Part One: On The Taboo
This chapter starts with an argument between The Girl and her sister.
The Girl confronts her sister: “ What if I never have children. What if I don’t have biological children? ”
“What?, what do you mean. I don’t understand, stubbelling, I don’t understand you.
“I mean what if I never conceive babies myself.”
“huuuuuh…For me it’s too dark. I tell you, It’s just too dark a future.” She was mad and you could see she could see that her sister wouldn’t change her mind on that point. But why ? She wondered. Why the sudden change, she thought. “Since when don’t you want children? I mean, is this new? What’s the point of this statement, you just want to piss me off?”
The Girl wanted to push her sister to the limit. The Girl knew she could reach the truth through her sister’s anger: find out how her sister really felt about it and maybe find out how she felt about it herself. So The Girl kept on asking her sister: “But what is so wrong in not wanting a biological child, why is this so important for you, besides you always said you didn’t want to have children yourself!”
The sister was widening her eyes, ‘wild’ : “no but come on, I know that at some point… I mean I love children, it’s human to want children, having children is like… it’s beautiful I guess, I think. I mean, idk…” she marked a pause because she couldn’t really believe The Girl and she was angry from a sad feeling, she couldn’t really tell if she was angry or sad. Now The Girl’s sister wanted to test her back: “Don’t you like yourself? It sounds like you don’t. You must hate yourself, I don’t know!…”
-end of the scene.
Here we are putting our finger on /touching a fondamental myth and taboo of our society that I’ve tryed to explain in the former chapters. Hope I succeeded in leading you to it, even though a great part of the history is missing; first cause being that I’m not a science book. And that you have to acknowledge that I’m a white European girl talking, who was “blessed” to be born with white priviledge ofc. That being said. Let’s come back to the Taboo.
What’s the Taboo? The main question being, why do we (feel the need to)procreate? From a geopolitical point of view, it’s a matter of population and power. The biggest nation are to be the biggest ones. If the amount of grandpas and grandmas exceed the amonth of newborn, the nation’s development reaches a stalemate. A nation who’s old is a nation who’s dying. From a family point of view, your blood-line needs to survive. Your blood-line is surviving through it’s descendants. The fact is that if you stop procreating, your blood-line diminishes until it disappears. It’s like in the tale of Peau d’âne where the two lovers are fantasising on a future life they will share: “and of course will will have hundreds of children and we’ll live forever”. From a Christian stand, it’s a matter of morality and duty to give birth. “Any woman who does what she can so as not to give birth to as many children as she is capable of is guilty of that many homicides, just as is a woman who tries to injure herself after conception”. It was Christianity that overturned moral ideas on this point by endowing the embryo with a soul; so abortion became a crime against the foetus itself. Hence, abortion is a crime, not conceiving babies is a crime against humanity, and a woman who refuse to use her fertile power is a criminal.
Part Two: On why family is the right/correct order…
The Girl: I’m still not sure what’s the right choice
Bo: What is right in giving birth or not? Having children or not? Being a mother or not?
The Girl: By right I meant fated No, Being a biological mother or not. Why do I suddenly see it as an option? I’m sure it wasn’t something I would have thought over before.
Bo: Before what?
The Girl: 2 years ago, my brother revealed his sexual orientation to my family. One night, it was late, nd mum cried. Anyway, it ended on a dramatic:“I don’t care about life anyway, I will never have grandchildren.” Maybe it was a reaction to his statement maybe not. Anyway it made me think of what is excepted from sons and daughters. I was not angry at her. I just refused the expectations of society. I found my mother and I were stuck in conservative patterns. And I started considering not having biological children. But it’s like lying to myself. Because even when I try to convince myself as hard as I can that I would never conceive children, I fail. A part of me is still obsessed with children, not that I’m thinking about it all the time, but I have trouble imagining a life without children.
Bo: Do you feel you have no choice?
The Girl: It’s very hard to find out what I truly believe. Which thoughts are mine…or if I already went too far/deep in the brainwashed. Am I conditioned by norms already?
Bo: Maybe you are too much attached to your own roots.
The Girl: You’re saying that I’m too attached to my family… But what do you want me to do, to erase completely where I come from?
Bo: Is blood the only feature to determine your origins? Why do you even need to be determined by your origins?
The Girl: But what definition would you give to the word ‘origin’? Is it a person, a place, a name, what is it?
Bo: Maybe it doesn’t have to be fixed in marble.
