#do not tango with the child of conservative parents

[mindibindi]

You are 100% a fascist

You were warned. You were told that stupid, pithy replies would be marked accordingly and dealt with ruthlessly.

Complexity: 0 Precision: 0 Objectivity: 0 Accuracy: -50 Conciseness: 50 Hedging: - 50 Responsibility: -50 Mark: FAIL Marker Feedback: You provided no data or explanation for how you arrived at the figure of 100%, which seems entirely arbitrary. Nor did you provide any cogent definition of the term "fascist", which is pivotal to your thesis. As no evidence was given to support your position, I have no choice to give you a big fat fail.

---

This is the dictionary definition of fascism:

And this is what Wikipedia has to say:

To be perfectly clear, there is only ONE US presidential candidate who is advocating for a fascist state. Loudly. Clearly. And in no uncertain terms. And it ISN'T Kamala Harris. She simply does not fit the definition.

These pages are widely accessible. You don't have to be part of an academic institution to access them. You don't need a degree to understand them. Furthermore, at this point, NOBODY should need further evidence on why drumph is not just unfit for the US presidency, but a perceivable threat to the continuation of American democracy. He's telling you so. Every day. Every time he opens his foul mouth. To ignore that is a position of either extreme privilege or willful ignorance.

And look, ignorance in and of itself isn't a huge moral failing. Different people have different levels of access to knowledge, education and training in skills like critical thinking and media literacy. But it does not require great intellectual chops to figure this one out. To think that voting red or even abstaining from voting is viable at this point, you would have to be actively avoiding evidence. You would have to be doing mental gymnastics to justify that position. You would have to be rejecting all reasonable cultural and political commentary and willfully choosing stupidity. And that IS a moral failing, at least in my mind. Because the evidence is EVERYWHERE. It is E V E R Y W H E R E . I'm in Australia and I can't escape it. It is on television, in print media, on social media. You only have to watch ONE late night comedy show to know that this racist, sexist, narcissistic wannabe dictator should scare the shit out of every decent, reasonable, compassionate American voter. The jury ISN'T out. The verdict ISN'T pending. The proof IS OVERWHELMING. And it's been there since day fucking one. It's been apparent since 2016 and well before. This pathetic excuse of a human being should never have even been allowed in the ring, even if he does speak to and represent a very real element within the American consciousness. Whether in this post or my last, it would not be remotely possible for me to provide ALL of the supporting evidence against Republicans' and christofascists' chosen one. But then, you don't want evidence do you? You don't want reason and discussion and principled argumentation. You don't want sensible, respectful, disqualifying criteria. You don't want accurate definitions and historical context. In fact, you actively reject them. Because they threaten your instinct to grab power by any means necessary. It doesn't matter how unreasonable, unethical or untrue. Flooding the world with hateful untruths is strategic. One of the far-right's most devious and successful tactics is to deliberately muddle the meanings of words. To put a post-truth obfuscation lens over words like fascist and ideology and woke and groomer so that they can't be used against them. They can't be used at all. They lose their potency, their specificity, their horror. You would actually rather steal the words out of victims' mouths, take away their voices and right to speak, than see yourselves, name your worst impulses and darkest prejudices. It isn't done knowingly. It's done with all of the egocentric, unconscious self-preservation of a narcissist. It's done because words have power. Knowledge has power. You know it, even as you reject all relevant and established knowledge in favour of the old, the out-moded, the disproven, the illogical, the traditional, the conservative. You take the words aptly and accurately applied to you and hurl them back as bullets because violence is simply all you know, all you have to fight back with. Evidence. History. Definition. Meaning. Knowledge. Reason. None of it backs up the position you have decided to die for. So you hate it. And you try to destroy it.

