'Liberating' Women from Reproduction

At the front of it, the thought of liberating women from reproduction seems to be a positive thing since women will no longer be required to bear the pain of childbirth and there would be a less overt link between women and childrearing as since the offspring has not physically come out of the mother, one would hope, women would no longer be 'naturally' expected to continue nurturing such offspring. Although I am not sure if these attitudes would really change. If we look at other examples of new technologies which could be potentionally challenging in terms of social ideologies, we can see a trend for existing ideologies to be re-presented in these new spaces created by such technology. An example of this, discussed in our tutorial this week is the way that the online BEV community re-presented attitudes already present within the 'real' Blacksburg and also the ways in which the space of the internet is in fact not the utopian classless, genderless, raceless space imagined as discussed in McGerty's article. What I am suggesting is that in reality women, even if they were 'liberated' from pregnancy and giving birth, would still be responsible for the majority of childrearing duties as is the case currently, unless social ideology were to change dramatically, which I am suggesting, it would not.

Another interesting angle of this argument is presented in Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman which is a responsorial text to the path feminism has taken since her first text The Female Eunich In The Whole Woman, Greer suggests that if women were to be liberated from childbirth through the production of 'artifical wombs' that they would no longer be needed by patriarchal society and would thus be disposed of and in effect 'bred out'. What is the need for a woman in such a society, she asks, especially since all embrios can be genetically modified to be male. Of course this is an extreme position, but it is an interesting idea. What would be the use of a woman in such a society now that she is no longer required for the survival of the species? I would suggest that she is needed to take on the dirty work of bringing up the children anyway - although robotic 'nannies' can be produced to this effect. Besides in all honesty society would not be balanced without the female of the species and there is always the pleasure principal, can technology ever be that advanced in that respect?