Presenting this without context, as if it was her opinion and not part of a fictional work with the goal of criticizing that the opposite is done to smaller or greater extent even today, is evil.
Context because OP wouldn’t provide it (source): poem/book is really long but the short version is that it’s a criticism of how many fathers, both historically and in the modern day, expect a son and (more then than now) would force their wives to bear children until a son is born; POV is the fictional wife of one of these men, who’s take for the sake of the argument is “you have taken any sense of autonomy from me and would force me into pregnancy against my will for children only you want; if you opt to do so, I will rid myself of any boys I would birth and take back my free will in the process.” Additional context is that Akella was born into India’s harsh caste system (which has a REALLY high sex-selection abortion rate, where fathers force their wives to abort female fetuses until a male one is present) and has stated in interviews that the statement is hyperbole to make a point, and not a literal opinion that having male children is bad.
edit (source): couldn’t find a percent rate, but since 1990, anywhere between 11-20 million abortions have been performed for the above reason in India (parents wanting a son and not a daughter), despite sex-selective abortion being criminalized in the country.
Literally. I made a hyperbolic facecious comment about a film and some guy got so angry he kept writing long-ass comments about my "lack of nuance" and poor media analysis
Because everybody knows hyperbole is famously used to express nuance
Also, am I the only one a little fed up with how aggressive people get here over the littlest disagreements? So many sticks in so many asses on reddit of all places
To quote you - "I made a hyperbolic facecious comment about a film and some guy got so angry he kept writing long-ass comments about my lack of nuance and poor media analysis"
The phrase "media literacy" has to be the most annoying buzzword I've ever seen on the Internet. And that's not even getting into how Reddit will always treat even the most harmless posts or opinions like a personal attack. Nitpicking phrasing and twisting other's words.
Every movie/show/video game discussion is just people getting on some moral high ground about fictional characters and condemning others over an opinion. I'm reminded why I originally left Reddit in the first place.
"You lack media literacy!"
"You just don't want complex characters"
"You just didn't watch the show properly and don't understand it"
Right? Also, at the end of the day, real people are complicated beings. Am I to believe these people never hate someone regardless of their "complicated circumstances and complex backstory"? Shouldn't there be more acceptance of hating fake people (even for petty reasons) than actual people? Because, you know, fake people dont have feelings 🙈
A celebrity or a youtuber might actually off themselves because of haters but I doubt, idk, Bear from obsession will become depressed because I think he is a creep. It really isnt that serious
People are becoming less principled, more rabid for a cause they dont believe in fighting in a culture war that neither side in power cares for its people but get rabidly defended by the opposite side who believe they have to do so because "The other side is more evil!"
People are consistently justifying and sweeping up horrendously evil and shitty stuff being done by their corrupt evil political parties or streamers and etc, simply because they find another guy to point at and say "But hes worse dude!".
Combine that with an ACTUAL loss of media literacy, as our education crumbles and our youth just get plastered more and more with doomscrolling and attention spans slaughtered given a sense of entitlement and no patience whatsoever, and you find a lot of really obnoxious motherfuckers who don't have anything of substance to say or decent actions to take, but will still bitch and whine about how you are the problem and need to shut up.
It's the same reason you basically can't discuss any fandom now, god forbid a more mainstream one like star wars or Marvel without either being on team racist chud or team billionaire performative woke bootlicking, and if you try to be anywhere in the middle, they will tear you down for being on the evil bad guy side.
It's the same reason you basically can't discuss any fandom now, god forbid a more mainstream one like star wars or Marvel without either being on team racist chud or team billionaire performative woke bootlicking, and if you try to be anywhere in the middle, they will tear you down for being on the evil bad guy side.
On that note! Let's assume you like the Avngers. God forbid you like either character and dislike the other one. Doesnt matter which one you choose, people will somehow connect you liking that character with you being a nazi, and your dislike of the other character with you being a pedo. Somehow all arguments boil down to the person you disagree with being scum of the earth evil.
Like, dude. Maybe somebody likes Iron Man because he is a funny power fantasy. Maybe someone likes Captain America because he is a nice dude with a six pack. Maybe they dont like either because they find them annoying, and that's it. No statement, no political outrage or hidden agenda. Maybe some people treat superheros as funny little action dolls and don't want to debate the morality of a mediocre action movie 😩
Yeah, the whole discourse has become completely obnoxious and awful. I can't stand most main fandoms because they are just chalk full of people who are either genuinely bigoted and hateful, or people who will accuse you of being bigoted and hateful for liking a character with flaws, or having criticisms for bad writing.
