Talk:Eugenics

I see the article mentioning about designer babies and forced sterilization, but maybe there is an eugenic practice that is much more common, talked about much less, and is on the rise: voluntary childlessness (childfree)

Most people who are childfree chooses to be for other reasons, it rarely is only for the concerns of passing bad genes, but some people also weigh their genetics when considering whether or not to have children. If the person is wealthy they may choose an embryo selection method, if the person is poor they may just choose to adopt a child, a pet or just be happy with their SO.

Two sources that I found that can be used:

• Engwall, Kristina (May 4, 2014). "Childfreeness, parenthood and adulthood". Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research. 16 (4): 333–347. doi:10.1080/15017419.2013.781955. ISSN 1745-3011.
• Brownell, Kristen (July 6, 2020). "Why I don't have a child: I refuse to pass on my addiction genes". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2022-07-27. Retrieved 2022-11-13.

Someone else who has worked more time on this article and has a better English than me, could point were to add this. I think this could be added near the "The heterozygote test is used for the early detection of recessive hereditary diseases", or on the "Endorsement" section, saying that people may already voluntary sterilize themselves so they don't pass on genes they think would bring a lesser experience for the child and a higher heath burden on the community/government, and wikilink to the voluntary childlessness article.

-- Arthurfragoso (talk) 16:05, 13 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your post. I do, however, have two objections. 1) The sources presented here are not up to our standards. The first is a very tiny, individual qualitative study. The findings of such a study have little weight, by any standard. The second is simply an opinion piece. 2) We would need sources that specifically refer to such decisions as a form of eugenics, which I imagine most do not, per WP:NOR. In sum, only if we get reliable WP:SECONDARY sources describing individual decisions not to pass on genes they consider to be "bad" as eugenics could we consider adding such material to this article. Generalrelative (talk) 16:33, 13 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Agree with Generalrelative. Also, my understanding is that eugenics is something undertaken by society, rather than by individuals, and that it is a deprivation of choice. TFD (talk) 17:59, 13 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

• It's already in the article, if only very briefly. See Eugenics#Arguments for scientific validity third paragraph. In the last paragraph of Charles Darwin#Human society the discussion he had with Galton is briefly covered, noting CD preferring to simply publicise the importance of inheritance and leave decisions to individuals. Of course, that was before eugenics was named and introduced as a coercive practice, but genetic screening remains in some contexts as a choice for individuals. . . dave souza, talk 19:24, 13 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

  Thanks everyone for the comprehensive reply.

  I'm childfree and I'm somewhat biased. Aside from those two articles on contemporary childfree, I could not find much stronger articles, so, we should keep the article as it is.

  I also found some historical articles that are quite informative, by the keywords on Google Scholar: "eugenics childfree voluntary"

  This book on chapter 13, shows quite a detailed story on childlessness from 1900 to the present days. The book says they encouraged desirable woman to have children, and the other to not have. But they mentioned most were compulsory sterilized, and they don't give much info on the voluntary childless. Then they decided to make a congress for eugenics, and a little after the consequence was the holocaust.

  "The foundation of eugenics, therefore, perpetuated the simultaneous discourses of voluntary childlessness as a social responsibility (for women with undesirable traits) and a social irresponsibility (for women with desirable traits)."

  The essential handbook of women's sexuality. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. 2013. ISBN 978-0-313-39709-7. OCLC 780480659.

  I also found this other article that is not much:

  "The final target of NON’s campaign against pronatalism was academia. Prior to 1970, academic literature rarely discussed voluntary childlessness. The desire for children was understood to be a universal impulse, making voluntary childlessness either rare or nonexistent. It was widely assumed that couples without children were biologically incapable of reproducing; childlessness was synonymous with sterility. Paul Popenoe, the renowned eugenicist, was one of the only scholars writing before 1970 to entertain the possibility that childlessness could be voluntary. In 1937, Popenoe concluded that “the great bulk of . . . voluntarily childless marriages are motivated by individualism . . . and an infantile, self-indulgent, frequently neurotic attitude toward life.” This assessment of the childless by choice would dominate social scientific discourse for the next thirty years."

