To me, it seems like online discussions for any stance, has to turn to it's most extreme. It's like their way or highway type of deal. Whatever happened to nuanced discussion, I wonder.
I think it stems from the more difficult cases, and people failing to realize the actual suffering that comes with that.
As with all extremes, a lot of emotions are involved. People who see / experience the hardships don't feel heard. As the general tendency is that one needs to be alive and that this is good, this hurts people who do not want to live (like this).
Going to a lot of trouble to conceive, and bringing triple the amount of possible suffering that people experience can be felt as worse than a death sentence. Therefore people feel the need to be vocal about this.
But in the end I agree, there is nuance. But there is the extreme as well, which weighs heavier here?
A life like the ones that suffer, you just wouldn't wish upon someone innocent. Though going full eugenics is a bit too far off the end there. I get it, but I don't agree that everyone should avoid having children.
Though it does pain me to see this one couple (both autistic) have a child without considering how the kid will be affected. Despite one of them having a low-functioning brother who is a burden (and I don't mean lightly) on their mother and she never helps her out.
It's an extreme case here. I just hope their daughter will have a good life.
you're right but don't underestimate redditor's self righteousness so fast. They convinced themselves they are absolutely right and moral so everyone who thinks differently is evil and the one who aren't as radicals are idiot.
This post stems first from a posture which is basically "I know EXACTLY how to live the perfect healthy life and everyone who thinks differently is brainwashed and stupid"
We would certainly be better off without it. Doesn't it have a much higher likelihood of happening when women bear children around 40? If we know a partial cause then maybe we should avoid it. I saw a billboard about a 58-year-old woman having a baby and I was horrified.
Autism Speaks played a huuuge part in making that the dominant narrative about autism for the past 20 years or so.
In the 00s (maybe early 10s?) one of the videos they made for parents of newly diagnosed children had a parent talking about how she was considering driving off a bridge to kill herself and her autistic child, but didn't because her non-autistic child was also in the car. This was presented as totally normal and just a way to prepare for how an autistic child will ruin your life.
I get what you’re saying, and caretakers certainly deserve support, even (especially!) when they’re talking about wanting to kill their own child, even if for no other reason than the child’s safety.
IMO Autism Speaks’ biggest issue is that their money comes from marketing autism as a horrible disease that affects only or primarily children, which only increases stigma against autistic people of all ages. They also have the problem of having no autistic members involved in a meaningful capacity in the organization, and AFAIK the only autistic member of their board of directors left because they were essentially ignored. That absolutely flies in the face of decades of disability advocacy, where a common refrain is “nothing about us without us.”
TL;DR: caretakers deserve support but Autism Speaks is super awful.
When that kind of parents how their autistic child is very difficult and that it keeps getting worse I am always feeling like : Karen, only 10 % of your kid issues are caused by his autism, the 90% are 100% because you treat him like shit and he is turbo-traumatized
Suicide is one of the top three causes of death for autistic people. The other two are heart disease and epilepsy complications, and on average we die under 50 years of age.
What they don't understand though is that the suicide part isn't caused by autism. It's caused by people being horrible to each other. Or in other words: people with autism die because people without it make living hell for them.
My daughter has it, and I'd say about 5-10 years ago it changed. The amount of acceptance is so much higher than it used to be. Obviously we need work, but hell in my city there are special times at both grocery stores and movie theatres for neuro-diverse people. The difference to a decade ago is extreme.
actually everyone treat others like shit. But what NT have is a much stronger upport circle and fewer difference.
By fewer difference I mean that you cant pick on someone that everyone around him does : A boss can't really bully a NT for using implicite dicourse when all of their collegues does the exact same, they would immediately realise something is wrong. The average NT knowing jackshit about autism, it can be easy to trick them into thinking that ND should "just make an effort" to understand implicite discourse.
That's sad part, we are technically all targeted with the same amount of flak so if you are slightly out of cover, you get blasted away
i think that the mistreatment of folks with autism is not enough to explain to have this high of a suicide rate, and that autism does just make life harder to deal with, regardless of discrimination
So there's a lot more suffering in general for anyone basically not white, straight, (and depending on circumstances, male). Autism isn't a death sentence. While people with severe autism struggle a lot more than most, they can have very good fulfilling lives. Source: My daughter (23) has (moderate) autism and her best friend (23) has severe.
can add the healthy for white and straight if you're in the USA.
Also just methodologically poc are faced with very different risk with racially motivated crimes and the fact that ethnic getthoisation create strong social support structures will help curb suicidal tendencies.
Even if the struggles can be similar, the supplementary problem with LGBTQ+, is loneliness. There are actually very few of them, so finding people like you that understand your struggles is very difficult. That really hit me when I talked for the first time with people leading association supporting LGBTQ, most of the work is reaching out to people to tell them they are not alone
It's a mix of the ABA industry, early researchers and socio-environmental issues.
Early researchers cultivate the myth of the normative human. Autists were an altered version of human that has to be corrected. If a human wasn't corrected to match the norm, it could not be happy in life and will suffer it's entire life.
So autists have to be corrected (we know it's false) to be happy whatever the means. It ended with electric shock and others stuffs seen during WW2. This is how ABA was created. It relies on the fears of autists not being happy until they are corrected.
ABA, PBT and all the others acronyms has built an industry worth a lot of money. They finance more research on the field with huge standard, COI and consent issues among others. They need to keep the fear in the population to keep the business up.
The third is the new way to see autism. The struggles of autists are mostly socio-environmental. It means that issues aren't the person and autism. It's a lack of acceptance of the diversity by the neurological majority. It implies discrimination, patronizing, and violence against autists.
Early researchers cultivate the myth of the normative human.
We are still there with mental illness. People have this idea that there are "normal" people and those who require therapy, as if there is a single person on earth that didn't come out of their childhood with some level of trauma.
Well actually not that much.
Two things.
First, some trauma can be dealt with thanks to your support circle.
Second, the thing is our experience of others is never representative of the overall society. You could look at my social circle and claim it as an argument. But that is not taking in account that my circle is small and not made of average people.
Lastly. Everyone suffered a cold once, they were not damned, not everyone is constantly sick. Though you wouldn't say there is no difference between sick and healthy people. Still everyone will go to the doctor once. In my country that is this approach much closer to physiological medicine that mental health professional promote.
I'm not speaking for autistic people here, but I am speaking as parent to two children (now adults) on the spectrum.
Autistic children do not ruin your life and do not have ruined lives themselves. As with all parenting, sometimes things are very, very difficult and sometimes things are very, very easy. This isn't unique to raising a neurodiverse child, this is just parenting. The unique challenges that parenting a neurodiverse child brings are 99% of the time caused by how society thinks these children/adults are and assumptions about whats best for them without actually asking them rather than any sort of intrinsic issue caused by their autism or ADHD or any other neurological difference. For the remaining 1% of the time, you just do your best.
The narrative that neurological difference, in particular autism, ruins lives has, in its modern form, been with us since Andrew Wakefield first perpetuated his fraudulent claims of vaccine damage causing autism. It was spread by antivaxx/autism activist parent groups like Jenny McCarthy's Generation Rescue and the truly despicable people at Autism Speaks. These are the people who've ruined lives.
I like you. I have 2 autistic kids (still kids) and one neurotypical kid. There is no difference in raising them. Every kid has their unique challenges. I never raise my children differently unless it requires it.
The International Carwash Show happens each year in Las Vegas. It is all sorts of people in the industry: owners, manufacturers, services etc. Everyone was so nice. They even let us walk through the carwash equipment when it was turned on!
I'm not naive (or arrogant) enough to think I know everything my kids are thinking and neither am I suggesting their lives are 100% perfect but all of them (on the spectrum or not) are all pretty forthright, confident adults. When they were teens they of course went through some shit related to their being autistic, but none of that was because they were autistic, it was down to how other people/situations made them feel because they were autistic. I'm as sure as any parent can ever be that I've never detected any kind of prolonged resentment or unhappiness at the fact of their autism.
We never taught them that 'autism is a superpower' because it isn't. Sometimes it has advantages and sometimes there are disadvantages and describing someone elses life as superpowered puts an unrealistic expectation of happiness and accomplishment on them. By the same token, neither are their lives a ruin and my life as their parent most certainly wasn't ruined.
it was down to how other people/situations made them feel because they were autistic.
That's a meaningless distinction. The end result is identical.
It would be foolhardy to say that you--an assumed neurotypical person--need to be close, personal friends with everyone in your life. You select your friends--and they select you--based on how well you fit each other. The fundamental problem is that autistic people, broadly speaking, don't fit with neurotypical people. A high-functioning autistic person will eventually realize that, and realize just how utterly alone they are in life. They will realize that the people they think of as friends will never think of them as a friend. Their social circle, if they're lucky, might consist of a small handful of people with overlapping interests, but are not an actual social support network.
I discovered this in 2014 when I failed to complete a suicide, and lost 95% of the people I believed were friends.
I am functional on a surface level. I have a job, I'm mostly self-sufficient, I'm married to someone that is also likely neurodivergent after having been in an abusive relationship for over a decade. I've noticed that the less able we are to mask, the more our social circle contracts. We can not reasonably expect that people will life us, or include us in their social circles.
I disagree, its not in my opinion a meaningless distinction at all. A difficulty in cognition might prevent a person from reading War And Peace. Thats a direct result of having a learning disability. Someone with a visual disability who cannot access audio books or braille versions of War And Peace is not being affected by their disability but by the fact an accessible version is not available.
You might argue the end result is the same - an inability to read War And Peace - but the point is that for the person with a visual disability the situation is fixable if society is prepared to make the effort.
In regards to your situation you've had terrible experiences but they are not down to the fact youre autistic, they're down to the fact your NT 'friends' weren't really friends at all. I'm sorry they let you down but I'm pretty sure I could find similar stories where nobody in the story was autistic.
Autism is a disability. A person with an IQ of 50 simply isn't going to be able to understand War and Peace; you can't dumb the book down sufficiently for someone to understand if they're going to struggle all their life to be able to put on shoes that lace instead of using Velcro. People with dyslexia can listen to audiobooks; there's no audiobook version of deep, fulfilling friendships and social support networks, because people on the autistic spectrum are going to have a hard time offering neurotypical people the what they need. A person that's on the autism spectrum is never going to be able to have social interactions in the same way that neurotypical people can, and those social interactions are necessary to being able to function in society. Some people on the spectrum may be able to appear normal on a surface level and will be able to get by, but it's fucking exhausting. People that have the misfortune to be lower functioning than I am may not be able to mask effectively at all.
That's without even getting into constrained interests, difficulty with coordination and forming positive habits--I still struggle to remember to brush my teeth daily in my middle age--or executive dysfunction.
I never claimed autism wasn't a disability. The fact that autistic people are disabled in some ways isn't in question. But its neither just a disability or - like all disabilities - something that isn't disabling by virtue of the world its part of rather than its intrinsic nature.
For example, you say an autistic person cannot experience social interaction in the same way as a non autistic person. True. But the non autistic person can, with very little adjustment, be aware of that. My kids have good relationships with NT friends and whilst they might not experience them in the same way as NT friendships, they still find them fulfilling.
Those people are likely your kids' best friends. Your kids are likely not their best friends.
Aside from marrying someone that is also neurodivergent, it is unlikely that your children will ever be the best friend of another person. They may be the friend that offers the most help, the person that always shows up to the party with lots of food and a keg, the ones that are always there with tape, boxes, and a truck when someone needs to pack up and move, the one with a spare couch when someone needs a place to stay for a couple days. ...But not the best friend. If they're very, very lucky, they'll end up married to someone else that is also neurodivergent; otherwise, they may end up married to someone that is neurotypical, and will be taken advantage of and/or abused by their partner for their entire life.
That's what you're missing.
Social interactions end up being lopsided, and can never be anything but.
The fundamental problem is that autistic people, broadly speaking, don't fit with neurotypical people. A high-functioning autistic person will eventually realize that, and realize just how utterly alone they are in life. They will realize that the people they think of as friends will never think of them as a friend.
First, I'm sorry for what you've been through. But from my personal experience, I know that I have three friends who have autism and/or ADHD. In each case, I did not know this until they told me. If I can't even know who is autistic without them telling me, how can I treat them differently?
Now I understand that it is possible that some behaviours of mine could make my autistic friends uncomfortable, while not affecting my other friends. But if I am doing something like that, it is out of ignorance rather than malice, and I would of course adjust my behaviour if asked to.
So I don't get why you think autistic people 'don't fit with neurotypical people'. I have friends who speak other languages, and autism is also, in a sense, speaking a different 'body language'. With some effort, we should be able to improve communication.
The fact that you just aren't understanding what I'm saying is demonstrating my point. You aren't able to understand my point of view, and think that everything can just be solved by people working harder. It's the same kind of belief that says that depressed and anxious people can be cured by just thinking happy thoughts and touching grass.
Can you be more specific? Why cannot autistic people fit in with others? Is it that others recognise them as being different and exclude them? Or is it that there are differences in the way we speak or behave that make you uncomfortable? And if it is the latter, what in particular should we change?
Yes 95% of your friends aren't your best friends.
They have their own struggle and hardships to deal with. So yes, in your situation both side needed to focus on themselves.
Lastly before being worried about the general population not including you in their social circles, did you ask yourself why you would be in their circles ? Because you were colleagues ? Or neighbour.
I also am in a situation were I have virtually no friends and it fucking hurts.
Loneliness fucking hurts, it ache the minds and psychology its among the worst pain I ever felt.
Though in the past years I've looked not for others but for things that passionated me first. And there I found people which liked me and that I liked. Some people are wildly different than me, others are likeminded but we connected.
I don't know my classmates but I have a few friends among my martial arts club. And I am not unhappy of the lack of connexion I have with my class, I don't think we'd really fit. Despite the social constructs that claims a student's first circle must be his class, I don't, and its fine, I just look elsewhere for people, in place where I fit.
hi, i am in fact someone else with autism (undiscovered for 30+ years, it was quite a find)
but also with a physical birth defect, which was very much defining and way more impactful.
"didn't ask being born" is a trend most people go through at some point, especially in lower classes, where life itself is a struggle if not outright suffering.
but who else can you blame for your existence if not your parents?
this is a pain point, which can not be ignored forever.
"put on a front" only works until it doesnt anymore, and its better to talk about it instead of waiting until someone snapped.
resenting and rebelling against parents is part of growing up, no matter the mental or physical condition.
but no one is really at fault, personally, everyone did their best they could at the time, and the best everyone can do is help each other.
From personal experience, the ability of people in the spectrum to feel happiness depends entirely on whether their parents were willing to make adjustments to see their children feel well. Most will want their child to be just like every other one and will damage them deeply in the pursuit of that.
just popping in to say I love being alive and I'm thankful for my parents keeping me! I made friends with a seagull today. couldn't have done that if I was never born. fuck yeah!
ITT: people advocating eugenics on themselves.
I hate it. I hate seeing it. And stuff like this is psychologically destructive to read for me.
