Said the actress Jamie Chung — she's in "Dexter: New Blood" — quoted in "An actor’s use of a surrogate raises radical-feminist questions," a WaPo opinion piece by Alyssa Rosenberg.
Chung, 39, acknowledged that people might assume she was “vain”... [S]urrogacy essentially offloads the discomforts and incapacities of pregnancy onto another woman. Yet there’s something galvanizing about hearing a woman bluntly rage against the limits of biology and the costs it imposes on half the population...
[In 1970, Shulamith Firestone wrote] "Women were the slave class that maintained the species... to free the other half for the business of the world — admittedly often its drudge aspects, but certainly all its creative aspects as well."... Firestone believed that 'artificial reproduction'... was imminent.... If Firestone were alive today, she might acidly condemn surrogacy as an example of a “servant class” liberating a few more privileged women from “the tyranny of reproduction.”...
Jamie Chung is proof of how uncomfortable it is to confront the unfairness of biological reality head-on.... Fifty years after Firestone dreamed that women might be freed from the prison of biology, we’re still judging women who try to bust themselves out — rather than the systems that constrain them.
The systems? Rosenberg briefly mentions what she calls our "cynically libertarian system." That refers to the lack of support for those who bear and raise children — people whom Rosenberg, like Firestone, calls women.
You might question how libertarian our system is and how cynical libertarianism is. I'd say we're far from libertarianism, and libertarianism is actually not cynical. It's too optimistic.
But is biology a prison?
That's at least a point of view — a metaphor to choose. But if you do choose that metaphor, how does it work? Can you "bust out" of biology? Where can you go? You have to live this life in a body, though you are free to regard your own body as your prison. You can hate it and want out. You can do radical things to it.
And going through pregnancy and childbirth is one of those radical things that can happen to a body. You can love that or hate it. You can seek it out, and you can take big steps to avoid it. One of the big steps you can take is to spend a lot of money to get someone else to do it for you.
Is anyone a "slave" here? "Slave" is Firestone's word. Rosenberg never repeats it. We don't use slavery as a metaphor these days. Rosenberg vaguely grasps at the notion that our "cynically libertarian system" makes slaves prisoners out of women.
Or was it nature that made us prisoners, prisoners of biology? That's a beef against life itself.
I suspect the answer Rosenberg would give is that she loves life in general but wants technology and government to work diligently to eliminate all the bad parts.
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And this is what the previous generation of LEFT WING academics and therapists addressed and criticize (Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, et al.). How does a person integrate reality into their desires, passions, goals, and interests? It's tough for a lot of people, and literally impossible for mentally unstable people. This is why you need to grow up, and this is what growing up means.
We've become a culture of permanent children, with the craziest of crazies held up as role models. But don't forget "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" and "It's better to rule in hell then serve in heaven."
Can you "bust out" of biology? Where can you go? You have to live this life in a body
"Bust out" may be a little hyperbolic, but "mitigate some of the unfortunate effects of" is certainly possible. We do it all the time. We wear spectacles, take medicines and have medical procedures, apply cosmetics to make ourselves look younger / more enticing, use contraceptives to avoid inconvenient pregnancies. And to save ourselves the trouble of gathering firewood to build ourselves fires, hunting game and cooking it to allow our delicately evolved digestive systems to stomach it; we buy electrical devices, and use supermarkets and even restaurants.
And let us not forget - Mother Nature is trying to kill us, and She will eventually succeed. We struggle against Her lifelong, and though She does have other components, like hurricanes and snowstorms, She is substantially composed of lumps of biology.
So there's nothing weird about trying to dodge the bits of biology you don't like. If you can find a guy to mow your lawn, instead of you having to march your own body behind a mower for an hour, great. The mower gets cash that he wants more than the time he wastes on your lawn. You get a mown lawn that you want more than the cash. It's a win-win, contrary to socialist gibberish about exploitation.
And likewise with surrogate mothers. Or mechanical wombs - coming to your screens in .... a hundred years or so.