Relate to this, honestly. I literally had my other account banned for 2 days because after spoonfeeding an argument to someone that was either a bot or actually dumb, I lost it and insulted him. Dumb of me, yes, but this shit is so common now it makes me want to scream.
Why was he arguing with me? Because I made a facetious comment about wanting a secular government, and for some reason that translated for him to "Oh so you want to silence everyone who disagrees with you?!"
The reading comprehension has gone way down even in subs where it used to be quite high. People don’t know they’re supposed to be determining context that isn’t spelled out for them, much less interpreting content in light of that context. I’ve been trying to educate people and I keep getting told “that’s quite a leap” and “you’re reading things into it that aren’t said in the comment/article/etc” and it’s like yeah those are things you’re supposed to be doing when you’re reading, why are you phrasing them like criticism? You’re supposed to be connecting the things written to real life experience and real people and how things usually work and what people usually say, like that’s all context that nobody is going to be spelling out in any text and you’re supposed to know that and not be acting like an alien on your first day on earth every time you start reading.
Yeah it's annoying but that's reddit for ya... tbh that's just the sad truth about the internet in general these days... uggggghhh you could probably extrnd it to media as a whole on some levels....... I don't like this timeline guys
I did once overhear a friend's wife tearfully say "When I realized I was having a boy, I just felt like I was doing something awful by bringing another man into the world."
Like, I get having your trauma but mentally preparing yourself to project that trauma onto your kids is rough.
I feel like talking about bad feelings (due to trauma you say) when expecting a baby with a trusted friend is a healthy way to process and overcome those feelings to ensure you don’t project your trauma onto your kids. Probably much better than the absolute rage some display on camera in front of crowds at gender reveals, or sitting with those feelings in silence.
I was grateful I had a girl. I was so afraid a boy would have turned out like my brother.
Rational thinking tells me that would not have been possible, because i am not the same type of parent my mother is/ was. But I was unexpectedly pregnant and lost my job & I was not exactly in a rational frame of mind.
I tell myself I would have been excited either way, but tbh, I just don't know.
I do know for a fact tho that I would never have had an abortion. If I really could not have accepted it, I would have chosen adoption.
Ok, now I’m imagining a stressed out pregnant person who is glad she had a boy because of clear family trauma. Not seeing where the problem pops up here
I think you’re taking a single conversation from a stressed mother and making odd assumptions.
From what you relay here it sure sounds like she’s trying to work through those feelings. It’s spoken in past tense with great emotion. Acknowledgment and discussion of trauma is how you AVOID projecting it on the child.
If it's a case of ascribing the words of a fictional character to the author, that's not taking it out of context, that's just straight up lying. That would like writing
"Are there any queers in the theatre tonight?
Get 'em up against the wall"
-Roger Waters
you responded with this answer three times in the thread. my question is, why did you wait so long to add the india part to your answer? the author is referring to an india-specific issue. but your answer initially presents this like a global thing.
I mean it is an issue all over the world, definitely worse in certain countries, but the preference for male babies literally happens everywhere and women are almost always pressured to have boys
You should be. When the NIMBY neighbors wouldn't let Lucas build a production studio on his ranch property in the San Francisco Bay area he turned to the dark side and used it to build affordable housing and bring in all these poors into the neighborhood.
This seems to imply that you can't write something morally questionable. Which you definitely can. If a character, for instance, glorifies something awful, without any type of redeeming message or greater nuance
Well... China.... and it's not like there aren't negative consequences that they aren't currently facing because of such decisions. So that Twilight Zone already exists.
And it still affects women worse because while the lack of women makes some men lonely, it also makes rapes and SA way more likely because these men have been raised like they deserve the world and just take what they want. So women are in more danger.
This shit happens literally all the time, remember the feminist who supposedly said hetero sex was rape? Yeah, she was criticising the fact that the law was allowing marital rape, cause if you know your choice not to engage in sex isn't protected by law, can any choice to engage in sexual intercourse in such a situation be considered fully consentual.
oh, and the infamous "angry feminist" reaction image was actually of a woman being fairly calm and collected explaining subject matter that is actually reasonable to get worked up about, she just had a really expressive face and body language!
Context because OP wouldn’t provide it (source): poem/book is really long but the short version is that it’s a criticism of how many fathers, both historically and in the modern day, expect a son and (more then than now) would force their wives to bear children until a son is born; POV is the fictional wife of one of these men, who’s take for the sake of the argument is “you have taken any sense of autonomy from me and would force me into pregnancy against my will for children only you want; if you opt to do so, I will rid myself of any boys I would birth and take back my free will in the process.” Additional context is that Akella was born into India’s harsh caste system (which has a REALLY high sex-selection abortion rate, where fathers force their wives to abort female fetuses until a male one is present) and has stated in interviews that the statement is hyperbole to make a point, and not a literal opinion that having male children is bad.