If people here don't like others with similar traits to them advocating that their life and perspective is not valuable and that they should hate it and wish no-one new experience it, I recommend avoiding this thread - even moreso if you have suicidal tendencies. It was very upsetting for me ;-;, even though I personally have no intent to have kids.
Same. Out of all my lost jobs, only two can be proven (by me only of course) to be because of some autistic trait I have.
While I don't value my own life as much as I should, I know I have value to others, and most of that is due to my traits. In fact, I'm starting a job today that wants me specifically because of those traits. I never thought I'd work again.
I have saved dozens of kitten lives, who go on to make their new human's life better.
I used to hate myself. I've learned to embrace the way I am and couldn't imagine being any other way. The people whose lives I have made a positive impact on would agree. I don't have to rule the world, but my household is efficient because of me.
Eugenics isn't the answer. I'd bet if we had the right resources available, none of the people in this thread would say that. Everyone deserves a chance at a good life. Corporate greed is the reason we don't have those resources.
As someone on the spectrum its ridiculous to say there life ruined first off its a spectrum so who knows how server there condition is and they can learn to live with help
The sad thing is there's tons of autistic people on that sub that geniuely think like that about themselves. One of my worst experiences posting was interacting with that place and getting another autistic person talking about how they wish to die, how they wanted to be hate crime'd and literally talked about offing themselves just to spite me. That person blocked me so I have no idea what they are up to these days. This was nearly a year ago and there's a good chance they've taken their life since then.
I fucking hate r/antinatalism. Its 100% should be banned. Its literally just severely depressed people talking themselves deeper into depression.
I'm a long time.lurker there before leaving reddit for good. I've seen most of the posts for years.
Antinatalism is not a depression cult, though it does attract that type but more of a "we see life as a net negative experience and it isn't our right to inflict it on others".
It's why they're so pro adoption since those kids are already born so the damage has been done. I don't think those people are depressed or suicidal.
I'm 40 so I've been around. Ever since middle school I knew I love my theoretical kids too much to have them born into this world. So far, there hasn't been any kind of evidence or experience I had to change my mind. I'm a wage slave. My "kids" would be wage slaves. They might have to fight in resource wars when climate change or rise of Nazis start really ramping up. I don't want them to have a worse life than me and I cannot provide or promise one. I don't think there ever was a time in history where procreation was a good idea.
You can do everything right and still get a rocket dropped on your home. Your kids can still become target practice for the next psycho at school. Hell, your kids could become the psychos! Every evil person that exists or has has been someone's "beautiful baby".
To me this comes off as gambling. You are gambling that you will have a bright, kind, Neurotypical kid that will grow up to be great and spread happiness and what not.
Thing I don't get is why people find Antinatalist philosophy so goddamn triggering. We can't change your mind you are going to do whatever the fuck you want. So many hateful responses to it when you can just walk away. Why?
And as far as the OG post, if you are autistic, know that autism is hereditary and still have kids in spite of all that, that's an evil sadistic act! How can you hate your theoretical kids so damn much? I feel sorry for them, but fuck the mother.
Gambling where your actions and your relatives actions can impact 95% of the results is gambling. Never heard of a school shooters who had a perfectly normal education before. Either they were brought up to be like that or drifted away toward horrors with no one giving a damn
Thing I don’t get is why people find Antinatalist philosophy so goddamn triggering
It is very good to read a theoritical book, but the first thing outsiders will look at are the followers of said philosophy. And for antinatalist they are a shittons of eugenicist and insensitive people. The main virtual breeding ground for that philosophy is reddit. Already said everything but let's go on.
There I saw a post by a man whose sister announced him she was pregnant and he reacted by berating her, throwing mean and spiteful remarks and every comment was cheering him and trashing the woman. The real question is : why are antinatalist so triggered and hateful towards even their loved ones who don't follow their philosophy ? The reality portrayed by antinalist is one where they are bothered by family members trying to convince them to have kids or weirded out that you don't want one while they disown their sisters who get pregnant.
Look here, Mario. You are speaking for exactly one (1) person. Your personal experience of autism is not universal. Some of us just have better circumstances. Some of us are spiteful bitches who live for the difficulty. My point being, some of us actually like being alive, and are okay with being autists.
Antinatalism is a more deranged branch of eugenics. It's not simply "promoting eugenics" it's a belief that giving birth is the greatest evil one can inflict upon a child and the world at large.
That they'd clearly see us as subhuman isn't surprising given that they at best want our entire species to voluntarily go extinct. Their entire worldview is best summed up as gentle genocide is good.
It's like these people have forgotten there are people with different set of beliefs than their own.
No matter how justified your beliefs are, you cannot impose them on others. This is true for religions and this is true for every single ideological stance out there.
Unless you are religious and believe in eternal torment after death, death isn't cruel, it's simply an end to life, a permanent return to nonexistence no more or less cruel than having never been born.
Additionally, while they aren't exactly wrong in that going from nonexistence to existence results in an infinite increase in potential for suffering, that holds true for joy/happiness/pleasure.
Imo bringing someone into being is not cruel nor wonderful, not moral nor immoral. It simply is.
This is the only good logical argument I’ve heard against it and I’m on board. People get too emotional talking about this and antinatalists generally approach this from a point of logic.
Most of the arguments I’ve seen so far are from sheltered first world people that have never suffered. They almost believe it’s a choice or that depression is just being really sad.
They deny that depression can come up from actual consistently repeated experiences that someone can have no control over.
The fact that most people on planet earth are suffering is what drives the idea. If your consciousness randomly hopped to the next person born on earth, would you want to live that life?
It’s also ridiculously cruel to create a consciousness knowing it’ll die.
No, it isn't. There, now we're on equal rhetorical footing unless you'd like to support that incredibly bold statement with ... anything? A link? A train of thought?
I think antinatalism is a really interesting philosophy. But it falls apart as soon as you discriminate - It is fair to question the ethics of reproduction, but as soon as you discriminate you end up in eugenics territory.
This subreddit is really hostile sadly. there is a lot of ableism under the disguise of antinatalism
True antinatalism would say everyone should not have kids, regardless of anything. Of course nobody is enforcing this so it's a kinda do whatever but maybe think twice before having kids.
I don't have ASD but I have ADHD, and based on my experience I think it's extremely fair to see knowingly inflicting upon another living being a disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life, as fucked up and immoral
It's like pugs and pitbulls, many people can agree in the thought "why are we intentionally creating more canines with terrible disabilities which badly hurt them for the rest of their life?", so why is it so bad when the same logic is applied to humans?
I think it's dumb to describe it as "eugenics", considering that's a term almost entirely associated in the modern day with Nazism, forced imprisonment/torture/forced sterilization of certain groups, and racist beliefs. Wheras this seems concerned with wanting people to not suffer nearly as much after they're born, so they're expressing how they're upset that people chose to create a new life with more suffering than average when there's tons of equally good alternatives, and I think that's pretty different than flat out promoting genocide...
What's wrong with adoption anyways? It's pretty selfish to bring a new life into this world for your own personal satisfaction when you could literally just take a child who's already out there suffering and make them not suffer for no extra loss.
I find it stupid that they describe it as "ruined lives" though. Especially for the parents, like wtf just be a good parent? It's not like most parents have a kid with no difficult challenges to face whatsoever. When you become a parent you sign up to being exposed to any and every possibility that could come from a kid. If you become a parent and then go "woe is me, I didn't expect autism so I can't deal with this, don't blame me for not parenting correctly" then you shouldn't have become a parent. The only way parents can "ruin" their own lives is if they're a shitty parent, which unfortunately a majority of people are...
disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life
Motherfucker what are you talking about? I am literally just here to vibe, it's the fault of the current system for refusing to support any kind of variety. Autism isn't fucking osteoporosis, I'm not in pain, I'm just fucking different.
Autistic people aren't suffering unless you're putting them in a system which refuses to treat them as anything other than subhuman.
This is the case. One thing is treating all humans with respect, and another is knowingly contributing to someone having a more difficult life. You can love the ones who already exist without passing on your genetic nonsense to new ones.
I have ASD and ADHD, generally pretty happy to be here.
Autism is a spectrum and most of us are perfectly functional, happy, productive people.
It's nothing like pugs or pitbulls, frankly that's kind of offensive. You're likening us to a genetic mistake. Most of the time I find myself wondering why the neurotypicals are so goddamn dysfunctional.
Who the fuck do you think you are too suggest that I, and many of my friends, shouldn't exist?
You're describing eugenics, call it what it is. It's not my fault you have shitty bedfellows.
The antinatalism subreddit (and similar groups elsewhere) is one of the most toxic places on the internet. It just reeks of hatred, and worse yet, treats that hatred as some sort of virtue.
Go live your life however you want, kids or no. But grouping up to talk shit about children or people who start families is just gross.
This isn't the first time I've seen it here or on reddit either, and it's honestly sad.
These groups always seem like doomers who have ingested so much negativity that they've developed depression. Either that, or they're taking the loooong way to just telling their moms that they don't want to start a family.
I have this theory that negative affinity groups (a term I made up for groups based on antipathy for something or someone) have a tendency towards toxic behavior. When you gain connection and social clout for dunking on someone or something, there's very little incentive to be fair to them or show any kind of nuance.
Contrast with groups with affirmative goals or a defined object of interest. The positive groups can measure progress towards their goals or new and interesting perspectives on their objects.
I don't know. I hate the fact that I was born autistic. Unlike a lot of autistic people, I refuse to think of it as some kind of 'superpower' or positive thing.
I was born defective. I'm literally a broken human who doesn't function correctly.
I know that I sure as hell wish I wasn't born, and whilst I'm sure those mothers are going to do a great job with their children, I also don't think that I should have children at the risk of passing it down and letting another person suffer the way I have.
We think similarly. Autism makes life difficult. I think scanning for defective genes early in pregnancy is worthwhile to avoid life destroying issues.
Of course autism has a scale of sorts, you can still live somewhat normally, but it sure as hell doesn't feel beneficial
You can't check genes to determine whether people will have a fulfilling and interesting life or whether they are some point will wish they weren't born. You can only make horrifying filtering based on crude guesses, also known as eugenics.
My life is hard, therefore I am okay with eugenics
Yeah righto, mate. Sucks for you, but maybe we should just make life easier for the disabled instead of preventing us from existing entirely. Just a thought.
Yeah sure, but when people single out particular demographics as being somehow less deserving of life, people within those demographics who don't hate their lives tend to get pissy about it for some reason. Go figure.
You are so, so privileged in this regard, you know that right?
It's like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
It's wonderful you and the others in this thread like you are so privileged. You are rare and that is special and I'm genuinely very glad you all had a chance to exist.
But I have to ask: why do you get to override the views and beliefs of those in the autistic community who are not as privileged as you? You don't speak for us, just as we don't/can't for you. We're not advocating for eugenics or telling anyone how to live their lives. All we've done is talk about ethics and not procreated.
So many of us with autism struggle immensly our whole lives, the world around us is so overwhelming, many of us cannot communicate efficiently or at all, and many of us are isolated, vulnerable to abuse and/or have been abused.
Why are you so angry with us for sharing with our autistic community that our lives are so difficult that we wouldn't want to have children who would suffer far worse that we have?
Maybe you can't comprehend this? Idk. Maybe you think we're too autistic and retarded to have our own voice and make decisions about our own bodies?
This instance on us needing to happily want to add more overwhelmed and suicidal offspring to the already overwhelmed suicidal world around us, is creepy.
It really is great that you are young and privileged and hopefull enough to want to make the world a better place because you have so much faith for humanity changing and everything, but we're kinda running out of time for all that now.
Potential offspring will suffer worse than any of us ever have as climate collapse and resource depletion, and not to mention the global rise in fascism, economic collapse (and potentially ww3) and all happening and escalating in the very real near future.
But you keep protesting and doing your social activism work though, I hope it works out for you and you succeed in making having autism easier for people like you and all your children, and you all enjoy the few decades we all have left before the food and water run out and the planet becomes to hot and unstable for human life.
You do you. And let us do our thing please.
It's like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
Autism is a spectrum, not a binary. It is likely that the vast majority of autistic people lead lives that are, for want of a better word, 'normal'.
Of course, it could also be that all people are autistic to some extent.
Yeah, I am very privileged in a lot of ways. I understand that much, and am extremely grateful for it. I also understand that my opinions are at least in part derived from my privileged personal experience. You're absolutely right in that I cannot speak to the experience of someone who lacks the support I have. I just think that of the billions whose lives are less privileged than my own, many would nevertheless consider their lives to be worth living. I find it tragic when some don't, but I don't think that that is necessarily a universally held opinion by the underprivileged.
I just have to ask: why do you insist on putting questions to me that have false premises? Nowhere in this thread have I said that mine is the universal Autistic^TM view, and yet you ask me why I feel I have the right to override people's opinions. Hell, I don't think anyone else in this thread has argued that there is any obligation to procreate. On the contrary, I have seen people people making the universal claim that autistic lives are especially not worth living and making the prescriptive claim that autists should not reproduce. That is a eugenicist argument.
So you and all the other's in this thread who have been actively insulting and angry and putting words like 'eugenics' in our mouths to shut us down, and calling us stupid, mentally ill, edgelords and psychopaths etc.
You don't think you've been overriding our views as members of the autistic community? Or claiming we are wrong and dangerously mentally unsound for holding them? And you haven't seen anyone advocating for this topic to be banned on social media so we can no longer discuss it?...
Your opinion that autistic people with antinatalist views are advocating eugenics, is so full of logical fallacies I felt like a dick writing them all out (I can put them back if you want tho, I'm just trying not to be too offensive here).
Most people who hear about antinatalism assume stupid shit and get angry and start with the character insults and accusations of racism and eugenics, and about how antinatalism means wanting to mass murder and segregate society.
And most people, like you, refuse to listen when it's explained.
Antinatalists are individuals who have independantly chosen not to procreate for the shared ethical reason of reducing suffering.
I doubt most antinatalists are even aware of the term, they're just people who have looked at the world around them and chosen not to add to it because it's awful.
And yeah, as a person with basic empathy It's really hard to look at the world and not feel sad when you learn people willingly procreate with debilitating hereditary conditions and are knowingly bringing potential suffering into the world for purely selfish reasons.
This is not a world ANYONE should be looking at and wanting to bring more life into, autistic or not.
Talking about it being upsetting and unethical isn't advocating for eugenics.
Antinatalists, autistic or otherwise, aren't forcing anyone to do anything, and talking about our feelings isn't hurting anyone unless folk like you decide to assume nasty shit about us and be rude.
Antinatalists having this conversation somewhere you can see it, are not some eugenist plot to harm people with a sterility causing memetic virus, nor is it some wild attempt at converting the masses into ''"genetic purity"" by forcing idiots like you to call us names because you won't fucking read what we're even actually saying but you're convinced we're evil.
I genuinely doubt most antinatalists even really talk about this anywhere but online in antinatalist spaces, and when it comes up on other forums like it has here. It's not exactly light conversation to have irl when most people react like they have here, or worse.
.
And forgive me if this is a false equivalency but if you believe antinatalism is stupid and we're all crazy eugenicists for not passing down our suffering, but apparently don't believe we should instead be popping out kids like bunnies and gurning about how great everything is,
what do you want from us instead then?
