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[Poll #204849]
I've been listening to bits of the discussion about this following the confirmation from the HFEA that parents will only be able to perform gender selection for medical reasons (e.g. avoiding heamophilia), not personal, social or "so-called family balancing reasons" but I'm afraid I'm finding that this is one of those questions where I'm not entirely sure what to think. On the one hand, I've heard very few good arguments against gender selection. Many people seem to have a gut reaction against it, but I don't understand why. This encourages me to align it in my mind with the many other scientific debates where the public have ill-informed objections. On the other hand, I'm not sure I can see good reasons for allowing it either. I don't think, for example, that it should be available on the NHS for non medical reasons.
The one reasonable person I heard speaking against it argued essentially that gender selection gives you an illusion of control which, if it doesn't work out could be damaging for you and the child. So for example you chose to have a girl because you have a certain perception of the way girls are. If your child turns out still not to be like that (perhaps she's a tomboy, for example) then your disappointment will affect you as a parent and the development of your child. This makes sense to me, but is it a strong enough arguement to restrict choice? After all, there are plently of avenues available for the parent/child relationship to mess up. If you're fixated on having a girl and you have a boy, won't your feelings of dissappointment in that case have a similar effect?
So what do you think? And more importantly, why do you think it?
I've been listening to bits of the discussion about this following the confirmation from the HFEA that parents will only be able to perform gender selection for medical reasons (e.g. avoiding heamophilia), not personal, social or "so-called family balancing reasons" but I'm afraid I'm finding that this is one of those questions where I'm not entirely sure what to think. On the one hand, I've heard very few good arguments against gender selection. Many people seem to have a gut reaction against it, but I don't understand why. This encourages me to align it in my mind with the many other scientific debates where the public have ill-informed objections. On the other hand, I'm not sure I can see good reasons for allowing it either. I don't think, for example, that it should be available on the NHS for non medical reasons.
The one reasonable person I heard speaking against it argued essentially that gender selection gives you an illusion of control which, if it doesn't work out could be damaging for you and the child. So for example you chose to have a girl because you have a certain perception of the way girls are. If your child turns out still not to be like that (perhaps she's a tomboy, for example) then your disappointment will affect you as a parent and the development of your child. This makes sense to me, but is it a strong enough arguement to restrict choice? After all, there are plently of avenues available for the parent/child relationship to mess up. If you're fixated on having a girl and you have a boy, won't your feelings of dissappointment in that case have a similar effect?
So what do you think? And more importantly, why do you think it?
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Re: gender selection
Date: November 14th, 2003 08:12 am (UTC)From:X and Y chromosomes weigh different amounts. Therefore, X-sperm and Y-sperm weigh different amounts, and can be separated.
I think you're right that this may well be tied to peoples' opinion on abortion, but I don't think it will be due to the mechanism.
Re: gender selection
Date: November 14th, 2003 08:20 am (UTC)From:FYI, in practice now...
Date: November 14th, 2003 08:24 am (UTC)From:As I'm sure you are all well aware, this debate has been very alive in India, where this practice seems well afoot - especially amongst those families with means.
Incidentally, with a preference towards boys.
-----
My view: Whilst I can see little reason to deny the option, I can also see the serious population imbalances this can produce (some good - like family economic potential or immediate social standing or forcing a revaluation of the rarer women; some bad - like the social destabilisation, the 'little emperor' effect, a shrinking diversity & distribution of gender perspective in a society) over time.
I generally consider a successful birth of a healthy child such a difficult and often dangerous enterprise, that I don't know why anyone would want to abort that particular gender if they are in fact ready and willing to start/expand their family.
As for alternate means of applying a gender preference, the same outcome opportunities and problems apply, though much of the issues surrounding abortion and faetal health can be side-stepped.
Incidentally, I probably shouldn't use the term 'gender' and instead clearly use the word, 'sex.' Gender is decidedly a more social construct, and is far more diverse than male/female.
Re: FYI, in practice now...
Date: November 14th, 2003 09:32 am (UTC)From:- the suicide rate among Chinese women is the highest in the world. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2526079.stm )
Rareness of women does not increase their status. It increases trafficking, abuse, and incarceration.
I generally consider a successful birth of a healthy child such a difficult and often dangerous enterprise, that I don't know why anyone would want to abort that particular gender if they are in fact ready and willing to start/expand their family.
Poverty, family pressure, status, to avoid abuse, to avoid penalties associated with children of that sex (a fine, dowry payments), and (deleted) to avoid upsetting the father.
Re: FYI, in practice now...
Date: November 14th, 2003 09:42 am (UTC)From:I was going to post about that: when I first heard about Indians avoiding bringing women into the world, c. 20 years ago, I made the same misassumption about how that would affect the status of women, when in fact all that happened is the lot of wives got worse in as much as they started being 12 year olds shipped in from Bangladesh.
Finding this out (thanks to the good people at the BBC) has coloured all my future-looking thoughts and predictions.
Re: FYI, in practice now...
Date: November 14th, 2003 09:52 am (UTC)From:Ultimately: the ruling patriarchy will be forced into a hard choice between female betterment or social collapse. And yes, women will bear the worst brunt of this entire evolved situation.
