to be extremely clear, eugenics is morally wrong and disgusting.
an old friend from high school got a job approving loans for small businesses and I told him he was a "means tester"
he had no idea what that meant and I explained it to him and I think he kinda realized his job is evil but isn't ready to confront it head on lol
(he's a lib)
yeah, it’s surprising how many libs don’t understand the entire loans system in the United States comes out of Jim Crow redlining policies and was only fixed on paper.
Hoping your friend is able to eventually confront that contradiction and move left. Sometimes it takes seeing the machine up close to realize it needs to be destroyed.
Climate change. When the really bad shit starts happening that actually demands a government response, the first world will be able to do reforestation and build sea walls and things like that to mitigate the worst of the effects - but the third world will be trapped sending us materials for those projects while getting only the bare minimum built to keep the extraction going.
"Unskilled" labor. A lot of dangerous or life-shortening work requires just as much specialized knowledge as something like being an accountant, but we have organized society in such a way that the kids of poor people end up in dangerous jobs and the kids of wealthy people end up in safe ones (and the kids of the wealthiest people just pretend to work).
I was waiting for that commercial to become a Tim and Eric sketch as I slowly realized it wasn't meant to be funny.
bruh
“Genuine” eugenics with voluntary participants isn’t bad because it is deontologically wrong, it is bad because it is a complete waste of time and effort
no, eugenics is morally and ethically wrong. eugenics is not a term that can somehow be reclaimed by throwing out its entire history.
This borders on sounding like “real eugenics has never been tried” which is :cringe:
I think about that a bit because you do see anti-abortion types making that point. Haven't quite got an answer for it yet
No, I definitely think eugenics is non-magically bad, I can't get over the 'superficial' connection to the 20s I suppose, although really more with a mind to the 30s & 40s. I guess I just haven't fully put to words why I think terminating a pregnancy because of birth 'defects' isn't really eugenics, because I am ok with that.
So the reason I changed the emphasis on defects is that while certainly many things considered birth defects are very debilitating, not all of them are so its an unfit generalization, and on top of that its just not a very nice thing to say; I work with children and we do not refer to them as defective or any other way that compares them unfavorably to, oh I don't know what word you would prefer here, 'normals'? 'Regular folks'? 'Superior genetic specimens'? I don't find the concept especially useful but I suppose for you it is essential to have something to refer to people whose traits you would prefer were in the gene pool. But I understand this is just a professional thing and a fact of working with children, they are especially sensitive, I have friends with cerebral palsy who feel condescenced to by that sorta thing, but who also suffered massive hits to their self-esteem from rhetoric like that when they were younger so. Its a balance.
The Nazis had bad science then, sure, but they were motivated by eugenic logic. Foolish Nazis would have failed doesn't make me less upset they tried. And if the Nazis had gene therapy and advanced screening, I do not think their eugenic project would have been more principled. I think gene therapy is fine, I think abortion for reasons of birth defect is fine. No problem with people making decisions like that. So if you insist those are eugenics, and a person making those decisions in their own life is practicing eugenics, you can satisfy yourself by loudly proclaiming you are a eugenicist. But see how far that gets you, people are going to hear "I love eugenics" and assume you are talking about a social project. Maybe find another word for your thing
Also sorry you're so ugly
You know eugenicists are completely full of shit because their standards for who gets culled coincidentally never places them or their friends and family on the chopping block lmao
Shit like that dude is why Pol Pot lost it and just started murdering everyone with glasses. Check out what they wrote in response to someone else in this thread :agony-shivering:
Defects are defects and don’t need scare-quotes. I personally was born with a genetically-inherited deformity and a deformity is likewise a deformity. Not all ways for a body to develop are equally good. Some are just bad for your health or leave you unable to do things that most people can. Gratefully, mine mostly just makes me ugly, but only a slight difference would have left me in a really miserable position and I would have been fucking insulted by someone saying that there’s nothing wrong with it. If I could have been given genes from someone else to change this specific trait (which was also entirely predictable, looking at my parents), it would be ridiculous for my parents to have abstained on the basis of such an act being “eugenics”.
The Nazi eugenics project was mostly oriented around a completely unscientific racial mythology. It shouldn’t be compared to attempts to avoid people being born with life-crippling defects that doesn’t involve coercing anyone or pandering to myths. I think that not all birth defects are genetic in nature as much as a byproduct of how the fetus happened to develop, but those that are actually genetically-driven being screened out is definitionally eugenics and, not because it is eugenics but because it helps avoid inflicting gratuitous suffering, it’s clearly a good thing. On the level of principals, this really is not a complicated concept. Gene therapy (to remove a disease) affecting a fetus or a person who plans to reproduce is also eugenics and it’s also a good thing outside of how the commodification of healthcare threatens to make such things another vector for the poor being fucked over. People should not be forced to suffer because of what their genes or their parent’s genes happen to dictate. There is nothing sacrosanct about DNA and superstition should not be a barrier to reducing suffering.
“But what about the Nazi genocide of the disabled?” Considering that they were just as happy to kill people who were disabled for non-genetic reasons, it still was not “real” eugenics. That aspect of the project was less “purging the gene pool” and more “removing the ‘useless eaters,’” as they wrongfully called them. Even some German veterans of WWI were killed for being disabled (though most were exempt because of nationalist lionizing). Obviously it still would have been wrong if they only murdered people with genetic conditions, but then it would have arguably been “real” eugenics (and would have failed even if the Nazi project didn’t kill itself by other means soon after it began).
