Is the human race worth saving?

All the words I couldn't fit into my Instagram post for International Women's Day

Saturday was International Women’s Day and like lots of women with access to social media, I made a vulnerable post about the importance of the day. I shared some photos my friend Tess took of me walking in the sand dunes with nothing on but a big sheet, my birthday suit and some cowboy boots. I donated a chunk of money to the Carolina Abortion Fund and patted myself on my bare back. Happy International Women’s Day y’all. My job is done here.

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A post shared by @alexmorriswrite

I don’t want to write about feminism just because you’re meant to think about women of the world on a specific date, but truly it’s been on my mind. Several drafts in my Substack continue to just sit here, so it’s time to see what I can put together at 10pm on a Monday night.

A few months ago I wrote about why I love the Wendell Berry poem “Manifesto, Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” even though some lines in it sound condescending towards women. (He did write the poem in the 1970s.)

The specific lines read:

”So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?”

The reason I dislike these lines is simple. Berry could be perceived as implying that women are valuable and deserving of satisfaction only if they breed. But there is an alternative interpretation: Berry is acknowledging that women who choose to give birth have a harder lot in life than the rest of us.

Fast forward to 2025 and I wonder if the decision of children is at the heart of feminism if not everything. Birth control revolutionized the world. As countries get access to it (and abortion) we see their birth rates drop. According to some studies we are quickly heading towards a population decrease. When women are educated, they generally decide to have fewer children. Not saying that some women don’t love being mothers, obviously they do, but even those who tell you that it’s the best thing they’ve ever done will also tell you that it required sacrifice. It required selflessness. That’s what Berry is acknowledging in the poem. That life often comes with profound beauty and love but hefty tradeoffs. As more and more countries access education, women will choose fewer children. I don’t believe it’s the radical left's agenda that is causing women to have fewer kids; it’s just that most women have eyes and can see the reality around them. After millenniums of baby chaos, women now, at last, have a choice.

For a long time I thought that educating women was the secret to fixing climate change (and most things). I still believe this to a degree, but tonight, just for funsies, I’m entertaining the idea of the human race eventually dying out because when given the choice whether or not to sacrifice, rather than having it forced upon us, more folks tend to choose self-preservation. No matter how many societies give mothers changing rooms, maternity leave, free childcare etc, some women will weigh up the odds and opt not to do it. That’s more than the odds were before birth control. We had no idea how dramatically the world would change when we gave women the ability to have sex and simultaneously control their fertility.

If we find out that humanity is ultimately doomed because not enough people are having children, consider if humanity is worth saving.

A few more thoughts.

In my Instagram post I mentioned conflicting narratives between being pro-feminist and anti-capitalist. Online activists talk about being both. People who claim to be both don’t recognize the way women benefit from making their own money. In cultures (predominantly capitalistic, western) where women can work and access birth control it is demonstrably clear that they have things better than cultures where they are expected to marry and start breeding at 12 for example, or they are expected to abandon their education to look after their family.

But when we say we are talking about ‘western values,’ are we actually talking about rich countries? Am I saying I truly value capitalism, or do I just value living in rich countries where I have more options?

It’s false to presume that the ability to work is specific to capitalism. Quite the contrary probably the most important thing about communism is, as Animal Farm taught me, that everybody everywhere is meant to work very hard until they die. The difference is just there’s no reason to climb high when wages stay the same and no one advances.

Are women better off in societies where everyone makes the same amount of money?

People (some of them quite young) work far harder in poor countries across the capitalistic - communistic spectrum than many folks in Australia and the United States. They work 12-hour-days or more, but they still don’t have choices, money and freedom like I do. Even worse, their cheap labor is probably making it easier for myself and most people I know. The ability to even consider pursuing a great life depends on where you got lucky enough to be born.

And am I wrong to presume that more choices makes life better? Consider arranged marriages. It seems crazy to let someone else set me up with a life partner, but stats tell us arranged marriages last longer than “love marriages”. Am I really empowered by all this freedom? If I had 6 or 7 children and didn’t know anything else was possible, would I be none the wiser? Is it my preconceived notions about Western values because I am a product of said values that I think that I am free? Is there a world where it is better to have men and elders in the community to make decisions for me?

And then I think about individualism vs collectivism, which I suppose is represented in Western cultures vs Eastern cultures. When I think of my big dreams and desires, I know that I want to at least have the option to do things my way. I want to be able to work hard and in return go on crazy vacations and have big nights out. I don’t mind being a part of a community, but I want the option to opt out on some days. In legitimate collective communities, you don’t have the option to opt out. In poor countries/communities, people have to depend on each other because the government and social welfare systems don’t work. I want to be free to live on my terms and not need anybody, even though I recognize that’s kinda sad at the end of the day.

Who dies happier, those who choose big selfish dreams or those who didn’t get a chance? I have no answers, but these are my questions that didn’t quite make it to my Instagram post where you have a word limit of 2,200 characters.

(A post for another day is how I love feeling free and being seen, as a woman of course.)

Photo by Tess Lehman

PS Here is an article by Nancy Frazer that influenced my thoughts on tonight’s Substack: How feminism became capitalism's handmaiden - and how to reclaim it.

PPS I’m pasting below a poem I heard at an IWD poetry reading years ago. It stays with me now, as I think about these things.

Tell us, Marx.
By Mallika Sengupta

She spun rhymes, wove blankets
The Dravidian woman who sowed wheat
In the Aryan man’s fields, reared his kids
If she isn’t a worker, then what is work?

Tell us Marx, who is a worker, who isn’t
New industrial workers with monthly wages
Are they the only ones who work?
Slum life is the Industrial Age’s gift
To the worker’s housewife
She draws water, mops floors, cooks food
After the daily grind, at night
She beats her son and weeps
She too is not a worker!
Then tell us Marx, what is work?

Since housework is unpaid labour, will women simply
Sit at home and cook for the revolutionary
And comrade is he alone who upholds hammer and sickle?
Such injustice does not become You

If ever there’s a revolution
There’ll be heaven on earth
Classless, stateless, in that enlightened world
Will women then become the handmaidens of revolution?