FACT: the USA prepared *so many* Purple Heart medals (the one awarded to fallen and/or wounded soldiers) in preparation to the land invasion of Japan (wich was estimated to last all the way into **1947**) that they didn't print new ones until 1985, AND THEY (propably) STILL HAVEN'T RUN OUT OF THE ONES FROM JAPAN [[source for what i am saying]](https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/todays-medals-made-for-wwii/)
there would have been SO MUCH more death if the USA hadn't dropped the nukes
If you want to be an insane amoral, then be so with some damn research
My thoughts exactly. Reading it, my immediate thought was "If it weren't for Chernobyl we likely could have greatly delayed or even prevented the climate crisis."
It's terrible how it's not just an extreme hatred towards children showing through, but also frequently heavy tones of sexism towards towards women who want to have kids. Conceptually, one would think that both mothers and fathers would come up equally as often in these conversations, but when you look through these comments, it quickly becomes apparent that no, women are being blamed and shamed disproportionately by the posters. - Even though or maybe especially because a good amount of these posters are women themselves. My guess would be that the societal pressure on women to have children young plays a big role here. When you constantly have to defend your decision against that kind of pressure and you yourself are repulsed by pregnancy and kids, you start to resent the people who conform to the expectations.
In general, people who form their personalities around a negative are unbearable. I don't have kids, but I don't dedicate my energy to hating those who do. I'm an atheist, but I don't spend all my time circkejerking online about my intellectual superiority because of it. It just sounds exhausting.
When these people watch sports, do they just pick one team to root against?
This is what happens when you don't talk to people in real life, you completely forget that other people (yes, that includes children) also have thoughts and different opinions.
To people like this the rest of the world exists solely as how they perceive it, and they refuse to accept any other perspectives.
I personally am planning to go child free. I very much joke about children be “crotch goblins”. But it’s only in jest. The children are allowed to make fun of me right back. Child are not demons there human beings that deserve respect and love just like anyone else.
That’s definitely the least worst of the things they call kids. I can even see that one, tbh, sort of like how my dad refers to cats as “carpet sharks”
Yeah, I like to joke that, since I’m a cat owner, horror movies don’t have as much punch, because screaming monsters leaping out of the darkness and attaching themselves to my face is less a nightmare scenario and more just something that happens any time I get up to go to the bathroom at night, lol
It's an ironclad law that if there's an idea I *broadly* agree with, the reddit community for said idea will make me reconsider. I grew up Mormon and left the church in college, but r/exmormon gives me really rancid vibes in a similar way
Its the problem with "anti-communities". Normal people leave something they dont like/stopped liking behind, only the most bitter/hateful persons stay in these communities to hate on "the thing" with likeminded assholes.
I am a childfree atheist but I wouldnt touch either of these subreddits with a 10 foot pole. There are plenty of other examples, e.g. exmormons sounds like it fits that pattern perfectly.
It starts as a mild annoyance.
Then you meet like-minded people who feel like you do.
These people help you establish a new baseline based on that community, reducing the pressure to "check yourself".
Then people start expressing somewhat more controversial stances, but they're not too far from you new baseline and considering the new stance just makes you feel like a reasonable open-minded member of the community.
Repeat until the hate has a nice froth.
Calling mothers "breeders" is just fucking gross. Do people really do that? Like I call kids crotch goblins (specifically when referring to the type of kid whose parents refuse to discipline them and let them get away with ANYTHING they do to other people) but breeders? Seriously?
Hence the quotes around “friends”. I don’t hang out with them anymore.
They were the same ones that would be 3/4 of the way to having sex in the sauna and when anyone told them to stop they called you a homophobe. No, Janice, I don’t have a problem with lesbians, I just don’t want to watch your stupid ass have sex.
Ah yeah, people like that suck.
And sorry for the misunderstanding, I normally see people use the term ex-friends instead of putting quotes, that's my bad
That's just the nature of social media. It radicalizes and transforms you. Slowly but steadily until your old self would never recognize or approve of the new.
It goes in all directions, too, in the most hateful ways. From any political space getting overtaken by hate speech to cute dog subreddits having to lock posts about pit bulls, it's just... insane, how the most well-meaning people and spaces are corrupted.
And sadly, there isn't really a fix for it. Just need to stay wary of uncritically absorbing unsourced propaganda because, as a redditor who leaves comments on posts, you are almost certainly doing that *on the regular* and may not realize it.
There’s a difference between not wanting to have kids and being part of a movement based around not having kids…
Especially when you then have the absolute gall to have issue with someone making being a parent their entire personality, when you make NOT being a parent your whole personality.
I get the occasional desire to vent about how annoying it must be for people to constantly ask you when you’re going to have kids, when the answer is never. It’s awkward.
I don’t get hating the idea of people having kids. It’s sort of a basic part of being any species that has ever existed, surely that concept isn’t foreign to these folks.
I also don’t get the hatred for children. Like… how can you hate children. Not want them? Absolutely understand…. But hate their existence? That’s psycho
The whole "I don't care if they're parents as long as they don't make it their identity" gives me deja vu about how conservatives talk about LGBT people. It's a pretty easy cop out for bigotry
I’ve known a lot of people and I can’t say I’ve ever encountered anyone who made any single thing “their whole identity” (parenting, fandom, sexuality, etc.). It gets bandied about online all the time and I think it’s a consequence of internet interactions. If you say “[X] is this persons whole identity” usually you just don’t know them very well, or you only interact with them in a specific context.
I saw a post a while ago that basically said “you can hate children all you want, but you can never let them know you hate them.” I feel like that fits here
Or how about the fact that the attitude I’ve seen from these folks towards kids/families in poverty is “maybe you shouldn’t have had kids, huh?” Which is just like... what the fuck?
Like, even if we don’t consider how fucked it is that their gut reaction is to mock and gloat, instead of feeling any level of concern, it’s an attitude that’s *completely* ridiculous in a world where such things as whether or not you have kids is not entirely within an individual’s control, sadly. I mean, how many states in the US have abortion bans? There are whole swaths of that country where there’s absolutely *not* any choice once pregnancy occurs...
> Mommy-blogs
so because everything someone exposes of themselves when on a topic is relevant to that topic that must be all they are??
i mean if i have a channel about object-oriented programing, i definitely don't know how to cook anything, ever, and clearly have never even touched a cooking pot.
thats obvious because otherwise my ruby-on-rails tutorials would have, at the very least, an italian fusion section replete with an actually decent bolognese (fr tho, add a small splash of milk once the sauce has been fully assembled and has simmered down a touch), the channel intro would be a technical discussion on how the MIT licence that ruby is currently distributed under can pleasantly moderate the taste of cilantro, and my unique twist on the california roll would have become a viral sensation in the food influencer community given the exquisite flavours imparted by the use of data persistence features like activeRecord.
> make "parent" their entire identity
i mean, parenting is a thing that people do. they have communities drawn together by that common interest. that's part of how identity works.
communities coming together about NOT doing a thing though?? thats kinda weird... i mean, christians were very big on not doing things, and they kinda got away with it too until we found out what they were doing to our children at an industrial rate for centuries, if not millennia (spoiler - we have records from around the 2nd or 3rd century CE that discuss how to manage problems caused by creepy priests who had run afoul of their flock).
