Have ya'll ever met eugenicists and racists? those are some of the most natalist motherfuckers out there. You think all the mystic woo woo "having children is like +1 good" bullshit you want, THOSE PEOPLE THINK THAT HARDER THAN YOU DO!!!
This rant is sponsored by yesterday's grandma demanding in the form of a question when I'm going to shit out babies for her and also random strawman comments in an obscure subreddit.
Edit: ITT: people actually starting to bully me for not wanting to have kids. Did not expect this on "leftist" website.
I've never seen a good retort to anti-natalism that doesn't just fall back on "you're just saying this cuz you're depressed". Even if that's true, it doesn't really address the arguments anti-natalists make, you can be depressed and right.
My retort is: if you don't think anyone should have children, for whom are you trying to build socialism?
Also, fascists and chuds will be having kids regardless of how moral you find it. I don't think this is a compelling reason to have kids but a kid raised by leftists is at least another potential comrade
Some people, you may know a few, are alive right now. More are going to be born regardless of my feelings on the matter. Them.
Socialism is a political philosophy, but it's also a praxis. It's a practical material approach to reduce the suffering of people who live and will live.
Anti-natalism isn't a political philosophy. It's just a moral belief in what is right and wrong. It does not, and cannot be applied in any practical material sense aside from a magical theoretical life eraser button.
Socialism is something an anti-natalist might support because it's something they can actually DO to help, while still believing in the innate injustice of existence itself
Not all anti-Natalists are socialists tho
They start out with this presupposition that existence is innately suffering, which they have absolutely no evidence for by the way. Not an X that inevitably comes with existence, but existence itself. They say this because were it an X that leads to suffering, the reasonable idea would be that we ought to combat X so that X either no longer exists or is severely mitigated if X is inevitable. This is why people consider them to be as best depressed and at worst eugenicists with extra steps. They evaluate their own life to be devoid of joy and project their own subjective understanding of their existence onto the subjectivity of other people. Like, their entire argument falls apart by just saying, "I feel that my life is full of joy and that life is worth living, and everyone else around me agrees with me with respect to my own life and their own lives." An anti-natalist has no choice but to pull some bullshit "uh acktually, you're not really happy, that's just copium for this miserable existence."
Suffering isn't an objective quality. It's a subjective quality that is contingent on the subject's experiences and self-evaluation. What is suffering for you may not be suffering for me and vice versa. By what grounds does the anti-natalist have to disregard the subjectivity of other people for their own?
The retort to this I've seen more is "well it's great that you're enjoying your life, but that's luck of the draw. Every child born is a gamble, there's always some risk they will live a miserable life, especially with the way the world is going now but even in better times it's a risk. If you had been dealt a slightly different hand your life could have been miserable. So every parent that is bringing a child into this world is taking that gamble without the consent of the unborn, they have not say on whether they want to take that risk, it's better to just not risk the harm at all from a morality standpoint."
It's fairly defeatist that the misery couldn't be solved or that most people would find life to be miserable. My example specified "everyone else around me," so the anti-natalist has to make this incredulous argument that not only was I extremely lucky, but almost everyone around me was lucky as well. They would most likely fall back on "uh acktually, they're not happy, they're just being polite, you don't know what they're actuallly thinking."
Like I said earlier, anti-natalists have to sooner or later resort to denying the subjectivity of other people. Because overall, most people don't feel all that bad about their life. Even in places that are facing literal genocide like Gaza, I see Gazans holding on to the hope that Palestine will be liberated and Gazans getting on their knees to prostrate and thank Allah even in the midst of utter misery. Not to make light of their situation, but it's honestly very inspiring that they can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste so much death and destruction but yet still have the mental and emotional resolve to march forth and face another day, day after day until the day of liberation when they can feel the soil and breathe the air of a liberated Palestine. Anti-natalists can call it cope or religious brainwashing all they want, but it's quite clear that for all the misery that comes from genocide, they don't actually hate their lives but instead hate the wretched entity with all their hearts, the source of their misery. But instead of a vague notion like "existence," the Zionist entity has a history. It has a beginning and a middle, and it will have an end too. It was made with human hands, and it will be undone with human hands as well. This is why anti-natalism is rightfully associated with depression and reactionary defeatism because that's what it is in the end.
Consent, when applied to an agent that doesn't even exist yet, makes no sense whatsoever.
If you were suddenly granted the power of precognition, and saw that any child you would create was doomed to live a horrible life, would you still do it?
Retort to anti-natalism expressed as individuals not wanting to have kids, or expressed as the idea that nobody should have kids?
Someone who personally doesn't want kids isn't an anti-natalist though