No shit, there I was.

[Luna]

This is gonna sound weird, but I think it would be a lot easier if rape was treated more like theft or like other kinds of assault. We could be angry and righteously indignant, instead of ashamed. Most o f the damage isn't from the actual rape, most of the time; it's from the social reaction and the idea that still exists, unspoken, that our purity has been fouled somehow, and we are less valuable because of it.

It's a throwback to the old "woman belongs to a man, ownership transfers from father to husband" bullshit.

It's the lingering "but what if the kid isn't MINE" shit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is gonna sound weird, but I think it would be a lot easier if rape was treated more like theft or like other kinds of assault. We could be angry and righteously indignant, instead of ashamed. Most o f the damage isn't from the actual rape, most of the time; it's from the social reaction and the idea that still exists, unspoken, that our purity has been fouled somehow, and we are less valuable because of it.

It's a throwback to the old "woman belongs to a man, ownership transfers from father to husband" bullshit.

It's the lingering "but what if the kid isn't MINE" shit.

Yes. It is. It hearkens back to a time when women were possessions, and their sexual "purity" proof that they were new, not pre-owned. It's funny, but not only am I happier in relationships where my partner takes no ownership of my kids, but my kids are happier too.

[Luna]

I came out with no kids... something for which I'm both grateful and sad.

(Glad I'm not dragging a kid through this shit, sad because I love kids, and am to the point of thinking that it's damn near too late, and I wasted a decade and a half being led on by "one more raise before we do" and may have lost my chance.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Having kids was good for me. It isn't good for everyone, though.

[Luna]

Having kids was good for me. It isn't good for everyone, though.

Of this I am VERY aware.  I used to work with some very, VERY fucked up kids whose parents should have been taken out and shot.  (Residential home for emotionally disturbed teenagers.  Of our 12 residents, 11 had been sexually abused, most by family members.  One of them had three children... and she was 17.)

If I don't have my own, being auntie isn't a bad second, I suppose.  Got a ton of friends currently expecting.  (Which is, at the moment, occasionally hard to take.)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Having kids was good for me. It isn't good for everyone, though.

Of this I am VERY aware.  I used to work with some very, VERY fucked up kids whose parents should have been taken out and shot.  (Residential home for emotionally disturbed teenagers.  Of our 12 residents, 11 had been sexually abused, most by family members.  One of them had three children... and she was 17.)

If I don't have my own, being auntie isn't a bad second, I suppose.  Got a ton of friends currently expecting.  (Which is, at the moment, occasionally hard to take.)

My friends are all having kids right now, which seems weird... my youngest is seven, and I'm SO DONE having kids.

[BadBeast]

Kids seem to get born regardless of any parental planning, or domestic stability. I think women's  hormones quite often trick them into getting pregnant at the drop of a hat. Especially young women, because the optimum age for giving birth is 15 to 25ish. And up until about 70 years ago, giving birth was the biggest killer of women there was. And there must be some kind of deception going on, because I was present at both my kid's births, and saw the pain you women go through to push them out, and some of you actually do it again, 2 or 3 times! Your genes must have some thing that makes you forget the pain of it all, because if you remembered it, we'd all be only children.