Stop Insulting Pro-Natalists: Thoughts on Absence of PR Strategy for Antinatalism

Way too many self-proclaimed 'antinatalists' go online and post excessively agressive or pessimistic content.

Such content often attract lots of attention by getting reposted, retweeted, screenshotted or whatever, which prevents antinatalism from gaining support, undoes hard work by serious antinatalist activists, and causes harm to painient (*1) consciousnesses who would have avoided being created if antinatalism had gained slightly more support.

Of course, some people would play a role in spreading such information in a way that works as propaganda against antinatalism because they fail (or pretend to fail) to understand that not everything antinatalists say actually reflects the content of antinatalism -- I don't intend to argue that they shouldn't be held accountable at all.

However, if you ignore the existence of such people and discharge whatever comes up on your mind onto the internet, that means you're abandoning the responsibility as an antinatalist not to hamper the progress of antinatalism, if not help accelerate it.

*1: 'painient' is an adjective meaning 'capable of experiencing pain.'

One obvious example is the damage caused by r/antinatalism (r/AN), a huge antinatalist community on Reddit.

It's one of the biggest antinatalist communities on the internet, and you can meet a wide variety of antinatalists on it; speciesist, anti-speciesist, environmentalist, misanthropic, philanthropic, etc.

When I got to know r/AN, it was filled with content that did the opposite of helping antinatalism gain support by the general public, despite the significant responsibility for shaping the public reputation of our position, which the community is burdened with, due to

1. the name 'r/antinatalism,'

2. the biggest member count of all antinatalist communities on Reddit, and

3. the fact it's a 'public' community, meaning anyone, familiar with the term 'antinatalism' or not, can view the content posted on it.

Such content include posts/comments where antinatalists insult pro-natalists, and those where they share their personal grief over having been created.

When I became better known for co-founding Antinatalism Japan, Oldphan, who is probably the most famous antinatalist activist on this planet, invited me to join the mod team of r/AN.

I was deeply concerned about the state of r/AN for the reasons I mentioned, so once invited, I hardly thought twice before saying yes to that offer.

If there had been any reason not to, that'd be the risk of hurting my mental well-being by exposing myself to disgusting content posted on the community.

But that wasn't strong enough to beat my sense of obligation to make good use of the opportunity given to me to stop r/AN from doing any more reputational damage to antinatalism.

I don't know if there had already been a fight between 'free speech' and 'censorship' among the mod before I joined the team, but I was always on the side of 'censorship,' arguing that we should take the power away from r/AN to hamper the progress of antinatalism by taking measures such as

1. benning the use of 'breeder(s),' which is a derogatory term for pro-natalists, and

2. switching the community to private, making it invisible to anyone who haven't joined it, taking the opportunity away from it to become the first exposure to the term 'antinatalism' to outsiders (and making r/antinatalism2, which was moderated much better than r/AN, do the job instead).

Only L, who also played a role as a moderator with the same kind of motivation as I did, understood and agreed with my views on this matter.

I have no idea why, but the most of the moderators who opposed our view changed their mind at the beginning of this year, and the mod team abandoned its tradition of only removing posts/comments that violate Reddit Content Policy.

We managed to introduce 'civility rules,' which require moderators' subjective judgements when applied to posts/comments, making r/AN a slightly better place for people to encounter the term 'antinatalism' for the first time in their life.

As a result, I was finally able to allow myself to leave the mod team at the end of May this year, having a realistic expectation that the current and near future mod team would be able to minimize the damage r/AN does to antinatalism.

It's been more than 2 months since I resigned, and now I can more clearly see that the fight I experienced at the mod team wasn't really between freedom of speech and censorship.

The concept of free speech cannot be applied as some kind of absolute good to a group of people who (are supposed to) support a social movement.

Imagine some anti-racicts ranting "white people are irrational idiots" on Twitter -- they wouldn't, and shouldn't, get away with it without being told to stop doing such an irresponsible thing by serious anti-racist activists, who are aware of their duty not to hamper the progress of anti-racism.

What's happening here is clearly not censorship!

When it comes to antinatalism, it is freedom of speech that enables people to publicly support antinatalism or engage in expressive activities to advocate for it, and it is government censorship that does the opposite.

