Childfree and conscious of my privilege

It occurs to me that my ongoing practice of living a childfree life is the product of many intersecting forms of privilege. If I had been an immigrant from an African country such as Nigeria, where it is virtually unheard of to choose to forego reproduction, I would have faced immense pressure from my family and the Nigerian community in Australia to adhere to the social norm. Similarly, if I were originally from China, not only would it have been culturally ingrained to pass on your genes, but I would have had to get heterosexually married at a set time (before 27 years old) to avoid being seen as a "left-over woman." My white European background shelters me from the harshest of the stigma.  

Another thing which has dramatically reduced my tendency to be swayed by heterosexual social norms, is that I identified as gay, and then bisexual, from the teenage years, and assumed that this automatically excluded me from baby-making. I was aware that Rainbow Families existed, but I never felt the urge to gravitate towards them, and so I have largely escaped pressure from either straight or GLBTIQ communities. The straights assumed that I was on a different life trajectory and would do my own thing, and the non-straights didn't have much incentive to pressure me into mirroring their life decisions - even when I did come across people desperate for parenthood. 

Back to race, white people like Lionel Shriver insist that white people adding more of their number to the global population is a good thing. I, thankfully, do not. It's totally fine with me if people of colour increase in proportion in the future. It may just make society more antiracist, and therefore kinder, more charitable and compassionate. This argument has no bearing on my uterus whatsoever.  

I am also privileged by my educational reality. Although I dropped out of university, I have been and remain a life-long learner, devouring books and newspapers like The Guardian. I have read various books on being childfree, and I'm familiar with the discourse about it on the web. I know that while stigma very much exists, society is slowly becoming more accepting. I know there is a place for me in Australian and international society as someone who advocates for women to have as many choices as possible in how they live their lives. I make my opinions known in blog posts like these. 

In short, I am lucky. I am also alive at the right time and the right place. If I had been born before the time of contraception and the Civil Rights Movement, it might had felt socially impossible to be who I am today, even in Western society. I am thankful to all the feminist, lesbian, bisexual and childfree women who came before me and made my current liberation possible. I hope I, too, am paving the way for younger generations' greater freedom by my contributions to the public discourse. Let's liberate ourselves even further!