The difference between THAT and what I said is that I arrived at my conclusions through thought. The conclusion came second, following reasoned justification. Not first, thereby demanding twisted justification. I didn't say you have to vote for Kamala Harris because she is the one true leader and America's ultimate saviour and I will personally break your legs and imprison your family if you don't. I simply said that, considering her opposition, there is no logical, compassionate and evidence-based choice here BUT to Vote Blue. Do you see the difference? Now, you may take issue with my no-quarter-given tone. You may find my zero tolerance for stupidity to be undiplomatic and unproductive. Personally, I don't think people on the Left can be blamed for losing their shit in the face of all of the above. But what's happening on the Left is a reaction to the Right, not its mirror image. It is a desperate attempt to restore reason and compassion and order and meaning. Not to impose unreason, perpetrate hideous violence, promote unflinching uniformity and dispense with all knowledge that doesn't come from a profoundly problematic little black book. Furthermore, I am not expecting anything of anyone that I haven't done myself. Because I will let you in on a little secret: I was once stupid. Just like you. It's true. I was raised to be stupid. I was stupid for many years, like at last twenty. I was raised to be religious, conservative, blind and biased. I was indoctrinated and controlled. I was bigoted and judgemental. I was a mean little child. A fucking idiot. I hurt people and I regret it. But thankfully I also got called out by some of my friends and I am forever indebted to those who cared enough about me and others to do that. They were right. And I am better for it. I spent some time trying to heal my inner child, getting indoctrinated by new agey bullshit (and there's plenty of that on the Right too). And then I went to university, almost as an instinctual way of deprogramming myself. Now, I am not saying that Academia is a perfect system. Far, far, far, far SOOOOO FAR from it. I am aware of all of its many problems. (That's a different discussion tho). This I can say: I am no longer as a dumb as a post. And if I can do it, so can you. Whether you're a little Russian bot being indoctrinated by hateful online content or a real person who truly believes that they believe in their own vitriol, I see you. I know you. I've BEEN you. I know the crowd you run with. I've been inside their heads. And I know that, as sure as they may seem, there is always that llliiiiiitttttlllleee niggling piece of doubt. A tiny part of your brain that isn't invested, isn't convinced. It rebels, it questions. Listen to it. You only need half a functioning brain. You just need your stunted, shriveled, ignored little heart to open a teeny tiny bit. But trust me. You ARE better than this. You're smarter than this. You're kinder than this. You CAN change. YOU can choose. You can speak TRUTH to POWER, rather than trashing truth just to grab a little bit of power for your worst, most selfish self.

[johannestevans]

The Joy of Trans Creation

On the liberty of making unapologetically transgender art.

Originally published in Prism & Pen.

For me as a child, there was no real transgender representation around me.

Transfeminine characters were exciting when I saw them, even though they were frequently the butt of jokes, highly sexualised, or the targets of violence from the narratives they appeared in. They were never afforded complex character arcs, and I can���t recall any trans women on my screens or on the pages of the books appearing for more than an episode or in small appearance before being killed or disappearing off-screen.

And trans men?

Nothing.

In the British soap series, Waterloo Road, there was a narrative about a trans guy that started when I was a young teenager myself, and it was… difficult. The narrative was clumsy and uninformed about trans experiences. It seemed more about cisgender parents’ anxieties about their trans children and was very conservative in extending liberty or freedom to the trans guy’s life or his body. He was sporty, a football player, and dykey — he was presented almost as if he was transitioning just to play sports.

And the obvious inspiration for this Waterloo Road plot, She’s The Man (2006) was…

Well, that wasn’t much to write home about either. The film is about a girl disguising herself as a boy in order to play soccer. I know that Amanda Bynes, who played the protagonist in She’s The Man, has talked in interviews about experiencing a lot of gender dysphoria whilst in the role, but what better encapsulation of the fact that trans roles were and still are so often played by cis actors who have no business doing so?

I remember watching She’s The Man as a kid and finding a lot of the jokes not very funny. These two trans male narratives, the only ones that I ever saw until I was much older, bore no resemblance to my life, my desires, and my feelings, whatsoever.

They were cisgender heterosexual people’s fantasies of transgender men. One is about a woman “thankfully” going back on her vile trans ways and revealing herself to be sexy and female after playing at being a pathetic and unmasculine man; the other is about an undesirable and lesbianish teenager who is “obviously” transitioning to get around misogyny, more than for any of his internal feelings.

I felt far more gender euphoria — far more excitement, more sense of feeling loved and cared for and genuinely represented and validated — when I saw effortlessly queer and fruity men on my screens. Characters like Hook and Smee in Hook (1991), or Armand and Albert in The Birdcage (1996): two silly, middle-aged men being overdramatic and in love with one another. Or characters like Hollywood Montrose in Mannequin (1987): fashion-focused, catty and, emotional.

Or, hell, even characters like the sexy gay leather bikers in the Blue Oyster Bar in the Police Academy movies — they’re intended as a recurring punchline, but nevertheless portrayed hot hairy men who dance the tango and unapologetically love and desire other men.

I did not feel like or want to be an eternal little boy for being transgender, continuously infantilised and emasculated, treated as if I wasn’t a real man. Moreover, I had no interest in feeling or acting as though manhood or masculinity or men were something I should have been superior to.

I’m a fashionable, pretty gay dude with so many joint problems that going for a jog can put me out of action for days. Narratives about straight trans guys, let alone ultra-sporty ones, couldn’t bear any less resemblance to my life or my desires as a man.

There’s a reason many cisgender people are attracted to these narratives about transmasculinity, and unfortunately, it has nothing to do with truly supporting the trans men who are lesbians, or who are sporty or straight. It has more to do with their feelings about which “women” are best to “allow” to transition, and so much of those feelings are based on their expectations of female attractiveness or desirability within heterosexual society, and never truly afford love or respect to those men.

And men like me?

We’re unthinkable, and thus, invisible.