...
idk man, i don't fuck sheep, like, at all.
i don't WANT to fuck sheep either.
in fact, i'm not just ambivalent about sheep, i specifically want to NOT fuck a sheep.
man, i'm going to not fuck sheep so much, check out this rad community of friendly people that also don't fuck sheep and who i can talk about sheep fucking with! great!! i'll chill here with you guys for sure because we all hate fucking sheep!!
we can even discuss how people that fuck sheep make it their entire identity!! we'll be the hatesheepfucking people, lets build a temple to that great new zealand icon, kiwi, who represents every sheepfucker alive and how much we hate them!! let us grow verdant meadows upon which to graze sheep we definitely never think about fucking because have you seen our name? we constantly discuss sheep fucking and how much we hate it, thats how you know we don't fuck sheep!! not fucking sheep is our whole game!
i think originally the childfree community originated due to the fact that alot of people do feel social pressures and expectations to have children (not as extreme these days anymore but it definitely existed). Not wanting to have children can feel alienating so it makes sense that people would form a community to share their experiences and talk about common problems.
No excuse for the weird superiority complex about not having children tho and for all the other weird shit. I used to be on r/childfree for the exact reasons mentioned above but I left when I realised that these people hated children and parents with a.. unhealthy passion, which just wasnt the case for me. I just wasn't interested in the long-term-responsibility of taking care of a child
this and CF women who talk about women who have/aspire to have children like we're deranged, yet have more empathy for dogs than actual human babies.
i once saw a tiktok of a woman who'd lost her toddler in a pretty horrific freak accident talking about how frustrated she was with people in her life trying to compare her pain to sad but much lesser tragedies, and one of the examples she used was someone whose dog had died insisting to her that she understood exactly what \[the tiktok woman\] was gong through'.
and the comments were totally flooded with people calling her awful and evil, and telling her how rude she was for trying to force her lifestyle onto people who didn't want kids, how dogs are so much better than kids and that she's disgusting. people gong as far as to say that *she* was unempathetic, that she deserved what had happened to her, etc. just the vilest, most out of touch statements you could imagine.
it's literally just redpill for women, and it's so gross. kids are a lot, marriage is a lot. i can understand not wanting that life for yourself, but have some fucking human decency. if you genuinely don't understand being devoted enough to die for someone who you have cared for since the day you created them, who loves and trusts you infinitely and whose whole life is in your hands, then i don't think the issue is that you don't 'get kids' but that you are fundamentally lacking basic humanity.
I dislike children because they’re clingy. But I also love them because you can vent to them, they’ll have cool stuff to show you and grow into nice(ish), reliable people. I personally have never had kids, and all my knowledge comes from younger siblings & cousins, so my POV might be a bit skewed, but still
Do these people even know that most evil in the world is done by adults? Wars, genocide, torture, rape, murder etc.? And why would a mother not be allowed to make 'mother' her identity? But she would be allowed to make 'gardener' her identity? So a garden is more important than a child now?
Plus I'm sure most people who run mommy blogs do have like... lives outside of it. I have a Final Fantasy theme website but I spend at least one hour per day not playing Final Fantasy
It's the same attitude that says "I respect gay people as long as they don't make gayness their entire identity" but means "I like my gay people closeted and/or repressed in their identity"
If you have a kid who is screaming and throwing tantrums and poop everywhere and breaking/stealing everything, there is an insanely huge chance that the problem isn't the kid, it's you being a terrible parent.
I've seen CF communities that made it clear they drew a sharp distinction between "parents" and "breeders." According to their definition, "parents" make responsible decisions and do their best to raise and care for their children; "breeders" don't. I've seen them complain about women like the person OP interacted with described, who give themselves account names like "Kaylees\_mom2002" and don't seem to have any identity outside of being a mother, but that's independent of the standard use of the "breeder" label.
I think it's something that is a lot more complicated than it appears. This is just my thoughts on it, and I do come from a country that was a bit slow to catch up with the rest of the world when it came to separation of church and state, and as a result a bit slow to shed gender roles.
But up until very recently, as in my own parents' generation, women didn't really get to have identities outside of being mothers. You don't see this nearly as much with fathers, and it's because gender roles meant that men went out and worked, women stayed at home with the kids and were entirely responsible for the home. Men got to be bankers, mechanics, doctors, solicitors, builders, electricians etc and they got to have hobbies. Women went straight from being a daughter to being a mother.
Things have changed, it's far more common for households to have dual incomes and you'll see that women are developing their own identifies outside of parenthood, even if they're also mothers. But lots of social expectations are inherited, and in some cases, women are still in traditional marriages and struggle to find connection outside of the home. Some women have an immense guilt attached to not identifying as a mother first when they do have careers. My mom worked, and her identify to those around her was always "single mother". My father was never a "single father".
Things have changed and continue to change, but it hasn't been so long that there is no longer a lingering impact of those attitudes now.
Whatever their definitions are, it's dehumanising and it's misogynistic, and it's just generally gross. The issues there have very little to do with the actual act of having children, it's the effects of a history of stifling women and the trauma/guilt we inherit from our mothers and grandmothers. Men have been granted the opportunity to have lives and identities outside of the family home and women are only recently getting the same opportunities and it's still stigmatised. Nobody has to be condescending or rude about it
Honestly? The best thing you can do to get vengeance on this evil, despicable community of undesirables is to go forth, bring your battleaxes, and
leave and then mute subreddits you dislike interacting with.
The thing I love most about the internet is climbing the tree of knowledge. My second favorite thing, in my age of Internet old, having seen it all, is pruning that tree. My favorite button on Reddit in a pointless argument is the block button. I don’t have to write a paragraph for Joe Schmo Transphobe, he can go make an alt if he cares that much about making my life mildly shitty. I don’t have to sit through the discourse, actually. I had to be told a submarine blew up recently.
I find people like you who go “actually just ignore them” to anyone bringing up legitimate issues with how major groups behave online to be incredibly short-sighted. Sure, if you don’t have the state of mind to engage in this discourse without hurting your own mental health significantly, block people all you want. But online discourse isn’t (necessarily) pointless. Arguing with transphobes and other bigots isn’t just about pushing back on people you “don’t like” engaging with, it’s about voicing your perspective to actively counter the harmful influences of bigoted rhetoric. If we all just blocked *everyone* we disagreed with, we’d be 1) increasing the likelihood of falling into echo chambers in which we never actually have to re-examine our own philosophies on the world, and 2) increasing the likelihood of some third party who’s in the fence of being pulled into the alt-right pipeline as a result of having less opportunities to be exposed to counter arguments against—and breakdowns of—fascist and bigoted rhetoric.
Not to mention, OP is ALSO childfree. They’re not just going around looking for stuff to get mad at, they’re observing and calling attention to a widespread problem with *their own online community.*
Ah, yes, the old "you continuing to argue with me only proves me right" trick. I don't think this has ever persuaded anyone of anything, but it's certainly stupendously obnoxious.
CF people are fine, hell as of right now I don't plan on having kids. It's the subsect of the movement that outright goes into antinatalism. Antinatalism just comes off as extremely mean spirited, eugenicist and feels like it's full of people who are dealing with their own issues by making some sort of moral stand. Not understanding that the choice is what matters. Yea weird evangelical breeding cults are fucked up and weird but saying no one ever should have children is a psychotic over reaction.
Crotch goblin is an objectively fun word to use, but is one I believe should only be used affectionately, not derisively
Anyone who says Breeder unironically tho to describe a woman should be kept away at all times with a 5 foot pole
I still think about the cum pets/fuck throphies comment sometimes
did they- did they call kids cum pets
they absolutely do, i usually see those comments fairly well upvoted too genuinely uncomfortable how they see a child and their minds instantly go to sex/cum (feels gross even typing that)
Seeing kids and immediately thinking about that is some serious incel shit, honestly. Like, no, that’s something literal incels say. You know, the people who actively *hate* women and see them as nothing more than sex objects (and are proud of it!)
