One of the discussions on artificial wombs: Men have no reproductive rights

After the artificial womb is invented and commercialized on a large scale, what will happen to society?

I have quite a few simple thoughts on this issue. I wanted to record and post a few Douban broadcasts one after another, but I didn’t even have “sensitive words”, but the Douban censorship didn’t allow me to post it, so I posted it on Matters.

First, start with a discussion of male reproductive rights. One of the great values of artificial wombs is that for the first time men have full natural reproductive rights.

This requires a discussion of a natural law fact: women naturally have full reproductive rights, while men do not naturally have reproductive rights.

Male compatriots are likely to object to this apparently correct statement, and some will say that fertility is done by both men and women, and a woman can't do it without a man - biologically, but not socially.

In other words: fertility and reproductive rights are two different things. Men have natural fertility, but do not have natural reproductive rights.

The Tehran Declaration adopted by the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights in 1968 stated: "Parents have the fundamental human right to be free and responsible for determining the number of children and the timing of their birth."

The 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women stipulates that men and women "have the same right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children".

The content of these texts of international law is wrong, it should even be said: evil. Only women have the fundamental human right to decide on the birth of their children. Men and women "have the same rights", which is not equal rights, but the unilateral oppression of women by the patriarchal society.

I'll explain why in two short articles. Clarifying this issue is the premise of discussing a near-future society based on artificial wombs.

So, why only women have natural reproductive rights and men do not have reproductive rights?

This can be counter-argued: Let’s not talk about the right to reproduction, let’s talk about the right to life first. In an ideal modern society (imagine an ideal modern market society where there is no patriarchal social system oppression and distortion of human natural rights), the right to life is obviously owned by every natural person, and anyone who wants to be in society To maintain one's own life, it is inevitable to exchange with others in the society, that is to say, whether a person's life is complete depends to a certain extent on the willingness of others to exchange, but this does not change the life he has. The fact that the right is complete because there is:

1. He can choose to exchange chips and exchange methods, or he can choose to give up the exchange (ie suicide), no matter what, it is up to him to decide;

2. In exchange, there are elements sufficient to support the complete reproduction of life;

3. Every day, when his right to life is continuously realized, he will personally experience the whole process, enjoy the benefits of life, and take risks to live, thus showing his subjectivity to this right.

For example, in order to live, I ate at a restaurant, and in this case,

First, I can choose to eat, what to eat, how to eat, or I can choose to starve or even starve to death;

Second, after a meal, as long as the food is normal and ideal (that is, the food is really what the concept of food refers to, without mixing in other things that should not be referred to by food), I will To live another day, this is a complete reproduction of my life;

Third, I have personally experienced the whole process of ingesting food to maintain my life. I eat and live by myself, and I feel the vitality and troubles of life by myself.

Taking this structure of the right to life as a model, you will find that in an ideal modern society, women's reproductive rights have the same structure, while men's "reproductive rights" do not.

For women:

First, women can choose to exchange sperm from a certain man to support the realization of their reproductive rights, or they can choose to refuse or give up, and women can also choose to have an abortion during the reproductive process (abortion can also be achieved by various methods in ancient times). It is something she can do by herself (no matter whether there is someone the day after tomorrow or a system prohibits her in various ways, she will naturally be given such ability first);

Second, once a woman chooses to exchange sperm (that is, things that are really sperm) within a suitable time interval for herself, she will be able to give birth to a child, and her reproductive power will be fully realized;

Third, women experience the full reproductive process, fully assuming the risks and benefits (if any) of it.

And men in the matter of human fertility:

First, men do not have the ability to give up. In other words, for men, the structure behind the matter of "giving up life" is to give up exchange. Because of giving up exchange, this is something he can decide on his own. But the matter of "giving up childbirth" is not giving up the exchange, but another new exchange! (No matter coercion, inducement or even violence, he has to use women, and he can't get an abortion by himself);

Second, after men pay for sperm, they do not get eggs, nor do they get the ability to complete the entire reproductive process. What a man really gets is a [probability], the probability of obtaining his own children, which is related to women's reproductive rights. Not the same kind of things, nor should the same concept be confused (social confusion must hide oppression);

Third, men cannot experience the process of human reproduction at all. In the process of human reproduction, men also have their own experience, but that is never the experience of reproduction. Otherwise, imagine an alien civilization coming to the earth and want to investigate the birth process in human civilization. How it was done, and then they learned that every member of the human race has the right to reproduce, so they randomly sampled a man for an interview, and by coincidence, they picked a man, "please talk about your reproductive experience", two months later , the alien civilization published a paper in a certain issue saying: The reproductive process of human species is simple and easy, as long as you have sexual relations with other human individuals, ten months later, your offspring will suddenly pop out. Therefore, our definition of reproductive rights cannot be so casually deceiving aliens, which is not very authentic.

Therefore, reproductive rights are exclusive to women, and men do not naturally have reproductive rights. To say that childbirth is a matter for both men and women is as absurd as to say that you are alive is something you and the cook at the restaurant where you order takeout have in common.

This is actually in line with the thoughts of many men in a patriarchal society: it's really not my business, so I don't want to take on too many responsibilities, because I don't have the right to reproduce, and naturally I don't want to take on the obligations in childbirth, but I want to eat everything. The benefits, so just: oppression.

Such absurdity is obscured, and our social construction is unwilling to face the fact that "the right to reproduce is unique to women", but defines "everyone, male or female, has the right to reproduce" as a fact and promotes it as "common sense", writing into national laws. Such equality is backward and hypocritical. It seems to be equal rights, but in fact it is men's grabbing of women's rights. Without an artificial womb, men should not have the right to reproduce. This is not to play with the concept, but to clarify that in the process of human reproduction, since what men have is not reproductive rights, what are the specific rights they have? Then, on the basis of these new concrete rights, the social construction can be reformed.

(To be continued)