Five Billion Over
I rarely add a comment to an online essay, but I did to a Nicholas Kristof’s piece on the need to stop poor women from getting pregnant so often. Yes, absolutely, but I choked on his description of a 30-year-old Haitian woman as intelligent, because she lived in a hovel without a scrap of food and nine young children and a tenth on the way.
The problem is epidemic in many parts of the third world where women are considered chattel, and where people have children as a matter of survival to take care of them later. Then there are the neoliths such as who run Afghanistan who tell women when they must have sex with their husbands.
Considering the planet is five billion over-populated, it’s clear that stopping women from having lots of children is a priority. It would be better for the women, better for the existing children, better for the Earth. Birth control education and supplies should be everywhere, though many cultures would resist.
Ultimately, we need to shift our notion of what it means to be a man. Fathering many children should not be sign of greatness but rather insanity. That means that their physical authority needs to be diminished, concomitantly with the accordance of full respect for women.
Women, too, need to take responsibility for this Malthusian plight. When the mother of six in California gave birth to octuplets, the first response was "Oh, how wonderful." No, it wasn’t.
We need to change our view of what it means to be female, too. If women didn’t make heros of men who fight, there would be no wars.
We’re all in this together, men and women, and if we don’t start getting our roles right – we don’t even offer mutual respect today – then we won’t come to grips with the burgeoning crisis of over-population, and war may seem like a practical option.
That would be taking a step backward, and no sentient being can want that.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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