----
I wonder how AIDS is accelerating these effects, and how things will turn out. I think the greatest tragedy we're seeing in places like eastern Africa is the lack of an indigenous government response to these challenges: like setting up social security networks to supplant familial links and traditions of polygamous marriages of (AIDS) widows to protect family resources.
Re: FYI, in practice now...
Date: November 17th, 2003 04:16 am (UTC)From:You've actually answered you own point there. When women become a scarce resource, they become exactly that; a resource. Something you buy and sell, something owned, and any benefit goes to the owner of the chattels not the chattel herself.
The (worldwide) AIDS crisis is a different issue, but I'd point out that in most African countries (South Africa is a special case) both the government and NGOs are working very hard to respond to the crisis. It's not enough, of course.
I'm not sure what you mean by "AIDS widows" -- the result in the worst-hit places is that only old people and children (aged 0-9) are left.
Anyway, big issue and definitely off-topic.
Re: FYI, in practice now...
Date: November 17th, 2003 06:45 am (UTC)From:2. I don't think AIDS is necessarily so different, especially when it intersects with traditional social values. It would be nice to treat AIDS purely as the medical plague that it is, but that hasn't been the case in the First World, or the Third. 'AIDS widows' specifically refer to those infected women (infected by husbands) who outlive their AIDS-dead husbands, who may have AIDS-infected children, and due to social ties, may be married by the husband's brother. A practice fairly common in SE Africa, I've read. In the long run, the orphans and aged are badly impacted by AIDS, but in the short-run, a society's highest earners are killed, and traditional social values may perpetuate the infection. By the bye, as an infection fulcrum, the 'AIDS Widow' model applies to both sexes - and again traditional social values may perpetuate this problem. I brought this up, because there is all too often a failure by government to intercept infected survivours, and a failure by those traditional social orders to evolve to the new challenge sufficiently.
For example, with good information, women as these can (and have in some places) gather together to demand their own independent support - with primary interest in the children.
Impact
Date: November 14th, 2003 09:46 am (UTC)From:My view: if men do not find they have a perceived 'fair share' access to reproductive opportunity, instinctive competition will take over - and that wrecks social order.
While perhaps less pertinent to female rights per se, it is interesting to consider the case of the Spartans. Their ideology and wholehearted application of social engineering towards those ideals wrecked them.
Poverty, family pressure, status, to avoid abuse, to avoid penalties associated with children of that sex (a fine, dowry payments), and (deleted) to avoid upsetting the father.
Hence ready and willing... (i.e. ready = able) Otherwise I take your point completely. Incidentally, note that I did rate higher social standing from a prefered sex as a 'positive' ... since irrespective of our view of it, a family in difficulty with a slightly higher social standing due to prefered offspring may make just that difference in success/survival - unfortunately.
Note: this is quite separate from actual economic output, necessarily. Most societies who practice sex selection are patriarchial, so favour male children. Males will have superior access to social resources to the betterment of their family and female relations. Irrespective of, say, higher female productivity since farming may be far steadier income than cattle ranching/goat herding. The damnable old myopia of social valuation - but there's no getting past it without the kind of major effort no one seems willing to seriously try any more. (alternative: UN viral-like efforts with female education, UNDP efforts, etc.)
Re: Impact
Date: November 17th, 2003 05:38 am (UTC)From:Short-term solutions have a nasty habit of becoming long-term ways of life. The Handmaid's Tale is fiction, and like all fiction says more about its social context than actual real-world severely female-oppressive regimes (of which there are many).
"ready and willing"
OK, "ready and willing" could cover everything I mentioned.
"alternative: UN viral-like efforts with female education, UNDP efforts, etc."
Of course, it's only an opinion; but I don't see this as an alternative. Education of women is the only way of raising their status as opposed to their value.
Education programmes for women form key work for every major NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) in the world. Apart from raising the status of the women involved in such programmes, side effects include lowered child mortality, better educated and healthier children, increased general, reproductive and sexual health (men and women), home income generation, capacity building, better resistance to crises and problems, and, in the end, decreased poverty.
"no one seems willing to seriously try any more"
See above.
Re: Impact
Date: November 17th, 2003 06:50 am (UTC)From:2. I agree completely about the value and worth of female education around the world (including the First World, if one reads the likes of Anne Coulter, ;-) ), I just don't think it is getting anything like the resources it needs to fully succeed.
you've crossed yourself
Date: November 17th, 2003 08:30 am (UTC)From:a) oppression inevitably leads to revolt ("I maintain that with sufficient pressure, even the most patient societies revolt")
and,
b) that women conspire in their own oppression ("very often women making themselves prisoners by their ignorance or beliefs ")
b) is demonstrably true, and I would never dream of arguing against it --- a) is a political opinion.
Re: you've crossed yourself
Date: November 17th, 2003 06:09 pm (UTC)From:Sadly, I think 'b' has been the classic solution of slowing the inevitable outcome of 'a.' In this respect, 'tradition' and 'religion' can be considered very suspiciously.
Mind you, 'b' is a very strong feminist view, and certainly not one everyone subscribes to, including women.