{"id":18821,"date":"2011-01-06T10:34:04","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T15:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp\/?p=18821"},"modified":"2025-03-10T10:08:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T14:08:42","slug":"a-tyranny-that-smiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/2011\/01\/a-tyranny-that-smiles\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tyranny That Smiles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"first\"><strong>AS DISCUSSED <\/strong>in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp\/2010\/12\/a-case-of-maternal-lust-2\/\">previous post,<\/a> Melanie Thernstrom, the daughter of neoconservative authors Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/02\/magazine\/02babymaking-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all\">has written of\u00a0her experience<\/a> hiring an\u00a0egg donor and two different\u00a0surrogates\u00a0to provide her and her husband with an instant family of two\u00a0children.\u00a0This real-life version of Margaret Atwood’s reproductive dystopia in\u00a0<em>The Handmaid’s Tale<\/em>\u00a0is told with\u00a0a confusing blend of self-awareness and self-deceit. The absence of any blatant coercion in the many contractual arrangements Thernstrom and her husband, Michael Callahan, made with others, including with the woman who supplied breast milk, is chillingly representative of technocratic\u00a0liberalism.<\/p>\n<p>Liberal society\u00a0blandly draws people in with a system of material rewards and the appearance of mutual necessity. Thernstrom met with the donor and surrogates in coffee shops, where they\u00a0held friendly chats and\u00a0cheerily deliberated.\u00a0Everyone had something to gain\u00a0but\u00a0all self-interest could be couched in altruistic terms. The donors\u00a0only wanted to help. They weren’t looking for money. Thernstrom only wanted to do something utterly natural – have a family – and do the best for her marriage. She wasn’t shopping for children in the way one might shop for a car.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Again, it appeared, because there was no coercion involved, because\u00a0all was conducted on friendly terms\u00a0and substantial sums of money were\u00a0given in exchange for biological services, that Thernstrom and her husband had not in any way mistreated the other parties. But this appearance is false. The offer of substantial money\u00a0for “gestational services” of any kind <em>is<\/em> a form of coercion. It’s soft coercion, holding out temptation to the stupid, selfish and weak. And, these business transactions have forced a life of confused identity on the most important parties involved: the children who were conceived, and who will be raised, under cold, impersonal arrangements. No amount of smiles and friendship between the parties involved can hide the deliberate refusal of love to these children. For one cannot love a person whom one regards as a non-person, as an abstraction or as an end for one’s desires.<\/p>\n<p>A society that allows women and men, even a small minority, to sell their sperm\u00a0or their\u00a0eggs or their wombs is barbaric.\u00a0A society that allows people to sell the\u00a0flesh-and-blood\u00a0bonds of kinship\u00a0is\u00a0a dark,\u00a0heathen hellhole that makes one long for the days when barbarians\u00a0plundered and pillaged instead of subverting their hostility toward\u00a0life\u00a0into non-violent forms of destruction. “Liberalism makes every man his own Nietzche – only with health insurance, a retirement plan, and protection against discrimination,” wrote James Kalb in <em>The Tyranny of Liberalism<\/em>. The order, efficiency and technical sophistication of modern life all provide cover for the coercive processes of deathlike decivilization. We live under a tyranny of the most heartless kind.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">— Comments —<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Regarding your latest post on the Abigail Thernstrom story, you wrote: \u201cThe offer of substantial money\u00a0for \u2018gestational services\u2019 of any kind <em>is<\/em> a form of coercion\u2026 soft coercion, holding out temptation to\u00a0the stupid, selfish and weak.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Like you, I find the entire Thernstrom arrangement bizarre and repulsive, and I would condemn it, but I\u2019m not sure I would condemn it as \u201ccoercive.\u201d\u00a0 It might be <em>suborning,<\/em> the equivalent of offering a bribe, and here your ascription of moral feebleness to the \u201csurrogates\u201d is entirely appropriate.\u00a0 I suggest that a closer equivalent to what the Thernstrom and her husband have done is prostitution.\u00a0 Just as a man on his own offers money to acquire the services of a prostitute for sexual gratification, the married couple offers money to acquire the services of the surrogates \u2013 in this case for satisfying what elsewhere you have aptly characterized as the \u201cmaternal lust\u201d of the so-called professional or career-oriented \u201cI want to have it all\u201d woman.\u00a0 Lust is the primary sin in both cases.\u00a0 Apparently the Thernstrom couple has also bought the services of a sperm donor or plural sperm donors, in which I again see the equivalent of trafficking in the fleshpots.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It makes a fascinating if slightly morbid thought-experiment to imagine the cold, calculating, self-alienated attitude that the surrogates especially must bring to this transaction.\u00a0 They are literally selling themselves, hence my comparison with prostitution.\u00a0 In my opinion all the participants in this moral imbroglio must be deranged in one degree or another.\u00a0 Our elites are as perverse in their morality and as sordid in their willfulness as the homicidal, wench-mongering Byzantine elites of the Sixth Century about whom the court-historian Procopius wrote in his <em>Secret History.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Laura writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">“Coercive” alone is probably too strong of a word, which is why I called it “soft coercion,” but\u00a0your suggestion is better.