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Are You a Breeder?
No, I don’t mean of dogs. I’ve encountered the curious word “breeders” a couple of times in the past week from lefties. As near as I can tell, it’s the way they combine their two most compelling (to them) religious beliefs: gay rights and environmentalism. “Breeders” are those who have the audacity to have a baby, thereby unkindly reminding same-sex couples that they have no such ability and at the same time increasing the surplus population that will consume stuff and destroy the earth. The term and its implications are so distasteful that I suspect it is one that has been used among lefties for a long time, but that they have kept out of their conversation with the larger world for fear it would hurt their cause. After all, there is definitely a misanthropic, Scrooge-like quality to the term. I speculate that now they are feeling confident in their ascendancy and are allowing it to slip out.
Let’s examine the term for a moment. It manages, in one fell swoop, to denigrate the ability to produce children, the people who do it and the children themselves — all with canine or bovine overtones. I have great hope that this will backfire, but who can tell in this upside-down and backwards age?
Has anyone else encountered this word in casual conversation or unfortunate Facebook discussions? I believe it originated in that dreadful and ridiculous 80s novel, A Handmaid’s Tale.
Published in General
We are talking about sex-crazed teen-agers who can use some sensible restraints. I agree that lefties make no sense in this arena, but then that doesn’t distinguish their position from their other positions, does it?
I agree that we could have (and have had) whole posts on these other issues, Tom. Don’t you agree, however, that children pose a problem for libertarians? Certain restraints and rules make sense in a society that includes children, as all do.
Just as a matter of personal taste, my preferred appellation is “stallion.”
We had people ask us if we knew what “caused” that, when we were young and producing our five children. No one in our circle could believe that we went on to have other children after the first two–one boy and one girl. We assured them that we did, indeed, know what caused “it”, and “it” was totally worth it!! My husband would always point out that our children would grow up and out-vote their children. Now we have four grandchildren and hope to have more join us!
Some people just feel entitled to be rude to those of us who have more than one or two children. It is the warped view that somehow people are a parasite and a pollutant on Precious Mother Earth. In fact, the earth was created by our loving Father in Heaven so that we could live here and have families and experience joy. So sorry for those people’s shriveled souls that they don’t know this.
Only time I was called a “breeder” was in 1983 outside the entrance to the National Zoo in DC. My wife and I were taking our three kids to the zoo and one flaming non-breeder sought to amuse his similarly disposed companion by pointing us out with that arch witticism.
We since made five more–four boys and four girls in all. Sixth grandkid is due in a month. Breeder? Hell, yes, bitches!
Grandchildren are the BEST! I wish I had ten children instead of just three so I could have thirty grandchildren. Why don’t they tell you these things when you are 30?
A breeder (only 1 kid so far, but we’re definitely planning to have more).
Seriously, though, who would want to go through life not coming home to a face like this:
Come back to us when she is 14. Teenagers have a way of making it easier for us to wish them well….
The term was in wide enough (in our generation and social range) use that my husband bought me a “we’re not trying to overpopulate the earth, we’re just trying to outnumber the idiots” shirt for my first pregnancy.
I would guess that we were exposed to it because folks assumed we were on “their” side.
To quote a nice lady writer, isn’t it amusing how the folks who are most likely to be hardline philosophical Darwinists are also so opposed to continuing the species?
It’s not the expressions, it’s the smells. And at 13 they start to go… different.
Yes–she’s adorable! The star of our meet-up last spring!
Treasure these times, Knotwise, they are gone in a blink! :)
5 kids. I recall some looks, never any comments (to my face, I probably look like someone who’d tell the commenter to [CoC redacted]).
Can’t wait to read all the comments, but for now I suggest the term “ephemerals” for the anti-breeders.
Hey, don’t rain on my parade!
I have been called a breeder by both a bitter gay man and a militant Gaia worshiper. The first was in 2004 when W. was reelected and I was explaining to a very nice third party person how on earth I could possibly made that voting choice, because it seemed like I was a well read and well spoken person. (this was in an online book readers club) The fact that I could hold a political discussion without expletives and ad hominem attacks gave the lefty moderators fits. They couldn’t ban me, whom they clearly disagreed with, and had to ban him.
With my third child, a Gaia nutter told me that I was evil for buying disposable diapers in Walmart and I should never have had my second, much less my third child. As I stood in gape jawed rage, my young children were right there eating Cheerios, she stalked away. Two minutes later a sweet grandmotherly lady, with a snow white, marcel wave and bedazzled sneakers, complimented my children’s looks and behavior, and informed me how nice it was to see a mother who knew what she was doing and congrats for having more than one.
Second or third pregnancy– a relative did it, at a party.
Having been forewarned I was able to Winston Churchill it and reply sweetly: “Yes, and we quite enjoy it, thank you for asking.”
