A few days ago, I posted a clip from comedian Chelsea Handler, that week’s host of The Daily Show, about her choice to be childfree and the nasty responses she received when she told people this, and I expressed surprise that other people would think it was perfectly acceptable to pass judgment on someone’s personal life choices that did not affect them at all.

Handler is by no means an outlier. As this article points out, the numbers making this choice are increasing, along with the backlash. The article also says that we need to distinguish between the term ‘childfree’, which is meant to “capture the sense of freedom and lack of obligation felt by many of those who had voluntarily decided not to have kids” and ‘childless’ which is used for “adults who don’t currently have kids, but want them in the future, or adults who had hoped to have children, but were unable to”.

While deciding against having children is nothing new, a trend for owning the ‘child-free’ label and discussing that choice more openly is picking up pace… But while the child-free movement is growing, researchers argue that societal acceptance and understanding of the choice to live without kids is shifting at a much slower pace.
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In the US, a 2021 Pew Research Center study showed some 44% of non-parents aged 18 to 49 don’t think they will have children, up from 37% in 2018. More than half listed their main reason as “don’t want to have children” rather than more circumstantial factors such as medical issues or not wanting to raise a child without having a partner. In England and Wales, a 2020 YouGov study suggested that more than half of British 35-to-44-year-olds who haven’t had kids never plan on doing so.
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[Elizabeth] Hintz [an assistant professor in communication at the University of Connecticut, US, who’s studied perceptions of child-free identities] points out that much of the criticism hurled at child-free advocates tends to be steeply gendered. “Reproductive decision making has always been a burden placed on women more so than their partners,” she says. “And motherhood and femininity are so closely intertwined as well, so that is also, I think, a part of it.” As a result, this means there’s still often more pressure on women than men to follow a traditional “life script” and start a family, says Hintz, even in Western countries that have made great strides towards equality.
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Hintz is confident being child-free will become even “more normalised” in the coming years, simply because of the increasing proportion of people who aren’t having children now. She hopes this will help to combat some of the stigma that “child-free people are selfish and miserable”, since those who have or want kids will naturally start to come across more child-free singles or couples who can help to buck that myth.

I suppose I should not have been surprised that Handler’s funny clip aroused indignation among all the usual suspects such as a guest Jesse Kelly on Tucker Carlson’s Hour of Hate who seemed to have really lost it, trying to argue that women like Handler were pathetic losers.

Carlson said the point of Handler’s video was to “make you feel good about being an aging, deeply unlikable woman who never had kids.”

Kelly saw Carlson’s misogyny and raised it, complaining that “feminists like Chelsea Handler” had been lied to by society that “you can be a girl boss and you can do anything a man can do.”

“Which everyone who’s ever seen a woman back up a vehicle knows that’s not true,” he added.

Kelly then blamed society for leading women to believe they can enjoy fulfilling lives without procreating.

“They’ve been told that they should do career and don’t do a family or anything like that,” he continued. “And soon you’re Chelsea Handler … and your Valentine’s Day date for the 10th year in a row is a 10-year-old copy of ‘Magic Mike’ and a half-full bottle of Xanax and you’re trying to pretend like you’re happy, but you’re not happy.

This sexist rant is so unbelievably unhinged.

I literally watch Tucker Carlson as my job and even I'm sitting here like, "Jesus Christ, dude." pic.twitter.com/eEEKGKBQGc

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) February 15, 2023

What to make of this nonsense? This article argues that people often project onto others their own insecurities.

When Carlson calls the video “super-depressing,” it’s a classic psychological projection. He knows what actually depresses his largely male audience is not fears that women are lonely, but their own fears of being alone. The roots of this anger over women’s independence aren’t hard to surmise. It’s about insecure men who fear women won’t choose them willingly. Carlson is speaking to those who think their best bet at having a stable relationship is forcing women into economic and social dependence on men. 

Indeed, the way that the right-wing media freaked out over Handler’s video made it clear they see insecure, bitter men as their primary audience.

But there is news that might cheer up such insecure men.

Scientists are perplexed and concerned by a “worldwide” 24 percent increase in the average erect penis length from 4.8 inches to 6 inches, according to a new study published by a team of researchers from Stanford, Emory University, and several universities in Italy.
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The Stanford paper found, in particular, “an increase in the average erect penile length in men from 1992 to 2021” that held “across several geographic regions and subject populations.” 

Researchers say that this is not necessarily something to be welcomed, except possibly by people like Carlson and his friends.

The researchers also note that there have been worldwide declines in sperm counts and testosterone levels and an increase in testicular tumors that also remain relatively mysterious, but could be caused by global environmental changes.
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“The increase happened over a relatively short period of time. Any overall change in development is concerning, because our reproductive system is one of the most important pieces of human biology. If we’re seeing this fast of a change, it means that something powerful is happening to our bodies. We should try to confirm these findings and if confirmed, we must determine the cause of these changes.”

p.s. Here is a clip of Handler putting another sexist, in this case smarmy Piers Morgan, in his place because he was checking Twitter during commercial breaks of the interview. I like her zinger at the end.