Here’s another Red Pill dude who seems to have taken Sex Ed in the late 17th century, back when scientists thought that babies developed from tiny homunculi living inside sperm cells, meaning that women were at most mere incubators of life, not the co-creators.
Well, let me add another “shower thought” to all this: I can only hope that this dude isn’t bringing any new life to the world and that his noble sperm just ends up clogging the drain in his shower.
Screenshot is from r/badwomensanatomy. I don’t know where the original is from.
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My guess is that the only ones who will be using artificial wombs are sterile and LGBT couples
They might not like all the consequences… there is a book where the main character is in charge of births in a planet without women…. But when you grow up that way all the hatred of women is theoretical because you’ve never seen one. Then he has to go off planet, because they needed to get fresh supplies of the other half (their ordered shipment not having arrived). It’s a good book called Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
‘Cuz that’s all we wimmins is, parts.
Stupid miggies.
About once a year, these dudes rediscover the future possibility of sexbot companions and artificial wombs (both still a ways off, absent any unexpected breakthroughs), and then declare women will become extinct or be forced to degrade themselves to gain male attention. This derives from the assumptions that 1.) Most/all men value women only for sex, and 2.) Given the lack of male attention straight women wouldn’t simply avail themselves of similar technology. Without both of those assumptions, it doesn’t work.
It’s likely that we’ll have means for w/w couples to produce children without male sperm before we have artificial wombs anyway, so it’s more likely that men would go extinct or be forced to degrade themselves for female attention first (not that either scenario is very plausible anyway).
Testing commenting with old email address
“Just an interesting shower though”
This guy has an interesting shower head, I guess.
I rather feel most of the commenters are overthinking their responses to the above.
Sometimes people are just fucking idiots. That’s it. As simple as that.
@Robert Haynie
And these misogynists are fucking idiots about 99% of the time. (Yes, I was being very generous by not saying 100%.)
@Robert Haynie:
Um, yeah? That’s kind of the point of the more serious discussions here, usually? To articulate why these kind of ideas are stupid, even if we usually put way more thought and/or expertise into it than usually went into creating the ideas in the first place? BS rarely needs anything more than a vague notion and confidence, while taking down BS without creating new BS usually requires a lot more than this. This is an informal space often used for practice, feedback, and if we’re lucky, convincing a few fence-sitting lurkers.
Some of us are activists and this practice is actually moderately useful – while I’m only a semi-regular here, I do some volunteer work informally counseling and providing information on available resources for people who fell into some very dark places and need help getting out – most often former neo-nazis. I don’t have the expertise to truly help them most of the time (which is actually a plus for people who are more comfortable confiding with “regular folk”, not professionals, at least to start with), but helping them see things in a different light tends to put them on a road towards a better path. That does sometimes require countering some of the BS which they haven’t yet let go of. Admittedly it does require a delicate and non-confrontational touch most of the time, and you have to speak at their level even when it means being oversimplified and a bit wrong, not at the higher-level discussions which often come up here.
For those of us here who aren’t activists of some kind, I imagine that “overthinking” these sorts of things, learning new a thing or two during the discussions, and maybe going off on weird tangents is all part of the fun? In between all the mockery, alerting people of semi-related things they might not have heard of, talking about personal tragedies, and pictures of capybaras, of course. Nothing wrong with just being here only for the mockery, if that’s your thing, but for some (most?) of us it’s quite a bit more than that.
TL;DR – Yes, and?
Artificial wombs would be helpful to people who haven’t been able to carry to term. Or who can’t risk body-pregnancy for one reason or another. To borrow a speculation from Lois McMaster Bujold, it coiuld also come in handy for treating conditions present in the fetus before birth, since you’d be able to just focus on treating the one patient who actually needs it.
victorious parasol
“people who haven’t been able to carry to term. Or who can’t risk body-pregnancy for one reason or another. ”
That would be me, among many others. After our 2nd was old enough to go to kindy, I had a bit of a pregnancy alert. And I was horrified. I would have to choose between termination or spending the pregnancy – and the rest of my life – in a wheelchair in chronic pain, probably unable to work as well. Fortunately we were spared that. But if an alternative were available we would have jumped at the chance if need arose.
Same thing goes for a couple of women in our daughters friend groups. Started out intending to have 3 or 4 kids, then found themselves suffering severe chronic “morning sickness” from beginning to end, morning, noon and night of their 1st or 2nd pregnancy. The sort that has killed women since time immemorial from dehydration. These women have decided that risking the same thing again in further pregnancies is simply not worth it.
Dave … “missed a day in biology class” ???!!
Methinks ’twas more than a day missed. More like missing a semester or two.
@Snowberry:
semi-regular here, I do some volunteer work informally counseling and providing information on available resources for people who fell into some very dark places and need help getting out – most often former neo-nazis. I don’t have the expertise to truly help them most of the time (which is actually a plus for people who are more comfortable confiding with “regular folk”, not professionals, at least to start with), but helping them see things in a different light tends to put them on a road towards a better path. That does sometimes require countering some of the BS which they haven’t yet let go of. Admittedly it does require a delicate and non-confrontational touch most of the time, and you have to speak at their level even when it means being oversimplified and a bit wrong, not at the higher-level discussions which often come up here.
Beau of the Fifth Column on YouTube has the wonderful turn of phrase “peer pressure from dead bigots.”
@Snowberry
To your point, I discovered one of my favorite written works of all time through this site: Worm.
I, for one, appreciate the variety of interests and perspectives here, and it’s
the main reason I come here…the mockery is just a bonus.