When antinatalists choose to engage in expressive activities in a way that contributes more to the growth of antinatalism instead of doing so in a way that does the opposite, we can't call that censorship.

Then what kind of content and ways of expression do I suggest?

Here are some examples:

CONTENT OF EXPRESSION: WHAT TO EMPHASIZE

1. Antinatalists support antinatalism as a result of exercising reason, often motivated by compassion.

2. Supporting antinatalism doesn't necessarily mean that the supporter is having a bad life. When one has a bad life, it only makes it easy for them to reach an antinatalist conclusion, and it doesn't have anything to do with the legitimacy of antinatalism itself.

3. When someone doesn't support antinatalism, that's only because they haven't been given a chance to take their time to think about the morality of procreation, not because they are genuinely a bad person. If given enough time to think about it, they will understand and support antinatalism.

4. Those who (try to) criticize antinatalism by equating it with things like eugenics, nazism, or religion should try taking a step back to the badness of pain (and the goodness of pleasure), which is the source of any kind of value, to enable themselves to think clearly and acknowledge differences between each position.

5. It's not any more wrong for people to procreate when they fall into certain categories such as poverty or disabilities, because procreation is always wrong as long as it can (reasonably be assumed to) produce a painient being.

6. Antinatalism and child-free are two entirely different things in two different categories. The former is an ethical view supported and practiced for altruistic reasons, while the latter is a personal, lifestyle choice made for one's own benefit. There is no logical inconsistency in being an antinatalist while raising a child, enjoying interactions with children, or conversely hating to see/hear children.

WAYS OF EXPRESSION: TONE AND ARGUMENTS

1. Remember to 'condemn the crime (position), not the criminal (person who subscribes to the position).'

   1. Never use derogatory terms for pro-natalists such as 'breeder(s)' in English, 'nata-kas (ナタカス),' 'gosanma (強産魔),' or 'hanzaisha (繁罪者)' in Japanese. If you call the person you're trying to convince of antinatalism an idiot, the only idiot in the room would be you, as you're only making your work unnecessarily difficult.

   2. Just like it's not logically inconsistent to like children while being an antinatalist, it is indeed not inconsistent to hate children. But refrain from expressing your hate. Such expression makes antinatalists, as a category, look like a group of people who tell others not to create babies because they don't want to see those "ugly" things on the streets.

   3. Never blame those who have procreated. There is nothing antinatalism can do about procreation that's already taken place. Antinatalism is an ethical position to be practiced to change the future; it's not a tool to condemn actions in the past. Using it as the latter only hampers the growth of antinatalism, taking the power to change the future away from it.

2. Never use actual cases of unfortunate people (things like incidents or disabilities) to defend antinatalism.

   1. Given enough time to think, it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to see that it's wrong to equate antinatalism with widely condemned positions like eugenics and nazism, but it's foolish to express our views by using language that facilitates such associations. It only slows down the progress of antinatalism.

3. Avoid linking your personal struggles with antinatalism.

   1. The only thing you can link your personal struggles with is what initially led you to support antinatalism. Try not to discuss such things in a way that makes pro-natalists misunderstand that your personal experiences are the only reason for you to be an antinatalist now. What helped you become an antinatalist is something you shouldn't even need to tell in the first place, unless you are asked to talk specifically about it.

Of course, I'm not an expert when it comes to human psychology, so I can't promise that antinatalism will achieve its objective fastest if all antinatalists do what I say.

But I can very confidently assert that insulting pro-natalists by calling them "monkeys with no rationality" or "pieces of s**t" on Reddit or Twitter is not the fastest way.

If you want to rant so badly about pro-natalists, you can do that within a community that only antinatalists have access to.

If you, instead, do that publicly where pro-natalists can read/hear/see, it means, as I said before, abandoning the responsibility as an antinatalist not to hamper the progress of antinatalism, and you'd be undermining antinatalism while claiming you support it.

Then how should we urge antinatalists on the internet to recognize this problem and try to find a solution?

It'd be ideal if the city office sends someone who's just become an antinatalist a letter saying "here are examples of how and what not to express in public spaces, as they could hinder the growth of antinatalism," but that's not how things work.