Agree completely. If one can separate oneself from the personal offense long enough, it becomes apparent how pathetically small and shriveled leftist ideology is. If there is any natural, organic impulse (terms normally favored by the Left), it is reproduction. These people are totally bound up in ways leading only to despair. Sad.
One of four and father of three daughters, who want to have lots of kids. The rise of the Malthusians occurred suddenly in the late sixties. This amazing chart shows the drastic change in public opinion. http://www.gallup.com/poll/148355/americans-preference-smaller-families-edges-higher.aspx. “The Population Bomb” was published in 1968 — exactly coinciding with the step change in opinion. Did that horrible book precipitate the change or just ride the breaking wave of popular thought?
Only ever heard this term on Ricochet! From a gay man. It stunned me. I considered writing a post at the time, wondering how his mother might feel being sneered at as a breeder. But if he respected his parents, I don’t think he would have used the term. It was clearly meant to be demeaning.
On reflection …….his use of the term probably sprang from “sour grapes.”
This came from gay culture? Yet again, I am left wishing—vehemently—that my ancestors had had the foresight to realize that settling San Francisco would be a cultural disaster, and salted the ground there to make sure no one would ever develop it.
These people are crazy. San Francisco gay lefties were also among the first ones to oppose gay marriage.
That awful book, yes, but of course it was all part of the advent of the pill and so-called “reproductive freedom” aka the freedom to have diminished lives.
If someone uses this term, just tell them “I was born this way. My children are non-GMO, all natural, free range and totally organic. Produced without pesticides, spermicides or exogenous hormones. “
That’s how I heard it used in the 1980s. It was an unpleasant word, along the lines of faggot. Back in the day it had nothing to do with how many children you had or didn’t have (lesbians with children wouldn’t be called breeders) but whether you were heterosexual or not (with children or childless). (For context, we didn’t actually have to burst into flames to be called faggot, or even flaming.)
Has its use really changed to be so literal? Who uses it?
I’m actually surprised people even use it any more – it was always a bit forced.
If SoCons are going counterculture, you could just adopt it, the way we took on gay and queer.
Yes it did. The eighties, unless I’m wrong. A bad decade for hair and nomenclature.
A former neighbor, a leftist university professor who has started a solar panel company subsidized heavily by the state – had four beautiful children with his Chinese wife. Problem is – it runs counter to his complete determination to control your life because global warming is the great looming killer and we all need to stop producing children thereby contributing to that horrific pollutant CO2 – in other words you should stop “breeding”.
Of his wife’s pregnancies he said: “Mary gets pregnant if she just smells sperm.” Ah. So it really wasn’t his fault that he had four children and now 6 darling grandchildren with whom he happily poses with for Christmas pictures. Hmmmm . . . so he wasn’t having intercourse with her? Kinda like Bill Clinton. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman . . . .” ?
So ya’ll stop breathing and breeding while he picks your pocket with his subsidized company that grew out of his heavily funded university research, and has children and grandchildren with big homes, cars and who jet around the world.
The word “hypocrisy” doesn’t seem adequate when applied to Al – who incidentally – said we had 9/11 coming.
When I was at UBC in the late 80’s I briefly dated a girl who was an Artsy, a lot of her friends were either gay or lesbian, and they would say things to her like ” oh you are dating a breeder?”.
they never said it to my face as they were cowards but I heard them talking about other people as breeders. When challenged on how rude it was to say such things, they responded that it was the truth, so it was OK to say the truth. Oh boy did I have fun with that line of thinking.
I was very surprised by the animosity I saw in the MSM about the woman in California who had eight kids. Despite this group’s love for all things related to IVF and ART, single-motherhood, and so on, the people in the news media clearly despised this woman.
Of course, there is so much money in these assisted reproductive technologies that the doctors performing them don’t ask any questions.
I aspire to breeder status – with a certain amount of trepidation and doubt as to whether I’ll actually succeed. I don’t find the term itself offensive: Supposing I do conceive a child and carry it to term, I will have bred. Or spawned, as iWc put it.
Why not own the term? It’s really rather cute.
Courtesy of the Urban Dictionary:
Breeder
1: slang term used by some childfree people for one who has a child and/or has many after that, refuses to discipline the child/ren, thinks the sun rises and sets for their child/ren, look down upon people who do not have children, and are in general very selfish and greedy when it comes to their whims and those of their child/ren, especially if they can use their parenthood status or their children as an excuse to get their way. A female breeder is commonly called a moo, and a male breeder a duh.
2: slang term used by people of homosexual persuasion to refer to heterosexual couples, who have a significantly higher risk of contributing to the population increase than the homosexuals do.
“Can you believe the nerve of those breeders? They come in to a nice restaurant and proceed to sit by and watch while their progeny shriek and run all over the place, and then let the children make a huge mess and do not even tip the waitstaff. Disgusting…”