On a more cheerful topic of a biological nature, LOOKIT WHAT I MANAGED TO GROW! AND IT BLOOMED IN THE FIRST YEAR!
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPWUV7RXsAIy7st?format=jpg&name=900×900
This is Lupinus texensis, otherwise known as the Texas bluebonnet, one of the prettiest wildflowers. It doesn’t care much about what kind of soil it’s planted in, but it’s very picky about the depth. Too deep or too shallow, and the seeds will just sulk and refuse to come out. But if you get it just right, you’re rewarded with flowers. There are at least 2 other buds on these particular plants, so I’m going to be checking this patch on a regular basis over the next few weeks.
This must be one of those brilliant MRA theories the troll in the other thread was talking about. The kind that just naturally arise when there are no petty squabbles or pesky academics to challenge them. Just a man and his shower.
Even if artificial wombs do become a practical possibility, it’s not going to suddenly render all women infertile. Women will still be able to have babies. People will still prefer to date, fall in love, marry, and start families the old-fashioned way. It’s not like pregnancy is a rotary phone that’s going to be rendered obsolete by newer technology.
Well, it certainly had no trouble creating a DNA filled egg in this scenario. (Eggs are biologically more complex, too.)
We already have third-party options for people who would like to start families but need help with gestation. They’re called surrogacy and adoption.
Like surrogacy and adoption, artificial wombs will likely be very expensive, not covered by insurance, and limited to people of means. In addition to money, access to artificial wombs will likely also be gated by a whole battery of social worker interviews, medical tests, psychological evaluations, and legal agreements to make sure the prospective parent(s) will be fit parent(s). Nobody wants angry loners using artificial wombs to breed slaves, cults, private armies, or daughters for grooming (as the OP is probably fantasizing about).
Cool, so all these men are planning to raise these babies on their own, get up for 2 am feedings, change dirty diapers, mix formula, comfort colicky tummies, etc. Or are they just going to invent nannybots, which will definitely not cause terrycloth-wire-monkey issues?
Um…A lot of sex is already purely sport now? Thanks to birth control?
Oh, here we go. We’ve arrived at the same place these fantasies always end up:“I want to be a rapist with zero consequences.”
Would this technology be of any use to someone trying to create an army of atomic powered super monkeys?
Just as a hypothetical.
There’s a story by Cordwainer Smith aka Paul Linebarger (he’s one of my favorite sci-fi writers) about a planet where women for some reason genetically cannot thrive. So one of the last women scientists arranges artificial wombs before she dies and everyone is born men from then on. The story is disturbing, to say the least. Women become evil creatures in the mythology of this planet. The space travelers who find this civilization are horrified (it doesn’t end well for anyone, but it is a 50’s sci-fi story, so that is unsurprising).
I’m pleased to say that man and woman (trans or cis) is an eternal dynamic that artificial wombs are unlikely to change. I think artificial wombs would be good. It would help people with fertility issues that can’t be solved with today’s science and technology. Despite the fury of MRA types over being single, I’m quite sure that it wouldn’t eliminate women. As I mentioned, men and women, whether trans or cis, aren’t going away.
Only if your breeding population is composed of MRA monkeys. Just don’t tell them where the eggs come from….
Does this idiot think that eggs don’t have DNA?
It was only after reading it a second time (three more times than any person should ever have to) that realized that he apparently doesn’t know how eggs work. Does he seriously think that jacking off into an incubator will produce a viable baby? I know that these guys ain’t exactly biologists, but…wow.
Try solar powered super monkeys instead. More environmentally friendly.
You can’t have a baby without an egg, so I don’t know what these boys plan to do when they kill all the wimminz.
@Ariaflame mentioned a very good book (read it, all!), but of course that planet depended upon all the others in the galaxy still having people with ovaries upon them along with the artificial wombs (which are in a lot of books in that series, though Ethan is basically a standalone).
@Snowberry: that’s good work you’re doing. And yes, w/w babies through egg fusion and carried the old-fashioned way are most likely to be here the soonest. Fake sperm the next.
@VP: Huzzah!
I look forward to single people being able to establish their own nuclear family.
@Elaine The Witch: Trick question. He doesn’t think, period.
I didn’t even notice that until Buttecup pointed it out. To my defense, usually when the idea of artificial womb comes up here, I automatically assume it’d include artificial eggs because I know those would be actually likely the easy part in replacing the female reproductive role. But this guy explicitly rejects the feasibility of artificial gametes.
The OP seems unclear/incoherent/confused on whether women would become literally extinct, or just become some sort of socially and economically marginalized underclass (hey, sounds familiar!). Female extinction would require not only artificial reproduction, but also sex selection in a cultural context where literally nobody wants to raise daughters (regardless of what reproduction method they’re using) for some reason. There’s perhaps a tiny bit of projection here?
Then again, I doubt these MRAs are generally very interested in having sons either, beyond the selfish prospects of raising a mini-me or being seen as a “normal respectable adult”. They just vaguely assume that reproduction generally happens because, well, obviously humanity must go on. They think it’s like some centrally planned economic activity.
They assume if it were possible to bypass women’s reproductive role, then women might be sidelined just for efficiency reasons, as if that makes sense economically. They take for granted that women basically can’t survive independently, and single mothers only exist because of generous welfare benefits. Women’s labor in childcare, as well as domestic maintenance and commercial jobs is devalued and erased, so that sexual labor and physical reproduction (and perhaps breastfeeding) becomes women’s main input to the society.