So the manosphere blogger who calls himself The Red Pill Theorist has managed to work himself into a tizzy over a Wall Street Journal piece by a woman who — gasp! — froze some of her eggs in her 30s in order to give her more time in which to find the right guy with whom to have kids.
In her op-ed, titled “Why I Froze My Eggs (And You Should, Too),” Sarah Elizabeth Richards wrote:
Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made.
Egg freezing stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life. It soothed my pangs of regret for frittering away my 20s with a man I didn’t want to have children with, and for wasting more years in my 30s with a man who wasn’t sure he even wanted children. It took away the punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped me find love again at age 42.
I have a lot of reactions to this op-ed, ranging from “damn that’s a lot of money” to “that’s kind of a sad way to look at your past relationships” to “congratulations to you, I guess, but I don’t think this is really a solution to the work-life dilemma faced by most working would-be-moms.” (See here and here for discussions of this latter issue that are a lot more informed than my gut reaction.)
The Red Pill Theorist had, well, a different reaction, worrying that egg freezing could become a “grrlpower-enabling” technology, much like the birth control pill before it, and predicting that evil Democrats will soon demand that it be covered by Medicaid.
His real worry? That egg freezing will allow women to have sex with a variety of men into their 30s and even — gasp! — their 40s without “settling down” with the hardworking betas who’ve been waiting patiently on the sidelines for a chance to score a little nookie with the ladies before these ladies get completely old and ugly.
If women begin freezing their eggs en-masse at thirty, and embark upon fifteen more years of debauchery, watch out. The current trend of beta misery, female misery, and alpha ecstasy is only going to get worse. Now 30-35 year olds with a lick of sense leap off the carousel with all the alacrity they can muster. But what if they don’t have to? They’ve got frozen eggs, and early-thirties women can be decent looking. There’s going to be a massive increase in the supply of female sexuality in the dating market. We all saw how well that worked out for women in the sixties.
The Red Pill Theorist imagines that somehow these gals will manage to stick those poor, pitiful, endlessly used and abused beta schlubs with the bill:
In the future, there won’t just be divorce-rape. There will be pre-divorce rape. Crafty college gals will extract financial resources from their beta boyfriends to freeze their eggs, and then unhaapyness will set in, and the beta will be stuck with the bill.
His grand conclusion:
Egg freezing is one more brick in the wall of total sexual marketplace deregulation. Bit by bit, the chains that once encircled the hypergamic beast are falling away. There’s never been a better time for men with options, never been a worse time for men without them. … It’s the next sexual revolution, except this time, women 30-40 will get to have some ill-advised fun.
Imagine that. Women in their 30s and 40s. Having fun. The horror!
@katz
::continues dying of laughter:: XD
Hey trolly, what’s this “traditional” Christianity you’re pretending to spout? US fundamentalism? Sorry, that’s a very recent and seriously inaccurate bit of literalism. Catholicism, maybe? That at least has serious age on its side, if you want to talk traditional. But I hate to inform you that “unnatural” birth control has been used by Catholics for centuries, regardless of priestly pontificating. (Example: Louis XV ordered condoms by the gross from England: he had a big family with his wife and didn’t want extra kids with his mistresses.)
As for the OP … how many women (even if all women were interested in freezing their eggs, which obviously we aren’t) could lay their hands on fifty grand? Fuck, that’s a couple of years’ pay for me. This asshat talks as if everyone were on a seriously good salary.
Thanks cloudiah!
Okay, yeah, PPT is utterly horrible.
And the Red Pillock is just a waste.
But Briznecko, thanks so much for that video–I’ve been giggling so hard my wife is looking at me funny.
Also, “FETUS CANNON”. Brilliant!
It just sounds like trolly is saying if you don’t want babies, too bad. No contraception for you. If you do want babies but can’t conceive “naturally” for whatever reason, you still can’t have babies because “unnatural” conception is bad. I hate when people automatically think natural is good and unnatural is bad.