\u00a0It is bribery, though distinct from all other forms because of possibly complicated motives on the part of the surrogates, who\u00a0in this case seemed to take some genuine pleasure in pregnancy and childbirth. For them, this too seemed a form of vicarious motherhood.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The comparison with prostitution is tempting but it falls short because third parties are involved. The costs for everyone are nothing compared to the costs for\u00a0those conceived.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">One of the most disturbing aspects of the\u00a0story\u00a0is the\u00a0passivity of the\u00a0husbands of the surrogates, or “gestational carriers,”\u00a0who were impregnated with\u00a0the\u00a0fertilized eggs of a donor.\u00a0These women said they wanted to have children again, but did not want\u00a0to have more of their own even though they were married. Their husbands, middle-class men, already the fathers of children,\u00a0agreed. What does one say to one’s wife when she is carrying another man’s child?\u00a0How does one act? Presumably\u00a0money was a\u00a0motivating factor. But even\u00a0Thernstrom\u00a0was surprised by the mens’\u00a0acceptance of their role. She writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">When we met their husbands, we felt relieved by their self-confidence and self-possession. The role of a gestational carrier\u2019s husband is, in some ways, more difficult than that of the carrier herself. The husband is, as Fie puts it, \u201ca bystander to a miracle,\u201d who partakes in the inconvenience of his wife\u2019s pregnancy but has fewer emotional rewards (as well as the occasional negative reaction from a stranger whose congratulations for a new chip off the old block can turn to disapproval).<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">This soulless, technocratic\u00a0reproduction would have been\u00a0futuristic\u00a0just a few years\u00a0ago, but it fits in nicely with the\u00a0<em>Times’ <\/em>campaign to normalize homosexual parenthood. If surrogacy is\u00a0honorable for heterosexuals then it is fine for homosexuals too. I would not at all be surprised if this motif was in the forefront of the editors’ minds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Thernstrom writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[I]t sounded weird and somehow hubristic, as if having children were a vanity project or a movie we were producing or a manufacturing job to be outsourced.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Who would deny that life is complicated and messy? After going through this lengthy process, Thernstrom is joyful, but hires yet another person –\u00a0a nanny – to care for the babies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bertonneau writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">I take your points.\u00a0 I would add this, that liberals always describe conservatives as soulless people interested only in financial calculation and personal gain.\u00a0 (\u201cEvil capitalists.\u201d)\u00a0 Yet in the Thernstrom arrangement \u2013 which exemplifies the bold liberal world \u201cbeyond good and evil\u201d \u2013 everything is reduced precisely to soulless financial calculation.\u00a0 I failed to glean that the surrogates were married women whose husbands, as you say, are entirely agreeable.\u00a0 What kind of man is that?\u00a0 To use an old term, a <em>blackguard <\/em>who deserves mockery and jeers.\u00a0 I am reminded of the first quatrain of Wordsworth\u2019s sonnet:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>The world is too much with us; late and soon,<br \/>\nGetting and spending, we lay waste our powers;<br \/>\nLittle we see in Nature that is ours;<br \/>\nWe have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Reverse the phrase \u201cgetting and spending\u201d and one has the first part, at least, the sperm-donor part, of the Thernstrom procedure, every element of which is profoundly unnatural and \u201csordid.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, by dedicating herself to what Wordsworth calls \u201cthe world\u201d \u2013 that is, to career, public status, and material chattels \u2013\u00a0Melanie Thernstrom has wasted her powers and given her heart away.\u00a0 So have all the other participants given their hearts away.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">When Marxian or any other form of atheistic materialism becomes the bedrock of assumption of a people, what considerations might give pause before such a heartless scheme?\u00a0 Precisely none.\u00a0 As you say, this is a liberal phenomenon in every way, shape and form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Caryl Johnston writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Thank you for your excellent blog. I agree with you and Tom Bertonneau about this Thernstrom business. Other than coercion or prostitution, I’d say it is an example of the “Might Makes Right” philosophy that has penetrated every corner of our national life. Because we have the (technological) power to do something, we do it. It is a destructive and anti-social philosophy which has now entered the realm of biology.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It took mankind thousands of years to raise the biological into the social. The casualness with which we destroy social customs of civilized life is nothing short of astonishing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Of course the end result of this is the further atomization of society – and more power to the State. “Divide and Conquer” seems to be the sequel to “Might Makes Right.”<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AS DISCUSSED in a previous post, Melanie Thernstrom, the daughter of neoconservative authors Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom,\u00a0has written of\u00a0her experience hiring an\u00a0egg donor and two different\u00a0surrogates\u00a0to provide her and her husband with an instant family of two\u00a0children.\u00a0This real-life version of Margaret Atwood’s reproductive dystopia in\u00a0The Handmaid’s Tale\u00a0is told with\u00a0a confusing blend of self-awareness and self-deceit. 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