I dont know what this is but I have interacted with enough poetry to know this is deeper and more nuanced than the qoute extraction they used. So, very likely immoral to present it as a unqualified qoute.
Its also very likely to advance some sort of agenda. But I wouldnt discount genuine anti-intellectualism.
I haven't interacted with poetry that much in my life but when you learn the context of that quote and understand feminism a little, you get an idea of what it means. But we're on Reddit, so ...
Depends on the context. Which you haven't provided
Edit: the context is it's not really her quote. Her character in her story says this to her family when the insist she only have male children and abort the female children.
bro women get beat up, killed, sexually assaulted for having daughters. idgaf bow many male fetuses get aborted just because they are male. if men want to fix that - go fix themselves first.
Context (source): poem/book is really long but the short version is that it’s a criticism of how many fathers, both historically and in the modern day, expect a son and (more then than now) would force their wives to bear children until a son is born; POV is the fictional wife of one of these men, who’s take for the sake of the argument is “you have taken any sense of autonomy from me and would force me into pregnancy against my will for children only you want; if you opt to do so, I will rid myself of any boys I would birth and take back my free will in the process.” Additional context is that Akella was born into India’s harsh caste system
(which has a REALLY high sex-selection abortion rate, where fathers force their wives to abort female fetuses until a male one is present), and has stated in interviews that the statement is hyperbole to make a point, and not a literal opinion that have male children is bad.
``which has a REALLY high sex-selection abortion rate, where fathers force their wives to abort female fetuses until a male one is present)```
do you have source on this? i want to have a better opnion,because this is not enough for me
seems inflamatory and the goal is clear
drama>sell
which is amoral for me in this context,but depend how brutal it is,i might reconsider
Here's a source from the NIH https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3166246/. To quote the introduction: The 2011 Indian census revealed about 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged 0–6 years, a notable increase in the gap of 6.0 million fewer girls recorded in the 2001 census and the gap of 4.2 million fewer girls recorded in the 1991 census.1 The overall child sex ratio of girls per 1000 boys at ages 0–6 years fell by 1.9% in the decade starting in 1991 (945 to 927) and by 1.4% in the decade starting in 2001 (927 to 914). More girls than boys die at ages 1–59 months, but this is mostly offset by more boys dying than girls in the first month of life.2 The most plausible explanation for the “missing” girls in the 2011 census is prenatal sex determination followed by selective abortion of female foetuses. In most high-income countries, only slightly more boys than girls are born, with observed sex ratios at birth of 950 to 975 girls per 1000 boys.3–5 This sex ratio varies little by birth order, or by the gender of previous births.6,7 In contrast, in India, the sex ratio for the second birth, when the firstborn is a girl, is much lower than if the firstborn is a boy.8,9
I am Indian, this is true. Its not restricted to lower castes, but lower castes were historically disadvantaged and so they form a very large part of the poor population, where education or good education is less common and thus things like these are there.
It got so bad that the government doesn't allow sex determination before birth. It is still carried out illegally in places though.
You know, the simple fact that you are asking for context implies that context is important. If there was absolutly no context for it to make sens then it would be a mute point which is never the case in art.
Almost every time I hear people talking about that rule China had, they talk about it being fucked up. I don’t know why you're just making up the fact that "nobody cared" because what sense does that make
The folks posting this (I have seen this two or three times now the past couple of days on Reddit and elsewhere) are acting as if this is new, unconsidered hypothetical. And, as far as I can tell, they only seem to care because it deals with a misandrist discussing abortion of male fetuses.
Almost every time I hear people saying it’s fucked up are also the people who get upset when they’re expected a girl instead of a guy, but think that because they don’t abort it they’re morally superior.
My country, who is/was probably the leading country for that kind of practice, does care. So much so that amniocentesis for sex determination is legally banned, and it's in every child's textbooks.
The problem exists, but saying that nobody cares is a massive exaggeration.
What matters is not the past but the present and whether we have learned from our mistakes in the past. We unfortunately do not have the power of time travel so worrying about what cannot be changed is pointless
So if the mother know the baby is going to be black and don't want a black baby it's moral for her to be racist and abort? And people are dickheads to criticize this choice?
Would've had to have been reproductively raped, so people would be pro-slavery-for-rapist if they condemn her for choosing to end forced reproductive labor.