  "The 1970s marked the rediscovery of voluntary childlessness in social scientific literature. In a 1973 article entitled “Voluntary Childlessness: A Neglected Area of Family Study,” the sociologist Jean E. Veevers lamented the “selective inattention” of social scientists who had “virtually ignored” voluntarily childless individuals"

  • (paywall) Healey, Jenna (2016). "Rejecting Reproduction: The National Organization for Non-Parents and Childfree Activism in 1970s America". Journal of Women's History. 28 (1): 131–156. doi:10.1353/jowh.2016.0008. ISSN 1527-2036.

  Anyway, this book and the article just confirms that during 1900s basically no one would would decided to deny their reproduction based on eugenics, they would do it for economic freedom and independence.

  -- Arthurfragoso (talk) 21:41, 13 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

I am afraid this article is now gaslighting me through, after a very recent change to the facts, its continued claiming of eugenics to be a "fringe" practise. An improvement to the article would therefore be for it to change for it to reflect the factual truth. Of course the problem that I face is thus: that, because eugenics is so horrific and people generally (therefore mainstream) will say they are against it when asked, it will therefore never be accepted by the mainstream that it is now being in fact practised on a mainstream basis. The mainstream will deny it and want it to be a fringe set of practises. I am therefore up against mainstream consensus that will determine this is not mainstream and will be seen as fringe by pointing out the fact that it now is. But nonetheless the article is now factually inaccurate due to a very recent change in the facts that has only occurred in about the past year and is now ongoing. What has brought me back here is my seeing numerous different people, including some scientists and doctors, making statements that link the general current response to COVID-19 as being "eugenics" and specifically using this word. I saw one the other day (I am not keeping records as I go) but I have now seen this: https://twitter.com/bethechange1682/status/1639021787844423682

At this stage, with myself seeing person after person after person over time speaking of this as being eugenics in this ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, I am now tipped over the edge by above tweet and forced to come back here (my last post on this Talk page was deleted as someone thought it was my own personal opinion) and challenge the now inaccurate statement in the article that eugenics is a fringe set of practises. The original tweet is not saying that people generally are enjoying seeing immunocompromised people die. What she is saying is that they are enjoying their normal life but as a consequence of this is causing immunocompromised people to die and selecting them out in a eugenics way. The reply makes clear this person perceives very strongly that this is eugenics, expressly or impliedly, and the lived experience of this person cannot be denied.

I also have this article https://rabble.ca/health/dont-look-away-from-the-implicit-eugenics-of-living-with-covid/ which also has experts mentioned in it. Whether or not these are fringe experts in that the vast majority of experts might not currently agree this is eugenics, it does appear that there is a section of the public, of immunocompromised people and people at higher risk from COVID-19, that does think that the mainstream practise of living with COVID is eugenics. People will of course be sad to find this is the case and will not want to believe it is. The original tweet refers to "all of society" having abandoned immunocompromised/higher risk, therefore now mainstream no longer fringe. The section of the public that believes it is eugenics cannot be written off, because the people that are immunocompromised or higher risk might be more than some people would think.

There are lots of us that are clinically vulnerable and which cannot be seen in normal society as disabilities are not always obvious. Indeed, some of us may no longer be circulating in normal societies that permit the amount of COVID-19 that they do, likely increased and continuous by people behaving on mass scale as if is normal pre-pandemic life, which it may well be for them but not us, as they now select us out and send us more so to our deaths or to further long-term disability. Unfortunately, I noted above that it was said "Also, my understanding is that eugenics is something undertaken by society, rather than by individuals, and that it is a deprivation of choice". It is - the living with COVID in the sense of largely behaving as if it is back to normal life and doing this on mass scale as appears to be being done is something being undertaken by society. And it *is* a deprivation of choice, because it denies immunocompromised people the choice to live normal lives that they cannot. Sadly and unfortunately it fits precisely the definition given of eugenics in what the person on here wrote. The article above points out that did have opinions that opposed the lifting of mask mandates but that this did not stop their mass behaviour of resuming pre-pandemic activities and now doing so by almost completely dropping wearing of masks - clearly almost no-one else actually has any personal responsibility.