To just not fucking talk about it?
(Sorry, I failed at not being offensive. I'm too tired to care much right now though tbh but if it's any consolation, it's really not personal, I'm just tired, hate most people, and trying to finish this before i go to bed)
I feel like everyone in this thread are arguing two different things. "My neurodivergence has made my life hell and I wish I never existed in the first place" and "you can live a fullfilling life with neurodivergence" aren't conflicting concepts to me.
I don't know how autism affects your life but I can speak for myself and I know it can be tough, executive dysfuntion has been beating my ass hard for a few years at this point.
Still, I do not think I'm broken because of it, years of conditioning by a society that doesn't give a shit about us and want us to do as much or more than everyone else while also laughing at us really fucks me up, even while being aware of these expectations and lack of structural support.
Also, I wouldn't consider myself really me without the special interests and obsessions I had throughout my life and the ways I have talked and expressed it.
What I have just said most likely won't change anything in your life, but I just wanted to aknowledge how hard it can be while also showing a little bit of what makes me happy about my experience being autistic. I hope for the best for you, friend.
Big same, yet when I got old and stopped caring about anything, and started paying more attention to others than my own problems, I started to notice autistic tendencies in almost everyone I have interacted with. Even people that bully or hate on autistic people. The hyperfixation on negative things or on really awful views on people and the world is always strong in those ones, paired with other weird brain shit like complexes coupled with total denial and inability to accept that they are wrong. I've been feeling like everyone is autistic and there is just more axes to the spectrum than I had been told in the past. Like rather than a point on a line, it's a coordinate in a cube. The most central ones are 'neurotypical' and it moves outward in all directions in 3d space.
On a side note neroatypical/nerotypical as a term kinda pisses me off because I swear it's more typical for people to be neuroatypical than what is considered neurotypical. People just think they are 'normal' but they are wrong. And it's not lesbians or vaccines, if anything its the forever chemicals and microplastics that these evil fucking corpos have been pumping into us and the world and we are only going to see more and more autism, and only the ultra wealthy will be able to call themselves normal while the rest of us will be considered defective.
If I may take a moment to ask... what the fuck are you on about, OP? Absolutely nothing in the screenshot suggests anything even remotely related to eugenics. You took that leap all on your own.
I definitely understand some of the points made by antinatalism. I often struggle with the fact that life is imposed on me rather then chosen and i am definitely considering geopolitics and ecological/economic when i make choices of how many kids i should have, but i long rationalized most issues to be with human society and not with life itself.
I very much believe society can still evolve but to do so we will need to become better people first, the most straightforward way to get better people is to educate them well starting from birth.
The conclusion of antinatalism seems to be a pessimistic extreme, that life itself can only be suffering so we are better of self-extincting ourself by stopping to make new babies but if all progressives followed this rhetoric then the only people
Reproducing are those that do not care at all.
In other words in order for their valid criticisms to have any positive effect on society they should still support progressives that are able to provide to have some amount of kids because or else they become a Selffulfilling prophecy of societal decline.
The bias against neurodivergents having children is sadly enough way more common than just those circles, but people like Greta Thunberg are proof that if anything the world needs more Autism and a not cure.
I share your feelings there regarding the choice or lack thereof with being born and seeing some of the points of antinatalism.
I don't think that community fully understands what antinatalism should be. Casually browsing it though, it seems more like they're more going towards eugenics than an actual antinatalist approach - i.e. applied to everyone, nondiscriminately, for reasons of morality (choice vs forced into existence, overpopulation and its ties to resource allocation and requirements and such). Arguably some posts there could be reasonably expected from non-antinatalist people, the sort of 'if you can't afford to raise them, don't have them'.
I take great joy in providing my son a life free of the home life experiences that made my youth hell. It still remains to be seen how well he'll avoid the pitfalls of social interaction I suffered through, but I do feel like I'm preparing him far better than I ever was.
I don't think five years olds think about the philosophy of antinatalism at all. Its a very interesting philosophy due to the fact that it is about people who don't already exist. Its certainly not a shitty idea, rather one very thought provoking.
Yeah this is the point where I'm really glad other people having kids is not his decision to make.
I'm high-functioning enough to pass for neurotypical, but my sense of injustice at this is amped beyond deep-fat-fry, on to 'hot as the sun at its core'
There's no other way to put it, having kids is extremely selfish.
It's pretty much the epitome of selfishness.
I want to clarify though, this isn't to say that calling only people who to have kids who happen to have disabilities "selfish." Every single parent is extremely selfish (excluding some outliers, obviously, don't "um actually" me).
You just experienced what the people in the antinatalism community experience all the time. They put out a reasoned opinion and get brigaded with "BUT KIDS ARE GOOD YOU'RE A HORRIBLE PERSON REEEEEE"
I said parents are selfish for having kids. You can try to downplay it all you want, but you don't have a kid for this future magical mystical kid. You have a kid for your own wants and needs over everything else. Just because having kids is an accepted action in society doesn't make it not selfish. And since you think of "selfishness" as a bad thing, this makes your brain scramble and your cognitive dissonance go into overdrive causing you to come up with completely inept retorts like I'm "selfish" for simply existing and using resources that the Earth clearly has as I'm using them.
The resources are there for you to claim idiotic and insane things because someones children made them.
The only reason you exist is because someone decided that the future of humanity only exists if we make children. You alone cannot decide that a common goal of many is a selfish decision of a single being.
So if you were truly commited to your cause and you wanted your bloodline to die with you, then you could also [i do not condone selfharm, this is purely for argumentation].
So if you were truly commited to your cause and you wanted your bloodline to die with you, then you could also [i do not condone selfharm, this is purely for argumentation].
I don't have a cause. You're putting words into my mouth because you don't know how to argue in good faith.
You're literally telling me to kill myself because you're personally offended someone dare challenge your preconceived notions of the world. You're a truly fucked up individual. I pray you don't have or ever have any dependents. You're a danger to society.
Antinatalists constantly tell people to kill their offspring. I argue on the same level as antinatalists.
If the cause is to end the suffering that humankind causes then there is only one solution.
If my notions of the world are wrong, and humankind really is only a burden, then youre indirectly also calling for genocide.
You think that isn't fucked up?
Antinatalists constantly tell people to kill their offspring.
Some do, sure, but that's what what antinatalism is. This is like saying "vegans constantly tell meat eaters to kill themselves." Yes, some do, but the point of veganism isn't the death of meat eaters.
I argue on the same level as antinatalists.
No, you argue on your deranged level by justifying it with your antinatalist boogey man. You're like those YouTube conservatives who put up a picture of a blue haired teenager on screen and saying "this is who the liberals are."
If the cause is to end the suffering that humankind causes then there is only one solution.
This is like saying the way to end violence done in the name of religion is to kill off all religious people. There's more that goes into getting to an end solution than just immediately jumping to it. And it also seems like you think antinatalists entire existence is about making antinatalism, like there's nothing else besides this.
If my notions of the world are wrong, and humankind really is only a burden, then youre indirectly also calling for genocide.
You seem to not know what the word "natalism" means. It's about bring people into the world. It has nothing to do with people who are already living.
And killing off all living people isn't a genocide. It's "speciocide." Completely different things. Comparing antinatalists with people who commit genocides is unbelievably unhinged, but I should have seen it coming from someone like you.
You think that isn’t fucked up?
The only thing I think is fucked up in this discussion is people who only believe in antinatalism-lite for eugenic reasons and, of course, you.
I said a lot of dumb and mean things in this thread. Yes, it contradicts itself. I'm sure at the time of writing this i've already forgotten what i was arguing for and just wanted to be right.
I based my "knowledge" on antinatalism on the 2 i've talked to and they were of the "killing yourself is the only way to be moral" kind.
After all what the others in this thread have told me is right, i've just been a cunt and angry for some reason. Please discount all i've written in here as "dumb person having an ego problem".
I can't believe the willfull ignorance of people. There are examples of thousands of people with autism becoming amazing people. I feel that reason is impossible for some
Quite a few people here on the comments are siding with the antinatalist narrative, but I don't think this is rational at all, in fact it's dangerous. Sure, you can individually opt to not bring more people into the world because you believe it would bring more suffering than happiness, but if this rhetoric spreads, the logical conclusion (heavily extrapolating without considering anything else) is the end of humanity which solves nothing, and while it prevents suffering, it also prevents happiness. If done and advocated in the pretext that we are ruining the planet, that certain people shouldn't be born, and other similar reasoning then this just reeks of ecofascism or plain fascism, and eugenics.
It's easy for us to buy into the narrative that we are all inherently bad and that we as humans are destroying the environment and the world, but this is not true, it's not me and you who are doing this, this is not a human trait, it's a consequence of the system we live in that incentivizes profit above all else. Why do you think awareness, support and accommodations for us needs to be fought over? Because it's expensive and doesn't guarantee profit, and the same can be said about the environment and the way corporations are literally burning the planet. Profit and accumulation of capital above all else, that is the rule.
There's only one way out of this nightmare that will give us the tools to revert the damage and actually build a society and world that will accept us, accommodate to us, liberate people and save the planet, and it's through organizing, studying and fighting.
We are in absolutely no danger of ever going extinct. You can never get enough people to use contraceptives or practice abstinence. You can't even get people to wear masks!
I agree, I was exaggerating for the argument because I think antinatalism as a whole is dangerous, not for the made up scenario of humanity going extinct, but for the eugenics/fascism side.
You can say that having kids is selfish, which it objectively is (no matter if they're perfectly healthy/wealthy/on top of society or not), but also want to "build a society and world that will accept us, accommodate to us, liberate people and save the planet."
Focusing on just kids with disabilities and not every kid is fucked though, with a lot of these people in these spaces.
You straw man the position and say following the conclusion of the straw man, humanity must end based on their logic.
Ok, what straw man? I've talked about it on the individual level and also in case such ideology spreads, there is literally people that advocate for the end of humanity on the antinatalist ideology, I do not follow it closely to be able to say if it is a big part of it or not, but I've seen it before and seen the stance getting praised and this is extremely dangerous. I'm not making this argument because of the possibility it might happen, being realistic it won't, but because it just helps spread bullshit that blames everything on humanity itself like we are inherently bad.
How isn’t having kids selfish? You’re not having a child for this child’s sake. You’re having the child for your sake.
That makes no sense to me, deciding to birth another human being and dedicating your life to them is the opposite of selfishness. Of course not everyone is like this, and people that just makes children and doesn't give a shit about them are selfish, but the act itself is not.
I am on the autism spectrum. I'm well into middle age.
Being autistic is like being in a poker game where you keep getting dealt hands that are high-card, and everyone else is getting straights, flushes, or even just pairs, and you only get out when you're bankrupt. Yeah, I play the hand I'm dealt, and I'm going to lose every goddamn time.
EDIT: A better analogy is gonna be Pinnochio (or A. I. Artificial Intelligence). I'm never going to be a real boy (any no, it's not because I'm AFAB and also a gender essentialist). No matter how hard I work at being better, there's no good fae that's going to come along and use their fae magic to make me a real boy. I'm never going to have the experiences of the real children, because I'm simply not one of them. I can ape their external characteristics, but I can't be them. While this--being autistic--is a result of evolution (it's likely a non-beneficial genetic mutation), humans have largely evolved to survive as a social species, to have close relationships and tribal affiliations. I'm always going to be on the outside, rather than part of an in-group.
Unrelated to your comment, but you should probably do some research on the gender essentialism front. We've known gender and sex are different for a long time, and should treat trans people as their gender, not their biological sex.
You misunderstand; I'm making fun of the people that claim that gender and biological sex are the same thing. I am not a gender essentialist, nor am I AFAB.
Why do you think there is such a thing as a 'real boy'? It is likely that most other people you know are envious of you for something else - maybe your ability to paint, or your voice - and are thinking 'if only I could draw / sing like Helixdab2. But I'll never have real talent.' Yes, some people get dealt a better hand than others, but that doesn't make them an ideal to aspire to.
I'm sort of convinced that ASD is a view of the future where humans finally shrug off the bonds of being descended from apes. So much of the nastiness that humans are capable of come from the sort of behavior that allowed our ancestors to survive. We no longer live there and no longer need to think in that way.
Disagree. People on the spectrum are subject to the same kind of irrational hatred and violent impulses as every other person. Given that a common issue with people on the spectrum is an inability to read emotional and contextual cues, I'd argue that people on the spectrum are less evolved. We're certainly less capable, in that we have fewer capabilities than neurotypical people.
This post makes me so mad. Holy shit. It's Autism, they're lives aren't ruined. I have autism and I'm very glad to be alive. The person that has made this comment spends way too much time on the internet and not enough interacting with people offline.
Antinatalism is a thing that could only thrive on the internet in a community full of people that get fed nothing but bad news all day. Go outside. The world isn't as bad as you think
WTF are they talking about? I've known lots of autistic people who lead very normal lives... I suspect the person who wrote this "rant" is either an edgy teenager or a basement dwelling neckbeard who believed himself capable of "curing" one of his lesbian friends
I am difficult at times. So are you people. But I found love and so did or will you too (yes, even you Steffan). The point I’m trying to make is: It doesn’t matter how broken we are, we are more human than this hate filled person ever will be.
Antinatalist here - the rhetoric in that post is horrible, and is not representative of antinatalism as a whole.
Antinatalism isn’t the belief that a certain group shouldn’t reproduce - it’s that nobody should. The world is fucked, and nonconsensually bringing anyone into it is morally reprehensible. It’s not eugenics, it’s voluntary extinctionism.
For the people that have been born, however, everyone deserves respect and equity. Ableism, or any other kind of discrimination, is just wrong, and makes you a shitty person. Just like the person who made that post.
According to some predictions, climate change will cause up to 3 billion refugees by the end of the century. The world isn't exactly the most stable right now either, in part due to the beginning effects of climate change.
Not that I necessarily agree with it, but coming to the conclusion that it's not necessarily moral to bring a child into that world or contribute to further suffering, isn't particularly insane or inhumane.
It's not a particularly novel or outlandish idea either. From Sophocles to Shakespeare. To be or not to be, is an age old question.
Not that going on about how much you hate children and people who have children all day on the internet, is a particularly healthy hobby, obviously.
And to add to all this, the ice caps will likely be melted completely in the next decade causing the Blue Ocean Event, where massive amounts of previously reflected solar radiation will instead be absorbed by the oceans, causing the release of huge amounts of methane from the sea bed and the earth to cook in it's own atmosphere.
This is a good explanation for anyone interested in further reading on the BOE. Look this up for yourselves with other sources though.
(You'll want to find out how much ice coverage is left at the poles, how much we've lost this year so far, and the loss projection for if the next 5 years are as hot as 2023. Then look up what will happen to the earth with all the unreflected solar radiation we'll be absorbing without the ice caps).
Billions of people are going to die in the next 30 years due to climate collapse. There may not be 3 billion of us left to be clinate refugees by the end of the century.
I’m not saying we should kill people, I’m saying making more is wrong.
It is a nonconsensual act whereupon you are forcing life and all its travesty onto another being, when they were perfectly fine not existing.