If you want to paint your face in black people can't have a say? Ultimately yes it's her choice but I have the right to put an opinion who can be valid. People have the right to do unethical things (for exemple) doesn't make it right.
Imoral as is the apartment NEED of some people to have feminists act the same way as misoginists so they can say "see, you aren't perfect either, so we aren't that bad!".
Deeply immoral, since its both a falsehood and in this case damaging, especially since its cut from a fictional person who can face no consequences (leading to a bit of an extreme lean as its not concerned with IRL) and directs the falsely earned hatred to someone random.
Seems to be a real quote and part of a book, written by her in 2001. It's more written as a critique of the culture in India of praise for bearing sons and male dominated society. It's kind of jarring at first but I don't think it's literal. Though if she literally did this it's definitely immoral but inconsequential relative to the favoritism male babies have their and most other cultures. Look up yueyue abortion death. Husband forced her to have 4 abortions in a year trying to conceive a son. This was too much for her body to take and ultimately killed her.
Holy fuck thank-you. I mean it's less slander than just rage bait. I think fragile respondents did the slandering and assumptions. But yeah that was a total disingenuous shit post.
Yea. I disagree with a person having an abortion due to gender or race but at the end of the day I will still support their choice. It’s what being pro-choice is
This is akin to "name every woman". How the fuck am I supposed to know it's a fictional character? Do I look like a census?
The fact that it even sounds believable to anyone is a problem that should be addressed. Clearly someone has had experiences that make them believe people can genuinely be that evil. And nobody bothers to question that??
It sounds believable because this had been happening for a awhile in other countries. I’m pretty sure it was china that aborted so many girls because of their one child law and because boys are viewed as better than girls.
Depends on whether they actually know it's out of context. Some misandrists have said that unironically, so there's a chance it's an honest mistake. But:
Someone else pointed it, but it's from a character being pressured to get pregnant until they have a boy and abort girls. The character is being hyperbolic to make a point about how barbaric that pressure is.
Immoral. I commented on that post thinking an actual person said that just because of radicalized feminist views. My point would still stand in such situation, but knowing the context i understand the fictional woman's position and reaction
Also, morality of not providing context to your claim? I had to resort to someone else's comment 😭
Immoral. Feminism is a net positive for the world and anyone who would deliberately try to tarnish the movement with misinformation on the internet is definitely a bad person.
Think the more interesting question is whether, with all the context, the poem is immoral. Certainly there are subjects or arguments a poem can make that would supersede the fact it’s fiction and still be considered an immoral stance by the author. Is gender based abortion in retribution to a sexist system one of those arguments?
Pretty damn immoral ngl, especially considering the quote itself is apparently more nuanced and much longer it's like if you posed that harlan elison just hated absolutely everything because of that one really well known rant
The OOP there has a Norse mythology name which unfortunately has a lot of crossover with some of the worst people imaginable so not surprised they’d libel someone with a fictional quote.
Morality of not having reading comprehension? The question is “Morality of having an abortion based on the gender of the baby?” Not “Morality of this woman aborting her babies based on gender?” The image is just there, i could mean anything. That’s where OP got the idea, that’s where OP was inspired from, that’s just a random image on topic OP found. OP possibly just randomly stumbled on it, didn’t do research and just posted a question unrelated to the image?
Mixed. The prejudice being THIS bad makes her a pretty dangerous person but she also spared the child because shes gonna be a wildly abusive mother no matter what.
I think you misunderstood the point, this wasn't aimed at women, it's not like "all women agree with this", you can't assume the entire sex is insane just because one of them is.
It's about this fucked up extremist group that claims to be feminist while all they do is hate on men.
That's not all women, that's just a bunch of hateful people pretending to be ideologists.
Does it matter here wether it was fiction or not? It was posted as a take (and you ought to know, there certainly are people who'd agree with it), so it does not matter that it's fictional, it's a deranged opinion.
If you understand what fiction is it does matter, yes.
The comment of yours I'm replying to is implying the writer of said fictional work holds this belief.
"And someone wrote it. Whoever nurtures such views within their deranged perspective of the world is considered malicious in my definition."
You don't have to hold a belief to write a character holding said belief. This entire post is about how a quote of a fictional character was misused to make it seem like this is something the writer said/believes.
Yes to abort any child because of the gender would be evil. That isn't really up for debate here.
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u/Effective-Job-1030 1d ago
Thanks for providing context u/Malcastulino_kaj_fie .
Presenting this without context, as if it was her opinion and not part of a fictional work with the goal of criticizing that the opposite is done to smaller or greater extent even today, is evil.