Therefore, on the basis that they will say they are against something which results in eugenics (is being undertaken by society right now in normal pre-pandemic behaviour as if the pandemic isn't here or the virus not here at the levels it is and is depriving some individuals of choice), people will generally of course say they are against it, and therefore eugenics is a fringe belief.

However, it is not a fringe set of practises because, despite this belief, it is now in fact being practised on a mainstream basis (that I believe most people, i.e. the mainstream, are not even aware of the fact they are practising it and therefore do not intend it but they are in fact practising it whilst not even being aware that they are but are therefore still practising it) and, it seems, with much of the population in denial as to what they are doing, will probably deny it if told since it seems impossible to believe, as well as most people being in some sort of mass delusion over this (of course the mass will never accept or see that it is), the reasons for which I could go into in huge detail with masses of evidence from media reporting to psychology as to people's behaviour in general and why this might be the case but would take me absolutely ages to do so, would be too long not read, and would be way way too much esoteric and too far gone now with most people that have fallen into this widespread irrationality in any event and, for this, I would back myself up with multiple pieces of research that show people on the autism spectrum tend to make more rational decisions, based on evidence and facts, rather than emotions that have clearly come into play and affected a lot of people on the pandemic and the threat of an infectious disease, and therefore I suspect I am more accurate at calculating odds and risk from the disease: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14946-never-gamble-with-an-autistic-opponent/

Indeed, cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias come into why people are behaving en masse as they appear to be, although if I go into more I will then need to find the numerous supporting evidence and people could be sure I have all that evidence somewhere to back myself up on everything I say if I can find that page on an autism website that says precisely this about autistic people. I am afraid it is too much for me to go into any more about this as it is so frustrating to see how most people are and, after I've written this and left it here, I will not be able to visit the article again because its gaslighting of me by claiming this is a fringe practise when this is no longer in fact true is so offensive and so emotionally destructive to myself to keep seeing it that I am no longer able to come back here to see it again and again.

The reason I am not amending the article itself is because it would be hugely controversial to call eugenics now a mainstream practise, even though this is the truth and does indeed fit exactly someone's understanding as posted by them earlier here and sadly I've now looked at it and brought precisely what is going on en masse in society (therefore mainstream and what is now in practise) squarely within what they wrote their understanding of eugenics to be. It is almost undeniable, except that, because I suspect most people, the mainstream itself, would deny it because it would be horrific to confront themselves with what practise they are actually doing, we therefore need to have some debate and create a false side in which some people say it isn't true and therefore neutral point of view accepting neither side. Certainly at present the claim this is a fringe practise - which has been true for an extremely long time but now only in the past year or two has become untrue - is, because of the people that are now saying living with Covid situation is eugenics, no longer something that is undisputed but instead is now contentious and controversial and therefore itself should no longer claim it is a fringe practise when there is now a non-insignificant section of the public that is using the word "eugenics" to describe the situation seen in living with Covid - I am seeing multiple different people on Twitter, and although this may be a fringe echo-chamber and will not be the mainstream view, nonetheless a group of immunocompromised people cannot be dismissed so easily unless it is wished to throw them all under the bus and itself be mainstream attitude in that.

Indeed, these people will never look at other humans the same again. So maybe the article should still say this is fringe practise (based on an incorrect mainstream belief that it is fringe practise because the mainstream would never want to admit their own collective behaviour was eugenics and of course I can't say the mainstream belief is incorrect because that itself puts me as fringe, even though it is incorrect and minority opinions can be right) but the article should now whilst saying it is fringe practise point out that this is disputed, because it does appear to be disputed by a group of immunocompromised people, mainly but not exclusively because it does also include myself and includes some experts, and these people cannot be entirely dismissed (almost by definition the immunocompromised will not be the majority of people) and I do seem to be seeing multiple people mentioning eugenics in this context not infrequently - maybe the mainstream is not circulating with immunocompromised people and is ignoring their statements in the ether of Twitter. Not least it is very uncomfortable to those whose behaviour is eugenics, namely the mainstream now, to see it this way.