Times have changed, a little — I do see more trans men on television and in film, bit by bit. I know that in animation particularly, great strides are being made in portraying various trans characters, and we see a much wider variety of trans characters in shows and film.

I do still think that I see far more they/them trans masc types who are often a white monolith with similar butch lesbian stylings, dyed hair, and certain piercings, often as a sort of introduction for cis hetero viewers to the concept of nonbinary identity or the use of they/them pronouns. I know many people like this in real life, nonbinary or trans, and the issue isn’t their physical appearance or the fact that they’re depicted like this — it’s that their characterisations are so often one-note.

I can’t think of seeing a character introduced as nonbinary who appears more transfeminine, or who characters would automatically label as “he” instead of “she” before being corrected to they/them, because nonbinary identity is treated in popular media as a sort of woman-lite; I can think of one gay trans guy who’s in Shameless; I can’t think of many trans men on television at all or in film who are fat, non-white or disabled.

Television and film are still a long way behind the beautiful diversity of real trans experience — but I write books and short stories. I get to create, as a gay trans man, trans men like me, and trans men like my friends, and craft narratives about trans experience that cisgender people would never be able to.

I published my second novel this month. One of the main characters is a transmasc fallen angel with BPD — he’s cold and arrogant, manipulative, cruel, and at the same time, he’s endlessly loving and charismatic, he’s beautiful and savage, he’s radical and believes strongly in his ideas, and in the rights of everybody.

I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams as a child seeing a character like that in any book I read. But many other trans men, trans people, queer people, and readers in general, will be able to pick up my book and connect to that character, see themselves in him, and love him or despise him as they might any other character.

There is no limit as an indie author to the trans characters that I can create, or how many of them I can have. I don’t have to limit myself to having a singular trans man on a cast of cis-hetero characters, his whole person and physicality aligned to the cisgender stereotype of transmasculinity.

I have dozens of trans characters in the universes I create, and many of them are trans men like me, or not: fat trans men, trans men of colour, Jewish trans men, disabled trans men, traumatised trans men. They’re tailors, revolutionaries, students, teachers, historians, archivists, office workers, stablehands, fops, librarians, adventurers, rogues, pirates, sailors, bastards or angels, heroes or villains.

The sheer joy of that reality is striking me regularly at the moment whenever someone leaves a kind or enthusiastic comment on my works or in their reviews. There’s so much joy that people display in reading my short stories or buying my books, and God, the wonder that I feel when I attend conventions or events and people recognise me or recognise my work and enthuse about it to me.

There is no greater compliment to me, no better assurance, no more loving thing to be told or to overhear, than “Finally, I feel seen.”

“He’s just like me!” or “I’ve never felt so represented,” or “Oh, I want to be him. I am him already. I love him.”

It’s lonely to be transgender.

In a society that punishes and penalises any acts of gender transgression or perceived deviation from the norm or expectation, the transgender or nonbinary or otherwise gender-nonconforming person is constantly at risk — and aware of the risk — of ostracisation, of victimisation, of violence, or assault. We go through life aware that we may be attacked or discredited, violently assaulted, denied medical care, treated as unworthy of love, abused, harmed, hurt.

We must fear and be wary of isolation from our friends, our loved ones, and our communities, because society fears us and has been taught it can hate us. Other people, those that we love, that we care about, forging those connections and keeping them strong, they are how we can survive.

And how do we do that, when we don’t know in our heart of hearts that those like us exist? When we can’t be sure that we exist?

I was very lucky as a young man to feel confident and assured in seeing myself and then establishing myself as like the queer, fruity men that I saw and loved on the screen, no matter that they weren’t made with the thought of transgender men like me. Yet so many others, people I talk to, people I’ve never heard of, do not have that assurance.

They stand in front of a mirror and they don’t see anything. To feel transgender before one’s transition is often to see oneself or think of oneself as existing in potentia. We are an egg yet to crack and hatch; we are a soul without a vessel as yet.

How can we imagine a future for ourselves when we can’t envisage it? When we have no framework or canvas or idea of how a person like us can look, can live, can exist? How can we conceive of what we might be or what we truly are, when we might be grappling with our own pains and trauma and dysphoria, and at the same time society’s disregard of us, when we have never known or thought of others like us existing — let alone existing in beautiful diversity, in variety, in the complexity that we truly do?

Whenever I get one of those comments or whenever someone says a kind word to me about my work as a trans man and I see the light in that person’s eyes or the enthusiasm in the words they’ve written, there is an unspeakably immense happiness and joy in it.

To have taken part in that, to have created a mirror for that person to see themselves in, a character or characters that make that person feel real— not merely validated or represented, but seen and loved and cared for by a complete stranger, I can name no greater privilege.

It’s a shame I didn’t have that in my childhood, sure, but what’s important is that I and, far more importantly, a whole variety of trans and nonbinary creators, are doing that work today.

