Men's Memes: Screening out male babies

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Screening out male babies

Doctors want to screen out embryos with autism

Look at the title of that article. Its very misleading. It makes it appear that doctors have some kind of clever genetic test for autism that can be performed on an embryo. They don't. All they are going to do is stop male embryos being born to parents from families with a history of autism.

For one thing, if doctors - for whatever reason - in the UK were asking to screen out female embros, there would be outrage. Secondly, at the very LEAST it would be seen as a highly charged WOMEN'S issue, and reported as such. But the fact that this is a MEN'S issue is totally hidden by the way the newspaper reports it. This happens all the time. Men's consciousness is diverted away from realising when various subjects are MEN'S ISSUES that give them a common interest to their fellow man. Lastly, this really is a slippery slope that will gradually lead us to designer babies. The case for avoiding children being born with autism is one thing, but what about avoiding children being born with aspergers syndrome - the less severe form of autism that results in a sort of 'geeky' personality?

4 comments:

Davout said...: Many famous people were thought to have Asperger's syndrome, Einstein, Newton and Euler included. In fact, I would bet that the majority of people who have made a name for themselves scientifically have had Asperger's. Since it affects predominantly men, wouldn't it be ironic if women were made to pay a 'civilization creation' tax to men, as homage to all those 'geeky' Asperger's syndrome men?; 11:12 pm
Angsty Crayon said...: I have Aspergers! Are they saying I'm inferior because of it?; 12:53 am
Fidelbogen said...: Okay, I know. Currently this is about autism. But I cannot
resist sharing the following, which is about Asperger's.

http://www.backlash.com/content/disab/2004/bronvanderwal042904.html

Enjoy your cream of aspberger's soup, blokes! :-); 12:43 am
Anonymous said...: There is a strange twist in Canada and perhaps in the US about screening out female embryos. If the woman chooses to abort female embryos, it is supported by feminist because it is the woman's choice. This happens with immigrants who carry traditional values and value male children over female children. It just shows feminists are misogynists.; 5:24 am

Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."