It is all a disregard for these people whilst everyone else is doing their normal lives. The multiple people in the minority mentioning it as eugenics are a voice that means claiming it is a fringe practise is not an uncontentious thing, it is now hugely contentious of this article to me by gaslighting me, the disagreements with it cannot be totally ignored except if they are this speaks volumes to me about most people's attitudes now as well, don't care about immunocompromised and callous. How do I get such a horrific thing accepted as being the mainstream that it now is? Not least to point out that I am actually a level-headed and rational person (the article from New Scientist suggests I am more likely to be compared to most people and this article also shows most people make some pretty irrational decisions: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-fallible-mind/201708/why-advertising-falls-flat-in-individuals-autism I do tend to be more rational, because I am autistic, and have the two scientific articles as prove of that and there are more I could provide, but enough about me as all I am saying is that I am quite level-headed and rational and have previously been in mainstream behaviour myself before the pandemic, so not the case that I am some automatic fringe deviant but bizarrely much of the rest of the world seems to have departed me in the past year and gone into some strange parallel universe for reasons that I can see why but are way too detailed to set out and take us way off-topic here anyway.

I have provided just two examples of sources saying or in effect eugenics, or maybe three since there are two tweets there. The article says "This becomes more difficult if we name what is happening: the normalizing of eugenics" and doesn't use the term lightly. Normalizing of it means it is now mainstream, no longer fringe instead normalized. It is found in everyone's behaviour that is now proceeding as if the virus isn't here and doing normal pre-pandemic behaviour acting in this way and not wearing masks/respirators to protect others. Failure to do this is itself an act of eugenics, that may deny other people choice since if immunocompromised they may not want to be around, or able to be around due to the increased risk maskless people pose to them, those people and therefore it is excluding people from society, including myself. It is eugenics because if immunosuppressed people catch the virus they are the ones most likely being thrown under the bus by other people's normal behaviour and more likely to be killed. I would not go as far to say herd immunity is eugenics, particularly as it seems the prospect of this is now remote.

Instead, it is the practised behaviour (apparently contrary to the belief) that is mainstream, passing the virus to these people is clearly causing deaths, that most people are proceeding as if not happening, indeed not because they want to necessary but because they are either not informed they are happening or are not interested enough to see it - we are now at 1,000 hospitalisations per day again in my country, the highest number of infections now in the year so far - yet the behaviour, perceived by some or many immunocompromised people (who may be more than you think) as eugenics continues to go on and is mainstream behaviour, sacrificing disabled and elderly people to be able to do their own normal life in an ongoing pandemic, including regularly speaking about this pandemic as if it has gone into the past and therefore mass denial about that, apparently to excuse the behaviour.

Also unacceptable and I had better leave this page soon because mainstream behaviour is now offensive to myself. Even at the time in 2022: "Many are now rationalizing their behaviours as somehow not endangering others (a virtually impossible calculation), even though we experienced a sixth wave of COVID because of lifting most restrictions." The behaviours are rationalized as somehow not being eugenics even though they are. People do not believe in eugenics. But they are practising it, in fact, right now, on mass scale - mainstream practise the article even last year speaking of a small and loud minority being "...a sideshow and a useful scapegoat that distracts us from the noticing how a eugenic-minded way of thinking is no longer an extremist or fringe ideology."

As far as I see it, there is every reason for the mainstream to fall into denial that this is the case, because it is their behaviour - and of course they don't want to stop their normal life because it is understandable to see how the pandemic has been so hard for them and continues to be hard for us whilst they now have what they think is their normal back (it's not - because passing the virus around and repeatedly infecting others is not normal, by definition, as per what was before, i.e. what could be gone "back" to so has not been gone back to, even though everything that has been on the news seems ultimately aimed at creating the impression this is the case, but instead a move into passing this virus around without precautions, that most people no longer see as necessary, has taken place and sadly it is eugenics because it is denying other people choice - people do not have choice to avoid being exposed to this virus by other's not wearing masks, the only other choice is their social exclusion that I can confirm, from my own experience of it, is now continuing to take place every day with no end in sight to it and didn't exist before this pandemic). I am encountering different people on social media, the parts of it in which I circulate, calling it eugenics not every day but not infrequently.

