“Just wait. At 46 you’ll be queuing up outside the adoption clinic, with all the other desperate 'childfree’ women.”
What queue? Adoption agencies in this country are crying out for prospective parents. Meanwhile you lot keep machine-gunning out the tiny humans, smiling dewily at other parents and saying, “We thought about adoption, but really we wanted our own child.”
Here’s a question. Why isn’t this prediction ever made at people who are men?
Maybe because when men assert something, people believe that they’ve thought the matter through, and made their minds up, and that to challenge their convictions would be hideously rude and pointless. He doesn’t want kids, and who else gets a say in that? Nobody.
Meanwhile, women’s brains - and their choices - belong to everybody but them.
Why do some people delight in the idea that a childfree woman will be ‘proven wrong’ someday? Why do they not only enjoy that idea, but also see it as a personal triumph - something to do with them?
Maybe we still don’t like when a woman asserts something - even about herself. Someone called ‘she’ is still not allowed to make bold statements starting with “I want” or “I feel” or “I believe” - unless they end with, “… what I’m told.”
I was informed once that, beyond any doubt, I’d be in my forties at the fertility clinic someday, “spending all that ‘career-woman’ money you’ve got on a baby”.
Things like that can shake you a bit. “What if?” you might think. “What if regret? What if people know something I don’t?”
But before you worry. Before you question yourself, question the questioner.
Why would he hope we’ll be doing that? Why does that image make him happy? Let’s be honest. He’s not speaking out of concern for your best interests here, worrying for your well-being. He might claim he is, but bollocks. He’s saying it because it makes him feel better about some discomfort he’s experiencing.
Maybe he thinks we shouldn’t assert things, when women should really be listening and agreeing with him.
Maybe he feels threatened by women who know their own minds, in case they figure out the truth about him - that he feels so very small.
Maybe he needs to believe that all women are the same, an alien species, so it’s not his fault that he can’t feel close to them.
Maybe it’s because he thinks I’ve no right having ‘career-woman money’ - money of my own, independent of him, not an accessory to man, reliant on his goodwill and mastery, but a thinking, choosing, assertion-making person.
So, in conclusion, the best response to this one is: “Sexist bullshit!”
Or a simple, “Wow…” And walk away.
Because anyone who comes out with something like that isn’t worth a speck of your valuable time.
pixelskylines
prguitarman
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