In Daniel Ortberg’s Something That May Shock and Discredit You, there’s a truly beautiful quote:

As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”

In being transgender I have created myself — no longer in potentia, I have developed and evolved. I’ve played with my hair and my face and my jewellery and my clothes; I’ve fed and nurtured my masculinity and my love for men and manhood as a gay man; I have created myself, and that’s been very joyful for me…

But to create works that help other people, transgender or otherwise, men or otherwise, create themselves? See for themselves the sort of people they’d like to be, how they would like to make themselves created?

That is a triumph beyond measure, and I am so grateful to do so.

[mirrorofliterature]

here's an opinion that i don't necessarily entirely agree with but i think it has great points and i'm curious to hear your take on it:

while molly weasley was very far from a perfect mother and made many mistakes, it's as good as a human person can do under the circumstances she grew up and lived in (two wars, losing her brothers and many friends, her husband and kids constantly being in danger, living under constant threat of war, financial status, treatment by other families etc.) and the fandom judges her way too harshly while characters who were much worse parental figures and were plain out horrible and neglectful (especially men) get off the hook very easily

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I agree in part - this may surprise some people, because I do not like molly, nor am I her biggest fan - however.

I think it is important to remember, when criticising molly's parenting (as I do frequently) to not forget the pressures she was operating under - trauma, patriarchy and rigid social structure. And people do often treat molly more harshly than other subpar parents - which is why I make sure to criticise arthur as well, as it takes two to tango and whatnot.

The only part I mildly disagree with is 'as good as a human person can do', because I think that molly could have done more by listening to her children. I don't think that molly or arthur are to blame for their family's low socioeconomic status - poverty is a social construct, and whatnot. What I do fault her for her is her misogynistic treatment of other characters, like Fleur and Hermione, and her treatment of Sirius in Grimmauld Place. That was needlessly cruel.

So in short - I'm not naive. I think the key issue is that a lot of people view Molly as a saint, so a lot of people swing heavily back into painting her as the devil - whereas, as a lot of things in HP, the true answer lies somewhere in between. Molly was good intentioned as a parent and was hampered by a lot of things, particularly trauma and money. She loved her children, undeniably. But this provides an explanation for her behaviour - it doesn't excuse it.

I think that other characters should get similar levels of scrutiny - as I do with arthur, but I don't think that necessitates us giving her the excuse of 'oh, it's okay that her children felt conditionally loved because she was traumatised!' [Which I don't think this opinion is suggesting, but something to be careful of]. I understand why molly is the way she is - she grew up in a socially conservative time during a war and lost a lot. But. If I am writing from the perspective of a Weasley child, they are going to have complex feelings about Molly, and Arthur.

So, in short: I agree. I think molly is a deeply flawed mother, shaped largely by her environment, but that does not mean she cannot be held accountable for the hurt she caused. I think the fandom's laser focus on her is at times misogynistic, but it's not particularly unique. Also, not every criticism of a female character is necessarily misogynistic. Molly often takes a lot of flack because she is presented as this paragon of motherhood quite overtly in the books, compared to others - so she's a bigger target than a lot of others.

I like the take, but I personally would veer away from saying she couldn't have done any better. She is a realistic mother: that doesn't mean she couldn't have done better.

[danksy-lives]

The Family Values Case For Abortion

Abortion and contraception are the greatest force for family values we have available.  Family planning gives parents more predictability over their lives, leading to better outcomes for their children.  Ironically, those who pride the importance of family the most are the least likely to use these tools to make a stable family.  This shows a failure to adapt one’s morality to the world in which they inhabit.

Stable families do not occur on accident, nor are they created by accidents.  They are the result of hard work between people looking to improve their futures.  Given the amount of time and effort this requires, they must be entered into voluntarily and thoughtfully, or not at all.  Basing a relationship around a child, who cannot contribute to this endeavor, and then expecting the proper conditions for childrearing to develop afterwards, is putting the cart before the horse.

With that in mind, the morality around creating families should reflect the best interests of any children being raised within them.  This means ensuring that the family unit is in place before it takes on children.  To pursue this goal, I propose two moral principles of reproduction:

1.    1. If someone is not actively seeking children, they must take precaution to prevent pregnancy.

2.     2. If a woman becomes pregnant by accident; or does not have a family in which to raise the child, she has a moral duty to abort the pregnancy.

On Trust

It can be difficult to speak of moral duties within a liberal framework.  There are few situations in which only one decision is considered valid and all others are considered immoral.

However, the belief that parents must work in the best interests of their children appears to be axiomatic among most (if not all) of the world’s cultures.  To most people, the best interest of the child is allowing them to thrive in the environment they will find themselves during adulthood and beyond.  The way in which the family is structured is (ideally) meant to acclimate the child to these various conditions.[1]

In high-trust societies, the most secure way of maintaining or improving your social standing is by building longstanding relationships with other people.  People who can trust those around them are better able to predict their own futures.  This leads to a more secure environment, where swords can be turned into plowshares.  In times of trouble, people can pool their resources to prevent damages and help others get back on their feet.  Under such circumstances, large social structures can be created through consent rather than mere coercion.  This model is as true of a small village as it is for a nation-state.