Maybe the appropriate amendment, but I will not make it because I see it as too controversial to make without at least mentioning on talk page - if I were to go straight ahead and make the change it would probably be seen as vandalism so I therefore will not do it - would be to say it is a fringe belief and fringe set of practises but believed by some immunocompromised people to be a mainstream set of practises - even though this would still have me disputing that it is a fringe set of practises since it has now, in literally the past year, changed from being fringe into now being mainstream practise and therefore it is not accurate to say it is a fringe set of practises! It is not - and I have seen the other person's understanding on this page of what "eugenics" is and it plainly describes exactly what is being practised on a mass scale now - mainstream therefore - it is society not just a few individuals and it does deny choice. It is squarely and completely within how this person has said their understanding of eugenics is. I have assessed it objectively, not my opinion, it is clearly within the plain description they've left us on 13 November last year as to what someone independent of myself understands it to be and I've seen the article before (the one I've linked to) and now the further tweets by more people independent of myself and not known to me who are saying this is eugenics and that other person saying "all of society" - practised on mainstream basis by description therefore.

I am also aware that you can see all sorts of outlandish views on Twitter and probably find any view at all on the internet and does not necessarily mean it is widespread. However the trouble is I don't find the view that this is eugenics is outlandish. And it fits exactly within what someone on this page has described that they understand it is. It should also be said that the idea that the current widescale and mainstream practise of normal behaviour in society that has become eugenics in the context of this pandemic, people behaving on mass scale as if there is no pandemic at all and no Covid around, probably wanting for understandable reasons to put it out of their mind whilst continuing to pass it on and on and causing the problem in the behaviour to perhaps many immunocompromised people that results in the eugenics, the idea that this is eugenics did not occur first in myself, instead it started for me by me seeing people saying it is and then usually when I hear something claimed, in my critical thinking, I question it and on this occasion after hearing it first time I went and looked into it and found that it fitted and is - and now I keep seeing further people saying it is eugenics. And then find it fits a description given by someone on this very page full and square. It is eugenics, it fits what they described in their understanding in the way I have now seen it does, and it is going on on a mainstream basis of practise.

Indeed, I then find myself asking if I am going mad to think this is eugenics, despite multiple people all independent of myself also saying it, and me finding it is mainstream behaviour in society, and therefore this article is gaslighting me in its current form that I won't change for reasons already stated. It has now become a strange world where the mainstream now appears to have gone in a deluded way to me and normalization of deviance perhaps (again not an original idea from myself), in this case the proper and correct behaviour of wearing a mask to protect others has been ditched on mass scale and this deviance from the correct behaviour, appropriate to the ongoing and actual risks in this pandemic rather than succumbing as so many do to the normalcy bias, given that there is a disconnect between the public and scientists as to the actual risks of COVID-19, now become normalized. With the deviance involving the vast majority of people now practising eugenics without knowing it being normalized, it is mainstream.

The mainstream now so far gone down this rabbit-hole that how will this Wikipedia article now be changed to the truth (given it was true before but has become inaccurate due to a very recent change in the facts) given that the Wikipedia consensus itself is based on the mainstream, that on this is down the rabbit-hole? Especially given the huge incentive for most people to be in denial about practising something that is seen as so emotive and horrific as this is and perhaps the only reason I am able to come here and be in the truth is because I haven't fallen into doing this mainstream behaviour but instead I now one of the very few actually acting appropriately in relation to this pandemic, that there is also widespread denial about and people talking about it as if it is all in the past, possibly believing this to be so, myself acting on the basis of the scientific evidence throughout the past year whilst it seems to me most people have given up and no longer paying attention to it, instead getting most of their information (if they aren't tuning COVID-19 out) from a very selective media that has failed to report most of what has been going on in the scientific research and seems to pick one outlier study the other day that hasn't been peer-reviewed to say everything is now good. aspaa (talk) 04:00, 25 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

This is far, far too long to be actionable. Break down the specific changes you want made, preferably with citations to back them up. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:36, 25 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

