Artificial wombs are in the news again, not because they’re an actual thing for humans but because some guy made a video suggesting that soon they will be. Filmmaker and biotechnologist Hashem Al-Ghaili has put together a CGI-heavy fake ad for an imaginary “birthing facility” in which 30,000 fetuses could be simultaneously gestated in spiffy plastic pods.
Though even Al-Ghaili admits we’re at least a decade away from practical baby factories, some on the right are already sounding the alarm. “Artificial Wombs Will Destroy Our Humanity,” blares a headline in the Daily Caller, though the article never quite explains how. LifeSite, meanwhile, muses darkly on the evils of “the playing of God” and asks its readers to “pray that this dystopian craziness never materializes.”
But Reddit’s Men’s Rights activists are feeling much better about the prospect of babies-from-a-bag, largely because they think it will decrease the power of Big Womb. “Breaking up a monopoly is always a positive development,” declares Men’s Rights Redditor ElisaSKy.
“Yup,” adds Forcetobereckonedwit.
100s of thousands of men will stop simping and stop putting up with their bullshit. Women will actually have to be nice, friendly, helpful, caring… y’know like they used to be before “feminism”.
Fearless-File-3625, for his part, is psyched that “women won’t be able to commit paternity fraud then lol.”
Pappo4ever gloats that
when civilization perfects this and the robot sex doll, women are in BIG trouble.
But the womb-holders are likely to object; various commenters agree. While the artificial womb will be “a good thing for single men,” writes commenter EatM3L053R,
at it’s core it will reveal a more painful truth that women will not want to confront. It will show them that men do not need women as much as they falsely perceive. You’ll see just how ugly this will be politicized, to limit Men’s reproductive rights; anything that takes power away from women without them receiving critical attention from Daddy Government will be a threat to their existence.
Maxwell1138 thinks that feminists all believe that
its okay for them to develop reproduction without sperm, but its against nature to develop reproduction without a woman’s body. Its actually a religion, the sacred feminine. And its even worse than you imagine it is.
I don’t know, dudes. Most women I know would be glad to have the option of having a child without having to go through pregnancy. Not that this would occur to any MRA; in their minds, pregnancy is a privilege, a source of power for women–not, you know, a massive inconvenience and actual health danger.
In any case, the baby factories remain a CGI dream for now. But, al-Ghaili’s fantasies aside, I doubt we’ll be seeing them any time soon. Not that this will stop MRAs from gloating over what they see as the final nail in the coffin for feminism.
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@R J Dragon
I have nothing to contribute, I just wanted to say I spent a minute giggling about this and agreeing.
Well, I certainly wish that Feminism would become “obsolete” – but not in the sense that these chuckleheads mean, and definitely not with the outcome that they would prefer.
I think they might change their tune once they realize that if they use an artificial womb, there will be no one else to push their childcare responsibilities onto.
Pretty sure we’re going to get egg-egg fusion before artificial uteri, and then the MRAs will become even more useless than they are now!
I don’t see these guys lining up to change diapers and potty-train either
See also Bujold’s “Ethan of Athos”, where the planet of all men (who are great fathers) uses artificial wombs like everyone else who’s sensible… but they still have to order in the eggs.
While the evolutionary goal may be to drive reproduction, judging by how apathetic they tend to be to their own offspring, their fixation on women is mainly motivated by libido, not the conscious desire to become fathers. This technology would do more to liberate women from their biological burden and being a controlled resource for the state, and allow them to persist beyond the deterioration of the Y chromosome. Seems to me like there would be even less reason for women to humor men’s bullshit .
This is an unimportant side note, but it is fascinating. Deterioration of the Y chromosome is not something that we need to worry about. Even if it does go away to nothing, it doesn’t mean men will go extinct. There are actually a few rodents where this has happened. But they still have males and can reproduce normally. What seems to occur is that in the short term they don’t need Y chromosomes. Animals that would have had a Y, now just have nothing, but develop into normal seeming males, just with a missing chromosome. It seems that when the Y gets short enough, whatever critically important genes remaining on it get moved over to a different chromosome before the Y chromosome entirely vanishes. In the long term, whichever chromosome that ends up with those male-determining gene duplicates, only one copy keeps that gene and becomes the new Y, and the other copy becomes the new X.
But in primates, it seems like our Y is somehow gaining new DNA every once in a while, and so it isn’t actually degenerating. It is crossing over and exchanging material with other chromosomes, and it has some sort of error-correcting mechanism, but how is a total mystery.
@Dave: That is way too scienc-y for MRAs. They only deal in pseudoscience and catchphrases. Can you dumb it down a little for them? Like “Turns out the Y chromosome in humans can’t go away.”
They can then use this to be all “har-har, look at our superior Y!”
I mean, they’d still be assholes, but at least they’d be better-informed assholes. Yay?
Also, more girly props for “yeeterus”. I shall spread it with @RJ Dragon’s permission.
I didn’t originate ‘yeeterus’, I saw a post by a trans man after having his hysterectomy, which he called a uterus yeeterus. I although it was funny, and fairly accurate.
They’ve failed to imagine anything beyond the headlines. So, OK… we now have artificial wombs… so what?
Are these idiots yearning for a child of their own? Unlikely.
Will women lose the ability to get pregnant? No.
What they WILL be moaning about now is how the rich Stacey’s can now ride the CC with total impunity knowing that they can keep their flawless bodies by outsourcing their gestation requirements. While they can only choose from a pool of broke hu-cows.
@David: All of which they complain about anyway, so NBD.
Rich people are already using surrogate mothers anyway (TBF, mostly because they can’t do it themselves). Like fancy preschools and concierge services, there are going to be designer bespoke artificial womb companies that will cover yours in diamonds and send out techs to your house daily. The upper middle class will have to settle for renting a plain one, or finding a nice creche facility of them.
These guys generally don’t have that kind of money, so they’re just going to have to find women with incredibly low standards — but they fear paying money to support the kids, so they’ll still be stuck with non-Stacey’s to pay for their rent-a-wombs and do the actual child-raising.
Meanwhile, the Stacies can ride the CC all they want and either find a good man to reproduce with, or simply rent their own robo-womb AND stay on the CC.
@RJ Dragon: I shall pass it along to all my pun-loving friends who have gladly had their uteri out, particularly my trans men friends.
Do they think the women who already find these men repulsive, are sad that they don’t have to have sex with them and bear their children?? All women would care about is that CPS is prepared, if this is ever a reality.