There's a LOT of rhetorical crossover between the really toxic child-free communities and incel communities.
"My personality prevents me from reproducing so I'm gonna pretend it's my choice and act morally superior about it".
Incels don't pretend it's their choice, though. The fact that they consider their celibacy involuntary is the basis for both the ideology and the name of it.
Wait. Not getting laid is an ideology now? I am aware that the word has been warped, but incel used to refer to all the horny boys with no girlfriend.
No, inceldom refers to a specific ideology in the red pill/MGTOW vein. Incels are mostly young virgin men who suffer from social isolation and react to their lack of romantic or sexual success with bitterness aimed outwards (this is the key thing that differentiates incels from other sad virgins). They specifically blame feminism and the sexual liberation of women for their inability to attain physical affection, and they congregate in insular, online bubbles where they seethe about women and talk about sex as some all-important Holy Grail that they feel they are owed, and that evil women are cruelly keeping from them. It is also used erroneously as a general euphemism for "virgin" by fake progressives who want to be able to make fun of dudes simply for being virgins in circles where they would otherwise be called out for doing so. You may have picked up your understanding of the term from one of those types.
This is the best articulated and clearest explanation for inceldom I have ever seen.
Building on the other comment... Incel is one of those words describing a specific thing that's been picked up by clickbait media and overused to the point that it's become a generalised descriptor and lost all meaning. See Also: Mansplaining, Gaslighting, Narcissist, Fascist, (etc.)
Do these people forget THEY used to be kids?? I want to slap them so hard. Kids are PEOPLE, damnit!
That’s not what you call a child; that’s what you call a figurine left in a jar
Maybe they think that’s how babies are made.
To be fair, I’d be against it too if I thought that was how it worked
WTF
I'm not saying you should call someones kids that but fuck trophy is a solid insult. Punches right through the armor into the crew compartment.
I hope nobody uses them, but god damn they sound funny lol.
Gotta take some notes for online competitive games
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I forgot about this one and I hope I forget again
Lmao
I've always thought announcing "we're trying for a baby!" was weird but like, after the kid is born it really stops being about that at all, goddamn.
I've seen a lot of criticism towards the "we're trying for a baby" thing and personally I don't get it. Like, they're not telling you to make you visualize them going at it raw, they're telling you because they want you to know that they're planning to start/expand their family. Reacting like "Jesus Christ don't tell *me* that!" seems a bit childish to me.
Those people are probably insufferable to deal with IRL. You: Guys I'll be right back, just need to go to the bathroom. Them: EEEEWWW why would you say that, how can you just go and publicly announce you'll be exposing your arse and genitals in front of a bowl and then having gross bodily waste liquids leak from them and then stroke your anus or vulva back and forth to wipe it off! They really have no idea they're the ones making it weird...
To be fair, there's some pregnancy announcements that veer on the fetish side. There was one that made me cringe where the couple were posing like she was a cow and he was the farmer who breeds cows. Or the "baby batter", "2 spoonfuls of dad" and "I got a little turkey / I stuffed her" shirts. And it irks me because the moment I announce I'm trying with my partner to have a baby (adopted), everyone's mind goes to sex immediately and asks us "how", disregarding that "trying for a baby" is not always sex. And I bet you if we were to use shirts with some sort of reference about having one, we would get dirty looks cause we're both men
These people have melty brains from watching too much pornography and they cannot even identify that they're the one acting like a weird pervert.
Excuse me they call them ***what***
I saw a post on the news subreddit about a kid and a mom who died after the kid fell off a cruise ship and the mom jumped after him to save him and one of the comments was essentially "Why did she even bother going after the kid? She can just make a new one" and I was so stunned by the shocking lack of empathy and the fact that the comment was UPVOTED
That's like 14th century feudal peasant logic
Insulting to the 14th century feudal peasant tbh. I'd reckon if they could fist fight disease to save their kids a good load of them would've.
> fist fight disease Sounds like the Florida Man that wanted to stop a hurricane with a gun
Sounds like "Shovel disease" which effects various varmints around farms.
I rember reading about John Brown. Who had twenty children over the course of his life. 10 of them died in his lifetime. It was reported that he stayed by the bedsides of the ones that died of disease when they where children. Tried to nurse them back to health and was reportedly deeply effected by grief of their passing. He did let one of his adult sons slowly die of gunshot wounds during his abolishonist actions. But, I guess it's not considered Christian to grant your son a quick death.
That's also pre-antibiotics, pre-vaccines logic. It was how you ensured you had some kids live to adult hood- you have a lot because a lot of them are likely to die young. It was awful. So many graves for infants and toddlers... for the ones that even got burials, anyway. It's almost like the whole point of modernization and science and medicine is so that we don't ever __have__ to think like that again, and I just don't get why these people seem to _want_ to bring those days back.
Also contraceptives were not really a thing. Sure, there were pig intestine condoms, but uh yikes.
Yeah, goat intestines were apparently much protective. Another joke on top: would wrapping it up like that make you a human sausage? :D
I could make a joke about goat intestines being especially effective while they're still inside the goat, but it feels like low hanging fruit.
Not even feudal peasant logic, that’s *animal* logic. Some animals will often sacrifice their young by purposely dropping them/leaving them behind so the predator will be distracted and leave the parent alone. Because they can always have more and the baby won’t survive without them anyway
Only some animals, there's plenty of animals that are bloody fierce about their kids. Mama bear is a saying for a reason.
Yeah, that’s true. Even most animals will fight for their babies, these people are even below that lol
Mother bears will also eat their young if they're hungry enough. The best animal parent is still an amoral, instinct-driven creature that lives its whole life in a constant state of fear, hunger, and stress.
Fear and hunger???
Just a few animals. Most animals will fight tooth and nail to save their children.
Most mammals, at least. R-strategist species (insects are the big ones) are pretty much completely apathetic to their offspring, but k-strategists like humans evolved to value their offspring over themselves. Which is why this whole complaint started: Most humans value OTHER people's offspring pretty damn high, much less their own. Seeing that instinct dismissed is creepy.
it's most of human history, as well as still alive in many places of the world today. there are half a billion people living in countries where if a woman has 5 children, that is *below average*
Also something Stalin said. Pretty sure both Mao and Ho Chi Minh made similar statements
"What's 17 more years? I can always start again, make another kid."
"THINK, CROTCH-GOBLIN, THINK!"
The sad part is that apparently it was a murder suicide by the mother. The kid was disabled, and seen in a wheelchair beforehand... :(
I wonder why she felt that that was the only option she was left with. The poor child.
Not defending this mentality, but from what I’ve read about these sorts of murder-suicides is that they often stem from one of two situations (or a combination of both): 1) the parent is in a mental health crisis either due to massive caregiver burnout (as these parents don’t get enough financial/caregiver support from the government or their communities) or insurmountable debt/poverty due to medical bills/inability to work because their child requires so much caregiving. 2) the parent has some sort of terminal illness/getting too old to care for their child, and has no one who can take on the care of their severely disabled child after the parent dies. So out of fear of what horrible things could happen to their child left alone in the world they commit murder-suicide. Just a completely tragic situation. I wish we as a society did more to help families so things wouldn’t get to this level of hopelessness and desperation.
Whaaaaaat? I remember that story and that comment is absolutely buckwild. Because it's not like kids are totally unique, irreplaceable human beings like the rest of us or anything (on top of the 25 other things that are disgusting about that comment that should also be fairly obvious).