Call me insane if you want, I couldn’t care less. Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole, and bringing someone else into the world to be both a victim and perpetrator of the issue is wrong.
I think your perspective about life is blinded by pessimism, and you're treating that pessimism as absolute fact. Many people view life as a wonderful thing, are thrilled to exist for the time that they do, and see creating a new life to experience the wonders of living as a gift.
Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole
You're sounding like Agent Smith from the matrix. Come on. Unplug from the negative feedback loop for a bit.
There are good things to experience, yes. If you’re already alive, then by all means, seek to find happiness and enjoyment. Don’t force someone else into that endless struggle. You can make no guarantees that their life won’t be one of pure suffering, and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And again, we are destroying this planet - not just for us, but for all life on it. We are the problem.
I agree with the other commenter recommending therapy. When you don't see it as "life is pain and the future is hopeless", you might sound less like a scifi villain calling for human extinction.
“Existence is suffering” is a foundational tenet for many worldviews and religions, not just antinatalism. Existence is literally the first cause to all suffering - no existence, no suffering.
Acknowledging that doesn’t make me depressed or pessimistic, it’s just acceptance how things are.
You’re free to live in whatever fantasy you want, though. That’s your right.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “get help” is generally bad form
Your worldview is literally calling for the extinction of all humans. You need to come back to reality and stop convincing yourself that this is normal or healthy.
If someone experiences so much suffering that they are pushed to “opt out of it”, it would have been better not to force them to live and experience the suffering in the first place. Just because someone can take themselves out of it doesn’t make the suffering okay to inflict.
Yes, and I think that is bad. I just also think that this isn't because of anything intrinsic to being alive and/or autistic, but largely due to external factors.
Yeah righto bud, I'm not victim blaming anybody. I'm just shit-talking a bunch of sad defeatists on the internet who think they're smarter than everybody else just because they've taken the fucking blackpill when in reality they're so far down this hole that they're running defense for fucking eugenics against their own community.
On the off chance that you were being sincere in your question as to what we can do to actually improve the situation, the answer is to participate in an existing community dedicated to that very purpose. Collective action is generally way more effective than anything an individual can do. Are there barriers to doing this? Potentially. What can you do about that? I guess you'll just have to figure it out; I don't fucking know the specific circumstances of your personal situation, nor those of any groups around you.
Yeah but like, why not let those with the best understanding of the particular circumstances make that decision on a case-by-case basis instead of unilaterally saying that because some people are probably going to have a shitty life no one gets to make more (people)?
Firstly, I don't have a kid. Being sterile (and also just not wanting any), I am quite unlikely to ever have a kid. Ideally we as a society would work to avoid water wars happening. My point is that we should improve our collective state of affairs somewhat, rather than resigning ourselves to the idea that to exist is to suffer like a bunch of loser doomers.
This is an incredibly dumb idea. It will also die out for incredibly obvious reasons because everyone else will keep reproducing while antinatalists descend into irrelevancy.
Genesis 1:28 and al-Baqarah 2:187 instruct reproduction. Antinatalists are destined for the fire.
Consciousness is required to give consent, requiring consent to be born is a paradox.
This is a philosophical debate of which i see only 2 possible outcomes.
Life itself is a fundamental bad and negative the only ethical thing to do is fully halt the circle of reproduction to minimize all harm
Life itself is a fundamental good and positive, we must nurture and protect it to minimize harm against it. Prioritizing well being and personal happinesses while finding a “cure” for intolerance, hate and greed.
Forcing birth upon someone is fundamentally wrong, and the only ethical thing to do is halt the cycle of reproduction to prevent further harm. We should also strive to minimize further harm to those already alive by prioritizing well-being and personal happiness, while searching for a “cure” for intolerance, hate, and greed.
Can you give some context on how that would look like in practice that is not akin to everybody suicide? If we stop the cycle of reproduction then humanity will go extinct in about a century (not considering Longevity escape velocity which would significantly alter the subject context)
Trying to create a better world and to find cures for harm is a difficult challenge, i am willing to sacrifice some of my own life (time, body and energy) for the common good knowing that future generations will be better off. But doing so knowing that in a century none of that work will matter at all would be detrimental to my ability to find meaning and therefore wellbeing in my life. Besides that, knowing that we have collectively chosen extinction rather then trying to archive the vast untapped potential our conscious minds still hold to grow would bring me great pain and sadness.
There is also the matter with what are we going to do with all other species on our planet? Do we respect their ability reproduce because they have no conscious concept of consent or we will we nuke the entire planet in the hope that their is no and never will be any other life out there?
Also a different question with a more spiritual angle: How can you be certain that there was nothing within you that existed before conception which did consent to being born as a human being in a random family. If we halt reproduction then we are forcing non existence on potential consciousness. In absolutes you can chose to end your life when you have it but you cannot give life to yourself when you don't have it.
It's not eugenics to be sad for 3 new autistic kids being brought into this world to suffer and die in the catasrophic climate collapse we're so dead set on, it's fucking empathy.
People are born neurodivergent but they are not born suicidal, the reason suicide is the leading cause of death is because we are a minority that is not well understood by the dominant majority, that is where almost all the hearth comes from.
Schizofrenia is also understood as a form neurodivergency and has quite some overlap with autosm. Most people know it as a horrible, scary mental illness but this is only the case in modern societies. Where in a big city people experience hallucinations of yelling, monsters and many intens negative emotions in natural communities they experience quite the opposite, visions of ancestors, angels, positive emotions and artistic beauty in things.
Instead of conceding that ‘life is pain, so we should not live,’ we should advocate that ‘society is inflicting pain, and we must reform it to prevent such suffering.’”
You don't know if said persons are gonna have a bad life, you just don't know.
Autism can be bat for some, maybe more than few, but is not for everybody, Humanity always has faced existencial crisis, we will fix climate change on way or another.
I think your belief system is a rare example actual Evil. You're literally advocating for the elimination of music, of art, of science, of anyone who could even appreciate those things. No more Rembrandt or Dali or Mozart or ... anything. And you've gotten so twisted up inside, ostensibly because some people live sad, hard lives, that you think that's a good thing.
Your assuming antinatalism is a plague that will infect everyone with "I aint having kids". 99% of people out here trying to have ten kids it seems. There are more trans people than antinatalists. Y'all are freaking out about a niche philosophy.
They're not advocating for a lower population. They're advocating for human extinction.
As in, we should all let the torch of consciousness burn out. I don't know if I'd call it evil, but it's definitely one of those severely misguided takes that you almost exclusively see on the internet.
At current rate we will never leave this planet, and it will die. If not by climate change then the Sun will go Red Giant and swallow us. Or a meteor. Something. All species will go extinct sometime.
You're here afraid a few people believing that we should go extinct when there are 8 billion people and rising is gonna cause actual extinction. Fucking calm your tits, dude.
Arguing that people must exist so as to maintain art and science is rather silly. Art and science exist for our utility; we are under no obligation to them. If people decide not to reproduce, that is their right.
Isn't it just the belief that nobody should have kids though? I'd have thought the while extinction part would rank higher than the culture loss. And evil seems a bit extreme, sounds more like apathy and loss of hope to me. Not saying there aren't some messed up people in the group though.
Yeah, this. My biggest issue with the fundamental anti-natalist position is that it's a totally blackpilled one that ultimately devalues any positive experiences life brings when compared with even the potential for any bad thing to happen, regardless of magnitude.
I’m advocating for the elimination of poverty, disease, death, pollution, war, hate, and all human suffering.
Sure, there are some neat things in this world that are worth experiencing if you were forced to live. If you’re already alive, of course you should seek to find happiness and enjoyment in the little time you have.
Still doesn’t justify forcing more people into the world to exacerbate the problems we have - overpopulation being a major one.
It’s not evil. Things were fine before us, and things will be fine after us.
"Things" were not observable by anything with the capability to designate them as such, so no they were not "fine" in any meaningful sense of the word.
You're literally doing the speech the villain does to make him seem reasonable.
Semantics, but if you really want to get into it, a lack of ability for things to be good or bad is still better than the existence and perpetuation of suffering.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “see a therapist” and comparing them to a villain is fucking disgusting
Surely the core arguments that an anti-natalist might bring forward apply to any sentient beings, right? Like, a cat didn't give prior consent to existing any more than a human did. Ergo, I do think it's reasonable to point out that there would be no observer that could witness, much less enjoy any benefit from, the anti-natalist ideal world.
It's ironic that the creator of evolution (Charlie Darwie), what I assume the foundational theory of their community, is considered to have been autistic.
Always amused me to see people posting that shit and then later posting about the Paradox of Tolerance.
Apparently fascists should be lined up against the wall and the autistic kids should be right next to them. If those people got their wish ALL Neuro-Divergent children would cease to exist. "You will be born PURE or you will not be born at all!" seems to be their motto.
Bro Autism is not a death sentence, geez. It's simply a neurodivergency. The world would absolutely be worse off without the ASD community as part of it. And I'm not even speaking poetically here. As someone with hyperactive type ADHD, ASD peers can be an absolute relief to talk to.
Neurotypical folks can be quite frustrating at times. Though they may not realize it, there's a lot of indirect communication between NT folks. They tend to imply what they mean, rather than say what they mean directly. Quite frustrating. My anecdotal experience has led me to believe that the average ADHD or ASD person is a far more effective communicator.
Reddit being reddit for whole ass reddit post
Getting permaban for getting into an argument with nazis and other totalitarianist was the best thing that happened to me.
Outside of r/aspiememes that site is a cesspool
Abortion and euthanasia are going to lead to autistic people being murdered. Neo progressives already believe that disabled children should be aborted and atheists admit that "life begins some time after birth" meaning they openly support euthanasia up to age five in some cases. A lot of neo progressives think the most humane option for disabled children is abortion or euthanasia at a young age.
Autistic people might be too much but we regularly nudge people to do eugenics if they have a chance to birth babies with down syndrome. "Eugenics" is mostly bad but I doubt people would disagree with the prevention of creating babies with huge disabilities. Autistic people are in the gray area imo.
"Eugenics" is the state-sponsored regulation of human reproduction. Eugenics functions via public policy and the rule of law. Until it is mandated by the state, it is not eugenics.
You want to abort your baby because you don't like its genetics, that is your decision to make; the state should have no input. You want to privately persuade or even bribe people to abort or keep certain kids based on their genetic heritage, that is disgusting, but it is not eugenics.
The problems of eugenics are not due to the suppression of genetic diseases, but because of state interference in reproductive decisions.
Adopting is great. Not everyone should do it.
Autism is difficult. Their lives are not ruined.
I can see some of the arguments of antinatalists but the online culture of it seems to have a nihilism/blackpill problem.
It's autism, not a death sentence.
To me, it seems like online discussions for any stance, has to turn to it's most extreme. It's like their way or highway type of deal. Whatever happened to nuanced discussion, I wonder.
I think it stems from the more difficult cases, and people failing to realize the actual suffering that comes with that.
As with all extremes, a lot of emotions are involved. People who see / experience the hardships don't feel heard. As the general tendency is that one needs to be alive and that this is good, this hurts people who do not want to live (like this).
Going to a lot of trouble to conceive, and bringing triple the amount of possible suffering that people experience can be felt as worse than a death sentence. Therefore people feel the need to be vocal about this.
But in the end I agree, there is nuance. But there is the extreme as well, which weighs heavier here?
Exactly this.
A life like the ones that suffer, you just wouldn't wish upon someone innocent. Though going full eugenics is a bit too far off the end there. I get it, but I don't agree that everyone should avoid having children.
Though it does pain me to see this one couple (both autistic) have a child without considering how the kid will be affected. Despite one of them having a low-functioning brother who is a burden (and I don't mean lightly) on their mother and she never helps her out.
It's an extreme case here. I just hope their daughter will have a good life.
you're right but don't underestimate redditor's self righteousness so fast. They convinced themselves they are absolutely right and moral so everyone who thinks differently is evil and the one who aren't as radicals are idiot. This post stems first from a posture which is basically "I know EXACTLY how to live the perfect healthy life and everyone who thinks differently is brainwashed and stupid"
We would certainly be better off without it. Doesn't it have a much higher likelihood of happening when women bear children around 40? If we know a partial cause then maybe we should avoid it. I saw a billboard about a 58-year-old woman having a baby and I was horrified.
Who, exactly, do you imagine you are speaking for?
Me with autism.
Hell yeah brudder stay spicy
then why do you use "we". That's not your personal experience you're sharing on the world, that is your position on how we should run the world.
Lastly, starting a point on the autistic community by saying "we would certainly be better off without it" is concerning
That's a bit rude. Sure OPs point is a bit extreme, but no need to wish death on someone for having a differencing opinion
I missed something. Where did death come in?
The post I had replied to was deleted but basically it was someone who basically said kys
That's why I said "please"
I believe that just makes you look worse :(
Shame :(
No u
🔥🥵🔥 i thank you this is lovely
I love your username
I love lamp
Why do they think autism is some sort of horror story where kids suffer in agony or something?
Autism Speaks played a huuuge part in making that the dominant narrative about autism for the past 20 years or so.
In the 00s (maybe early 10s?) one of the videos they made for parents of newly diagnosed children had a parent talking about how she was considering driving off a bridge to kill herself and her autistic child, but didn't because her non-autistic child was also in the car. This was presented as totally normal and just a way to prepare for how an autistic child will ruin your life.
Autism Speaks is disgusting. What an awful organization. I wish more people knew that.
I didn't know until I saw it getting trashed on the autism subreddit and asked why... So keep getting the word out!
I will. I don't have ASD but several of my loved ones do and I'm glad Autism Speaks hasn't gotten to them and made them ashamed of who they are.
I had no idea that existed. Wtf
But, there must be ways to manage the ill effects of Autism. Parents can talk to experts, instead dealing with it on their own.
I get what you’re saying, and caretakers certainly deserve support, even (especially!) when they’re talking about wanting to kill their own child, even if for no other reason than the child’s safety.
IMO Autism Speaks’ biggest issue is that their money comes from marketing autism as a horrible disease that affects only or primarily children, which only increases stigma against autistic people of all ages. They also have the problem of having no autistic members involved in a meaningful capacity in the organization, and AFAIK the only autistic member of their board of directors left because they were essentially ignored. That absolutely flies in the face of decades of disability advocacy, where a common refrain is “nothing about us without us.”
TL;DR: caretakers deserve support but Autism Speaks is super awful.
Malicious misinformation is nothing new I guess.
very sane behaviour regarding your child.
When that kind of parents how their autistic child is very difficult and that it keeps getting worse I am always feeling like : Karen, only 10 % of your kid issues are caused by his autism, the 90% are 100% because you treat him like shit and he is turbo-traumatized
Suicide is one of the top three causes of death for autistic people. The other two are heart disease and epilepsy complications, and on average we die under 50 years of age.
What they don't understand though is that the suicide part isn't caused by autism. It's caused by people being horrible to each other. Or in other words: people with autism die because people without it make living hell for them.
Yes, but that's not due to autism, that's due to the way society treats autistic people.
So when is that going to change
I'd love to know.
