So, they grew meat...

Scientists grew meat from the stem cells of a cow.  Pasty white meat from an animal that was never really an animal, just something scraped into a Petri dish. It even has its own Wikipedia page. In Vitro Meat.  Seriously. This is the Internet. Of course, it has its own Wiki page, probably within minutes of it emerging in strands from the dish, just like our ancestors did eons ago on the banks of Lake Ooze.

Then, of course,  the scientists shaped it into a burger, because if its anything geeks know well, it's the shape of fast food. Sadly, even after mixing the pasty stem cell "meat" with bread crumbs, seasoning, and frying it in an heart-choking amount of butter, it tasted meaty in texture, but the flavor was nothing to get overly excited about.

But it is exciting to speculate on meat grown from stem cells. Bland meat that has no flavor. Pasty white meat that you'd never know was "beef." Many possibilities have been put forth since the meat hit the frying pan. People excitedly surmised this Frankenmeat had the potential to end world hunger. Space techies suddenly saw a solution to feeding the passengers and crew on unlimited space travel voyages. Animal lovers saw a way to save the cows at last.

That started me thinking. The meat is bland and therefore interchangeable. Why stop at beef? Why not chickens? Why not fish? It would all taste the same and the only differences would be in flavorings and added fat content.

Think about it. We could send people to explore the galaxy forever. They could continually generate their own meat from a tiny laboratory space. The only problem would be disposing of waste, clothing themselves as fabric wears out after awhile, water, and, because such voyages would be decades long, eventually each other.

Then I started thinking some more. All that bland meat that looked and tasted the same. Horrifying as it is for some to admit, the truth is if our stem cells were grown the same way, we could not be picked out from the crowd of other animals on the plate. We'd be just as bland, just as pasty, just as white, although I suspect our fat content might be a tad higher.

When we bury a body, we take up valuable real estate on a planet that is running out of resources. If we can reduce a cow to a mess of stem cells served up seasoned and fried on our plate, we've already set aside the ethics and moral arguments. It's not a cow anymore. It was never a cow even though it came from a cow. The same argument would apply to us in that situation. It wouldn't be us in that dish even though it came from us.

What it comes down to is we are not any different than that fried stem cell burger on a plate. That meat is us.  We ARE meat when you really do think about it. We are not vegetable. We are not gold. We are not holy. We are meat.

So basically this is the reality we are faced with: humans are greedy, consuming omnivores and I don't see us changing anytime soon. We're going to want our "meat" to taste different from other "meat." It's why we have multiple flavors of ice cream, multiple arrangements of topping on pizzas, multiple everything.

 But the resources are not endless and stem cell meat is just the beginning of new moral arguments over food and survival. Eventually the argument will not be what is meat and what is not meat, but what is Messy Meat and what is practical meat. And because it will all taste the same, some types of meat will have premium labels. And I'm guessing it won't be the cow with the expensive label stuck to its Petri-grown ass.

You can argue all you want, but Soylent Green is here. The minute the contents of that Petri dish ended up in the stomach of someone else, we officially became meat. Now it's a just a matter of adjusting to that reality.

From Ursine Logic's Child-Free By Choice shop.

So, they grew meat...

What Child-Free By Choice Means

When I came of age in the 60's and 70's, one of the big issues of the day was overpopulation. It was a subject that took on new relevance with the advent of reliable birth control such as the pill. And it spun off into an idea that was radical at the time: having children was a choice not an obligation.

At the same time as the pill came on the scene, there were other factors at work such as the growing Feminist movement that also served to show women had more choices than staying home and popping out babies. Even though the idea of equality for women was not a new idea, it finally reached the mainstream in the 60's after JFK appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman of President's Commission on the Status of Women. Much of what we consider "women's issues" now, such as equality in the workplace, maternity leave, etc came from the studies conducted by the commission.

With this new awareness of women as more than baby machines it was inevitable that large numbers of us realized we could do more with our lives and leave behind a more powerful legacy of work, art, literature, music and contributions to the sciences if we remained child-free. A book that influenced many to remain child-free was Ellen Peck's The Baby Trap. She presented a powerful argument that used real world examples to show not everyone needed to breed to live and enjoy a fruitful life.

As I grew up and matured into an adult woman I had many examples of successful and child-free women to show me this was a valid choice in a world faced with hunger and wars brought on by overpopulation. The images of starvation in places like Ethiopia really affected me and a lot of people my age. We saw the devastation and accepted our role in it and knew our contributions, although small, would be large ones if more people believed as we did.

Many of us chose not to bring children into a world always at war and running out of precious resources. It allowed us to move forward and learn to create a legacy that came from our hearts and minds instead of from our physical bodies. And for the most part the rest of the population was okay with this. They considered it strange, eccentric at times, but completely and totally our choice.

One of my reasons for opening up a Cafepress store that is devoted completely to the child-free by choice is because this tolerance for "our choice" has changed in the last few years. There's almost this rage at those of us who made this choice, as if we are somehow defective or threatening to those who choose to breed. I've had less hatred directed toward my left of radical politics and my Atheism than I've had directed at me because I actively promote a child-free lifestyle.

