this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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The Democratic National Convention™ of Libjerk
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Dems keep working with trump to approve his picks, but what they won't accept is that if you sit down at a table with nazis, the only thing that's changed is the number of nazis at the table. @_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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It does, actually. The term for it, shockingly enough, is personal eugenics.
So, you are engaging in eugenics, for choosing whether or not to have children with someone?
In that case, who does get to decide who you have kids with, then...if not you? Or is it all just eugenics, at that point?
If you make a choice not to have kids based on genetic conditions, you're engaging in eugenics.
No, you aren't. Eugenics is population level genetic manipulation. The goal is to create a whole group with certain traits...often regardless of the will of the participants. It is based on a series of policies or laws that are enforced by the state.
Sure bro, that's why a random doctor forcibly sterilizing someone they've decided is undesirable doesn't count.
Oh, wait.
It does.
It's also eugenics when you deliberately breed two members hoping to create a child with a specific trait, for example in livestock breeding.
It turned out you affect the gene pool through individuals, crazy.
Umm, yeah...bro. That's when someone ELSE is doing it to you. As in, not your personal decision.
Point to the part in any definition of eugenics where it says that.
Clubs like Mensa were created as an eugenicist exercise to get high-IQ individuals to breed. There is no force, there is no punishment for not being in them, there are only individual choices.
It's still an attempt to alter the human gene pool through selective breeding, positive or negative, personal or systemic.
Saying "I don't want kids" isn't eugenics.
Saying "I don't want to risk passing down my depression" is.
So is "I want to have kids with this person so our children will have trait X"
As I said in an earlier comment...if those things count as eugenics, then all personal choices count as eugenics. The only thing that wouldn't, is to accept a purely random outcome with no conditions at all. Meaning, you don't even choose your partner based on looks, or intelligence, or background.
Any selection based on personal characteristics would be considered eugenics. And that's simply ridiculous.
I chose my wife because I thought she would make a good mother. She was kind, patient and gentle, with a great sense of humor. All qualities I admire and respect. Do I want my child to have those qualities, as well? Sure. Is that eugenics? No. It's just selection based on the attributes you consider favorable.
If you want what's "best for your children"...you choose your partners carefully. You aren't engineering future populations. You're just being selective about who you choose to share yours with.
Yep. And that's called eugenics, you fuckwit liberal that can't handle that they believe in the bad thing.
Lol! Read a book, man.
Sterilize yourself, please.
Which apparently means the same as "I will sterilize you" according to your logic.
I can see how someone so fucking stupid they didn't follow a single, extremely obvious point or knows how words work could think that.
Says the guy that literally doesn't understand the difference between "eugenics" and "natural selection".
You are comedy gold, my friend. Dunning and Krueger would have loved to study you.
Lmao, the natural selection of deciding not to pass on your genes for ableist reasoning.
You're just straight up never going to have an opinion worth hearing, gl with the rest of your life, don't be afraid to shoot your own nuts off.
What are you even talking about with the, "ableist reasoning"?
And I really do have to reiterate...please, read a book. If you want to sound like you know what you're talking about, it helps if you actually understand the words you are using. You obviously have no idea what "eugenics" or "natural selection" even mean.
I think I understand where you're coming from, but also doesn't this last reply fit the original meme? This reply telling somebody to sterilise themselves, aka engage in "personal eugenics", fits the reply tweet pictured in the OP, and fits the sentiment critiqued in the meme.
Who says I disagree with the right to personal eugenics? Or termination for that matter.
It just shouldn't be a result of state actors, or apply to people beyond themselves.
OP shooting themselves in the nuts is a demonstrable social good, but they don't have the right to do it to themselves or others, like in the meme.
I didn't say anything about whether you disagree or not.
If so, then not all eugenics is unethical and the term shouldn't be used as automatically shameful.
That's the conclusion ableists of the self hating kind often reach, sure.
Are you saying that people making their own choices about their sexual life are being shameful?
You forcing a child on people who don't want it is a lot more shameful.
Who said I think personal eugenics is (always) wrong?
I don't think it is precisely because no one should be shamed or forced into having a child if they think the child will suffer as a result. That's frequently ableist thought, the equation of disability or whatever with suffering, but that's also easier to say about some disabilities than others.
What I find contempible is the ethical and intellectual cowardice it takes to pretend these actions aren't what they are because someone's fragile ego doesn't want to associate themselves with the bad words.
Then to continue with the same logic, not all "ableism" is unethical, and the term shouldn't be used as automatically shameful.
Not all "Self Hating" is unethical, and the term shouldn't be used as automatically shameful.
Reproductive authority belongs to the individual, not the state, nor the general public. It is unethical and shameful for anyone to apply external pressure on that individual's decision, regardless of your moral opinion.
That or these ableist opinions and pressures are an ethical flaw we will judged for in retrospect by a more advanced society.
Or perhaps applauded when the fascists win and all members of the ever growing categories of "useless eaters" are purged from humanity.
And no, it is not unethical for people to point out that these decisions are based on ableist or eugenicist thought.
What a strange leap of illogic, that it is immoral to challenge ableism and eugenics because someone's feelings might get hurt or they might doubt their own beliefs.
If the individual is fine, on review, with basing their decisions on internalized ableism or racism or whatever that is obviously their choice, but they should be made aware that that is the choice they are making.
A rational and ethical individual has an outright responsibility to bring it up, if only so the individuals in question can at least question the pressures leading to their decisions.
Try rephrasing that in such a way as to not assume ignorance on the part of the individual making the decision.
Why shouldn't I when Lemmy, a relatively educated selection of hyper lefty nerds with various mental illnesses is shitting itself in a self-righteous fury at the idea that they might be indulging in eugenicist and ableist thought?
Ignorance seems like a pretty reasonable assumption to me.
It doesn't seem reasonable to assume that everyone knows everything and it's therefore socially unacceptable to bring it up when on the topic.
Seems your arguments are based predominantly on stereotype rather than any actual semblance of reality.
Seems like you couldn't find a real angle to attack or a means to defend your idea that "talking about uncomfortable things is a personal attack and verboten" so you opted to ignore a plainly evident reality with proof unfolded before your eyes.
The plainly evident reality unfolded before my eyes is that "condescension" is the basis of your personality. You deem your opinion to be superior to those of anyone and everyone around you. You feel it is your moral obligation to broadly share your "wisdom"; that your audience betters themselves simply by having been exposed to your word.
In your own way, you are trying to make the world a better place. Good for you.
Probably shouldn't accuse someone of having condescension as a personality trait when using a condescending tone yourself, it's weak rhetoric.
I defer to your expert opinion.
So, the right is committing eugenics against itself, but the left is being accused of eugenics simply for observing it?
No.
It isn't eugenics to select your line out of gene pool by mistake and not intent.
It is also isn't the act of eugenics to wish for or mock these results, but it is a form of Social Darwinist thought, which is a eugenicist belief. So a noun vs verb situation, eugenicist beliefs vs genocidal acts.
Personally I welcome all Republicans directly removing themselves from contributing to the gene pool, but it's still pretty disgraceful to cheer them when they're taking everyone around them down with them.
There are no red or blue states after all, just shades of purple. These institutions aren't just designed to protect Republicans from themselves, not to mention we aren't in a situation yet where we have to accept that when Daddy starts goose-stepping Junior's going to have to roll through dice in the bombing campaigns. These are still preventable tragedies and ones that certainly have much more to do with socioeconomic results than genetic "flaws"