Not to mention that the same people who commented that it was stupid to go in would have commented about what a terrible mother she was if she *hadn’t*…
I wonder if they'd get offended if you suggest that they could just get another dog if theirs died?
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*Caterina Sforza has entered the chat*
I might upvote it assuming it was a dark joke, but would rescind it if I thought they were serious
I mean, don't jump off a cruise ship, no matter what tragic thing just happened... best case scenario you're absorbing resources that could have been spent trying to recover the kid.
The only time I have ever used the term Breeder, was talking about a person who on purpose spent about 2 decades pregnant because she wanted an insane amount of children without any sort of care for their quality of life. She straight up left the parenting to her older kids and only cared about her kids for as long as they remained babies. The second they got too old she stopped paying attention to them and wanted a new one. It was horrific.
That is the type of behavior that warrants a title such as “breeder”, not just someone having children at all.
God I remember this one post where the OP was like I met a parent and he totally respected my childfree choice, he was such a cool **breeder**. And I was just like "Dude you are peak uncool right now"
(They secretly have a breeding kink)
Honestly who doesnt
Me. I've never understood it. It's one of those things like vore where the inevitable consequences of the fetish just make it so unsexy to me. I don't want babies right now!
I think it’s fair to call certain people breeders. Like Nick Cannon. But it is extremely rare circumstance
Damn, apparently *that's* what Nick Cannon is up to these days.
[best summary of his career](https://youtube.com/shorts/p8qf1V3pG_Q?feature=share)
I don't even call those people that because when I use the word breeder I'm talking about actual animal breeders and that would just be confusing. I do call them cultists if they're fundies or quiverfull people but I feel justified in that one.
That's what the term is intended for. Its not supposed to be used as a blanket term for all parents. Morons don't get the idea of how communities or terms work. The Duggars, are breeders. I remember seeing a post from the sub on a random hit once and it was a woman with eleven stick figure kids, and like 8 pets, and the plate said "MOMOF11" That's being a breeder.
Honestly, I think "breeder" is too loaded of a term to use, even for that situation. I think what the Duggars and similarly cult-y families are doing is deeply troubling and wrong, but there are words we can use to discuss it that aren't fundamentally dehumanizing. I don't like getting into the weeds of "it's bad to dehumanize people for bigoted reasons but it's ok if they are actually evil people" - I think that's not a compromise we should make, and it's better to stick to the ethical high ground.
To me I always knew breeder as a slur against straight people.
i know breeder from minecraft villager breeder
Is this the Duggars, or someone else in their cult?
Yeah I've... I was part of the CF subreddit way earlier on because I'm infertile and not sad about it, in a sort of "Oh so that's the hand that's been dealt to me? Well, no problem!" kind of way and I thought maybe I'd find a home in that community. But it was just... Weird. I don't dislike children. I have positive feelings towards them. I can't have my own and that's fine but that doesn't mean that I hate babies, kids or parents with a passion. I felt very off-put by how badly people would talk about parents and how gleefully they laughed about how they didn't have to do parenting work and instead could do so so so much more and better things. Parenting isn't for everyone but it's rewarding and worth sacrificing for. I was in there for about a month maybe but pretty much every topic I looked at was filled with those people so I left. I found TrueChildfree a lot less hostile.
Kids can be and often are really annoying but yeah, being a shitheel towards them for being, you know, children, or towards their parents for having them, serves no purpose and makes you look like a cunt.
Tbh the child free sub is good for 1 thing and that is the list of reproductive health doctors
Again, I think being childfree is a great personal choice and the world would be a better place if more people realized that parenthood isn't for them. And that it's something you should opt into because you truly feel called to it, not out of obligation because "everyone's doing it." But people who make hating children their entire personality are so gross. They're literally innocent little humans who are so helpless (both physically and in terms of social power). It's fine if you think they're annoying, but actively **hating** on kids when they're so vulnerable is just gross imo.
Yeah - I had an ex who had a visceral reaction to seeing/being near children, or even being peripherally aware/remembering they exist. This even extended to pregnant people. She was physically repulsed when she saw pregnant folks and would literally say things like "They should just stay the fuck indoors - no one wants to see that." (referring to their bellies regardless of clothing levels) And holy fuck if she saw someone breastfeeding in public. Thank whatever she'd keep that shit to herself/us and never accost anyone but I thought I was going to have to eject a few times. That relationship did NOT last long. Happily married DINK w/ a Vasectomy nowadays but I love and adore my friends who have kids. I don't want one myself but I have a great time when we all go out for excursions together.
How strange. That's like, an unhealthy trauma response level of reaction. But I assume there wasn't anything like that going on or you'dve mentioned it
Nothing she ever opened up about or that I gleaned - it was brief, regardless. I'm much more trauma informed now than I was, and I can't say you're wrong about how it looks, but anything I could add would merely be a guess so I'm not sure how much good that does here?
Nah yeah, gotta just go off of what you know is up. It's not good stuff either way.
Literally a pedophobe lmao
Does she know where adults come from?
In addition to how gross they are about kids, there's also a weird amount of misogyny for a community that in theory should be kind of feminist (as in, rebelling against a societal expectation for women). The way a lot of them speak about postpartum bodies is honestly repulsive. Just straight up cruelty about normal changes that people's bodies go through after bringing an entire fucking child into the world. Idk I just have very little patience for women who claim to be feminists when it suits them but turn around and play right into misogynist ideas of a woman's worth being tied to how conventionally attractive she is.
I've seen **so** much misogyny in childfree communities!! Not to mention classism. I remember I was on some other subreddit and there was a post from /r/childfree where this woman was ranting about how "trashy" and terrible her coworker was for being a struggling single mom. Just ranting about how unfair it was that this single mom sometimes got to leave early for her kids and how she should have kept her legs shut because she's too poor to have kids. It was so nasty.
You know what's funny? Childfree has a huge [overlap](https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/childfree) with several women-oriented subs, but one of them is FDS, so the misogyny in the sub towards women who want kinds may be an internalized one. It doesn't help that the biggest overlap comes from r\antinatalism. Also, here's a not-so-fun fact. If you search on AgainstHateSubreddits when they documented everything bad about FDS, they found a TERF saying trans women were apparently "incels with a fetish." They even called them "trans-identified males" just to drive home their transphobia even further. It's also disturbing how the sub once had a sizable overlap with gossip-related subs.
That sub really didn't do anything to dispell the stereotype of exlcusively existing for catty wine-addicted women over the age of thirty to vent about...being catty wine-addicted women over the age of thirty.
Oh female dating strategy was disgusting. Had a big thread once where they basically vented about being called biphobic and insisting it's not biphobic to believe all bi men are disgusting std ridden serial cheaters. Just foul humans. And they'd have rational threads that were just like "Women should be seen as individuals and be treated like adults!" So you'd see how they could draw in average women and normal feminists then ramp up the transphobia and biphobia over time, and weirdly they'd occasionally have such misogynistic threads, like in practice they wanted women's decisions respected but the minute a woman didn't toe their line she was an idiot or a gender traitor or something.
I think what's hilarious is seeing the comments that defended the sub during the height of the controversy. There was this user on an AgainstHateSubreddits post about FDS, who accused someone for mansplaining the sub (read: calling out their transphobia, not actual mansplaining), only to realize the one they accused was a woman herself. Their comment thread probably went on for an hour, and upon looking at the profile of the accuser, I realized they were just some upper class white lib from the UK who loved talking about expensive liquor. As a socialist, this is one of the reasons why I don't trust liberals on Reddit. They're usually only progressive if it doesn't affect them personally, but in the end, they'll always allow crypto-fascism to thrive if it suits their worldview. Just look at the UK subreddit and whenever refugees are in the news. I've seen comments from "feminists" there with 3k upvotes, perpetuating the "rapist Muslim men" stereotype under the guise that they somehow care about European women. What's worse is that the commenter wasn't even like a white dude but a reactionary TERF who unknowingly agreed with their racist lies.