History of the Nuclear Family

The family structures that have developed and shown the most resilience in high-trust conditions are variations on the nuclear family.  Many conservative moralists believe that the nuclear family (or the sanctity of marriage, depending on the version) is the backbone upon which every other part of society relies.  I do not deny the nuclear family’s profound importance in our society.  After all, my thesis is meant to adapt the practice to the modern era.  I also understand where such an argument comes from.  Since children are raised in families, and those children go on to perpetuate society, it is easy to see families as building blocks for society.

Despite this, I must emphasize that conditions of trust with the wider society are a prerequisite for a nuclear family, and not the other way around.  If all a society had to do to convert itself from a low-trust to a high-trust system was to promote the practice, then we would expect it to spread to all societies on earth.  The prevalence of practices such as arranged marriages and polygamy in much of the world shows that this is not the case.  Where high-trust societies are found, variations on the nuclear family tend to develop naturally.

This becomes relevant when discussing how to promote successful family models.  Traditionally, this was done by forcing couples together into families at the earliest opportunity.  Whether or not they would be a good match for each other, let alone up to the task of raising children, was not the primary concern.  Where this was not done through forced marriage, social norms such as abstinence before marriage and that pregnant women should marry their child’s father served to direct young people towards the institution.  Within it, prohibitions on practices such as sodomy, contraception, and abortion meant that pregnancies occurred frequently and unexpectedly.  When such norms are adhered to, family planning is not possible, meaning most children will be accidents.

This social system is designed to prioritize the quantity of children over the quality of their rearing.  If your stated goal is to be fruitful and multiply in the name of some religion or ideology, then adhering to it makes sense.  Such reasoning is not meant for the benefit of the children or even the parents.  It exists to use the resulting children to spread whichever meme motivates the behavior.  The logic is internally consistent, but by its design, is not in the best interest of the children being produced.  If this reasoning is acceptable to its supporters, then dissuading them is outside the scope of this essay.  However, it cannot be argued that creating children for a larger purpose they cannot freely choose promotes any enlightened form of family values.

 The biggest flaw of the system, however, is that it seeks to create stability without allowing potential parents the autonomy that allows them to build trust.  Any marriage based on lust rather than logic can be expected to fail.

This problem was done away with the creation of teenager as a separate stage of development.  By allowing partial autonomy in certain matters, teens can work through their worst impulses before they would have serious effects on their futures.  By allowing them to make and learn from mistakes, their future decisions become more informed.  When your peers have all gone through this process, your entire society becomes more trustworthy.  These high-trust conditions are what make the nuclear family possible and desirable, all without the need of rigid social norms.  In the short time this has been accepted, it has proven a better guide to the young than conservative moralizing ever had.

Family Planning

The new trust afforded towards the young has translated into more trust for adults.  This has developed into the idea that what goes on in the bedroom of consenting adults should not be interfered with.  Because this has become a cliché, it is worth noting that this state of affairs is historically unprecedented for those outside the upper class.  As such, it has not had the time to be intellectually explored to the same degree as the old system.

One example of this is how sexual freedom and the freedom to plan a family are conflated.  This is a result of relying on traditional modes of thought.  Before the advent of contraception, this conflation made sense.  However, modern advances have separated sex from reproduction.  Our philosophy should adapt to this development.

Abortion and the Family

Abortion is both always present and a lingering taboo.  Most people will acknowledge its availability as good or at least necessary.  However, when a woman considers whether to terminate her own unwanted pregnancy, it is treated as a matter of grave importance.

This duality is embodied by the position of someone who is pro-choice but would never terminate an unwanted pregnancy of their own.  The reasons for this are hardly discussed before a pregnancy.  However, mothers-to-be often develop a gut feeling that they have a moral duty to the fetus, even if they had never wanted a child.  This should stand out as odd coming from someone who is pro-choice.  The idea that parents have an unconditional obligation to their unborn children is the cornerstone of the pro-life argument against abortion.  If these women feel their moral duty to their fetuses is logically founded, then any defense of abortion is a failure to protect children.  The fact that every year, hundreds of thousands of women in America come to the same logically inconsistent conclusion shows that the new morality has yet to be fully accepted.

While the desire to protect one’s fetus may be an innate part of pregnancy, it is not always moral.  This desire is an evolutionary holdover from before we could plan our families.  It reflects a time when any given child had a slim chance of reaching adulthood and propagating the species.  Under those circumstances, having as many kids as you could was not a matter of morality, but one of social security.  Humans, having the longest childhoods of any animal species, have the most to lose when their children die.  Therefore, accepting any pregnancy that came a woman’s way was a necessity.