"You have to live this life in a body"
Not if the abortionist's knife gets you first. Then you don't have to live at all. Freed from prison before you even get to it!
"A body" is a subtle equivocation. These days, you can try to get any body you want. Disfigure it to your heart's content----implants and Botox, tattoos, hormone treatment, cutting off genitals--go for it. Even "prison" is a dangerous metaphor now. Biology is the equivalent of mass incarceration.
"Women were the slave class that maintained the species... to free the other half for the business of the world."
Attention Women: Do you know what "the business of the world" was for thousands of years - until just very, very recently in the history of man?
It was hunting the wild beasts. It was waging the wars. It was preventing you from getting raped by the evil men among us.
That's "the business" we're out there doing while you're snapping peas on the porch and changing diapers.
My God, what a bunch of ingrates.
No one wants to talk about slavery today. Too nasty.
But 75% of the world’s solar panels have some slave labor components in them. Biden just allowed that state of affairs to continue. Tonight I’ll ask the local electric utility not to buy solar panels made by slaves. They don’t care.
"You might question how libertarian our system is and how cynical libertarianism is. I'd say we're far from libertarianism, and libertarianism is actually not cynical. It's too optimistic."
You are correct on this.
As for the rest of this, biology is fixed. We are what we are unless we use surgery to change some of your physical biology, but you cannot change it down at the cellular level. We are what we are. And all of us are programed to do one thing: keep the species alive. Procreate. Homosexual creatures appear in species other than humans, but like humans, they are not the norm. The norm is that which creates new generations of the species. Don't like it? Argue it out with nature.
I've known countless women, many of them hard-driving, smart, independent people, who undergo a change- a noticeable change- upon having a child. I can never know what they know. I can never carry a living human in me, carry it to fruition, and give birth. But I know what I've seen from women I've known in my life, and to a person, they all say it changed them forever.
That said, we teach generations of women that stopping your life to have a child is bad. Slavery. In the end, it is the only reason we're here. And as my wife, my sister, my mom, cousins, friends have shown me, it doesn't stop your life, though it does make it much busier. Much, much busier. And fuller.
Look- we have mis-taught what it means to be an independent woman. And I can guarantee you from watching younger women I saw in my old industry to some of those closer to me- we are about to have a generation of younger women who focus entirely on themselves, their 'freedom', and pursuing only their careers and their enjoyment of things. And that generation, upon reaching their 40s, will become very obviously miserable people as they see the emptiness of the job is not fulfilling in and of itself. You may gain a work title, but what then? What is your legacy?
Still...this is a personal choice. And having a baby- even if it's by someone else, it better for the human race than not. Because today- as I repeat myself- we are having babies below replacement rate. For the first time ever in the US. But also in Western Europe, Russia, Japan, China, Canada. What happens when the near future population is short on working people, productive people, inventive and creative people? So...even if she views having a child as slavery, and she disagrees with the 'horrors' of biology, the fact that she's having a baby by surrogate is a kind of victory for all of us. Better than nothing.
But she's missing out on something (dare I say?) God-given to her. The ability to carry a human life inside of her and give birth. It's not something she'll always be able to do.
"That's a beef against life itself."
Yes and it's a typical leftist worldview.
The handmaid's tales! I'm sure of it.
At least the women in "The Handmaid's Tale" had other women give their bodies over to giving birth because they were unable to do it themselves. Not because it would inconvenience their lives. Where are the ladies in the red dresses and the white hats protesting at her house?
If she thinks getting pregnant and having a child means "putting her life on hold" for only two years, she probably shouldn't have a child by any means.
By the way, I can't wait for the left to attack her for choosing a surrogate of the wrong race, which will happen regardless of the race of the surrogate.
She's interested in a baby, which is the grown-up version of playing with dolls. It's the same hormones for that as for her biology.
At least one of a little girl's dolls will be sick and require nursing care. She puts her life on hold.