My daughter has it, and I'd say about 5-10 years ago it changed. The amount of acceptance is so much higher than it used to be. Obviously we need work, but hell in my city there are special times at both grocery stores and movie theatres for neuro-diverse people. The difference to a decade ago is extreme.
It's beginning to change in the academic world. The deficit model is falling for the difference/diversity paradigm.
no
actually everyone treat others like shit. But what NT have is a much stronger upport circle and fewer difference.
By fewer difference I mean that you cant pick on someone that everyone around him does : A boss can't really bully a NT for using implicite dicourse when all of their collegues does the exact same, they would immediately realise something is wrong. The average NT knowing jackshit about autism, it can be easy to trick them into thinking that ND should "just make an effort" to understand implicite discourse.
That's sad part, we are technically all targeted with the same amount of flak so if you are slightly out of cover, you get blasted away
That's simply not true.
that might be an exageration but that is surprisingly common
supposedly
Do tell us your theory.
no thanks, but if youve got some proof id be happy to read it
So you don't have any idea why so many people on the spectrum commit suicide but you don't think it's the way they're regularly mistreated?
i think that the mistreatment of folks with autism is not enough to explain to have this high of a suicide rate, and that autism does just make life harder to deal with, regardless of discrimination
It's also the 2nd leading cause of death for 2SLGBTQ+ youth:
So there's a lot more suffering in general for anyone basically not white, straight, (and depending on circumstances, male). Autism isn't a death sentence. While people with severe autism struggle a lot more than most, they can have very good fulfilling lives. Source: My daughter (23) has (moderate) autism and her best friend (23) has severe.
can add the healthy for white and straight if you're in the USA. Also just methodologically poc are faced with very different risk with racially motivated crimes and the fact that ethnic getthoisation create strong social support structures will help curb suicidal tendencies.
Even if the struggles can be similar, the supplementary problem with LGBTQ+, is loneliness. There are actually very few of them, so finding people like you that understand your struggles is very difficult. That really hit me when I talked for the first time with people leading association supporting LGBTQ, most of the work is reaching out to people to tell them they are not alone
It's a mix of the ABA industry, early researchers and socio-environmental issues.
Early researchers cultivate the myth of the normative human. Autists were an altered version of human that has to be corrected. If a human wasn't corrected to match the norm, it could not be happy in life and will suffer it's entire life.
So autists have to be corrected (we know it's false) to be happy whatever the means. It ended with electric shock and others stuffs seen during WW2. This is how ABA was created. It relies on the fears of autists not being happy until they are corrected.
ABA, PBT and all the others acronyms has built an industry worth a lot of money. They finance more research on the field with huge standard, COI and consent issues among others. They need to keep the fear in the population to keep the business up.
The third is the new way to see autism. The struggles of autists are mostly socio-environmental. It means that issues aren't the person and autism. It's a lack of acceptance of the diversity by the neurological majority. It implies discrimination, patronizing, and violence against autists.
We are still there with mental illness. People have this idea that there are "normal" people and those who require therapy, as if there is a single person on earth that didn't come out of their childhood with some level of trauma.
Well actually not that much. Two things. First, some trauma can be dealt with thanks to your support circle. Second, the thing is our experience of others is never representative of the overall society. You could look at my social circle and claim it as an argument. But that is not taking in account that my circle is small and not made of average people.
Lastly. Everyone suffered a cold once, they were not damned, not everyone is constantly sick. Though you wouldn't say there is no difference between sick and healthy people. Still everyone will go to the doctor once. In my country that is this approach much closer to physiological medicine that mental health professional promote.
Taking a quick look at the comments I see we're back to 2000s autism speaks bullshit.
Autistic people aren't suffering unless you're putting them in a system that treats them as subhuman.
I'm not speaking for autistic people here, but I am speaking as parent to two children (now adults) on the spectrum.
Autistic children do not ruin your life and do not have ruined lives themselves. As with all parenting, sometimes things are very, very difficult and sometimes things are very, very easy. This isn't unique to raising a neurodiverse child, this is just parenting. The unique challenges that parenting a neurodiverse child brings are 99% of the time caused by how society thinks these children/adults are and assumptions about whats best for them without actually asking them rather than any sort of intrinsic issue caused by their autism or ADHD or any other neurological difference. For the remaining 1% of the time, you just do your best.
The narrative that neurological difference, in particular autism, ruins lives has, in its modern form, been with us since Andrew Wakefield first perpetuated his fraudulent claims of vaccine damage causing autism. It was spread by antivaxx/autism activist parent groups like Jenny McCarthy's Generation Rescue and the truly despicable people at Autism Speaks. These are the people who've ruined lives.
I like you. I have 2 autistic kids (still kids) and one neurotypical kid. There is no difference in raising them. Every kid has their unique challenges. I never raise my children differently unless it requires it.
Agreed! I am also super grateful for the unique experiences autism has provided our family (a trip to the fan museum and carwash show, among others).
Tell me more about this car wash show....ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪
The International Carwash Show happens each year in Las Vegas. It is all sorts of people in the industry: owners, manufacturers, services etc. Everyone was so nice. They even let us walk through the carwash equipment when it was turned on!
Are you certain your adult children don't resent being born with autism?
Because I put on a hella front for my mom. Just throwing that out there.
I'm not naive (or arrogant) enough to think I know everything my kids are thinking and neither am I suggesting their lives are 100% perfect but all of them (on the spectrum or not) are all pretty forthright, confident adults. When they were teens they of course went through some shit related to their being autistic, but none of that was because they were autistic, it was down to how other people/situations made them feel because they were autistic. I'm as sure as any parent can ever be that I've never detected any kind of prolonged resentment or unhappiness at the fact of their autism.
We never taught them that 'autism is a superpower' because it isn't. Sometimes it has advantages and sometimes there are disadvantages and describing someone elses life as superpowered puts an unrealistic expectation of happiness and accomplishment on them. By the same token, neither are their lives a ruin and my life as their parent most certainly wasn't ruined.
That's a meaningless distinction. The end result is identical.
It would be foolhardy to say that you--an assumed neurotypical person--need to be close, personal friends with everyone in your life. You select your friends--and they select you--based on how well you fit each other. The fundamental problem is that autistic people, broadly speaking, don't fit with neurotypical people. A high-functioning autistic person will eventually realize that, and realize just how utterly alone they are in life. They will realize that the people they think of as friends will never think of them as a friend. Their social circle, if they're lucky, might consist of a small handful of people with overlapping interests, but are not an actual social support network.
I discovered this in 2014 when I failed to complete a suicide, and lost 95% of the people I believed were friends.
I am functional on a surface level. I have a job, I'm mostly self-sufficient, I'm married to someone that is also likely neurodivergent after having been in an abusive relationship for over a decade. I've noticed that the less able we are to mask, the more our social circle contracts. We can not reasonably expect that people will life us, or include us in their social circles.
I disagree, its not in my opinion a meaningless distinction at all. A difficulty in cognition might prevent a person from reading War And Peace. Thats a direct result of having a learning disability. Someone with a visual disability who cannot access audio books or braille versions of War And Peace is not being affected by their disability but by the fact an accessible version is not available.
You might argue the end result is the same - an inability to read War And Peace - but the point is that for the person with a visual disability the situation is fixable if society is prepared to make the effort.
In regards to your situation you've had terrible experiences but they are not down to the fact youre autistic, they're down to the fact your NT 'friends' weren't really friends at all. I'm sorry they let you down but I'm pretty sure I could find similar stories where nobody in the story was autistic.
Autism is a disability. A person with an IQ of 50 simply isn't going to be able to understand War and Peace; you can't dumb the book down sufficiently for someone to understand if they're going to struggle all their life to be able to put on shoes that lace instead of using Velcro. People with dyslexia can listen to audiobooks; there's no audiobook version of deep, fulfilling friendships and social support networks, because people on the autistic spectrum are going to have a hard time offering neurotypical people the what they need. A person that's on the autism spectrum is never going to be able to have social interactions in the same way that neurotypical people can, and those social interactions are necessary to being able to function in society. Some people on the spectrum may be able to appear normal on a surface level and will be able to get by, but it's fucking exhausting. People that have the misfortune to be lower functioning than I am may not be able to mask effectively at all.
That's without even getting into constrained interests, difficulty with coordination and forming positive habits--I still struggle to remember to brush my teeth daily in my middle age--or executive dysfunction.
I never claimed autism wasn't a disability. The fact that autistic people are disabled in some ways isn't in question. But its neither just a disability or - like all disabilities - something that isn't disabling by virtue of the world its part of rather than its intrinsic nature.
For example, you say an autistic person cannot experience social interaction in the same way as a non autistic person. True. But the non autistic person can, with very little adjustment, be aware of that. My kids have good relationships with NT friends and whilst they might not experience them in the same way as NT friendships, they still find them fulfilling.
Those people are likely your kids' best friends. Your kids are likely not their best friends.
Aside from marrying someone that is also neurodivergent, it is unlikely that your children will ever be the best friend of another person. They may be the friend that offers the most help, the person that always shows up to the party with lots of food and a keg, the ones that are always there with tape, boxes, and a truck when someone needs to pack up and move, the one with a spare couch when someone needs a place to stay for a couple days. ...But not the best friend. If they're very, very lucky, they'll end up married to someone else that is also neurodivergent; otherwise, they may end up married to someone that is neurotypical, and will be taken advantage of and/or abused by their partner for their entire life.
That's what you're missing.
Social interactions end up being lopsided, and can never be anything but.
First, I'm sorry for what you've been through. But from my personal experience, I know that I have three friends who have autism and/or ADHD. In each case, I did not know this until they told me. If I can't even know who is autistic without them telling me, how can I treat them differently?
Now I understand that it is possible that some behaviours of mine could make my autistic friends uncomfortable, while not affecting my other friends. But if I am doing something like that, it is out of ignorance rather than malice, and I would of course adjust my behaviour if asked to.
So I don't get why you think autistic people 'don't fit with neurotypical people'. I have friends who speak other languages, and autism is also, in a sense, speaking a different 'body language'. With some effort, we should be able to improve communication.
The fact that you just aren't understanding what I'm saying is demonstrating my point. You aren't able to understand my point of view, and think that everything can just be solved by people working harder. It's the same kind of belief that says that depressed and anxious people can be cured by just thinking happy thoughts and touching grass.
Can you be more specific? Why cannot autistic people fit in with others? Is it that others recognise them as being different and exclude them? Or is it that there are differences in the way we speak or behave that make you uncomfortable? And if it is the latter, what in particular should we change?
Yes 95% of your friends aren't your best friends. They have their own struggle and hardships to deal with. So yes, in your situation both side needed to focus on themselves.
Lastly before being worried about the general population not including you in their social circles, did you ask yourself why you would be in their circles ? Because you were colleagues ? Or neighbour. I also am in a situation were I have virtually no friends and it fucking hurts. Loneliness fucking hurts, it ache the minds and psychology its among the worst pain I ever felt.
Though in the past years I've looked not for others but for things that passionated me first. And there I found people which liked me and that I liked. Some people are wildly different than me, others are likeminded but we connected. I don't know my classmates but I have a few friends among my martial arts club. And I am not unhappy of the lack of connexion I have with my class, I don't think we'd really fit. Despite the social constructs that claims a student's first circle must be his class, I don't, and its fine, I just look elsewhere for people, in place where I fit.
sounds like you resent your mom
How dare you say that to someone with autism about their own experiences? Seems like you're just inflammatory and an asshole.
hi, i am in fact someone else with autism (undiscovered for 30+ years, it was quite a find) but also with a physical birth defect, which was very much defining and way more impactful.
"didn't ask being born" is a trend most people go through at some point, especially in lower classes, where life itself is a struggle if not outright suffering. but who else can you blame for your existence if not your parents?
this is a pain point, which can not be ignored forever. "put on a front" only works until it doesnt anymore, and its better to talk about it instead of waiting until someone snapped. resenting and rebelling against parents is part of growing up, no matter the mental or physical condition.
but no one is really at fault, personally, everyone did their best they could at the time, and the best everyone can do is help each other.
From personal experience, the ability of people in the spectrum to feel happiness depends entirely on whether their parents were willing to make adjustments to see their children feel well. Most will want their child to be just like every other one and will damage them deeply in the pursuit of that.
just popping in to say I love being alive and I'm thankful for my parents keeping me! I made friends with a seagull today. couldn't have done that if I was never born. fuck yeah!
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm.
You're in the right place then
unfortunately, I get that a lot. I'm just kind of a weird dude.
Is reasonable to assume people wouldn't be that sarcastic in a place like this imo.
peak autism board exchange
I need more details about this.
This
That... is a dangerous skill Seagulls are embodiement of pure chaos, be careful with such power
Experience has shown me that the people who are thankful for their life is in the minority compared to the people who suffer their life.
That sucks
I have seen people behave in all sorts of ways
people who suffer their life have a need to express it. People who are fine don't. Simple survivor bias
An autistic life isn't a ruined life.
ITT: people advocating eugenics on themselves. I hate it. I hate seeing it. And stuff like this is psychologically destructive to read for me.
If people here don't like others with similar traits to them advocating that their life and perspective is not valuable and that they should hate it and wish no-one new experience it, I recommend avoiding this thread - even moreso if you have suicidal tendencies. It was very upsetting for me ;-;, even though I personally have no intent to have kids.
frfr, it's so fucking tragic.
I went 36 years without even knowing. Corporate greed has done more to ruin my life than my mental illnesses have.
Same. Out of all my lost jobs, only two can be proven (by me only of course) to be because of some autistic trait I have.
While I don't value my own life as much as I should, I know I have value to others, and most of that is due to my traits. In fact, I'm starting a job today that wants me specifically because of those traits. I never thought I'd work again.
I have saved dozens of kitten lives, who go on to make their new human's life better.
I used to hate myself. I've learned to embrace the way I am and couldn't imagine being any other way. The people whose lives I have made a positive impact on would agree. I don't have to rule the world, but my household is efficient because of me.
Eugenics isn't the answer. I'd bet if we had the right resources available, none of the people in this thread would say that. Everyone deserves a chance at a good life. Corporate greed is the reason we don't have those resources.
As someone on the spectrum its ridiculous to say there life ruined first off its a spectrum so who knows how server there condition is and they can learn to live with help
"Now you have ruined three lives forever"
bruh
The sad thing is there's tons of autistic people on that sub that geniuely think like that about themselves. One of my worst experiences posting was interacting with that place and getting another autistic person talking about how they wish to die, how they wanted to be hate crime'd and literally talked about offing themselves just to spite me. That person blocked me so I have no idea what they are up to these days. This was nearly a year ago and there's a good chance they've taken their life since then.
I fucking hate r/antinatalism. Its 100% should be banned. Its literally just severely depressed people talking themselves deeper into depression.
I'm a long time.lurker there before leaving reddit for good. I've seen most of the posts for years.
Antinatalism is not a depression cult, though it does attract that type but more of a "we see life as a net negative experience and it isn't our right to inflict it on others".
It's why they're so pro adoption since those kids are already born so the damage has been done. I don't think those people are depressed or suicidal.