Accidents Happen (But They Shouldn’t)

Spelling out the psychology behind these decisions makes them all the more jarring in the modern world.  The march of medical technology has made infant mortality a negligible concern for the first time in history.  We now have the stability to prepare our lives for any children we raise.  I find it troubling that this fact has not been fully accepted.

If this were fully internalized, Americans would not live in a society where half their peers exist on accident.  Each of these people has an early childhood that their parents (or parent, in some instances) had to cobble together in a few months.  Considering the importance of the first four years to childhood development, this instability cannot be understated.   How much stress does this cause the parents?  More importantly, how much do those stressed out parents adversely affect the newborn child?

These questions all assume that the parent(s) are putting their best effort into childrearing.  That is not always the case, especially with fathers.  While it takes two to tango, potential fathers do not have the same biological urge to protect the fetus they helped to make as mothers.  If a man creates an unwanted pregnancy, and he is pro-choice (or is anti-abortion and a hypocrite), it follows that he would want the woman to have an abortion.  If this conflicts with the mother’s desire to birth the fetus and raise the child, the man has no recourse to take.  If he abandons the mother and child, he will forever be considered a deadbeat father.  In addition, he can and most likely will be forced to pay child support for the next 18 years, a practice which can financially cripple the man while failing to provide the child with the support of a second parent.  Rather than ruin their reputations and finances, most men choose to stay together despite the disagreement.  While this provides the child with a second parent, it does not eliminate the difference in values which created the dilemma.  The father will still feel that he is dedicating his time to a child he did not want to create.  This will reflect poorly to the mother, who will feel that he is not pulling his weight in the family.  As the child ages, they will begin to pick up on this simmering resentment, which they will probably blame on their own existence, creating psychological wounds which may never heal.

These situations and the lost potential they cause are each a preventable tragedy.  As such, they should be presented and discussed through this lens.  I find it distasteful to romanticize those who govern their lives around the fact that someone once failed to pull out.  Just as bad are those who insist they or others marry their partner in pregnancy for the sole benefit of giving the child two parents.  These beliefs are products of an antiquated age which the modern world forgot.

What is Life?

The sense of duty that mothers feel towards their fetuses cannot be erased, but if needed, it can be combatted by appealing to the best interest of all relevant parties.

The first step towards this is to determine who the relevant parties are.  It goes without saying that a mother is a relevant party to her own pregnancy.  In cases where the father is socially or financially responsible for the raising of the potential child, he should be considered a party to this matter.

The point that is the hardest to pin down is whether the fetus itself is a relevant party in the situation (and if so, at what point).  To answer this, many fields of thought have proposed starting points for when life begins.  If it can be proven that the organism/fetus/baby is human, it follows that it should be protected as other humans are.  By establishing when this happens, it would follow that it is when the organism/fetus/baby crosses the Rubicon into our moral community.

In the Overton Window of American society, these answers range from life beginning at conception to life beginning at birth.  Most people believe that life begins at some point during pregnancy.  I find most of these positions to be lacking in substance.

To explain why consensus is so hard to find on this issue, we should step back from ideology and look at the question of when life begins through the lens of biology.  From this approach, the only starting point for life is the abiogenesis some 3.5 billion years ago.  All of the world’s life exists from an unbroken chain of that first source.  Nowhere in the timeline between abiogenesis and any human currently alive is there a point where their ancestors weren’t living organisms.  Using this as our criteria, every living thing that holds human DNA is itself human.  Not only does this cover all fetuses, it also extends to the sperm and eggs that combine to create them.  Such a broad definition of life may be scientifically correct, but it is unfit for purpose in the present question on morality.  If this were taken seriously, every time a man masturbates would be an act of genocide wiping out millions of lives.  Similarly, every time a woman menstruates, she would be inflicting climate change on the ovulating eggs, since her uterus is the only natural environment they can survive in.   No reasonable moral Rubicon should accuse everyone of reproductive age of homicide.

Since it is now shown that the question of when life begins is a proxy for the question of when someone joins our moral community, I will be focusing on the question of the moral Rubicon.

The belief that life begins at conception takes the idea that anything containing human DNA is human but narrows the definition to the products of two people procreating.  Since this only happens during conception, this becomes their starting point for human life.  It is worth noting that the definition above does not originate with the argument itself, but was introduced later as DNA became widely understood.  Its origins are with the Catholic Church, who believed that all their congregants must follow the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply”.  Since conception creates a potential Christian, any attempt to terminate the pregnancy sets back what they consider to be their holy mission.  While this reasoning is no longer explicit, it has been widely adopted by the Abrahamic Religions as a way of protecting future children (and therefore expanding their potential congregations).  This belief is an extension of the traditionalist view of marriage and family.   As such, it gives little regard for the individuals who are affected by its notion of the greater good.  The system’s proponents have tried to reconcile this contradiction by personifying the unborn.  This has led to mixed results.  This standard is based on and requires an outside force to root out the individual’s reproductive control, with no concern for either parent or the child.  As such, it cannot coexist with any society based on individual rights and freedoms.

