
MEG: First off, let me thank childfree.uk for the opportunity to answer these most important questions.
ELENA: How early in your life did you know that you don’t want to have children? Was it something you thought a lot about?
MEG: I have never wanted to have children. Therefore as for how early in life did I know, I would say it was the moment I became sentient. It really just isn’t something you think about. I certainly never had any desire to have children, nor did I have any concerns about having desires one way or the other.
I would say that if there was any conscious decision to not have children, it would have been once I had survived my own super disfunctional, fucked up childhood, and knowing I would never want to impose childhood on anyone.
ELENA: What do you think about all the hoopla about childless by choice? About people questioning the morality and scrutinizing the lives of the childless. And the childless people explaining themselves.
As for being childless by choice and any so-called hoopla surrounding it, as if it is a heroic decision to sacrifice one’s right to propagate, I think it’s complete bollocks. To me it feels more like a choice, and by a choice I mean a sacrifice, to have children in the first place.
ELENA: Would you encourage other women to not reproduce?
MEG: Encourage other women not to reproduce? Crikey, that’s like encouraging other people in a restaurant your dining at not to smoke. Of course I would encourage human females to curtail they’re extremely reproductive nature. The same way smokers in a restaurant make my environment uninhabitable, or the air unbreathable, so does rampant human overpopulation make this planet uninhabitable. Far more serious than smoking. For instance I can always fart loudly in the presence of smokers, or simply leave the restaurant without paying the bill, but there’s not much I can do about this extinction level event caused by human reproduction.
ELENA: Why did you stop communicating with those of your friends who got to be mothers?
In the case of motherhood, there is no chance to grieve for your lost friend. At least, not openly because you’re supposed to be happy for the new mother.
MEG: I wouldn’t say it was me who stopped communicating. Women become mothers and they disappear. They simply vanish. Okay, they are still there slaving away for the little parasite, but their brains are gone, their minds are missing, everything is centered on the squalling, little piece of shit and there’s not much left, if anything, of the original human being that squeezed out the shrieking bundle of joy.
But yeah, I definitely ghost off when a former friend gets knocked up. I guess that’s not fair, kind of like ghosting off when someone you know is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Then again, cancer kills. You actually see the end of someone. You can put a period at the end of the sentence. You can grieve your loss and the loss of life and sentience. In the case of motherhood, there is no chance to grieve for your lost friend. At least, not openly because you’re supposed to be happy for the new mother. Maybe it would be like having your friend turn into a zombie or suffer some kind of brain injury that wipes out everything above the cerebellum. They’re gone, but there’s something left that is still breathing so there’s no real way to grieve, to say goodbye to someone you once knew and loved.
ELENA: What do you think when you see women with toddlers or baby carriages, seemingly deliriously happy?
MEG: I tend to stay out of their way.
ELENA: Are you concerned to leave no children behind you when you are gone? This seems to concern a lot of people.
MEG: Are you kidding? Crikey, the last thing this world needs is any more of me! Regardless of how diluted it might be.
ELENA: You are a woman, you have female reproductive organs. Nature, evolution gave you those so that our species went on and on. Don’t you feel you are not fulfilling that task? That reproduction is your biological duty?
MEG: That’s like saying I have hands that can hold a weapon, so I have a duty to maim and kill. Also an evolutionary advantage, by the way.
As for instincts, like reproducing, killing, enslaving and what have you, we humans pride ourselves on having a choice over instinct. It’s like this, see: animals have instincts; people have choices.
ELENA: What is your prediction for the planet considering the current daily birth rate for humans?
MEG: Technically, it’s not a birth rate any more. It’s a population explosion. It was predicted, am I allowed to mention Malthus? Anyway, the biosphere is doomed as we know it. Certainly the overwhelming majority of currently existing species of plants and animals will be wiped out, if they haven’t already been. Humans will continue to degrade and out strip the environment and the ability to feed themselves. There will, very likely, be mass starvation (which is a good thing, and really shouldn’t be interfered with by various government bodies like the UN), resource wars, pandemics of actual diseases that actually kill people because of weakened immune systems due to environmental stresses. Basically those four horsemen the irrationals talk about: they’re here!
Find out more about Meg
- On elenameg.com
- On maitken.com