I'm 40 so I've been around. Ever since middle school I knew I love my theoretical kids too much to have them born into this world. So far, there hasn't been any kind of evidence or experience I had to change my mind. I'm a wage slave. My "kids" would be wage slaves. They might have to fight in resource wars when climate change or rise of Nazis start really ramping up. I don't want them to have a worse life than me and I cannot provide or promise one. I don't think there ever was a time in history where procreation was a good idea.
You can do everything right and still get a rocket dropped on your home. Your kids can still become target practice for the next psycho at school. Hell, your kids could become the psychos! Every evil person that exists or has has been someone's "beautiful baby".
To me this comes off as gambling. You are gambling that you will have a bright, kind, Neurotypical kid that will grow up to be great and spread happiness and what not.
Thing I don't get is why people find Antinatalist philosophy so goddamn triggering. We can't change your mind you are going to do whatever the fuck you want. So many hateful responses to it when you can just walk away. Why?
And as far as the OG post, if you are autistic, know that autism is hereditary and still have kids in spite of all that, that's an evil sadistic act! How can you hate your theoretical kids so damn much? I feel sorry for them, but fuck the mother.
Absolutely it is a eugenics flavored death cult
Gambling where your actions and your relatives actions can impact 95% of the results is gambling. Never heard of a school shooters who had a perfectly normal education before. Either they were brought up to be like that or drifted away toward horrors with no one giving a damn
It is very good to read a theoritical book, but the first thing outsiders will look at are the followers of said philosophy. And for antinatalist they are a shittons of eugenicist and insensitive people. The main virtual breeding ground for that philosophy is reddit. Already said everything but let's go on. There I saw a post by a man whose sister announced him she was pregnant and he reacted by berating her, throwing mean and spiteful remarks and every comment was cheering him and trashing the woman. The real question is : why are antinatalist so triggered and hateful towards even their loved ones who don't follow their philosophy ? The reality portrayed by antinalist is one where they are bothered by family members trying to convince them to have kids or weirded out that you don't want one while they disown their sisters who get pregnant.
And i won't talk about the misoginy
It's true though. Living with autism is like choosing the Nightmare difficulty option in life.
Source: me
Look here, Mario. You are speaking for exactly one (1) person. Your personal experience of autism is not universal. Some of us just have better circumstances. Some of us are spiteful bitches who live for the difficulty. My point being, some of us actually like being alive, and are okay with being autists.
The ratio of votes says otherwise.
Good for you for having an enjoyable life. I hope you continue to do so.
Ironically they do
Well, used to. I stand by my statement.
lol
dude this site is based on reddit, the first upvote is automatically put by your account
You're going through month+ long threads. Ran out of things to look at on the internet? Been there.
you know it takes half a minute to scroll down there. Really don't you have anything better to do than to come and say that ?
Oh I'm sorry to disappoint you. Expecting a proper debate? Or were you just shouting at the clouds at a random anonymous post you disagree with?
I politely disagree.
Autism can* be terrible, just as autism can also allow to have a great life.
So no, is not a true but a loose may.
The people that want to restrict reproduction are acting like eugenicists? I'm shocked. This is my shocked face.
Why is this subreddit full of idiots? They are misrepresenting antinatalism so fucking hard.
Antinatalism is a more deranged branch of eugenics. It's not simply "promoting eugenics" it's a belief that giving birth is the greatest evil one can inflict upon a child and the world at large.
That they'd clearly see us as subhuman isn't surprising given that they at best want our entire species to voluntarily go extinct. Their entire worldview is best summed up as gentle genocide is good.
It's like these people have forgotten there are people with different set of beliefs than their own.
No matter how justified your beliefs are, you cannot impose them on others. This is true for religions and this is true for every single ideological stance out there.
They're nuts, for sure.
It's also ridiculously cruel to create a consciousness knowing it'll die.
Unless you are religious and believe in eternal torment after death, death isn't cruel, it's simply an end to life, a permanent return to nonexistence no more or less cruel than having never been born.
Additionally, while they aren't exactly wrong in that going from nonexistence to existence results in an infinite increase in potential for suffering, that holds true for joy/happiness/pleasure.
Imo bringing someone into being is not cruel nor wonderful, not moral nor immoral. It simply is.
This is the only good logical argument I’ve heard against it and I’m on board. People get too emotional talking about this and antinatalists generally approach this from a point of logic.
Most of the arguments I’ve seen so far are from sheltered first world people that have never suffered. They almost believe it’s a choice or that depression is just being really sad.
They deny that depression can come up from actual consistently repeated experiences that someone can have no control over.
The fact that most people on planet earth are suffering is what drives the idea. If your consciousness randomly hopped to the next person born on earth, would you want to live that life?
No, it isn't. There, now we're on equal rhetorical footing unless you'd like to support that incredibly bold statement with ... anything? A link? A train of thought?
What is the alternative? Giving up on humanity existing?
We can't change that this how life exists in our reality.
I would say absolutely YES.
I think antinatalism is a really interesting philosophy. But it falls apart as soon as you discriminate - It is fair to question the ethics of reproduction, but as soon as you discriminate you end up in eugenics territory. This subreddit is really hostile sadly. there is a lot of ableism under the disguise of antinatalism
True antinatalism would say everyone should not have kids, regardless of anything. Of course nobody is enforcing this so it's a kinda do whatever but maybe think twice before having kids.
I don't have ASD but I have ADHD, and based on my experience I think it's extremely fair to see knowingly inflicting upon another living being a disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life, as fucked up and immoral
It's like pugs and pitbulls, many people can agree in the thought "why are we intentionally creating more canines with terrible disabilities which badly hurt them for the rest of their life?", so why is it so bad when the same logic is applied to humans?
I think it's dumb to describe it as "eugenics", considering that's a term almost entirely associated in the modern day with Nazism, forced imprisonment/torture/forced sterilization of certain groups, and racist beliefs. Wheras this seems concerned with wanting people to not suffer nearly as much after they're born, so they're expressing how they're upset that people chose to create a new life with more suffering than average when there's tons of equally good alternatives, and I think that's pretty different than flat out promoting genocide...
What's wrong with adoption anyways? It's pretty selfish to bring a new life into this world for your own personal satisfaction when you could literally just take a child who's already out there suffering and make them not suffer for no extra loss.
I find it stupid that they describe it as "ruined lives" though. Especially for the parents, like wtf just be a good parent? It's not like most parents have a kid with no difficult challenges to face whatsoever. When you become a parent you sign up to being exposed to any and every possibility that could come from a kid. If you become a parent and then go "woe is me, I didn't expect autism so I can't deal with this, don't blame me for not parenting correctly" then you shouldn't have become a parent. The only way parents can "ruin" their own lives is if they're a shitty parent, which unfortunately a majority of people are...
Motherfucker what are you talking about? I am literally just here to vibe, it's the fault of the current system for refusing to support any kind of variety. Autism isn't fucking osteoporosis, I'm not in pain, I'm just fucking different.
Autistic people aren't suffering unless you're putting them in a system which refuses to treat them as anything other than subhuman.
As an autistic person (diagnosed by an actual professsional, not by tiktok), I must say I am happy existing lol
This is the case. One thing is treating all humans with respect, and another is knowingly contributing to someone having a more difficult life. You can love the ones who already exist without passing on your genetic nonsense to new ones.
I have ASD and ADHD, generally pretty happy to be here.
Autism is a spectrum and most of us are perfectly functional, happy, productive people.
It's nothing like pugs or pitbulls, frankly that's kind of offensive. You're likening us to a genetic mistake. Most of the time I find myself wondering why the neurotypicals are so goddamn dysfunctional.
Who the fuck do you think you are too suggest that I, and many of my friends, shouldn't exist?
You're describing eugenics, call it what it is. It's not my fault you have shitty bedfellows.
The antinatalism subreddit (and similar groups elsewhere) is one of the most toxic places on the internet. It just reeks of hatred, and worse yet, treats that hatred as some sort of virtue.
Go live your life however you want, kids or no. But grouping up to talk shit about children or people who start families is just gross.
They can't, they have to tell the world how better they are because they didn't finish inside.
"It's not a toxic stew of depression and misanthropy guys, it's a totally valid belief system!"
This isn't the first time I've seen it here or on reddit either, and it's honestly sad.
These groups always seem like doomers who have ingested so much negativity that they've developed depression. Either that, or they're taking the loooong way to just telling their moms that they don't want to start a family.
It's great that they aren't procreating then.
I lurked for a while there, and the most horrible realisation is that many had children, they just regretted so much. Those kids are fucked
That's really sad.
And it also has the same energy as your divorced uncles telling you their theories about how "marriage is horrible"
That's... why they're there.
That isn't a dunk lol
I have this theory that negative affinity groups (a term I made up for groups based on antipathy for something or someone) have a tendency towards toxic behavior. When you gain connection and social clout for dunking on someone or something, there's very little incentive to be fair to them or show any kind of nuance.
Contrast with groups with affirmative goals or a defined object of interest. The positive groups can measure progress towards their goals or new and interesting perspectives on their objects.
I don't know. I hate the fact that I was born autistic. Unlike a lot of autistic people, I refuse to think of it as some kind of 'superpower' or positive thing.
I was born defective. I'm literally a broken human who doesn't function correctly.
I know that I sure as hell wish I wasn't born, and whilst I'm sure those mothers are going to do a great job with their children, I also don't think that I should have children at the risk of passing it down and letting another person suffer the way I have.
We think similarly. Autism makes life difficult. I think scanning for defective genes early in pregnancy is worthwhile to avoid life destroying issues.
Of course autism has a scale of sorts, you can still live somewhat normally, but it sure as hell doesn't feel beneficial
You can't check genes to determine whether people will have a fulfilling and interesting life or whether they are some point will wish they weren't born. You can only make horrifying filtering based on crude guesses, also known as eugenics.
Yeah righto, mate. Sucks for you, but maybe we should just make life easier for the disabled instead of preventing us from existing entirely. Just a thought.
If you were never born then no harm no foul. Nobody is suggesting purging the living.
Yeah sure, but when people single out particular demographics as being somehow less deserving of life, people within those demographics who don't hate their lives tend to get pissy about it for some reason. Go figure.
You are so, so privileged in this regard, you know that right?
It's like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
It's wonderful you and the others in this thread like you are so privileged. You are rare and that is special and I'm genuinely very glad you all had a chance to exist.
But I have to ask: why do you get to override the views and beliefs of those in the autistic community who are not as privileged as you? You don't speak for us, just as we don't/can't for you. We're not advocating for eugenics or telling anyone how to live their lives. All we've done is talk about ethics and not procreated.
So many of us with autism struggle immensly our whole lives, the world around us is so overwhelming, many of us cannot communicate efficiently or at all, and many of us are isolated, vulnerable to abuse and/or have been abused.
Why are you so angry with us for sharing with our autistic community that our lives are so difficult that we wouldn't want to have children who would suffer far worse that we have?
Maybe you can't comprehend this? Idk. Maybe you think we're too autistic and retarded to have our own voice and make decisions about our own bodies?
This instance on us needing to happily want to add more overwhelmed and suicidal offspring to the already overwhelmed suicidal world around us, is creepy.
It really is great that you are young and privileged and hopefull enough to want to make the world a better place because you have so much faith for humanity changing and everything, but we're kinda running out of time for all that now.
Potential offspring will suffer worse than any of us ever have as climate collapse and resource depletion, and not to mention the global rise in fascism, economic collapse (and potentially ww3) and all happening and escalating in the very real near future.
But you keep protesting and doing your social activism work though, I hope it works out for you and you succeed in making having autism easier for people like you and all your children, and you all enjoy the few decades we all have left before the food and water run out and the planet becomes to hot and unstable for human life.
You do you. And let us do our thing please.
Autism is a spectrum, not a binary. It is likely that the vast majority of autistic people lead lives that are, for want of a better word, 'normal'.
Of course, it could also be that all people are autistic to some extent.
Yeah, I am very privileged in a lot of ways. I understand that much, and am extremely grateful for it. I also understand that my opinions are at least in part derived from my privileged personal experience. You're absolutely right in that I cannot speak to the experience of someone who lacks the support I have. I just think that of the billions whose lives are less privileged than my own, many would nevertheless consider their lives to be worth living. I find it tragic when some don't, but I don't think that that is necessarily a universally held opinion by the underprivileged.
I just have to ask: why do you insist on putting questions to me that have false premises? Nowhere in this thread have I said that mine is the universal Autistic^TM view, and yet you ask me why I feel I have the right to override people's opinions. Hell, I don't think anyone else in this thread has argued that there is any obligation to procreate. On the contrary, I have seen people people making the universal claim that autistic lives are especially not worth living and making the prescriptive claim that autists should not reproduce. That is a eugenicist argument.
So you and all the other's in this thread who have been actively insulting and angry and putting words like 'eugenics' in our mouths to shut us down, and calling us stupid, mentally ill, edgelords and psychopaths etc.
You don't think you've been overriding our views as members of the autistic community? Or claiming we are wrong and dangerously mentally unsound for holding them? And you haven't seen anyone advocating for this topic to be banned on social media so we can no longer discuss it?...
Your opinion that autistic people with antinatalist views are advocating eugenics, is so full of logical fallacies I felt like a dick writing them all out (I can put them back if you want tho, I'm just trying not to be too offensive here).
Most people who hear about antinatalism assume stupid shit and get angry and start with the character insults and accusations of racism and eugenics, and about how antinatalism means wanting to mass murder and segregate society.
And most people, like you, refuse to listen when it's explained.
Antinatalists are individuals who have independantly chosen not to procreate for the shared ethical reason of reducing suffering.
I doubt most antinatalists are even aware of the term, they're just people who have looked at the world around them and chosen not to add to it because it's awful.
And yeah, as a person with basic empathy It's really hard to look at the world and not feel sad when you learn people willingly procreate with debilitating hereditary conditions and are knowingly bringing potential suffering into the world for purely selfish reasons.
This is not a world ANYONE should be looking at and wanting to bring more life into, autistic or not.
Talking about it being upsetting and unethical isn't advocating for eugenics.
Antinatalists, autistic or otherwise, aren't forcing anyone to do anything, and talking about our feelings isn't hurting anyone unless folk like you decide to assume nasty shit about us and be rude.
Antinatalists having this conversation somewhere you can see it, are not some eugenist plot to harm people with a sterility causing memetic virus, nor is it some wild attempt at converting the masses into ''"genetic purity"" by forcing idiots like you to call us names because you won't fucking read what we're even actually saying but you're convinced we're evil.
I genuinely doubt most antinatalists even really talk about this anywhere but online in antinatalist spaces, and when it comes up on other forums like it has here. It's not exactly light conversation to have irl when most people react like they have here, or worse.
.
And forgive me if this is a false equivalency but if you believe antinatalism is stupid and we're all crazy eugenicists for not passing down our suffering, but apparently don't believe we should instead be popping out kids like bunnies and gurning about how great everything is,
what do you want from us instead then?
To just not fucking talk about it?