Oh yeah ... I remember reading that post before I upvoted it. Listen, I get it, you are some kind of moralist and you've determined that "eugenics" is verboten. But if you ask me if I'd hypothetically prefer that either there be a service existed that screened people's jizz and eggs for genetic diseases before IVF treatments or risk a kid getting born with a malady that's genetic in origin, then yeah, I guess I'd support the service, even if it is "eugenics". Because that way, you don't get kids who choke to death on their own mucous because of Cyctic Fibrosis, or have to tell someone that they've got Huntington's disease and their central nervous system is going to start poisoning itself. You ever see a baby born with Harlequin Icthyosis? Don't fucking google it!
wait are you saying you also support eugenics lol I’m so confused
You're going to need to define whatever it is you think eugenics is, and why you don't like it.
You’re going to need to define whatever it is you think eugenics is, and why you don’t like it.
naw. There’s a standard understanding of eugenics and it’s universally viewed as a white supremacist concept.
Help me understand what you’re saying though, what do you think eugenics is or should be viewed as? You mentioned harley quin babies and cystic fibrosis, but really weren’t clear. I don’t see how those medical conditions relate to eugenics.
The concept of intelligence versus stupidity. Nobody gave a shit about this before the 19th century. Eugenics arose then because the bourgeoisie needed a justification for their stolen wealth.
I used to think we were all still trapped in the 1980s or 1970s but we’re actually trapped in the 19th century, at least when it comes to ideas.
Take a look at the eugenics tree on google images. Justin Podur has some good podcast episodes on the 19th century too.
Wealthy white countries hording vaccines and their technology and then letting covid rip, knowing that the old, sick, and poor in their own country are all still at great risk of death and disablement?
Overly complicated paperwork, understaffed programs, & other bureaucratic violence that makes it difficult or impossible to access healthcare or social services.
Hot take: research into the biological causes of queerness is eugenics.
In Europe, it's standard practice to screen fetuses for conditions like Down Syndrome. When its is detected, most parents opt to abort, which is legal and free in much of the continent. This has led to something like a 90% reduction in the number of cases. Probably people with Down will be extinct in Europe within our lifetimes.
Obviously being LGBT isn't the same as Down Syndrome, except that a hell of a lot of people think that it is. I'm pretty sure at least half of cis people would abort their trans baby. If there's a specific measurable cause of queerness, or at least some forms, and some scientist discovers it, why wouldn't they use it for extermination? This would pretty much be a dream come true for the right.
I feel pretty confident that the endpoint of such research would be "it's essentially random because it gets sorted out by your head and hormones during critical development years", but you're 100% correct that if they found a gene for it people would test and selectively abort it. We've already seen what happens when a society with access to abortion creates uneven pressure on what kind of kids you should have - China during the One Child policy - so until the day comes that the entire population is totally fine with having an LGBT kid it's knowledge that would do more harm than good.
well there isn't going to be, because what is queer and straight are socially defined and necessarily fluid. they will try though, of course.
:10000-com:% agree. Being obsessed with a “rational explanation” of queerness comes from viewing cishet as default. That belief in CompHet is founded in the cultural norms of white supremacy and colonialism.
Possible correlations between genetics and queerness is an interesting question in a complete vacuum, but the way that information will inevitably be weaponized regardless of the outcome is not worth having one’s curiosity piqued.
I’d feel differently if we had a country with a DOTP that upheld queer rights as a part of its party line and protected queer people from genocide. We’re not there… yet.
:sicko-fem: :trans-hammer-sickle:
Also, a lot of the people I’ve seen who are obsessed with that question also happen to be bigoted freaks having a closeted existential crisis about their own sexual orientation / gender identity.
I had an argument with a cis transmedicalist once who eventually admitted they were only invested in their truscum beliefs because of their own search for a “scientific” definition of their bisexuality. They were, unsurprisingly, trying to suppress / “cure” their attraction to multiple genders.
Convo ended when I told him the best cure for his emotional turmoil would be to accept himself and suck a dick when he wanted to suck a dick.
trying to suppress / “cure” their attraction to multiple genders.
I really hate that people can be convinced they need to agonize over noticing more than one gender of cutie. It's unilaterally positive without that inflicted agony
Anytime I hear about a study of a scientific study of social problem black people (or any minority group) face. I don't have any good examples off hand, but it's shit like studying "the psychology of poverty" or whatever rather than studying the social, economic, and material environments in which that mind is developed. Also any sort of "outcome disparity" that doesn't look at any of the conditions of the people. It's all so weirdly "good stock" vs. "bad stock" to me. It fit so nicely into the individuated approach of liberalism. That sort of determinism just tries to make it "okay" that the othered group suffers cause they just built to suffer or whatever. It's the justification of hate with extra steps.
Rich kids save more money than poor kids, and have better delayed reward patience than poor kids. Rich kids spend more time with family. Study shows that kids practicing horseback riding and polo are 90% more likely to own their daddy's company when they grow up. Ugh.
Study shows that kids practicing horseback riding and polo are 90% more likely to own their daddy’s company when they grow up. Ugh.
Exactly dude. It's just so fuckin' gross. Trying to use their studies to justify bad conditions for people is just so messed up.
Half-assing integration of “mainstream” schools & SEN schools so either kids are left without all the support they need or just never seeing disabled kids except when the system fails them and they’ve reached a point where they’re emotionally deregulating.
Only interacting with ND and/or disabled kids when they’ve reached a point of crisis can also reinforce ableist lies that those of us who are ND and/ disabled are too unstable to exist in “polite society”
Yup, completely agree. That’s part of why decolonization is critical.
:amerikkka: :fash-bash:
do people think this post is eugenics? no, so we're already halfway there
do you really want to go down this road? you wanna roll those dices?