I can see that it is the precise wording that is problematic. "... is a fringe set of beliefs..." should really be "some aspects of which reflect a fringe set of beliefs..." Modern genetic screening and counselling (most notably and ironically amongst the Jewish community) are eugenics in practice and obviously not 'fringe 'at all. The desire for healthy children is universal. 92.12.195.5 (talk) 13:48, 13 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

That is a very unusual claim to make. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:06, 15 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

"The original tweet is not saying that people generally are enjoying seeing immunocompromised people die. What she is saying is that they are enjoying their normal life but as a consequence of this is causing immunocompromised people to die and selecting them out in a eugenics way" I do not get your premise. People with immunodeficiency likely have much shorter lifespans, but they are not legally prevented from procreating or typically subjected to compulsory sterilization. So, some of the typical methods of eugenics do not seem to apply. Dimadick (talk) 07:04, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

This says it all: I am therefore up against mainstream consensus that will determine this is not mainstream and will be seen as fringe. That's entirely correct. Any time someone posts a mile-long screed about "the truth", they should be ignored, especially if they explicitly declare they are fighting against the preponderance of mainstream source material. If they're doing this at multiple talk pages or otherwise being disruptive, they should be indefinitely blocked as obviously WP:NOTHERE and per WP:NOT#FORUM WP:NOT#SOAPBOX. If aspaa (who seems to have no idea what "gaslighting" actually means) has some kind of defensible point to make, they can concisely post a change request with regard to a specific piece of content in the article, and with actually reliable sources to back it up. And even then it's going to be subject to intense scrutiny at an article like this. Skimming the above text wall, aspaa's central point can be responded to with this: COVID-19 having more impact on people with certain pre-existing medical conditions, and policymakers and medical systems not being able to do anything about that, and a lot of individuals not seeming to care about this more than they care about other life-or-death problems in the world, is not eugenics (has nothing to do with allegedly improving the human gene pool). The fact that some random poet and self-described activist at the unreliable WP:UGC site Rabble.ca doesn't know (or pretends he doesn't know) what eugenics actually means is of no concern to WP or its article content (or its readers). "The multiple people in the minority mentioning it as eugenics are a voice that means claiming it is a fringe practise is not an uncontentious thing, it is now hugely contentious" is patent nonsense. The very fact that it's a handful of non-notable bloggers at unreliable sites simply misappying the term eugenics as arguement to emotion to advance a socio-political point about a COVID-vulnerable sub-population makes it fringe, and also makes it simply off-topic, because it is not about actual eugenics. Aspaa is doing the direct equivalent of arguing that because a bunch of far-right bloggers like to call environmentalists "eco-Nazis" and misuse the term Nazi, that WP must rewrite its article on Nazism to redefine the term to include environmentalists. Wikipedia is built on the preponderance of the material in reliable sources on a topic, not on the venting of random blowhards misusing words (intentionally or out of ignorance).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

The article is quite long, so apologies if I simply missed it, but there seemed to be no mention of the forced sterilizations of Indigenous women in North America (as recently as 2019 in Canada) nor the requirement for transgender people in the Netherlands to be sterilized (which appears to have ended in 2014). These are only two examples, though there are surely many more. This is of obvious importance. It is not good to pretend eugenics has barely been practiced since the Nazis, no good can possibly come of it. CLMeadow (talk) 06:48, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the limited content on the article is intentional. The best way to expand an article to put in the work yourself. Zenomonoz (talk) 08:43, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Do you believe it would go better under "Modern Eugenics" or "History"? I'm also considering renaming "Modern Eugenics" as it covers more speculation on ethics. CLMeadow (talk) 19:00, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'm not 100% sure but this looks relevant here.[1] Doug Weller talk 13:08, 4 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Doug. I'll keep an eye out for more coverage. Generalrelative (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Per MOS:ENGVAR, I reverted a recent change from US to British English spelling in this article. However, it is using DMY not MDY dates, and the topic is not particularly closely tied to the US. So, we could come to a local consensus to switch to British spelling to be more consistent with the date format. This would just entail searching for 'ize', 'izing', 'ization' and changing applicable words to use 's' instead of 'z'. I don't think any other differences are implicated.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)Reply