(Sorry, I failed at not being offensive. I'm too tired to care much right now though tbh but if it's any consolation, it's really not personal, I'm just tired, hate most people, and trying to finish this before i go to bed)
There are people who suggest that, though
So when is that gonna happen
Believe it or not, some people are actually working on that instead of just giving up on the world ever improving.
Realistically, either when we start organizing, protesting and fighting, or when the current system is buried underground.
I feel like everyone in this thread are arguing two different things. "My neurodivergence has made my life hell and I wish I never existed in the first place" and "you can live a fullfilling life with neurodivergence" aren't conflicting concepts to me.
I don't know how autism affects your life but I can speak for myself and I know it can be tough, executive dysfuntion has been beating my ass hard for a few years at this point.
Still, I do not think I'm broken because of it, years of conditioning by a society that doesn't give a shit about us and want us to do as much or more than everyone else while also laughing at us really fucks me up, even while being aware of these expectations and lack of structural support.
Also, I wouldn't consider myself really me without the special interests and obsessions I had throughout my life and the ways I have talked and expressed it.
What I have just said most likely won't change anything in your life, but I just wanted to aknowledge how hard it can be while also showing a little bit of what makes me happy about my experience being autistic. I hope for the best for you, friend.
😊
Right there with you
Big same, yet when I got old and stopped caring about anything, and started paying more attention to others than my own problems, I started to notice autistic tendencies in almost everyone I have interacted with. Even people that bully or hate on autistic people. The hyperfixation on negative things or on really awful views on people and the world is always strong in those ones, paired with other weird brain shit like complexes coupled with total denial and inability to accept that they are wrong. I've been feeling like everyone is autistic and there is just more axes to the spectrum than I had been told in the past. Like rather than a point on a line, it's a coordinate in a cube. The most central ones are 'neurotypical' and it moves outward in all directions in 3d space.
On a side note neroatypical/nerotypical as a term kinda pisses me off because I swear it's more typical for people to be neuroatypical than what is considered neurotypical. People just think they are 'normal' but they are wrong. And it's not lesbians or vaccines, if anything its the forever chemicals and microplastics that these evil fucking corpos have been pumping into us and the world and we are only going to see more and more autism, and only the ultra wealthy will be able to call themselves normal while the rest of us will be considered defective.
If I may take a moment to ask... what the fuck are you on about, OP? Absolutely nothing in the screenshot suggests anything even remotely related to eugenics. You took that leap all on your own.
I definitely understand some of the points made by antinatalism. I often struggle with the fact that life is imposed on me rather then chosen and i am definitely considering geopolitics and ecological/economic when i make choices of how many kids i should have, but i long rationalized most issues to be with human society and not with life itself.
I very much believe society can still evolve but to do so we will need to become better people first, the most straightforward way to get better people is to educate them well starting from birth.
The conclusion of antinatalism seems to be a pessimistic extreme, that life itself can only be suffering so we are better of self-extincting ourself by stopping to make new babies but if all progressives followed this rhetoric then the only people Reproducing are those that do not care at all.
In other words in order for their valid criticisms to have any positive effect on society they should still support progressives that are able to provide to have some amount of kids because or else they become a Selffulfilling prophecy of societal decline.
The bias against neurodivergents having children is sadly enough way more common than just those circles, but people like Greta Thunberg are proof that if anything the world needs more Autism and a not cure.
I share your feelings there regarding the choice or lack thereof with being born and seeing some of the points of antinatalism.
I don't think that community fully understands what antinatalism should be. Casually browsing it though, it seems more like they're more going towards eugenics than an actual antinatalist approach - i.e. applied to everyone, nondiscriminately, for reasons of morality (choice vs forced into existence, overpopulation and its ties to resource allocation and requirements and such). Arguably some posts there could be reasonably expected from non-antinatalist people, the sort of 'if you can't afford to raise them, don't have them'.
I might suggest that this is good enough reason to not want to reproduce. If your own life has been shit, you wouldn't want to inflict that on others.
I’ve been there myself and i will always respect a choice people make for themselves, but they shouldn’t impose theirs onto others.
I take great joy in providing my son a life free of the home life experiences that made my youth hell. It still remains to be seen how well he'll avoid the pitfalls of social interaction I suffered through, but I do feel like I'm preparing him far better than I ever was.
Pretty sad that providing a better life for children than we had is apparently a controversial opinion.
Understanding a shitty idea won't make it better. I too understand it, but I reject it completely
If you disagree with the philosophy, I would love to know why.
The whole philosophy is based on a 5yo absolutist idea of "bad" or "harm" and is meaningless to anyone not dead
I don't think five years olds think about the philosophy of antinatalism at all. Its a very interesting philosophy due to the fact that it is about people who don't already exist. Its certainly not a shitty idea, rather one very thought provoking.
@Emerald @escaped_cruzader
Maybe it's not antinatalism at all, maybe it's projected survivors guilt. ya?
I really hate those guys, is ok you don't want kids, don't push it on everyone else.
We have to fix the world one way or another and thruth be told, I think that being so bleak helps nobody.
Yeah this is the point where I'm really glad other people having kids is not his decision to make. I'm high-functioning enough to pass for neurotypical, but my sense of injustice at this is amped beyond deep-fat-fry, on to 'hot as the sun at its core'
What a mean thing... but I agree, I never wanted this...
There's no other way to put it, having kids is extremely selfish.
It's pretty much the epitome of selfishness.
I want to clarify though, this isn't to say that calling only people who to have kids who happen to have disabilities "selfish." Every single parent is extremely selfish (excluding some outliers, obviously, don't "um actually" me).
You just experienced what the people in the antinatalism community experience all the time. They put out a reasoned opinion and get brigaded with "BUT KIDS ARE GOOD YOU'RE A HORRIBLE PERSON REEEEEE"
You are selfish. You use resources that earth doesnt have.
I said parents are selfish for having kids. You can try to downplay it all you want, but you don't have a kid for this future magical mystical kid. You have a kid for your own wants and needs over everything else. Just because having kids is an accepted action in society doesn't make it not selfish. And since you think of "selfishness" as a bad thing, this makes your brain scramble and your cognitive dissonance go into overdrive causing you to come up with completely inept retorts like I'm "selfish" for simply existing and using resources that the Earth clearly has as I'm using them.
The resources are there for you to claim idiotic and insane things because someones children made them.
The only reason you exist is because someone decided that the future of humanity only exists if we make children. You alone cannot decide that a common goal of many is a selfish decision of a single being.
So if you were truly commited to your cause and you wanted your bloodline to die with you, then you could also [i do not condone selfharm, this is purely for argumentation].
I don't have a cause. You're putting words into my mouth because you don't know how to argue in good faith.
You're literally telling me to kill myself because you're personally offended someone dare challenge your preconceived notions of the world. You're a truly fucked up individual. I pray you don't have or ever have any dependents. You're a danger to society.
Antinatalists constantly tell people to kill their offspring. I argue on the same level as antinatalists.
If the cause is to end the suffering that humankind causes then there is only one solution.
If my notions of the world are wrong, and humankind really is only a burden, then youre indirectly also calling for genocide.
You think that isn't fucked up?
Some do, sure, but that's what what antinatalism is. This is like saying "vegans constantly tell meat eaters to kill themselves." Yes, some do, but the point of veganism isn't the death of meat eaters.
No, you argue on your deranged level by justifying it with your antinatalist boogey man. You're like those YouTube conservatives who put up a picture of a blue haired teenager on screen and saying "this is who the liberals are."
This is like saying the way to end violence done in the name of religion is to kill off all religious people. There's more that goes into getting to an end solution than just immediately jumping to it. And it also seems like you think antinatalists entire existence is about making antinatalism, like there's nothing else besides this.
You seem to not know what the word "natalism" means. It's about bring people into the world. It has nothing to do with people who are already living.
And killing off all living people isn't a genocide. It's "speciocide." Completely different things. Comparing antinatalists with people who commit genocides is unbelievably unhinged, but I should have seen it coming from someone like you.
The only thing I think is fucked up in this discussion is people who only believe in antinatalism-lite for eugenic reasons and, of course, you.
No they don't. I think you are fucked up - an angry troll - and this whole convo is now a waste of resources.
No, antinatalism does not call for genocide. Genocide would be a violation of human rights, not having children isn't violating anyone's human rights.
You are insane ha ha! What an idiot. My bloodline will die with me. Now what's with this 'kill yourself' talk?
LOL what a complete lack of self awareness. That was a self-own.
Wow, you seem fun. Hope you aren't using any resources!
Antinatalism can conserve resources by providing the resources to those who already exist rather then creating a new life.
How? The Resources you use to survive are made thanks to previous generations of kids.
You said in a previous comment
but now you are making a good point about how people can also make resources. Thats very contradictory.
I said a lot of dumb and mean things in this thread. Yes, it contradicts itself. I'm sure at the time of writing this i've already forgotten what i was arguing for and just wanted to be right.
I based my "knowledge" on antinatalism on the 2 i've talked to and they were of the "killing yourself is the only way to be moral" kind.
After all what the others in this thread have told me is right, i've just been a cunt and angry for some reason. Please discount all i've written in here as "dumb person having an ego problem".
I firmly believe most of our problems come from thick cunts like this.
I can't believe the willfull ignorance of people. There are examples of thousands of people with autism becoming amazing people. I feel that reason is impossible for some
Quite a few people here on the comments are siding with the antinatalist narrative, but I don't think this is rational at all, in fact it's dangerous. Sure, you can individually opt to not bring more people into the world because you believe it would bring more suffering than happiness, but if this rhetoric spreads, the logical conclusion (heavily extrapolating without considering anything else) is the end of humanity which solves nothing, and while it prevents suffering, it also prevents happiness. If done and advocated in the pretext that we are ruining the planet, that certain people shouldn't be born, and other similar reasoning then this just reeks of ecofascism or plain fascism, and eugenics.
It's easy for us to buy into the narrative that we are all inherently bad and that we as humans are destroying the environment and the world, but this is not true, it's not me and you who are doing this, this is not a human trait, it's a consequence of the system we live in that incentivizes profit above all else. Why do you think awareness, support and accommodations for us needs to be fought over? Because it's expensive and doesn't guarantee profit, and the same can be said about the environment and the way corporations are literally burning the planet. Profit and accumulation of capital above all else, that is the rule.
There's only one way out of this nightmare that will give us the tools to revert the damage and actually build a society and world that will accept us, accommodate to us, liberate people and save the planet, and it's through organizing, studying and fighting.
We are in absolutely no danger of ever going extinct. You can never get enough people to use contraceptives or practice abstinence. You can't even get people to wear masks!
I agree, I was exaggerating for the argument because I think antinatalism as a whole is dangerous, not for the made up scenario of humanity going extinct, but for the eugenics/fascism side.
This is such an incredible leap in logic.
You can say that having kids is selfish, which it objectively is (no matter if they're perfectly healthy/wealthy/on top of society or not), but also want to "build a society and world that will accept us, accommodate to us, liberate people and save the planet."
Focusing on just kids with disabilities and not every kid is fucked though, with a lot of these people in these spaces.
Why is it a leap in logic? And why having kids is objectively selfish? Genuinely asking.
You straw man the position and say following the conclusion of the straw man, humanity must end based on their logic.
How isn't having kids selfish? You're not having a child for this child's sake. You're having the child for your sake.
Ok, what straw man? I've talked about it on the individual level and also in case such ideology spreads, there is literally people that advocate for the end of humanity on the antinatalist ideology, I do not follow it closely to be able to say if it is a big part of it or not, but I've seen it before and seen the stance getting praised and this is extremely dangerous. I'm not making this argument because of the possibility it might happen, being realistic it won't, but because it just helps spread bullshit that blames everything on humanity itself like we are inherently bad.
That makes no sense to me, deciding to birth another human being and dedicating your life to them is the opposite of selfishness. Of course not everyone is like this, and people that just makes children and doesn't give a shit about them are selfish, but the act itself is not.
Slippery slope fallacy
How? It's the part about taking it to it's logic conclusion, which I said was an exageration?
I am on the autism spectrum. I'm well into middle age.
Being autistic is like being in a poker game where you keep getting dealt hands that are high-card, and everyone else is getting straights, flushes, or even just pairs, and you only get out when you're bankrupt. Yeah, I play the hand I'm dealt, and I'm going to lose every goddamn time.
EDIT: A better analogy is gonna be Pinnochio (or A. I. Artificial Intelligence). I'm never going to be a real boy (any no, it's not because I'm AFAB and also a gender essentialist). No matter how hard I work at being better, there's no good fae that's going to come along and use their fae magic to make me a real boy. I'm never going to have the experiences of the real children, because I'm simply not one of them. I can ape their external characteristics, but I can't be them. While this--being autistic--is a result of evolution (it's likely a non-beneficial genetic mutation), humans have largely evolved to survive as a social species, to have close relationships and tribal affiliations. I'm always going to be on the outside, rather than part of an in-group.
Unrelated to your comment, but you should probably do some research on the gender essentialism front. We've known gender and sex are different for a long time, and should treat trans people as their gender, not their biological sex.
You misunderstand; I'm making fun of the people that claim that gender and biological sex are the same thing. I am not a gender essentialist, nor am I AFAB.
Why do you think there is such a thing as a 'real boy'? It is likely that most other people you know are envious of you for something else - maybe your ability to paint, or your voice - and are thinking 'if only I could draw / sing like Helixdab2. But I'll never have real talent.' Yes, some people get dealt a better hand than others, but that doesn't make them an ideal to aspire to.
Being envious of me for an ability is irrelevant to the point.
I'm sort of convinced that ASD is a view of the future where humans finally shrug off the bonds of being descended from apes. So much of the nastiness that humans are capable of come from the sort of behavior that allowed our ancestors to survive. We no longer live there and no longer need to think in that way.
Disagree. People on the spectrum are subject to the same kind of irrational hatred and violent impulses as every other person. Given that a common issue with people on the spectrum is an inability to read emotional and contextual cues, I'd argue that people on the spectrum are less evolved. We're certainly less capable, in that we have fewer capabilities than neurotypical people.
I agree with the first part, but that's a case by case basis, just like NT's. Those traits are not mutually exclusive with autism.
This post makes me so mad. Holy shit. It's Autism, they're lives aren't ruined. I have autism and I'm very glad to be alive. The person that has made this comment spends way too much time on the internet and not enough interacting with people offline.
Antinatalism is a thing that could only thrive on the internet in a community full of people that get fed nothing but bad news all day. Go outside. The world isn't as bad as you think
WTF are they talking about? I've known lots of autistic people who lead very normal lives... I suspect the person who wrote this "rant" is either an edgy teenager or a basement dwelling neckbeard who believed himself capable of "curing" one of his lesbian friends
I am difficult at times. So are you people. But I found love and so did or will you too (yes, even you Steffan). The point I’m trying to make is: It doesn’t matter how broken we are, we are more human than this hate filled person ever will be.
"a community full of well-adjusted people with high-functioning asd who can integrate into society commandeers the term asd"
like i don't have an opinion on the post but i fucking knew this place was full of shit
Antinatalist here - the rhetoric in that post is horrible, and is not representative of antinatalism as a whole.
