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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28118 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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I would be a lot more pro sexual revolution in a world that had artificial wombs than one that didn't. I feel that the sexual revolution happened about a hundred years before it's time and that it's biggest failure are happening because we don't have the technology yet to mitigate them. Much like how a car machanic is a useful job for society in 1950 but a useless one in 1750, the sexual revolution has certain "prerequisites" to work well that aren't satisfied by the society of today, but will probably be done so in the next century.

For an example I have pretty much nothing against the sexual hedonism in Brave New World, over there it's perfectly fine and a good thing for the citizenry.

I was going to say that high quality robot prostitutes would be a good move.

Artificial wombs seem like they will have a near-null effect on fertility because people are hesitant about raising kids, not bearing them.

Plenty of women don't want the damage pregnancy does to the human body.

Given feminist biopolitics, "I don't to gestate a kid" is a more socially acceptable line than "I don't want to raise a kid" because it riffs on the idea of women controlling their own bodies - but raising a child from birth to young adulthood is harder than gestating them from conception to birth and this is common knowledge in our culture. Hell, even if you only count the nine months after birth, a newborn is harder work than a pregnancy and any mother will tell you this. But most women who say they don't want to gestate a kid wouldn't want to raise it either.

I have met a very small number of women whose identity is wrapped up in their hotness but who are not party girls (motherhood is incompatible with a party lifestyle) for whom artificial wombs would reduce their anxiety around losing their looks due to pregnancy leaving them willing to have children. But the great majority of childfree-by-choice PMC women's true rejection of motherhood is that the time and energy commitment would ruin either their competitive-but-not-well-paid-enough-to-hire-a-nanny career in arts/journalism/NGO bullshit etc. or their hedonistic lifestyle.

Artificial wombs make single fatherhood by choice as available as single motherhood by choice is now (likely impact on overall fertility negligible as not many men will sign up), but the main impact would be that they dramatically reduce the cost and risk of babymaking for older couples with fertility issues.

With artificial wombs you can get the state to rear children and tax the populace to fund it. Plus, right now there is a massive shortage of children to adopt with waiting lists over a decade in many places, which suggests that there is a shortage of children without parents who want to take care of them (which is what is primarily produced by artificial wombs, but produced not that much by natural wombs).

there is a shortage of children without parents who want to take care of them

The people who want to adopt them would probably stuff them in daycares and schools asap.

They can always volunteer in daycares and schools which are currently under-staffed if they have such a desire to take care of other people's children.

I cannot agree. Artificial wombs presumably don't pop children out automatically: you have to intend to have a child, unlike many a case with natural wombs. I would assume fewer people would back out of children they intended to have and raise than currently do out of whatever the distribution is between planned babies, surprise babies and oops babies.

Why would it be any easier to get the state to raise your kid just because it wasn't gestated inside your body?

Presumably in this scenario the state could take donor eggs and sperm and have and raise kids itself, was the suggestion.

And children from state run institutions turn out pretty badly, I think.

There's definitely a selection effect of being the offspring of parents who relegate their kids to being wards of the state, and don't have family who can raise them.

Sure, but not everything is selection effect and there is nothing we know about institutional/foster care child rearing which doesn’t point to it being incredibly bad at parenting.

I suppose sometimes you have to run before you're able to walk, if you want to move at all.

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