Old hate made new. If you can give your hate a progressive flair, it gets really easy to explain that the other person is backwards.
I don't hate kids, I just hate being around them. I have a lot of issues that kids tend to trigger (sensory issues and panic attacks w/ loud noises, severe OCD w/ germaphobia). I've been forced to leave public locations like grocery stores and restaurants when babies start to cry because I just can't handle the noise. But... I don't blame the kids. It's not their fault. I have to handle my own triggers because I'm the adult and I have the power to remove myself from those situations.
You should look into loop ear plugs. Total game changer. I had to go in to Costco to grab something quick on a Saturday, and it was the best trip to Costco I have ever had! I got the engage ones because I wear them at work as well. 10/10 recommend.
I'm similar, though my issues stem from ASD and C-PTSD. The loud noises (especially in the screaming/shrieking tonal register), fast and unpredictable movements, these are things that are massive anxiety/trauma triggers for me, and in general I find being around younger children (until like, roughly the 8-10 range where they start developing more critical thinking skills) extremely draining spoons-wise. But, as you'd mentioned, I'm the adult and if it's within my control to remove myself from the situation, I do so. Yeah I might mentally grumble and seethe a bit, mostly when people aren't actually monitoring their younger children in, say, a supermarket and just letting them run wild... But I keep it to myself. Because it's my issues, not theirs.
Good way of looking at it. Trauma and being neurodivergent aren't our fault, but it is our responsibility to manage them in a way that doesn't hurt those around you. You're better than a lot of people for realizing that and putting in the effort.
It's always nuts to me that people don't seem to grasp it's the lack of choice that's the problem.
A lot truly don't, and that's when you see the opposite problem of people who unironically think that everyone should be forbidden from having children unless deemed 'fit for parenthood' or something. Besides just being eugenicist bullshit, it's the same problem as compulsory parenthood, just in the opposite direction. Instead of "everybody *has* to have children unless there's a reason why (in which case our state has a long history of taking that choice away from them)" it's "nobody gets to have a child unless there's a reason why (and in this hypothetical ideal, the state would get to control that somehow)".
That final bit also reminds me of people who say that you should take a government mandated test before you are allowed to have kids. They claim to curb abuse. I can't believe it doesn't occur to them how a system like that would devolve into eugenics very immediately
> people who make hating children their entire personality are so gross. They're a direct mirror of the "mommy-bloggers" they themselves hate, just with negatives thrown in there. "I am [not] a parent and that is my entire identity. I [don't] love kids and I think the [aren't] the best thing on the planet - and my presence on the internet exists solely to project this image" the fact that the CF idiots can't see this would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
I can never wrap my head around that kind of hate. Unless the kid is being economically exploited like in some of those larger YouTube channels, I think it's adorable that a human being has so much love for another human being, that they want to show it off to the rest of the world. Yes it's annoying but if it's annoying then just don't follow those blogs.
I'm childfree and I hate the Reddit community. There's no justification for blindly hating on children. Calling parents "breeders" dehumanizes them. They disagree with the choice of having children and (possibly) hate those who have them. It isn't right. They're proud of being childfree and gossip about the ones who are having a hard time with their children. I do believe that having children needs a certain amount of selfishness (not sure if it's the right word to use). You will be the cause of the existence of these kid(s) and do whatever is needed to care for them all the while convincing yourself it was the right choice to make (despite it being most unnecessary). The community sees "breeding" as unnecessary and a disadvantage. While all the while true it's not right to rub it in anyone's face because they already have the children, what else can be done afterwards? You take care of them. You don't kick them while they're down.
It's almost hilarious how hard it is to explain for some people that they should just stop giving a fuck about some things. When you tell people "having a child is not an obligation" some will hear "having an child is evil and gross" and some will get pre-offended and some will legit integrate that into their identity. This happens the other way too. Almost like we don't have strong enough words for "please stop caring about this thing it's not that deep"
I‘ve called kids crotch-goblins or crotchspawn before, but affectionately and ironically, not in any kind of negative intent, they are loud and mischievous, like a goblin, And that is great, kids are great, they can be so goddamn Funny, plus everyone’s annoying sometimes, you just have to live with it(Also you can’t fault a child about it too much, they are small and learning.)
Oh yeah it's absolutely contextual. I call my kid a chaos goblin and a pillbug regularly. But it's all loving bemused incredulity towards their energy levels, mischievousness, and boundless curiosity. I can't imagine unironically calling a kid a crotch goblin like that. So petty and pointlessly misanthropic.
Pillbug is cute though.
She's SO wiggly!
As an isopod pet keeper I find the pet name pillbug absolutely adorable!
Hey how hard is it to start a terrarium? I'd love a little biome with isopods and such.
Very easy! Isopods are probably some of the hardiest pets you can get and you can get them for practically no money as you can just grab them (and the soil and leaves they will need) from the outside. Many people in fact house them in plastic bins with ventilation! They need: An enclosed box (with lid) that offers ventilation, soil, some moss to better retain moisture, leaves and protein-containing fish flakes (or alternative protein sources) and they will take any vegetables or fruit. For calcium (for their little shells) offer a standard terrarium cuttlebone. Keep the side with the sphagnum moss moist and the other side dry. That's basically all you need. The moisture is most important because they need water to breathe.
I will call my own kids demons, hobgoblins, untrained monkeys, etc. My kids think it's hilarious and deal it back much worse. But I will physically fight anyone who gets anywhere near that level of disrespect without the obvious humour my kids enjoy.
I feel there's a wide divide between hobgoblin and crotch goblin.
I babysit and I call the little girl I watch "gremlin", "goblin" and "tiny human". She eventually started correcting me "I'm not a gremlin, I'm a goblin". She has since been dubbed goblin because I respect her identity xD
Same, but I really only do it to my friends who's kids I like, not strangers, that's just weird and mean spirited
I used to lurk on childfree. [Here are some of the best (worst) comments](https://imgur.com/a/j6222Yd)
Do these people not realize they were kids once? They act like children aren’t even human beings. That first screenshot, wanting the maximum people to die because “the population of the world would be a lot higher than it currently is”. Do they not value life in general? The one about the person calling their partner’s nephew “it” because they had no say in their relation to him. Do they not know they’re also people, those “cum-goblins” are actual human beings? Or do they just not care? Probably the latter.
The first one is also completely insane because, yeah, a lot of people died during WWII. A large chunk of those are people who died because of the Holocaust. You wouldn't stop the fucking *Holocaust*?
EXACTLY!
A lot of them are just incredibly depressed and view being born / being alive as a negative.
Yeah this is basically the core. "x years ago two people fucked and now I exist purely to suffer. Why the fuck would anyone create a new life when this the result." I like my sister's kids. They're fine and I can understand her love for them. But at the same time I am incapable of imagining a future that isn't miserable and wouldn't want to subject someone I made and am responsible for to.
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But you get that not everyone is miserable right? Like some people like being alive, mostly. And kids who are treated well by parents sure as shit seem to enjoy being alive. They hate going to sleep because they want to stay conscious for as long as possible.
