"On Being 40 and 'Childless'" [2024], Laura Bassett (https://www.laura-bassett.com/p/on-being-40-and-childless).

Sometimes, I lay down on my floor, and just appreciate that it's my floor and I can sprawl on it any time I damn well please.

It is 2025 and journalists are still asking people who do not want to have children why we do not want to have them, and not those who want to have children why they want them. If not exactly pathologised, we are still perceived as an oddity.

The best thing about the video is that it starts near a kindergarten with screaming children in the background. Like, of course we do not want to have children, have you been around children?

Did you know that the "children happify" propaganda only started with industrial revolution because people didn't need children to work the land anymore, so those who wanted a steady supply of wage slaves needed to convince people to reproduce anyway?

In my twenties, I was denied a medically necessary hysterectomy because I “might meet a man who wants kids”

I fought for years to get the surgery, spending weeks out of every month stuck in a hospital bed needing iron and blood transfusions. Too disabled to work. Fainting almost daily. In constant pain.

No matter how sick I got, the hypothetical future husband and baby came before my health. What these imaginary beings might want was more important than what I needed.

When I finally had the surgery, I had a severe post operative complication. The surgeon didn’t believe me. She sent me home.

I had to go to the ER four times before they found the life threatening internal bleed. Each time dismissing me as “attention seeking” or accusing me of not understanding some pain was to be expected.

My then boyfriend saved my life. He got loud and refused to take me home, saying he was convinced I would die.

It turns out, he was right. I had a giant bleed in my belly and an infected abscess that had been growing for weeks while they gaslit and ignored me.

It was a hell of a crash course in medical misogyny, as well as the need to always have an advocate in healthcare settings:

https://medium.com/@thedisabledginger/what-my-hysterectomy-taught-me-about-medical-misogyny-and-advocacy-e7d6e7294af8

I live by an art school that doesn’t have a #ceramics program, so sometimes students seek me out for mentorship. I had a lot of fun and learned so much from these two today. I’ve mentored kids from the US and Thailand, and now Hungary and Brazil. It’s a really cool way to get to know (and hopefully influence) the upcoming gen since I’m #childfree.

If you use Instagram (or if you want to click on this anyway) this 19 year old woman’s story regarding seeking care for endometriosis is heartbreaking. She can’t to get a hysterectomy because doctors are concerned she may change her mind about babies later, because misogyny tells them all women want babies & if we don’t we’re broken but we may get better later. She’s a lesbian and she’s infertile anyway. She knows she doesn’t want babies.

But I was so impressed with her steady speech and poise telling her story. I was a fidgety, fast talking, nervous wreck last year when I did it, and all my trauma from being denied sterilization is in the past. She’s still in it.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHMV5L-S2FE/

"Frauen haben erkannt, dass männliche Validierung nicht das einzige Ziel im Leben ist, und das Versprechen wie »das Leben fängt erst dann an, wenn du Kinder hast« hohl sind."

#childfree #kinderfrei #crazycatlady

aus: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/single-frauen-werden-im-internet-mit-hass-ueberschuettet-kolumne-a-69cff287-f6c4-4e2c-9af3-80c17983c45a?sara_ref=re-xx-cp-sh

I Massachusetts.

Governor Healey just made prenatal vitamins and OTC birth control part of mass health & some other medical mass insurance program.

I rejoice when I see something helping women who want to have children and who don’t want to have children. This is really wonderful, but I’m kind of surprised that someone on mass health who is pregnant would have had to pay for prenatals anyway.

I like my weekends and having 'me time'
Get pets instead, thwart the Natalists and their fetish for White Babies.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/feb/21/i-love-my-kids-but-i-regret-having-them-how-can-i-accept-my-life-as-a-parent