The most common standard of when someone joins our moral community is that it occurs at some point during the pregnancy.  In America, the standard for when this happens is at the end of the second trimester.  Other nations use a variety of cut-off dates.  The reason for the various dates is that zygote/fetal development is a largely amorphous process.  While there are many descriptions of developments on a weekly basis, none on these change the fact that a fetus functions as an organ within the woman’s body, rather than an independent lifeform.  Attempts to categorize stages of pregnancy such as the trimester system exist purely for the health of the mother.  For this reason, using it as the standard of American legal precedent, as in Roe v. Wade[2], is entirely arbitrary.  Such a standard exists to be easily understood, not to be logically defended.  I recognize the role of this ruling and others like it in providing access to safe abortions.  However, this moral Rubicon does not hold up to philosophical or biological scrutiny.  For this reason, it is the least defensible of these categories.

The last standard is that the fetus does not join our moral community until it is born.  While this seems outlandish to many Americans, it is already the standard used in various countries, including our northern neighbor.  The reasoning behind this standard is largely the same as for allowing abortion at all; A pregnancy is a personal matter which outside forces have no right to control.  Even if one believes that the unborn have some moral weight, this is outweighed by the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.  Therefore, this position states that abortion should be available at all times with the same readiness that current law provides to early pregnancies.

My Moral Rubicon

Given the way these standards are laid out, you might expect me to say which of these Moral Rubicons are correct.  Given my earlier criticism of Conservative moralizing on the family, you might expect me to say that fetuses have no moral worth until their birth.  While I support the idea that abortion should be available at all times during a pregnancy, I do not believe that a zygote/fetus only has moral worth after birth.

My standard for when a zygote/fetus enters our moral community is whether the mother intends to raise it as a member of our moral community (i.e. give birth).

If the mother chose to become pregnant and wishes to raise the child, then she and those around her will consider the future child to be part of their moral community as soon as they are aware of it.  In this case, the Moral Rubicon happens at the earliest point where its existence can be known, which is conception.  This is why pregnant and expectant mothers are given a long list of prohibitions for the protection of their unborn.  When one accepts guardianship over the baby on board, they willingly change their behavior for their child’s sake.

Contrast this with an unexpected and/or unwanted pregnancy.  If the mother has no desire to bring the pregnancy to term, her autonomy over her body means she should not be forced to do so.  If a child is not and will never come to term, it is not part of our moral community.

These two standards exist because of how differently people react to pregnancies depending on circumstance.  The idea of a mother overjoyed to raise her child in a loving family is a far cry from discovering she was impregnated by her rapist.  Acting as if the moral relationship between the mother and child is the same in both scenarios is an absurd oversimplification.

These absurdities are avoided by basing the Moral Rubicon on the intentions of the mother.  The fetus is one of us the first time their mother falls in love with them (or when they are born, whichever is sooner).  A love-based standard of moral worth would protect bodily autonomy while recognizing the value of future persons.[3]

As for policy, I advocate for the removal of all restrictions on abortion.  When accepting bodily autonomy as a goal, you cannot create a cutoff point at which one’s body exists to serve a life outside their moral community.  When a person requests an abortion, this would be their justification.

The Consensual Family

A moral family exists for the benefit of its members.  The details of this change depending on the morality of those running it.  As discussed earlier, in most places at most times in history, the father was the ruler of the family.  His centralized power meant that the effectiveness of the family was measured by his success.  This was created by the belief (and fact) that order and obedience were the surest traits for success in premodern societies.

As the trait which brings the most success moves from obedience to openness to change, families have adapted by giving their members more autonomy.  The effectiveness of the family is now measured in its benefit to its individual members.  If those members don’t have their interests served, they have the means of leaving it.  If a spouse feels their partner has not pulled their weight, they may divorce them.  When children outgrow the benefits of living with their parents, they are free to make their own way.  They have no obligation to serve their parents, despite the immense costs their parents put into raising them.  In the case of minors, the state will take over their guardianship if the family is abusing or neglecting them.  The goal of such systems is that family is a consensual arrangement.

This goal of informed consent should be expanded to the creation of children.  Just as the mother should have final word on controlling her body, the father must have a say in his relationship to the products of his body.  At present, the time when the mother can sever legal ties to her potential offspring extends from copulation to when her society deems the fetus to be part of their moral community.  The window for men starts and ends with ejaculation.  The only foolproof way for them to avoid the responsibility of raising an accidental child is to not have sex in a vagina.  This works about as well as promoting abstinence always does(n’t).  Such a standard makes no sense in an age where sex and reproduction have been decoupled.  In practical terms, the father must be made aware of the birth of his child well in advance.  If he did not intend to reproduce, he must have legal recourse to sever his responsibility to the child before it is born.  Without such protections, men are as liable for unwanted pregnancies as women in societies which believe that life begins at conception.