I suppose something more realistic is making our organization, Antinatalism Japan, known in the Japanese-speaking area well enough for new antinatalists to learn the existence of us as soon as they learn the term 'antinatalism' itself, and sharing content on our website and socials to encourage them to have better awareness.

Looking back at our principles which were created when ANJ was founded, it says one of the goals of ANJ was to eliminate prejudice against antinatalism.

So raising awareness of ourselves should naturally be one of our objectives.

However, as I mentioned at the end of my previous blog post, I feel like 'museishoku-shugi' (無生殖主義/antinatalism), the new term we started using to address the issue of AN's public reputation, is actually working against us by building a wall between ANJ and existing 'hanshussho-shugisha' (反出生主義者/antinatalists) to hinder our outreach effort.

Over the last few years, I've seen several tweets saying things like "I think there should be some Japanese-speaking antinatalist group," receiving replies like "you may not know but Antinatalism Japan is a thing."

Is it time for us to seriously consider replacing 'museishoku-shugi' with 'hanseishoku-shugi' (反生殖主義/antinatalism) and change our Japanese name accordingly?

According to ANJ's website (which feels odd for me to say given almost everything on the website is written by me), there are 3 reasons for proposing 'museishoku-shugi' as a replacement for 'hanshussho-shugi.'

If we were to stop using 'museishoku-shugi' and switch to 'hanseishoku-shugi,' the first 2 (common definition of AN being speciesist & the concept of 'birth negation' eating into AN) would easily be taken care of, but the last one 'the letter '反' (anti-) potentially hurting AN's public image' may still remain problematic.

As much as antinatalism is true and correct, unnecessarily making it seem cult-like, extremist, or terrorist-like should absolutely be avoided for the sake of gaining enough support to make actual changes. Some antinatalists are concerned about such negative effect that '反' (anti) in '反出生主義' (hanshusshou-shugi/antinatalism) could potentially have, and argue for using an alternative name for it. 'Museishoku-shugi' could be just what they are looking for.

In order to resolve this, we would need to

1. consider this problem with the character '反' (anti-) to be insignificant enough for us to ignore,

2. argue that the benefits of using the term 'hanseishoku-shugi' outweigh the disadvantage of the character '反' potentially giving antinatalism poor public image, or

3. use the term 'hanseishoku-shugi' in a way that immediately counteracts any negative connotation associated with the character '反.'

Let's take a closer look at each of these.

1. Consider this problem with the character '反' (anti) to be insignificant enough for us to ignore

   1. It's hard to convince ourselves that one of the biggest reasons for us to co-found ANJ with its Japanese name 'museishoku-kyoukai' was simply a misunderstanding.

   2. Whether people have a negative impression of a position whose name starts with 'anti-' ultimately depends on what comes after the 'anti-' -- given the widespread consensus that racism is wrong, it's unlikely for people to find the term 'anti-racism' off-putting, while it's quite natural for them to do so with terms like '反出生主義' and '反生殖主義' given the dominance by pro-natalism.

2. Argue that the benefits of using the term 'hanseishoku-shugi' outweigh the disadvantage of the character '反' potentially giving antinatalism poor public image

   1. It may be better to build a bridge between ourselves and existing Japanese-speaking antinatalists to share our concerns (while perhaps slightly taking the risk of the '反' giving people a negative first impression of antinatalism), than stubbornly sticking with the name 'museishoku-shugi' and failing to gain recognition, let alone support.

3. Use the term 'hanseishoku-shugi' in a way that immediately counteracts any negative connotation associated with the character '反.'

   1. I can't think of a way that certainly will be effective. We did choose the visual identity for ANJ based on pale pink and yellow-green as part of our PR strategy, but it doesn't take away the ability to understand the meaning of the character '反' from people.

To me, for now, the 2nd suggestion to "argue that the benefits of using the term 'hanseishoku-shugi' outweigh the disadvantage of the character '反' potentially giving antinatalism poor public image" seems to work as an argument for switching to 'hanseishoku-shugi' from 'museishoku-shugi.'

Perhaps I conclude that only because I'm feeling particularly strongly about the lack of PR strategy for antinatalism now (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this blog post).

I'd like to sleep on this matter for some time, and if my opinion doesn't seem to change, then this may actually be worth discussing among the members of ANJ.