My Thoughts on the ‘Baby Murder’ article and Twitter’s Intellectual Dishonesty
A while ago, just after the Anarchist Library had rejected the works of Foucault, theory twitter lost their minds over another work. The said work was Eleven Ways to Kill a Child written by Mallory Wournos. And as someone who has finally read it and discussed it with a friend, I would like to share my thoughts on this controversial article.
The article itself is not as ‘transgressive’ or thought altering as it wanted to be. Sure, it’s rather controversial but it never adds another section where it further talks about morality and further challenges the reader to look beyond the shock and confusion to real introspection. I don’t know if this is something the author expects the reader to do or not but it’s more so a skill developed by interpreting art than theory oftentimes.
But what even is the interpretation you can glean from the article? Well, first I have to give a brief overview of what’s even talked about in the article as most of you have probably not read it and probably never will. Never at any point does it make an argument for or against infanticide. It just states the cold hard facts concerning why infanticide happened in the past. And with the power of facts and logic, it points out that humanity’s view on infanticide has not been uniform. It never has or never will be set in stone and that it was actually pretty common until the 19th-century.
It then further discusses how infanticide transgresses according to Wournos, one of the most fundamental identities which carry society into the future, how infanticide is such an abhorrence societally that it’s considered the work of mental illness or the devil, and then they further go on and discuss briefly how it also transgresses against our idea of a woman. So, transgresses against the idea that woman is naturally inclined to be submissive and nurturing, that for them, the family is the ultimate achievement and their life’s purpose. After that, the author lists out various ways of killing a child with added historical context and accounts of it occurring.
But never does the author call for the murder of children. It’s simply the discussion of the murder of children (great argument on my part amiright) and why that said murder happens. Many people see Anarchism as ‘soy’ and ‘Reddit’ but it’s not like that. The article is simply pointing out that this is one of our societal blind spots. It’s something we’ve tried to forget and wished we’d forgotten. It reminds us that…
Despite its continued practice, its relevance to women, and its transgression of motherly values (which proclaim the family as the ultimate achievement for anybody with a uterus), infanticide seem to be unworthy of discussion.
It’s a self-proclaimed challenge to look beyond the disgust. Infanticide something that still happens (even in the ‘developed world) and still has relevance but we still refuse to even think about it. Ignoring bad icky things doesn’t make them go away. It’s definitely not a topic to be taken lightly but what good does brushing it under the rug ever achieve?
Did you think about your value systems, the value systems of others, the importance placed on birth and death, or the limits of freedom? Or did you simply lose your mind over an article that you had never read? Did you want to laugh at how ‘deranged’ some anarchists are? I’ve heard someone suggest that the aforementioned anarchists are the only ones ‘edgy’ enough to bring up topics that hard-boiled serious Marxists and Leninists won’t consider because perhaps the course of historical progression of communism and internationalism is of utmost importance, sidelining anything other topics of discussion. Did you never look beyond the shock and disgust for a second to think? Any self-respecting ‘theorycel’ would approach this article with a little less derangement and a lot more intellectual honesty, especially since it’s just a short six-page article so it’s not like word count would stop anyone from reading it.
I don’t care if you agreed or disagreed with the article. That really doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you’re losing your mind over it because you actually read the thing. What does bother me is the intellectual dishonesty fostered by clicks and laughs online. Modern social media is designed in such a way that the point of it is to spread information like pass the passel and the algorithms and UI are designed to reward and encourage it. And this doesn’t help the situation either, resulting in people not engaging with the thing they’re dunking on but instead posturing to get more clicks for more dopamine. And it feels really good to have this feedback, feedback that you are so smart and so funny and so correct. That you’re this intellectual dunking on these horrible deranged anarchists. Because at the end of the day, all of this was never about the article but about you.