Does not artificial insemination involve discarded embryos?
“If Firestone were alive today, she might acidly condemn surrogacy as an example of a “servant class” liberating a few more privileged women from “the tyranny of reproduction.”
And she’d be right. Because that’s the reality. The reality isn’t A Handmaid’s Tale. It’s wealthy women (and wealthy gay male couples) using poorer women (and women in less developed countries) as breeders. Try reading a surrogacy contract. Talk about taking control over someone’s body! These women who don’t want to lose control over their lives and maintain freedom seem to have no problem controlling other women as a means to their own selfish ends. Sure, surrogates can say they want to do it to help…but it really, at the core, boils down to needing the money.
Same thing with egg “donation”. Young, college-age women looking to defray costs and pay off debt by pumping themselves full of hormones to sell eggs. So that some woman can raise her kid on organic, non-GMO food.
First they robbed racism of all meaning.
Next up, slavery!
In such a contract both sides come out ahead, surrogate and employer. It's sort of like organ donation, everybody is allowed to make money on it except the donor, owing to concern for coercion of the poor by money.
Slavery is an economic good, just obsolete in a free market. A slave contributes more to society working in his own interest than for his master.
You can't own a horse, or a dog, or a waterfall. You can only own a casino. (Indian mystic voice)
OTOH, my daughter, great wife to my son in law, fantastic mother to two of my grandchildren, very active in the church and a super singer just got chosen "Industrialist of the Year by the PR Manufacturers Association.
So it is possible to have it all.
OTOH, I sometimes have a nagging doubt that she was chosen, in part, because she is a woman. Not because she is good at what she does.
I wonder if a man with the same excellent resume and the same excellent results for her company (She is a plant general manager with about 1,000 employees Fortune 500 company) would have been chosen. I like to think so. But there is that nagging doubt in the back of my mind.
This is not new, I have had that itch every time she has won an award or gotten a promotion. Was it her or her being a woman? As much as I try to suppress it, it is always there.
Thank you to all the fucking feminists. This is on you.
John LGBTQ Henry
Artificial wombs are coming ... if robots haven't completely replaced us by then ...
Indeed, that was Firestone's vision of the future.
Television is an addiction. Have you ever had the experience of watching a lousy show, season after season, and then when it makes a comeback it's unwatchable and you wonder how you ever watched it to begin with? That happened to me with Dexter.
Has anyone done a real analysis of the ethical differences between prostitution and surrogacy?
From what I understand of surrogacy contracts, you are giving your body for money but under much longer and much stricter terms - and with a strong possibility of much longer side effects (i.e. the life-altering aspects of many pregnancies/live births).
I'm not speaking for or against, but it seems to me that a rich wealthy person hiring a pregnancy surrogate is engaging in a much more serious form of paying money to have someone else's body at their control & disposal.
Actresses are known for their vanity and kookiness. Good to see another real life example.
Me! Me me me me. Me, mememe - me me. Me me, me me. Me!
The Progressive Left is, at its base, a Death Cult. Prove it wrong to yourself, go ahead. These stories - surrogate pregnancy, gender flipping for children, Pride month, drag queen story hour - are admittedly a very small segment of people within society, and the instances are but a handful of snapshots in the population at large - and yet they are center stage, in front of the vast, powerful microphone,with their facilitated messages being broadcast worldwide. This is the leadership message from the Progressive Left. A Death Cult.
Instead of her learning to get over her fears, which is what adults try to do, she expects the world to change to accommodate her fears.
Why is it "galvanizing" to listen to an immature person rage against reality?
The "prison of biology". How stupid can you get?
When men are galvanized to action about the limits of biology, they make and build *things*.
EAB : Same thing with egg “donation”. Young, college-age women looking to defray costs and pay off debt by pumping themselves full of hormones to sell eggs. So that some woman can raise her kid on organic, non-GMO food.
Hold on a minute there, Butch. These younger college-age women get paid for the intolerable burden of some other woman bearing and rearing their (the payee's) kids ?
