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Ed P's avatar

I absolutely hear and agree with this. But there are some assumptions around human rights and equality baked into this I think.

On the other hand, there is a very well documented phenomenon I’m familiar with as I was an volunteer fundraiser for UNICEF for many years. The more you educate girls in a given population, the less children they have. So educating girls in Africa especially became a focus, as this is believed to be downstream from hunger and poverty. Fewer children, fewer mouths to feed. More educated girls tend to have more options, delay pregnancy and have fewer children, in which they invest more in each. Uneducated girls in the Africa often are unaware of birth control options or even how babies are conceived.

There is intense backlash from conservative religious forces in Africa to this assistance and mindset — the terrorist organization Boko Harem is entirely based in opposing this, on keeping women and girls uneducated and subordinate while refusing the influence of western education and aid. They tend to kidnap girls from schools and enslave them.

So when they say feminism is lowering the birth rates, they mean they’d rather girls have no other options but to make babies and take care of the home. They are ideologically aligned with Boko Harem, apparently

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Philippe's avatar

I think problem defending Feminism, is that Patriarchy (or anti-Feminism) didn't idolize all man in past, but subset of it.

Wannabe Patriarch see themselves as idolized landowner, with wives, multiple children, and farmhands.

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