u/Nova_fir

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I’ve always wondered about this. If a trait makes an organism less likely to survive or reproduce, wouldn’t evolution eventually make that trait disappear?

Is it because the trait might have some hidden benefit, or are there other reasons why it can stick around?

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Why do trans men seem so rare and hard to find? 😭

Are there actually fewer trans men than trans women, or is it more of a visibility thing, where trans men just tend to be less visible?

why do you think there is so much hatred and hostility toward trans people, especially trans women?

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Maybe this is the first time in my life that I talk about and let out a part of my suffering.

This is difficult and exhausting for me.

I was born in a conservative and backward environment. I am from a Muslim country, so the whole thing felt like hell to me.

It started when I was little. I was not allowed to play with boys because mixing and interacting with the opposite sex was considered haram, even though I was just a child whose only concern was to run, play, and laugh.

The environment I grew up in treats girls as if they are a matter of shame and family honor.

My mother was the biggest reason behind my suffering. When I was 9 years old, she started suspecting me and saying that I was not respectable, that I talked to boys and played with them. She started beating me severely even though I was afraid of her and I wasn't talking to anyone at all.

After that, I finished elementary school and things became even worse. she became a very difficult person because she started insulting me with the most horrible words and saying disgusting sexual things to me. I didn't even understand what I had done to deserve all of this or why she was calling me a whore. I didn't even know what that word meant at first, but from the way she described it to me, I started to understand.

Every day I would go to sleep and wake up hearing those hurtful words from her.

The problem is that it didn't stop at words. She also used to beat me badly, drag me across the floor, hit my head against the wall, humiliate me, and say disgusting things to me.

And it didn't stop there either. She would also undress me while I was sleeping, touch my body, and say sexual things to me.

I started hating my body because of this. I started thinking that there was something wrong with me, and because of how much she told me those things, I eventually believed that I really was a whore.

I became terrified of the sound of her voice. Whenever I hear her talking, I feel like she is talking to me and insulting me. I feel like her voice is getting closer and that she is coming to hit me.

I became unable to sleep. Her voice is always in my head. Whenever I hear her voice, my whole body starts shaking and I feel like my heart is going to stop.

I hate myself so much. I feel disgusted by this body and I wish I had never been born.

You're allowed to choose your career — as long as it's respectable.

You're allowed to choose your partner — as long as the relationship makes sense to everyone else.

You're allowed to decide whether you want children — until your decision makes people uncomfortable.

You're allowed to be yourself — until “yourself” becomes inconvenient.

We call this freedom, but in reality, it's often just choosing between options that people already consider acceptable.

The question is: are you really free to choose something that other people consider wrong?

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I am wondering whether extreme poverty can create a moral obligation to refrain from having children.

Having a child is different from making a decision that affects only yourself. The child does not consent to being born and has no control over the circumstances into which they are born. Because of that, I think prospective parents have a special moral responsibility toward the person they are choosing to bring into existence.

If someone already knows that they cannot reliably provide basic necessities such as adequate food healthcare education and a reasonably safe and stable environment, is their desire to have a child enough to justify bringing that child into those circumstances?

I am not arguing that poor people are less valuable than wealthy people, nor am I arguing that the government should have the authority to prevent poor people from reproducing. I am asking about the morality of the individual decision.

A common response is that many people grow up in poverty and still have happy and meaningful lives. But does the fact that some people successfully adapt to poverty mean that knowingly creating a person who will face severe deprivation is morally justified?

I am also interested in the claim that reproduction is a fundamental human right. Are rights to reproduction absolute, or can there be circumstances in which exercising that freedom becomes morally problematic because another person will bear the foreseeable consequences of the decision without having chosen it?

Finally, I think there is an important distinction between moral responsibility and legal coercion. Someone can have a moral reason not to do something without the state having the right to forcibly prevent them from doing it.

So my main question is:

If a person knows that they cannot provide a future child with basic necessities, does that knowledge create a moral obligation to refrain from having that child? If not, what moral principle justifies bringing someone into circumstances that they never had the opportunity to choose?

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I think that view completely ignores the suffering that can exist behind the decision. Someone who reaches the point where they no longer see a tolerable future isn't necessarily someone who simply "gave up" because life became difficult. Their perception of their own life can be shaped by an amount of psychological pain that other people may never fully understand.

calling someone who died by suicide "a loser" or "a coward" tells us anything meaningful about what they experienced. From the outside, it's easy to judge someone's final decision while knowing almost nothing about the internal struggle that preceded it.

That doesn't mean I think suicide is a good solution or that suffering makes it inevitable. I just think the person shouldn't be reduced to their final decision. Before judging them, I'd rather understand what kind of suffering could make someone believe that death was preferable to continuing to live.