Tube tying.

A reader sent me a link to this comic, apparently approvingly.

(Further scrutiny of this webcomic reveals certain problematic elements. Also sometimes it seems a little too autobiographical. But at least it's, um, brilliantly written and politically trenchant.)

The idea of people getting sterilized young gives me the heebie-jeebies. I have no problem with people not having kids, of course, but committing to it in your early twenties seems like a bad idea. A lot changes in life. When you're that young you just don't know how your circumstances or your partner or even your own beliefs might change over time. In the last five years, I can trace my own progression from snide liberal to snide libertarian, and from reluctant Jew to snotty atheist to eclectic pantheist. If you told me at 18 that someday I was going to own guns and sometimes vote Republican, I would've told you to fuck off. And if you handed me a paper to sign giving all my future votes to the Democrats, in perpetuity... I might have signed it.

I'm going to change more in my future. Right now I think I want kids but not until I'm in my thirties, or somehow "established" in a home, relationship, and career. I may change my mind. I may never have kids; not getting sterilized is hardly a commitment to breed, after all. Whatever happens, I may--no, I will--be a different person in the future. I don't want to destroy something that may turn out to be very important to Future Holly.

I also worry about the influence of the whole "childfree" movement, which is a freaky, freaky thing. It's this loose Internet society of people who don't want kids. But since it would be boring to sit around going "how's it going? still no kids? me either. good deal." all day, it warps into this weird vicious circlejerk in which they hate kids and hate parents and love abortion and love joking about horrible things happening to children. And of course they also love sterilization. And childfree-ers who get sterilized get the accolade of the community and get to feel like they really belong to the movement and they're living their ideals.

And then they grow out of it, right on schedule like they grew out of the Harry Potter communities, and they don't get their reproductive systems back. I don't think everyone who doesn't want kids "grows out of it," of course, but I think childfree-pride flag-wavers do. Or god, I hope they do.



I'm going to be a lot of different people, and they all have to share one uterus. It's only common decency not to mess it up.


EDIT: I'm going to do something unprecedented on the Internet and change my mind. People have the right to do any damnfool thong they want to their bodies, and it's not the medical establishment's job to make reproductive decisions for patients. However, I still think it's a very bad idea for a very young person with no medical problems to be sterilized.

Also I still think capital-C Childfree people are bugnuts. Although now I'm a little afraid to say that because those crazy fucks love them some online harassment. Just keep it online, kids.