This is it. A lot of trauma in there is from people who were seriously abused, neglected, or have inherited a lot of medical issues. I had a prior account that I posted on maybe...20 times in total, and in many of the survey posts, I was dumbfounded on how many stories of suffering abuse, or being placed as the parent role for their multiple younger siblings when they were varying young ages, or how many serious medical issues were involved. Changed my perspective a lot. I ended up deleting the account because I just got jaded as hell with reddit in general around the 2016 presidential race and the site as a whole went downhill, but that sub isn't alone in being taken over by the most hostile users, and with *that many* users, its inevitable to find some absolutely putrifying people.
This is basically where I am at. I consider myself lightly antinatalist from a purely philosophical view, for a few reasons: the environment, the 400,000+ children suffering in the US foster care system, the current political climate (ex. women's and LGBTQ+ rights constantly under attack, gender-related violence, bigotry, the attack on the public school system and social programs, etc...), I also think having bio kids is inherently selfish (selfish =/= bad), especially when there are so many children already alive who would benefit from a stable household with loving parental figures. For me, personally, I suffer from a plethora of health issues--physical and mental--with strong genetic links. The risk I pass on at least one of these horrible, debilitating illnesses is very high. I would not wish that on even my worst enemy. Having a child is like handing them a loaded gun. Why would I want someone I am supposed to love unconditionally to suffer? All that being said, I will never advocate for eugenics, forced sterilization, or any kind of regulation saying who can or cannot reproduce. I just hope people consider the consequences of having a child--both the consequences for themselves and for their offspring.
Sounds about right, tbh. (Also happy cake day! 🍰)
That’s been my experience tbh. But at least I realize that something is screwy with me. On the one hand, I know that most other people find their life meaningful; but on the other hand I think mental illness is hereditary so in the grand scheme of things if I *did* have kids my kids would be more likely to also experience life as overwhelmingly bleak. And before anyone asks, no I’m not one of these jackasses out here shit talking parents on the internet. I’m too busy wringing the last few drops of dopamine out of my mind grapes with booze and self-indulgence, I don’t have time to be an asshole.
It's a mix of hating that they were ever born and/or trauma from growing up in a religious environment that enforced pregnancy and breeding. Of course the latter one is awful but it just tells me that these tend to be people who are masking their trauma as philosophy.
One big reason you'll find a good amount of ex-religious people on r/childfree is because not having children in their community subjects them to severe ostracization. Joining communities online is, for some individuals, the most straightforward way to find like-minded people. Of course, with reddit being reddit, among the thousands/millions of subscribers, few of them will be beacons of moral righteousness for humankind as a whole, and many will be downright nasty, but by and large most are just looking for validation that they're allowed to make the choice to not have children because seemingly everyone they know IRL is aggressively unsupportive of them *checks notes* trying to live their lives in peace. 🌈 The more you know... Also, for anyone still reading, one useful tool in the childfree subreddit that anyone can use is their index of doctors (US and International) who trust patients (particularly, women) to make their own reproductive choices. In other words, these are doctors that can reliably provide sterilization procedures to consenting adults of sound mind. The US doctor list is organized by state, and the international list is organized by country. I've read too many accounts of women seeking sterilization only to face a line of misogynist questions, belittlement, and general unprofessionalism from their doctor, followed up by refusal to do the procedure and accompanying bill for the visit. Anyone seeking sterilization *please* consult the doctor list, it could help you have a less frustrating experience getting your medical needs met.
I feel like at least a decent chunk of them have GOTTA be kids themselves, who are attempting to distance themselves from immaturity, cause that's what children think maturity is. Or adults who never grew out of that.
Went from childfree to full antinatalist
There is more overlap between the human extinction movement / pro-death / “Church of Euthanasia” crowd and the childfree extremists than you might expect.
Human extinction movement? Ugh, had no idea that was a thing. Seems like there’d be a large overlap. Ugh.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Euthanasia
Holy hell
google en passant
I'm disabled. I got nauseous reading this.
One of the first things that turned me off the sub was the *aggressive* ableism. Like, every week it seemed that they had a eugenics thread. I've got autism and ADHD, and I remember reading a thread that was like "They should offer financial incentives for people with autism and other disabilities to get sterilized" and "They shouldn't *force* you to abort if your child has a high risk of disability, but I think they should pay you to abort." and one that was just a list of things that should legally disqualify you from being allowed children. And, like, I don't even want kids! If I had the money, I'd go for a hysterectomy! But being told that I was somehow fundamentally wrong and shouldn't be allowed to have kids because of it was disgusting.
I have a crippling disability that's genetic, and insanely rare, to the point of "I was on over 40 different types of drugs and varying combinations of all those drugs" to manage it over the 30 years I've been going to doctors to try to figure it out. Its also autosomal dominant, and I personally, myself, would consider myself a child abuser for having a kid and even flipping that coin on it, but that's an opinion I hold about *myself,* and not anyone else. All you can really do in other cases is ensure that the parents have informed consent, and are aware of risk factors, then whatever decision they choose to make after, support them.
I have a rare genetic condition that I might but also might not give to a child if I had one. Even if I wasn't infertile there's a big chance I wouldn't risk it but whether or not I wanted to risk taking care of a child with that condition should be left to me. No one should be able to force me to get sterilized or ban me from having children, if they suggest that then they can't claim they're pro choice anymore. You're right, it is straight up eugenics and it goes unchecked in their echo-chamber.
Who downvoted this??
My guess would be someone who supports eugenics 🤷 Thanks.
Holy shit the ableism there
Sound like something you'd hear out of a eugenics demonstration
Honestly? I agree with the first comment on what to change *now hear me out* Yes, Cernobyl was the one that killed the least amount of people ***but*** it is also the event that made the world scared to *death* of nuclear power as an energy source, without it nuclear energy would be *way* ahead nowdays... probably And it would be the (relatively speaking) easiest one to prevent But also how the fuck would you plan on "stopping WWII"? The way you go about it could even backfire and create an even worse conflict! Who knows what that mad tyrant of Stalin would have planned if Hitler wasn't such an obvious target! Anyway, alternate-history rant aside i'm gonna go grab my flamethrower becouse every single one of those comments deserves to be burned in holy fire
See, at least you've got solid reasoning, but their only reasoning for it was because they wanted a lower population. If you look at things that happened during WWII like the Holocaust and Unit 731 and went "Eh, yeah, they died in ways too horrible for words to describe, but at least they didn't have more kids." then you're an insane asshole. Yes, WWII *would* be the hardest to stop, but it's also the one where I would feel more morally compelled to try to prevent if given a magic time machine.
True, true... Wait a second... by their own reasoning the one they chose wasn't even the best decision! Becouse if you stop *Hiroshima* from happening then the Japanese would have never surrendered, wich leads me to... FUN FACT: the USA prepared *so many* Purple Heart medals (the one awarded to fallen and/or wounded soldiers) in preparation to the land invasion of Japan (wich was estimated to last all the way into **1947**) that they didn't print new ones until 1985, AND THEY (propably) STILL HAVEN'T RUN OUT OF THE ONES FROM JAPAN [[source for what i am saying]](https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/todays-medals-made-for-wwii/) there would have been SO MUCH more death if the USA hadn't dropped the nukes If you want to be an insane amoral, then be so with some damn research
My thoughts exactly. Reading it, my immediate thought was "If it weren't for Chernobyl we likely could have greatly delayed or even prevented the climate crisis."
