Sophie Lewis, a feminist theorist and author of “Full Surrogacy Now” proposes a future of radical feminism where family is chosen by the individual rather than their biological relations, and that anyone can be a mother regardless of their gender.
“It is a wonder we let fetuses inside us,” Lewis says in an interview with Vice. “This situation is social, not simply ‘natural.’ Things are like this for political and economic reasons: we made them this way.”
Lewis wants to dismantle the practice of the nuclear family which is likened to a microcosmic model of capitalism in the practice of managing wealth and passing it down through family lines along with property. Lewis claims the concentrates wealth in the hands of the few and is a form of oppression of minorities “exploiting people of color” and “disowning queer children.”
The idea that “it doesn’t matter who raises a child as long as they are safe and loved” has been debunked by numerous studies in the psychological importance for early childhood development to be in a two parent home where the parents are biologically related to the children.
This can not be the case all the time, and those who grow up in foster care, adoptive children, nor children of sperm donators are certainly not doomed to fail, it is undeniable that they suffer from major disadvantages, primarily mentally, when compared to those who grew up in a home with their biological parents who stayed together.
Several of these studies are published by Them Before Us, and in one example children of sperm donors speak about the negative impact of not just the absence of a father, but knowing he was never really a part of their mother’s lives.
“I’ve only wanted one thing in this life that I have been missing: paternal love. ….All I ever wanted is to be loved by you. The reality is that you were some college aged student who needed money, so you chose to donate. I just want you to know that your selfish actions indeed have consequences. My mother tells me that I’m better off without a father than with a father who doesn’t love me. The issue with that statement is that in the latter situation, at least I would know who my father is, regardless of his love for me. In the first statement, I do not know if my father loves me or not, which causes this tornado of thoughts in my mind, but even worse: I feel like an entire half of my life is missing thanks to my mother’s decision. As much as mother depicts herself as the hero, she may be a villain in disguise. Perhaps, she does not even understand the impact of her selfish deeds. Did she ever think about how this could impact a child? How it keeps her daughter up at night, knowing that there is yet another man in this world who does not love her.”
Lewis reported to Vice that when she discusses the idea of eliminating the nuclear family she’s treating as if she’s “not even speaking English anymore … like [I’m] not even making syntactical sense,” she said at the e-flux lecture. “Real brain explosion emoji to the max.”
Lewis admits she had little idea of the reactions she would have publishing such a radical feminist dystopian future.
“I think some people take my book as a really intentional, purposeful attempt at pissing everybody off,” Lewis apparently said “with a laugh.”
“But I don’t feel like I’m strategic; I don’t think my skill is seeing what everyone else is saying and making a calculated intervention.”