Isn't that pretty much the wild oat sowing guy's dream ? Fire and forget, and leave someone else holding the baby. Your baby. Only it's even better - no danger of being pursued for child support, these gals get PAID for depositing their babies with some rich woman. Without even the trouble of bearing them. Who's exploiting who here ?
"Chung, 39, acknowledged that people might assume she was “vain”... Assume? I thin she's proven it beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless, she's only concerned that others will think she did it because she didn't want to get 'fat' rather than vain about her career and the opportunity to continue it without interruption. Surrogacy treats the child as a commodity that can be bought just like a restaurant meal. Just like you can have a gourmet meal at a restaurant without all the messy and laborious work involved in creating it, so to with the child. After all, what's the difference? Meal, child, they're both just status markers. Or at least they are to Jamie Chung.
This one meaningless story about some actress is symbolize the downfall of our more perfect union by the libs.
Another squirrel to be chased.
Rent-a-wombs, treating women like factories, is a HUGE progressive thing.
It's "choice" don't you know. Like sex work. It's empowering. Even our nation's capital promotes it.
I wonder how many people who think that "only women get pregnant" is unfair and wrong also think "natural" is wonderful. That, say, GMOs are awful and should be banned. After all, humans shouldn't play God, etc.
This caused me to eye roll so hard, I think I sprained an eye muscle. To claim that women are prisoners of biology without noting that men are also prisoners as well is just so damn stupid, I feel dumber for having read this. Where does she think the phrase 'cannon fodder' came from? We are certainly getting dumber overall, as a species.
Dog bites woman. (Woman?)
Who is raising her kid, I have to wonder. Sure, you avoid the pregnancy. How do you avoid the child-rearing?
Lee Moore wrote: "... wild oat sowing guy's dream? Fire and forget."
It's come to this has it? The only birth control for which women are responsible is the decision to abort?
Add it to the list of things for which many are not responsible: Saying, "No!"; raising children responsibly; voting intelligently; etc.
Excellent comments, all.
At 39, Chung's clock is almost ticked out. I pity her all the wonderment and joy she's missed by chasing her career. (And I have no idea who she is.)
Got to watch out for those pesky libertinarians, always going around enslaving people, especially women.
"How do you avoid the child-rearing?"
Seriously? The class and kind of person who can afford convenience surrogacy can and will pay for nannies, au pairs and the like to raise xer children.
My father and his sister were largely raised by B/black women, since Opa and Oma had to be at the shop five or six days a week. (A different world, but the factors of supply and demand function the same.)
Aggie @ 9:26: "...Death Cult." You got that right.
So depressing to see so many addicted to worshiping...themselves. The more they turn inward, the less they can give and the more they must take; and the appetite grows with feeding. Eventually they eat themselves entirely up; and starve to death.
Then there is this:
much noise is being made about the fact that biological men who identify as women want uterine transplants in order to more fully experience being a woman. Think menstruation and pregnancy. This is an expansion of the “men having babies” movement, where gay couples buy eggs and rent wombs from women in order to have babies that are genetically connected to one of the men. These transgender people make no mention of wanting to experience menopause—but I digress.
Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study, the largest of its kind, titled “Perceptions and Motivations for Uterus Transplant in Transgender Women.” Surveying 182 transgender people, the researchers found that 90 percent wanted uterine transplants to improve their “quality of life,” help mitigate their gender dysphoria symptoms, and enhance their feelings of femininity.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/06/denying-and-defying-our-human-bodies
uterine transplants
I understand the concept of a heart transplant, or a liver transplant or a kidney transplant. The transplanted item functions as a heart, or a liver or a kidney. But in what way does a uterine transplant function as a uterus ? What sort of uterussy type things can it do ?
There is no mystery in sex and conception. A woman, and man, have four choices, and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation. The wicked solution is neither a good nor exclusive choice. The Pro-Choice "ethical" religion denies women and men's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to negotiable commodities.
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