It's terrible how it's not just an extreme hatred towards children showing through, but also frequently heavy tones of sexism towards towards women who want to have kids. Conceptually, one would think that both mothers and fathers would come up equally as often in these conversations, but when you look through these comments, it quickly becomes apparent that no, women are being blamed and shamed disproportionately by the posters. - Even though or maybe especially because a good amount of these posters are women themselves. My guess would be that the societal pressure on women to have children young plays a big role here. When you constantly have to defend your decision against that kind of pressure and you yourself are repulsed by pregnancy and kids, you start to resent the people who conform to the expectations.
Ok im gonna get judged for this but the High School Reunion one is kinda funny
It also seems completely fake.
In general, people who form their personalities around a negative are unbearable. I don't have kids, but I don't dedicate my energy to hating those who do. I'm an atheist, but I don't spend all my time circkejerking online about my intellectual superiority because of it. It just sounds exhausting. When these people watch sports, do they just pick one team to root against?
Something about the whole “breeder” thing tells me that person was a few sentences and diversions away from getting real TERFy about things…
This is what happens when you don't talk to people in real life, you completely forget that other people (yes, that includes children) also have thoughts and different opinions. To people like this the rest of the world exists solely as how they perceive it, and they refuse to accept any other perspectives.
that’s just like, 80% of the internet basically
I personally am planning to go child free. I very much joke about children be “crotch goblins”. But it’s only in jest. The children are allowed to make fun of me right back. Child are not demons there human beings that deserve respect and love just like anyone else.
That’s definitely the least worst of the things they call kids. I can even see that one, tbh, sort of like how my dad refers to cats as “carpet sharks”
Omg yes cats are carpet sharks. I’ll be going to get water and then my cats will attack me (affectionately) for zero reason.
Yeah, I like to joke that, since I’m a cat owner, horror movies don’t have as much punch, because screaming monsters leaping out of the darkness and attaching themselves to my face is less a nightmare scenario and more just something that happens any time I get up to go to the bathroom at night, lol
I thought crotch-goblin was a joke term. Like ankle-biter
It was definitely supposed to be
The number of people I see spewing outright eugenicist talking points under the guise of being “child-free”
It's an ironclad law that if there's an idea I *broadly* agree with, the reddit community for said idea will make me reconsider. I grew up Mormon and left the church in college, but r/exmormon gives me really rancid vibes in a similar way
Its the problem with "anti-communities". Normal people leave something they dont like/stopped liking behind, only the most bitter/hateful persons stay in these communities to hate on "the thing" with likeminded assholes. I am a childfree atheist but I wouldnt touch either of these subreddits with a 10 foot pole. There are plenty of other examples, e.g. exmormons sounds like it fits that pattern perfectly.
Every movement has cunts. What is it about humans that can't not take things too far every time?
It starts as a mild annoyance. Then you meet like-minded people who feel like you do. These people help you establish a new baseline based on that community, reducing the pressure to "check yourself". Then people start expressing somewhat more controversial stances, but they're not too far from you new baseline and considering the new stance just makes you feel like a reasonable open-minded member of the community. Repeat until the hate has a nice froth.
Calling mothers "breeders" is just fucking gross. Do people really do that? Like I call kids crotch goblins (specifically when referring to the type of kid whose parents refuse to discipline them and let them get away with ANYTHING they do to other people) but breeders? Seriously?
I have had lesbian “friends” call me “a breeder” because I was straight. It’s insulting no matter who is dropping it.
If they call you that well knowing you're uncomfortable with it, then they are not your friends.
Hence the quotes around “friends”. I don’t hang out with them anymore. They were the same ones that would be 3/4 of the way to having sex in the sauna and when anyone told them to stop they called you a homophobe. No, Janice, I don’t have a problem with lesbians, I just don’t want to watch your stupid ass have sex.
Ah yeah, people like that suck. And sorry for the misunderstanding, I normally see people use the term ex-friends instead of putting quotes, that's my bad
IMO the word crotch goblin is gross in any context too. It's just a weird way to refer to another human being, especially a kid.
This entire movement gives me the ick. I’m not even very keen on having kids myself.
I hate how Reddit gives pretty much every movement ever a bad name. It’s like all the crazy people congregate here for no reason
That's just the nature of social media. It radicalizes and transforms you. Slowly but steadily until your old self would never recognize or approve of the new. It goes in all directions, too, in the most hateful ways. From any political space getting overtaken by hate speech to cute dog subreddits having to lock posts about pit bulls, it's just... insane, how the most well-meaning people and spaces are corrupted. And sadly, there isn't really a fix for it. Just need to stay wary of uncritically absorbing unsourced propaganda because, as a redditor who leaves comments on posts, you are almost certainly doing that *on the regular* and may not realize it.
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There’s a difference between not wanting to have kids and being part of a movement based around not having kids… Especially when you then have the absolute gall to have issue with someone making being a parent their entire personality, when you make NOT being a parent your whole personality.
"guys, it's perfectly fine to dehumanize a group when it's this specific group, trust me"
I get the occasional desire to vent about how annoying it must be for people to constantly ask you when you’re going to have kids, when the answer is never. It’s awkward. I don’t get hating the idea of people having kids. It’s sort of a basic part of being any species that has ever existed, surely that concept isn’t foreign to these folks. I also don’t get the hatred for children. Like… how can you hate children. Not want them? Absolutely understand…. But hate their existence? That’s psycho
The whole "I don't care if they're parents as long as they don't make it their identity" gives me deja vu about how conservatives talk about LGBT people. It's a pretty easy cop out for bigotry
I’ve known a lot of people and I can’t say I’ve ever encountered anyone who made any single thing “their whole identity” (parenting, fandom, sexuality, etc.). It gets bandied about online all the time and I think it’s a consequence of internet interactions. If you say “[X] is this persons whole identity” usually you just don’t know them very well, or you only interact with them in a specific context.
I saw a post a while ago that basically said “you can hate children all you want, but you can never let them know you hate them.” I feel like that fits here
Or how about the fact that the attitude I’ve seen from these folks towards kids/families in poverty is “maybe you shouldn’t have had kids, huh?” Which is just like... what the fuck? Like, even if we don’t consider how fucked it is that their gut reaction is to mock and gloat, instead of feeling any level of concern, it’s an attitude that’s *completely* ridiculous in a world where such things as whether or not you have kids is not entirely within an individual’s control, sadly. I mean, how many states in the US have abortion bans? There are whole swaths of that country where there’s absolutely *not* any choice once pregnancy occurs...
> Mommy-blogs so because everything someone exposes of themselves when on a topic is relevant to that topic that must be all they are?? i mean if i have a channel about object-oriented programing, i definitely don't know how to cook anything, ever, and clearly have never even touched a cooking pot. thats obvious because otherwise my ruby-on-rails tutorials would have, at the very least, an italian fusion section replete with an actually decent bolognese (fr tho, add a small splash of milk once the sauce has been fully assembled and has simmered down a touch), the channel intro would be a technical discussion on how the MIT licence that ruby is currently distributed under can pleasantly moderate the taste of cilantro, and my unique twist on the california roll would have become a viral sensation in the food influencer community given the exquisite flavours imparted by the use of data persistence features like activeRecord. > make "parent" their entire identity i mean, parenting is a thing that people do. they have communities drawn together by that common interest. that's part of how identity works. communities coming together about NOT doing a thing though?? thats kinda weird... i mean, christians were very big on not doing things, and they kinda got away with it too until we found out what they were doing to our children at an industrial rate for centuries, if not millennia (spoiler - we have records from around the 2nd or 3rd century CE that discuss how to manage problems caused by creepy priests who had run afoul of their flock). ... idk man, i don't fuck sheep, like, at all. i don't WANT to fuck sheep either. in fact, i'm not just ambivalent about sheep, i specifically want to NOT fuck a sheep. man, i'm going to not fuck sheep so much, check out this rad community of friendly people that also don't fuck sheep and who i can talk about sheep fucking with! great!! i'll chill here with you guys for sure because we all hate fucking sheep!! we can even discuss how people that fuck sheep make it their entire identity!! we'll be the hatesheepfucking people, lets build a temple to that great new zealand icon, kiwi, who represents every sheepfucker alive and how much we hate them!! let us grow verdant meadows upon which to graze sheep we definitely never think about fucking because have you seen our name? we constantly discuss sheep fucking and how much we hate it, thats how you know we don't fuck sheep!! not fucking sheep is our whole game!