I consider this hatred as stemming from the Entitlement Movement that believes having babies somehow gives one special powers over the rest of the population. These special powers translate into such things as forcing adults to watch only kid-oriented television, movies, and have access only to child-safe entertainment and lifestyles. The old-fashioned idea of parenting being something that took place in the home has fallen down the pit of letting the government, the schools, and the churches raise children instead of the parents. The Entitlement Movement never learned about off switches, v-chips, filtering software, or adults only, and those of us who choose a child-free lifestyle have to suffer for their ignorance and inflated sense of me-me-me.

My child-free by choice store is one way to bring the choice back to life and out of the hands of the entitlement bunch. I have a range of designs that include options such as overpopulation, anti-war philosophies, and yes, some that the breeders by choice will consider mean and insulting. The reason for those is that parents sometimes fail to get the idea that not everyone wants to interact with their children, not everyone thinks it's okay to let children run over every one's right to existence, and it draws on the old-fashioned idea that you had them so you raise them.

I will be adding designs on a more frequent basis now that it is it's own store instead of a section in Ursine Logic, and I'll also be adding cat and dog designs as many child-free humans devote a lot of time to making sure our furry companions have a good life. For those who think the child-free are selfish, just check out how many of us do support causes that deal with poverty, hunger, the environment, and saving innocent furry creatures that others have abandoned to a life of misery and death before you drop words like "selfish" so casually.

And if you have a favorite design idea or phrase you'd like to see on a t-shirt or other item, do drop me a line and I'll put it together for you because it's time we work together to save what's left of this planet's precious resources.

My email is ursinelogic at gmail dot com. Hate mail will be posted with a link to your email, and threats will be forwarded to law enforcement. On no other topic have I been forced to post that warning, which tells you how rabid breeders can get when their world view is threatened.

Peace.

What Child-Free By Choice Means

Child-Free by choice online book club

I've tried several online book clubs and they always degenerate into discussions of children, pregnancy and all the assorted horrors around that. That really spoils it for those of us who came there to discuss books. So I'm delighted that one of the child-free by choice list members has started a yahoo book discussion group that will focus on adult conversations about all kinds of books. So if you want some adult conversation around good books, come join.

Sign up here

Child-Free by choice online book club

Why I Don't Have Children

People sometimes ask me why I don't have children and I usually give them some smart-ass answer such as "because I can't have kittens," or something equally evasive. Why I do this is because we live in a world where I've received more hate mail over a section of my shop that is devoted to childfree people than I have over designs such as "Fuck You Mr. President." People are threatened in a weird way by those of us who choose not to breed.

And yes, it is a choice, one I made when half my graduating class was missing because they signed up for the military at 17, got sent to Vietnam, and were dead by graduation day 1969. We read their names in tribute and handed their empty diploma cases to their grieving families. At that time the military was mostly male and we young women looked around that room empty of most of the boys we grew up with and left the room as Pacifists. I swore right then, with many of my friends, that I would never provide children to be used as cannon fodder.

My other reason was over-population. I saw a world filling up too fast with too limited resources. It is far worse now. If we keep reproducing at the rate we are now, our future and those of children born in the next few years, will be a future of wars fought for limited resources such as water, food, and unpolluted land. We are already dying for oil. That should be a clue and wake-up call for those who still don't get it.

Later in life I was told a third reason to never have children: I carry the gene for Hemophilia. Any male child would have more than likely been born with this disease. And while I've heard all the arguments why someone who has this can live a long and happy life, I didn't feel I should inflict it on a child if I had the choice not to. I chose not to.

At the same time, I realize there are amazing people in the world who need to have children. They need to raise the next generation to be the amazing and enlightened beings they themselves are. The answer to this is very simple. Adopt. There are so many children all over the world who would be grateful for a safe and permanent place to sleep with parents who loved them. There are children in this country, in our own neighborhoods who have grown up in foster homes because they are not cute enough, white enough, perfect enough to be adopted. This is so wrong.

One of the worst arguments I've had with someone on myspace was with a couple people who tried to convince me there was a shortage of babies to adopt and that's why abortion was wrong. There is NO shortage of babies to adopt if you aren't looking just for cabbage patch dolls. If you really care about humanity and the planet and saving lives, then adopt a special needs child. Adopt a child who is not a baby. Adopt a foster child who longs for a real home they won't have to eventually leave. Then tell me there are no children to adopt. Before then, you are not being compassionate and caring about human life. You are being a fucking racist who only wants a dolly with blond hair and blue eyes.

After the latest round of hate mail I decided to expand the section of my child-free shop and will be adding more designs to it just because I don't like racists, I don't like people who think it's alright to tell me what to do with MY body, and who judge others for choices they make that are different. If I was like them I wouldn't have any friends with children. I wouldn't be around children. I would just live in my biased reality and call it good.

But I'm not them and I have both child-filled and child-free friends. I have friends who adopted children from other countries. I have friends who adopted crack babies. I have friends who foster children no one wants. To me these are the true heroes of the world, those who give a home to the less than perfect. That makes them perfect humans in my book.

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Changing minds one t-shirt at a time. Visit Ursine Logic for more designs.

Why I Don't Have Children