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antinatalism jerkery reddit

Telling new parents that their babies will be miserable is praxis

a comic panel showing a young, female hospital orderly in a maternity ward looking with exaggerated anger and disgust at a happy couple holding a newborn baby

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I don’t mean to turn this into an anti-antinatalist blog. But what the fuck. A recent post in the antinatalism subreddit raises the question: were antinatalists born in a barn? I mean, not all of them, but a lot of them? Because that would explain a few things.

Here’s the post:

r/antinatalism
3 days ago
FigAware493
inquirer

A new rule was added at my work because of my opinion.

I used to work at a hospital cafeteria, and one of my tasks was delivering food carts to the different wards. After dropping off a cart at the maternity ward, I gazed at the newborns on display and said, "I think people who have babies must not watch the news very often." A nearby couple asked me why. I told them, "Because if they watched the news, they would know how terrible the world is and not bring innocent babies into it."

A week later, the cafeteria staff was gathered for a meeting. We were told that we were not allowed to say depressing things at the maternity ward.

That seems, to me at least, like a fairly mild response to her highly inappropriate comment. I mean, I’m a no-baby man myself, and even if fatherhood were a live possibility at my age I don’t think I’d feel comfortable bringing a baby into an overheating world that seems to be sliding into fascism. But you know, I’m a bit of a pessimist, and that’s my choice, and if someone else has a different choice, that’s their fucking business.

Now, I should point out, there were some in the subreddit who felt similarly to me.

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But the majority of the commenters thought the OP was cool as hell for essentially telling new parents that they were ignorant idiots and that their newborn baby would grow up miserable.

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Reddit antinatalists: When they’re not fantasizing about forced sterilization or wiping out all life on planet Earth with the press of a button, they’re gloating because one of their own ruined some random new parents’ day.

Thankfully, all this will limit the reach of their all-too toxic movement, and that’s all to the good.

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Chris Oakley
Chris Oakley
10 days ago

What does an exploding Klingon moon have to do with antinatalism?

Snowberry
Snowberry
10 days ago

@Chris Oakley: I’m going to assume that’s a joke, but just in case it isn’t (or any lurkers don’t know what it means) “praxis” is a philosophy term meaning along the lines of “that which is put into practice” often with the implication of “as opposed to being/remaining theory”.

Victorious Parasol
10 days ago

If that cafeteria worker is ever dumb enough to say that sort of thing in the NICU, the nursing staff won’t even leave a stain behind.

Nobody messes with the NICU babies.

.45
.45
10 days ago

That, if true, is really a dumb thing to say to a random couple. You have no idea if they have just been told their kid has a genetic disorder that will lead to a short and painful life or something. I know guys who would get violent if you started saying things like that to them and their wives right after giving birth to a healthy baby.

(Please note I do NOT advocate such behavior. The guys in question are quick to jump to violence because they are raging assholes who could feature in other posts on this blog, but in this case I wouldn’t feel too bad about it)

Lollypop
Lollypop
10 days ago

Where there’s life there’s hope. I completely understand the choice NOT to have children of course, but now we’ve set the climate crisis (plus every other ecological crisis) ball rolling I kinda feel its humanity’s responsibility to sort it out, rather than check out entirely in a nihilistic flunk. That woman could’ve been staring at the kid that will change everything – who knows?

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