*chokes* $50,000 would pay off my mortgage. Although I have no children and don’t want any, so I’m messing up the system (yes, I’ve actually been told that) because I won’t have any children to leave my property to and will be a burden on society in my old age. Never mind all the money I’m currently saving for my retirement, since I’m not spending it on current children, future children, or freezing my eggs for potential children.
(I’m not saying women shouldn’t freeze their eggs if they want to and can afford to – it’s just not for me.)
I’m getting really tired of hearing about the sexual marketplace as if people can just take a trip to their local supermarket and pick up a casual lay for the low, low price of failing to acknowledge that other people are individuals with thoughts and feelings and agency of their own.
Hi and welcome, pollydactyl! Love your nym. 🙂
Kitteh’s: I’d rather use 50k for a house downpayment rather than an expensive egg freezing that may not be viable after all.
@pollydactyl
Yup. Though given his shtick it may be that if you can’t conceive naturally god didn’t want you to have babies. Trolls are weird.
I feel like I’m kind of just pointlessly tacking onto everything you say, so tell me if it’s annoying you. I’m just super rambly today.
You’ve just described the MRM’s ideal world.
hellkell – me too. Freezing eggs wouldn’t even cross my mind on “what to do if I had lots of money”.
It just weirds me out how obsessed people can be with babies having to physically come out of their bodies in order to count as “their” kids.
Uh, no, won’t be turning to Christianity here, thanks.
@KIttehserf
There ideal world makes me shudder. No wonder they want to make rape seem not bad, because then this is basically what they would have.
@Marie
No worries! It doesn’t bother me at all.
Kittehs – I know. Scary, isn’t it? My first thought is generally “Dude, that’s what fleshlights are for.” Myself, I prefer a nice vibrator with fresh batteries to a real person any day. But that’s because I probably have a mild autism spectrum disorder (or I’m just antisocial), so relationships are genuinely difficult for me, and not because I deny the personhood of other people and think I’m somehow intrinsically owed some nebulous sexual ideal that results in having sex with pretty young things.
Did you know that people had condoms in medieval Europe, and very likely even earlier in some places? They were made from sheep intestines, and actually worked pretty well.
Speaking of the sexual marketplace…
Dean Esmay from here.
I shudder to think at what Dean’s “solution” to this would be. Forced affection/intimacy in addition to sex? Sex workers can’t even be compensated for their work?
@pollydactyl – yup, they really just want women to be unable to refuse them, ever.
@ellex – yeah, the idea of sex as the be-all and end-all regardless of the other person is totally alien to my thinking, too. Granted I’m prolly near as dammit to asexual, so don’t have that level of urge about it, but getting into a headspace where the other person isn’t even a person, is just an obstacle in the way of their body parts … I don’t even.
I didn’t know condoms were around that early! I knew about the 18th century ‘cos Louis XV (the French called them English hoods, heheh). They were sheep intestine too.
cloudiah – I wonder how he thinks those customers are exploited? Who’s FORCING them to go to sex workers? Who’s stopping them from, oh, I dunno, being friends with women, socialising, that sort of thing? And who’s assuming they’re even looking for affection anyway?
This weekend I went twice to a club where it was intended for people to hook up and have lots of sexy times.
Even then there were plenty of conversations to start with-people did not just walk in and stick their bits onto other people’s bits without even saying “hi, may I?” And this is when the second night had everyone wandering around naked.
If I was looking for affection, a prostitute would not be my first thought.
Frankly, I have pets for that.
Having to be polite, respectful and kind to women. It really chaps his butt.
They never say which sect of traditional Christianity they think everyone should get back to.
Are we talking first century Christian traditions or the modern Calvinists and Christian Scientists? Are we talking Crusader Rabbit or the Burning Times, is what I’m wondering.
Wut? The johns are exploited? Because they have to pay to rape instead of being free to rape with impunity? Criminy!
Off topic, but Anita Sarkeesian’s second video in the Tropes Versus Women in Videogames series is up, Damsel in Distress part 2:
The fact that you would erase my son’s existence tells me everything I need to know about your brand of christianity.