Making informed consent a cornerstone of the family has benefits beyond control of parental duties.  The informed consent of parents serves the best interests of their children.  Even though minors are not capable of providing it themselves, being raised in such an environment means their familial relations exist from a point of trust rather than one of obedience.  Just as bans on arranged marriage and access to divorce increase trust between spouses, a policy of deliberate reproduction, as well as child protection laws strengthen trust between parent and child.  When equipping a child for life in a high-trust society, the ability to trust in others is one of the most important skills they can have.  Therefore, creating the environment for this behavior should be a top priority.[4]

The existence of informed consent between spouses does not guarantee trust between them and their children.  Such conditions require that the creation of the child be as intentional as the creation of marriage.  If mutual trust is a cornerstone of our society and being born on accident irrevocably damages their ability to trust others, then bringing a person into the world on accident is inherently immoral.  If the parents had the means of preventing this but didn’t, it is a selfish act as well.  Any deviation is a failure of parenting.

Afterword

This idea begs the question of where the Accidents among us fit into this moral framework.  My fear is that this will be compared to the Conservative moralizing I denounced.  While I too seek stable families for children’s growth, my reasoning is adapted to the reality of ever-present contraception.  It is based on the benefit of individuals rather than the collective or a higher power.  These individuals are judged on their character and actions, not how they fit into a greater framework.

This blank slate of moral standing applies to accidents as to anyone else.  They come into the world untainted by their parent’s mistakes.  As such, the child shares neither their shame nor esteem.  This is true even if the mistake in question led to their existence.  Passing the guilt of parents onto their children is not only meanspirited, it undermines the Liberal framework my thesis is based on.  As such, I oppose any moral distinction between accidents and others.

Another accusation I expect to hear is that I believe that it would be better that a currently living accident were never born.  This argument is moot.  As discussed above, I believe that children unwanted by their mothers do not enter our moral community until they are born.  If they are aborted, they have no rights or interests to protect.  Conflating the moral worth of those outside the moral community with those who have entered it is to misunderstand the concept.  Those outside the community have no human rights, and we act in their interest at our leisure.  When one enters the community, they gain those human rights, as befits any human.  However, that does not mean that their human rights retroactively apply before that point.

To illustrate the point, I propose a scenario.  Hypothetically, if a person had a dog which they treated like any dog, and then it was magically turned into a human with human intelligence, would the owner be at fault for treating a human like an animal?  If the new human remembered being treated like a dog, would it be logical for them to be bitter about their previous treatment?  In both cases, the answer is no.  Humans and animals are treated by different moral standards because humans are sentient, and animals are not.  If an animal somehow entered the moral community of humans, they would be entitled to the human rights of anyone else.[5]  At the same time, people who interacted with the dog before the transformation cannot be at fault for putting it in the logical moral category.  Provided the former dog is treated as an equal of other humans, no wrong has been committed.

Dogs, like the fetus discussed above, are not part of our moral community.  Their interests, if considered at all, are subservient to those of humans.  These facts are irrelevant to what they might become later on.

Anyone who crosses the moral Rubicon holds the same inalienable moral worth as any human.  What they were or how they were treated before doesn’t matter.  My belief that the fetus in question should have been aborted has no bearing on whether or not the person it grows up to be would be better off unborn.  I would never hold that as a default position, even if I somehow knew a person was an accident before meeting them.

Footnotes

[1] The families that develop in any given environment are those whose children are best able to perpetuate its values.  The process by which society settles on a system has just as much to do with natural selection as it does with deliberate moralizing.

[2] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

[3] This should not be conflated with the legal status of unborn children.

[4] One obvious scenario where parents cannot provide informed consent to childrearing is if one or both parents are too young to give informed consent.  In such cases, childrearing cannot be in the benefit of the child involved.  Therefore, minors should not be entrusted with the raising of children.  This is the same logic used to bar them from voting.  If you are not mentally equipped to be one decision-maker among millions in your nation, how can you be entrusted to be one decision-maker among two (at best) controlling the life of a fellow minor?  Such arrangements only exist because puberty does not correlate with the age of consent.  No one seriously believes that minors are capable of childrearing, only that they are stuck in their situation.  If it is recognized to be detrimental for all parties, it should not be created in the first place.

[5] It is worth noting the reverse situation is not true.  In stories where people are turned into animals, they are typically marked as separate from other animals and treated as a human wherever possible.  Despite the absurdity of the scenario, various traditions come to the same idea.  This shows the permanence of the moral Rubicon.  Once a person enters it, they are part of the moral community no matter what.