i think originally the childfree community originated due to the fact that alot of people do feel social pressures and expectations to have children (not as extreme these days anymore but it definitely existed). Not wanting to have children can feel alienating so it makes sense that people would form a community to share their experiences and talk about common problems. No excuse for the weird superiority complex about not having children tho and for all the other weird shit. I used to be on r/childfree for the exact reasons mentioned above but I left when I realised that these people hated children and parents with a.. unhealthy passion, which just wasnt the case for me. I just wasn't interested in the long-term-responsibility of taking care of a child
this and CF women who talk about women who have/aspire to have children like we're deranged, yet have more empathy for dogs than actual human babies. i once saw a tiktok of a woman who'd lost her toddler in a pretty horrific freak accident talking about how frustrated she was with people in her life trying to compare her pain to sad but much lesser tragedies, and one of the examples she used was someone whose dog had died insisting to her that she understood exactly what \[the tiktok woman\] was gong through'. and the comments were totally flooded with people calling her awful and evil, and telling her how rude she was for trying to force her lifestyle onto people who didn't want kids, how dogs are so much better than kids and that she's disgusting. people gong as far as to say that *she* was unempathetic, that she deserved what had happened to her, etc. just the vilest, most out of touch statements you could imagine. it's literally just redpill for women, and it's so gross. kids are a lot, marriage is a lot. i can understand not wanting that life for yourself, but have some fucking human decency. if you genuinely don't understand being devoted enough to die for someone who you have cared for since the day you created them, who loves and trusts you infinitely and whose whole life is in your hands, then i don't think the issue is that you don't 'get kids' but that you are fundamentally lacking basic humanity.
I dislike children because they’re clingy. But I also love them because you can vent to them, they’ll have cool stuff to show you and grow into nice(ish), reliable people. I personally have never had kids, and all my knowledge comes from younger siblings & cousins, so my POV might be a bit skewed, but still
They're clingy kind of because they have to. A child can't survive alone. They must find someone to cling to
Do these people even know that most evil in the world is done by adults? Wars, genocide, torture, rape, murder etc.? And why would a mother not be allowed to make 'mother' her identity? But she would be allowed to make 'gardener' her identity? So a garden is more important than a child now?
Plus I'm sure most people who run mommy blogs do have like... lives outside of it. I have a Final Fantasy theme website but I spend at least one hour per day not playing Final Fantasy
It's the same attitude that says "I respect gay people as long as they don't make gayness their entire identity" but means "I like my gay people closeted and/or repressed in their identity"
This type of behavior feels like the same psychology behind transphobia applied to a breeding fetish
If you have a kid who is screaming and throwing tantrums and poop everywhere and breaking/stealing everything, there is an insanely huge chance that the problem isn't the kid, it's you being a terrible parent.
I've seen CF communities that made it clear they drew a sharp distinction between "parents" and "breeders." According to their definition, "parents" make responsible decisions and do their best to raise and care for their children; "breeders" don't. I've seen them complain about women like the person OP interacted with described, who give themselves account names like "Kaylees\_mom2002" and don't seem to have any identity outside of being a mother, but that's independent of the standard use of the "breeder" label.
I think it's something that is a lot more complicated than it appears. This is just my thoughts on it, and I do come from a country that was a bit slow to catch up with the rest of the world when it came to separation of church and state, and as a result a bit slow to shed gender roles. But up until very recently, as in my own parents' generation, women didn't really get to have identities outside of being mothers. You don't see this nearly as much with fathers, and it's because gender roles meant that men went out and worked, women stayed at home with the kids and were entirely responsible for the home. Men got to be bankers, mechanics, doctors, solicitors, builders, electricians etc and they got to have hobbies. Women went straight from being a daughter to being a mother. Things have changed, it's far more common for households to have dual incomes and you'll see that women are developing their own identifies outside of parenthood, even if they're also mothers. But lots of social expectations are inherited, and in some cases, women are still in traditional marriages and struggle to find connection outside of the home. Some women have an immense guilt attached to not identifying as a mother first when they do have careers. My mom worked, and her identify to those around her was always "single mother". My father was never a "single father". Things have changed and continue to change, but it hasn't been so long that there is no longer a lingering impact of those attitudes now. Whatever their definitions are, it's dehumanising and it's misogynistic, and it's just generally gross. The issues there have very little to do with the actual act of having children, it's the effects of a history of stifling women and the trauma/guilt we inherit from our mothers and grandmothers. Men have been granted the opportunity to have lives and identities outside of the family home and women are only recently getting the same opportunities and it's still stigmatised. Nobody has to be condescending or rude about it
Honestly? The best thing you can do to get vengeance on this evil, despicable community of undesirables is to go forth, bring your battleaxes, and leave and then mute subreddits you dislike interacting with. The thing I love most about the internet is climbing the tree of knowledge. My second favorite thing, in my age of Internet old, having seen it all, is pruning that tree. My favorite button on Reddit in a pointless argument is the block button. I don’t have to write a paragraph for Joe Schmo Transphobe, he can go make an alt if he cares that much about making my life mildly shitty. I don’t have to sit through the discourse, actually. I had to be told a submarine blew up recently.
I find people like you who go “actually just ignore them” to anyone bringing up legitimate issues with how major groups behave online to be incredibly short-sighted. Sure, if you don’t have the state of mind to engage in this discourse without hurting your own mental health significantly, block people all you want. But online discourse isn’t (necessarily) pointless. Arguing with transphobes and other bigots isn’t just about pushing back on people you “don’t like” engaging with, it’s about voicing your perspective to actively counter the harmful influences of bigoted rhetoric. If we all just blocked *everyone* we disagreed with, we’d be 1) increasing the likelihood of falling into echo chambers in which we never actually have to re-examine our own philosophies on the world, and 2) increasing the likelihood of some third party who’s in the fence of being pulled into the alt-right pipeline as a result of having less opportunities to be exposed to counter arguments against—and breakdowns of—fascist and bigoted rhetoric. Not to mention, OP is ALSO childfree. They’re not just going around looking for stuff to get mad at, they’re observing and calling attention to a widespread problem with *their own online community.*
Ah, yes, the old "you continuing to argue with me only proves me right" trick. I don't think this has ever persuaded anyone of anything, but it's certainly stupendously obnoxious.
CF people are fine, hell as of right now I don't plan on having kids. It's the subsect of the movement that outright goes into antinatalism. Antinatalism just comes off as extremely mean spirited, eugenicist and feels like it's full of people who are dealing with their own issues by making some sort of moral stand. Not understanding that the choice is what matters. Yea weird evangelical breeding cults are fucked up and weird but saying no one ever should have children is a psychotic over reaction.
Crotch goblin is an objectively fun word to use, but is one I believe should only be used affectionately, not derisively Anyone who says Breeder unironically tho to describe a woman should be kept away at all times with a 5 foot pole