Oh Salon, is there any group, no matter how small, insignificant or just plain silly, that you won’t offer up as a misunderstood minority?
On Wednesday, Salon readers learned of Alanna Weissman. She hates your kids, and she’s not sorry. You hear that, your first reaction is to shrug bemusedly and walk away. Kids aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But stop right there! Weissman’s a marginalized minority, damn it. And she will be heard.
“I identify as a childfree woman,” she wrote, “one of a growing demographic of young people for whom having children is not only not in their present, but not in their future, either, entirely by choice.”
Buckle up – she “identifies” as childfree – there is a whole lot of progressive identity gibberish incoming. And … here it is: “Syntactically, the childfree are distinguished from the childless — those who want children but cannot or do not have them — because the latter term implies that one is “less” something for not having offspring.”
So does this mean Weissman is not cis-reproductive? Not sure what language is acceptable at Salon these days. But whatever you call, it, it leads to victimhood, as when she moans, “Other childfree women have felt this resultant animosity, and have tried to preempt others’ judgment.” And it’s not her that must change. It’s everyone else. That’s why she’s inflicting this article on them.
So here we have modern liberalism in its distilled form: “I don’t like children; celebrate me!” In truth, the whole premise of the piece is so silly that you have to hope Weissman’s tongue was planted firmly in her childfree cheek when writing. But given her prose, it’s hard to tell:
And by denying that we exist—especially for women, society’s designated nurturers, who feel this stereotype especially acutely—we are denied the chance to prove that, contrary to what one may instinctively characterize us as, this particular facet of our personalities, our identities as baby-haters, does not make us bad people.
Weissman protested that being childfree was for her not a matter of practicality, but when it takes that many words to say so little, it’s hard to imagine she has time for goldfish, let alone kids.
Still, it’s very hard to believe that this is not meant as a joke:
We’re just like everyone else until we express the opinion that, in the eyes of society, instantly transforms us from Regular Person to Baby-Hating Monster, despite any other positive attributes we might possess. So, to escape judgment, we go about our baby-hating business quietly as we contribute to the world around us. We are your journalists, your professors, your bartenders and baristas. We are your siblings, your colleagues, your friends.
On the other hand, this is Salon we’re talking about. Self-parody is their business.