Antinatalism isn’t the belief that a certain group shouldn’t reproduce - it’s that nobody should. The world is fucked, and nonconsensually bringing anyone into it is morally reprehensible. It’s not eugenics, it’s voluntary extinctionism.
For the people that have been born, however, everyone deserves respect and equity. Ableism, or any other kind of discrimination, is just wrong, and makes you a shitty person. Just like the person who made that post.
"Don't worry guys, that person doesn't represent us - what they should have said is that they wish for all of humanity to die out."
This is an absolutely insane thing to advocate for. I hope you come to realize that in time.
According to some predictions, climate change will cause up to 3 billion refugees by the end of the century. The world isn't exactly the most stable right now either, in part due to the beginning effects of climate change.
Not that I necessarily agree with it, but coming to the conclusion that it's not necessarily moral to bring a child into that world or contribute to further suffering, isn't particularly insane or inhumane.
It's not a particularly novel or outlandish idea either. From Sophocles to Shakespeare. To be or not to be, is an age old question.
Not that going on about how much you hate children and people who have children all day on the internet, is a particularly healthy hobby, obviously.
Those are some very optimistic predictions.
Here are some fun links from the World Economic Forum and the United Nations: Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030 and 90% of global top soil and arable land is at risk of depletion by 2050.
And to add to all this, the ice caps will likely be melted completely in the next decade causing the Blue Ocean Event, where massive amounts of previously reflected solar radiation will instead be absorbed by the oceans, causing the release of huge amounts of methane from the sea bed and the earth to cook in it's own atmosphere.
This is a good explanation for anyone interested in further reading on the BOE. Look this up for yourselves with other sources though.
(You'll want to find out how much ice coverage is left at the poles, how much we've lost this year so far, and the loss projection for if the next 5 years are as hot as 2023. Then look up what will happen to the earth with all the unreflected solar radiation we'll be absorbing without the ice caps).
Billions of people are going to die in the next 30 years due to climate collapse. There may not be 3 billion of us left to be clinate refugees by the end of the century.
I’m not saying we should kill people, I’m saying making more is wrong.
It is a nonconsensual act whereupon you are forcing life and all its travesty onto another being, when they were perfectly fine not existing.
Call me insane if you want, I couldn’t care less. Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole, and bringing someone else into the world to be both a victim and perpetrator of the issue is wrong.
I think your perspective about life is blinded by pessimism, and you're treating that pessimism as absolute fact. Many people view life as a wonderful thing, are thrilled to exist for the time that they do, and see creating a new life to experience the wonders of living as a gift.
You're sounding like Agent Smith from the matrix. Come on. Unplug from the negative feedback loop for a bit.
You call it pessimism, I call it realism.
There are good things to experience, yes. If you’re already alive, then by all means, seek to find happiness and enjoyment. Don’t force someone else into that endless struggle. You can make no guarantees that their life won’t be one of pure suffering, and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And again, we are destroying this planet - not just for us, but for all life on it. We are the problem.
Says every person with depression ever.
I agree with the other commenter recommending therapy. When you don't see it as "life is pain and the future is hopeless", you might sound less like a scifi villain calling for human extinction.
“Existence is suffering” is a foundational tenet for many worldviews and religions, not just antinatalism. Existence is literally the first cause to all suffering - no existence, no suffering.
Acknowledging that doesn’t make me depressed or pessimistic, it’s just acceptance how things are.
You’re free to live in whatever fantasy you want, though. That’s your right.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “get help” is generally bad form
Your worldview is literally calling for the extinction of all humans. You need to come back to reality and stop convincing yourself that this is normal or healthy.
Why stop at humans? Ducks are pretty reprehensible as well.
And the less said about koalas, the better.
Irrelevant.
Humans are the primary cause for global suffering. Ducks are pretty fucked tho, they could probably go as well.
Mosquitoes I shouldn’t even have to mention. I think we can all agree those fuckers need to go
Dude if people really have such a problem with life, they can in fact opt out of it at pretty much any point down the line.
If someone experiences so much suffering that they are pushed to “opt out of it”, it would have been better not to force them to live and experience the suffering in the first place. Just because someone can take themselves out of it doesn’t make the suffering okay to inflict.
And we do, frequently. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for autistic people.
@OurTragicUniverse @STRIKINGdebate2 @BluJay320 @Lt_Worf @Walk_blesseD
So where does birth rank as the leading cause of death?
Yes, and I think that is bad. I just also think that this isn't because of anything intrinsic to being alive and/or autistic, but largely due to external factors.
And what control do we have over these external factors? Because it sounds like you're basically summing this up as 'skill issue', you get that right?
Victim blaming autistic people who commit suicide is a great look on you. You should be so proud of this line of reasoning.
Yeah righto bud, I'm not victim blaming anybody. I'm just shit-talking a bunch of sad defeatists on the internet who think they're smarter than everybody else just because they've taken the fucking blackpill when in reality they're so far down this hole that they're running defense for fucking eugenics against their own community.
On the off chance that you were being sincere in your question as to what we can do to actually improve the situation, the answer is to participate in an existing community dedicated to that very purpose. Collective action is generally way more effective than anything an individual can do. Are there barriers to doing this? Potentially. What can you do about that? I guess you'll just have to figure it out; I don't fucking know the specific circumstances of your personal situation, nor those of any groups around you.
Yeah but like, why not let those with the best understanding of the particular circumstances make that decision on a case-by-case basis instead of unilaterally saying that because some people are probably going to have a shitty life no one gets to make more (people)?
So if your kid doesn't want to fight in the water wars you're just gonna say "lol kys nerd"? Tragic.
Firstly, I don't have a kid. Being sterile (and also just not wanting any), I am quite unlikely to ever have a kid. Ideally we as a society would work to avoid water wars happening. My point is that we should improve our collective state of affairs somewhat, rather than resigning ourselves to the idea that to exist is to suffer like a bunch of loser doomers.
There's no fixing to this shit and deep down you know this.
I saw how humanity got together to deal with COVID. Spoiler: they fucking didn't.
What a garbage species we are.
This is an incredibly dumb idea. It will also die out for incredibly obvious reasons because everyone else will keep reproducing while antinatalists descend into irrelevancy.
Genesis 1:28 and al-Baqarah 2:187 instruct reproduction. Antinatalists are destined for the fire.
“Your worldview differs from mine so therefore you must be sad and miserable”
Sure, bud
you think someone wronged you by allowing you to be alive.
A nonconsensual act is not “allowing”, it is forcing
Consciousness is required to give consent, requiring consent to be born is a paradox.
This is a philosophical debate of which i see only 2 possible outcomes.
Life itself is a fundamental bad and negative the only ethical thing to do is fully halt the circle of reproduction to minimize all harm
Life itself is a fundamental good and positive, we must nurture and protect it to minimize harm against it. Prioritizing well being and personal happinesses while finding a “cure” for intolerance, hate and greed.
Alternative:
Can you give some context on how that would look like in practice that is not akin to everybody suicide? If we stop the cycle of reproduction then humanity will go extinct in about a century (not considering Longevity escape velocity which would significantly alter the subject context)
Trying to create a better world and to find cures for harm is a difficult challenge, i am willing to sacrifice some of my own life (time, body and energy) for the common good knowing that future generations will be better off. But doing so knowing that in a century none of that work will matter at all would be detrimental to my ability to find meaning and therefore wellbeing in my life. Besides that, knowing that we have collectively chosen extinction rather then trying to archive the vast untapped potential our conscious minds still hold to grow would bring me great pain and sadness.
There is also the matter with what are we going to do with all other species on our planet? Do we respect their ability reproduce because they have no conscious concept of consent or we will we nuke the entire planet in the hope that their is no and never will be any other life out there?
Also a different question with a more spiritual angle: How can you be certain that there was nothing within you that existed before conception which did consent to being born as a human being in a random family. If we halt reproduction then we are forcing non existence on potential consciousness. In absolutes you can chose to end your life when you have it but you cannot give life to yourself when you don't have it.
Parents can choose over their kids until adulthood, for example to have or not a medical treatment or how they should be educated.
Parents should choose if they make a kid or not as well.
parents can choose for their kids.
Ffs having autism sucks, suicide is one of the leading causes of death for us, and on average we die around 50.
It's not eugenics to be sad for 3 new autistic kids being brought into this world to suffer and die in the catasrophic climate collapse we're so dead set on, it's fucking empathy.
People are born neurodivergent but they are not born suicidal, the reason suicide is the leading cause of death is because we are a minority that is not well understood by the dominant majority, that is where almost all the hearth comes from.
Schizofrenia is also understood as a form neurodivergency and has quite some overlap with autosm. Most people know it as a horrible, scary mental illness but this is only the case in modern societies. Where in a big city people experience hallucinations of yelling, monsters and many intens negative emotions in natural communities they experience quite the opposite, visions of ancestors, angels, positive emotions and artistic beauty in things.
Instead of conceding that ‘life is pain, so we should not live,’ we should advocate that ‘society is inflicting pain, and we must reform it to prevent such suffering.’”
You don't know if said persons are gonna have a bad life, you just don't know.
Autism can be bat for some, maybe more than few, but is not for everybody, Humanity always has faced existencial crisis, we will fix climate change on way or another.
Wow, the Church of Shar exists in the real world.
I think your belief system is a rare example actual Evil. You're literally advocating for the elimination of music, of art, of science, of anyone who could even appreciate those things. No more Rembrandt or Dali or Mozart or ... anything. And you've gotten so twisted up inside, ostensibly because some people live sad, hard lives, that you think that's a good thing.
Dude, find a therapist. This is no way to live.
Brother if you think advocating for less population is "actual Evil" you're in for a real hard time out in the world.
How did you read "voluntary extinction" and arrive at "less population?"
Your assuming antinatalism is a plague that will infect everyone with "I aint having kids". 99% of people out here trying to have ten kids it seems. There are more trans people than antinatalists. Y'all are freaking out about a niche philosophy.
They're not advocating for a lower population. They're advocating for human extinction.
As in, we should all let the torch of consciousness burn out. I don't know if I'd call it evil, but it's definitely one of those severely misguided takes that you almost exclusively see on the internet.
It's bound to happen.
At current rate we will never leave this planet, and it will die. If not by climate change then the Sun will go Red Giant and swallow us. Or a meteor. Something. All species will go extinct sometime.
You're here afraid a few people believing that we should go extinct when there are 8 billion people and rising is gonna cause actual extinction. Fucking calm your tits, dude.
The global population will stabilize on it's own before the end of the century.
Arguing that people must exist so as to maintain art and science is rather silly. Art and science exist for our utility; we are under no obligation to them. If people decide not to reproduce, that is their right.
Isn't it just the belief that nobody should have kids though? I'd have thought the while extinction part would rank higher than the culture loss. And evil seems a bit extreme, sounds more like apathy and loss of hope to me. Not saying there aren't some messed up people in the group though.
Yeah, this. My biggest issue with the fundamental anti-natalist position is that it's a totally blackpilled one that ultimately devalues any positive experiences life brings when compared with even the potential for any bad thing to happen, regardless of magnitude.
I’m advocating for the elimination of poverty, disease, death, pollution, war, hate, and all human suffering.
Sure, there are some neat things in this world that are worth experiencing if you were forced to live. If you’re already alive, of course you should seek to find happiness and enjoyment in the little time you have.
Still doesn’t justify forcing more people into the world to exacerbate the problems we have - overpopulation being a major one.
It’s not evil. Things were fine before us, and things will be fine after us.
Antinatalism is evil because it goes against what God instructed.
"Things" were not observable by anything with the capability to designate them as such, so no they were not "fine" in any meaningful sense of the word.
You're literally doing the speech the villain does to make him seem reasonable.
I am literally begging you to find a therapist.
Semantics, but if you really want to get into it, a lack of ability for things to be good or bad is still better than the existence and perpetuation of suffering.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “see a therapist” and comparing them to a villain is fucking disgusting
How could it be better? There'd be no one around to make that judgment call, so it's a fundamentally illogical statement.
And I calls em like I sees em Mr. Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain Apologist.
Your human reasoning assumes all existence is human, I feel like we may be seeing a slight bias here.
Surely the core arguments that an anti-natalist might bring forward apply to any sentient beings, right? Like, a cat didn't give prior consent to existing any more than a human did. Ergo, I do think it's reasonable to point out that there would be no observer that could witness, much less enjoy any benefit from, the anti-natalist ideal world.
Believe whatever fantasy you want, bud
Fuck Reddit
It's ironic that the creator of evolution (Charlie Darwie), what I assume the foundational theory of their community, is considered to have been autistic.
Always amused me to see people posting that shit and then later posting about the Paradox of Tolerance.
Apparently fascists should be lined up against the wall and the autistic kids should be right next to them. If those people got their wish ALL Neuro-Divergent children would cease to exist. "You will be born PURE or you will not be born at all!" seems to be their motto.
Bro Autism is not a death sentence, geez. It's simply a neurodivergency. The world would absolutely be worse off without the ASD community as part of it. And I'm not even speaking poetically here. As someone with hyperactive type ADHD, ASD peers can be an absolute relief to talk to.
Neurotypical folks can be quite frustrating at times. Though they may not realize it, there's a lot of indirect communication between NT folks. They tend to imply what they mean, rather than say what they mean directly. Quite frustrating. My anecdotal experience has led me to believe that the average ADHD or ASD person is a far more effective communicator.
Are they expecting them to test for autism before being used?
Well, not saying we should interfere with people's life choices but it would've made a thing or two easier for me If my parents didn't have me.
Antinatalism is the prelude to ecofascism.
Reddit being reddit for whole ass reddit post Getting permaban for getting into an argument with nazis and other totalitarianist was the best thing that happened to me. Outside of r/aspiememes that site is a cesspool
Abortion and euthanasia are going to lead to autistic people being murdered. Neo progressives already believe that disabled children should be aborted and atheists admit that "life begins some time after birth" meaning they openly support euthanasia up to age five in some cases. A lot of neo progressives think the most humane option for disabled children is abortion or euthanasia at a young age.
Yikes, that sounds bad. Can you provide a source?
TIL Lesbian couples cause autistic kids?
The childfree folks are batshit to start with but they are really only saying we won’t have kids, although they can be dicks about it.
This lot are saying you should not have kids which is a whole new level of nutcase.
Childfree =/= antinatalist
Autistic people might be too much but we regularly nudge people to do eugenics if they have a chance to birth babies with down syndrome. "Eugenics" is mostly bad but I doubt people would disagree with the prevention of creating babies with huge disabilities. Autistic people are in the gray area imo.
"Eugenics" is the state-sponsored regulation of human reproduction. Eugenics functions via public policy and the rule of law. Until it is mandated by the state, it is not eugenics.
You want to abort your baby because you don't like its genetics, that is your decision to make; the state should have no input. You want to privately persuade or even bribe people to abort or keep certain kids based on their genetic heritage, that is disgusting, but it is not eugenics.
The problems of eugenics are not due to the suppression of genetic diseases, but because of state interference in reproductive decisions.
Then the reddit post is not a form of eugenics? It's just a person shaming someone but not forcing them to do something.
Correct. It is only "eugenics" in the figurative sense, not the literal.