Oihane’s Reviews > Thin Skin: Essays > Status Update

I searched the research paper that she mentioned in which the best decision to reduce carbon emissions is to have one less child is true it's there omg 😭😭😭 open access too

"I'm all for pregnancy and parenthood in a different world from ours. In a world where pregnant people have care, support, where moms aren't totally on their own. Where having babies isn't the be-all, end-all of a woman's existence, the only route to human fulfillment. Where we live in a sustainable society that can support new members of its population without exploiting the resources of other countries and species"

"Like abortion, the crime is stopping something that never started, ending a life before it begins. Thwarting possibility, potential, unfulfilled futures. But no one talks about the possibility, the potential, the futures thwarted by having kids."

I wanna cry every sentence speaks straight to my heart

"Why can't we not want children for ourselves? I don't want them for my own sake. Not because I think kids are terrible—it's not about them!—but because I want my own life. It's not the future I'm trying to preserve or protect. It's now. It's me. It's my life."

Round of applause please I couldn't have said it better

"The call to motherhood is external, but it is powerful, and naturalizing that call helps keep the structures of heteronormative society intact."

I've never felt that so called 'maternal call' when i was a kid and everyone was so sure they wanted kids growing up I was like ??? Should I be so sure too? It's so validating to read this book. We can choose not to have kids if we don't want to!!!!!

"While our bodies do have "Biological clocks" that determine our sleep patterns, hormones, and the years in which we are fertile, there is no biological factor that kicks in during your thirties to tell your body to have kids, nor is there an innate "maternal instinct" that arises when a woman becomes a mother. There is, however, a powerful cultural clock. At what age do you become a witch? 35, 40?"

!!!!!! YES

"Some would say my desire to be pregnant was an instinctive, natural, maternal drive. But these drives don't exist without institutions that reinforce then. They are cultural. And as such we can examine them, change them."

SAY IT LOUDER

Nothing has changed wtf?? Also very interesting how they started saying 400 years ago that women's period was toxic. Even nowadays the need of hiding your period is still intact it's crazy

So from the times of feudalism women were pushed into heteronormativity and child-bearing because it was the only way for man to keep colonising and keep getting richer under the growing capitalism. They needed more children to keep the system going so they needed women to stay at home and have children. For this to happen the term 'witch' was created and every woman who didn't fit their criteria was a witch.

I just can't read a book normally after physics can I? "Time is passing always at the same pace" no it doesn't, time dilation exists 😭