Big Con’s Pro-Natalism Examined
Revisiting the “Empowerment” of Women in the Young Women’s Leadership Summit and the Greater Right-Wing Movement
Last weekend was Turning Point USA’s Young Woman’s Leadership Conference (YWLS) held in San Antonio, Texas, where troupes of young, impressionable teenage girls congregated to commune around the words of Big Con’s over-paid female leadership; including Candace Owens, Riley Gaines, and Yeomi Park.
It behooved speakers to touch on pertinent topics relating to American women, namely national preceding gender discourse and the effects of biological men entering women’s spaces, typically found in sporting events, gyms, and bathrooms. However, other issues relating to the conservative female experience inevitably permeate into the realm of reproduction. Initially, this makes sense. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion has once again become a politically viable topic for the Right-Wing (RW) as throngs of conservative women find their personal ethics consummated in the realm of public policy thanks to Trumpian Justices.
However, if you were to attend YWLS, you can't help but shake off the feeling of celebrated natality throughout the entirety of the event; an issue I find far more intimate than reproductive policy or gender discourse. Poster boards of fetuses are placed at every corner in the hallways of the convention center. Various young moms happily brandish their children to each other between break-out sessions, and merchandise lamenting the dangers of hormonal birth control is strewn about at every other table.
Make Natalism Propaganda Honest (Again)
These things are not bad. Although targeting contraceptives is a conservative maneuver at stimulating population growth and has little to do with protecting female health, (if you do not believe me, wait a few years until Copper IUDs become a source of contention) hormonal birth control does wreak havoc on the female body (more women should take Copper IUDs) and abysmally low birth rates of heritage Americans is a bad thing for society. The low total fertility rate (TFR) gestures to the growing necessity of conferences like the Natal Conference annually held in Austin, Texas. Ridiculously high ticket price aside, I do predict attendance to events like Austin’s Natal Con. will continue to grow as the years go by, particularly amongst White conservative Americans. Additionally, if you pay attention to the online RW, you may have noticed that the movement has readily hastened itself to this cause.
I reiterate, that this kind of propaganda is requisite for a thriving nation, especially when advertised to certain populations.
However, YWLS, a Big Con event, displays this propaganda dishonestly. While conferences like Natal Con. speak to the necessity of increasing the heritage American TFR directly, events like YWLS posit itself as a “woman’s conference” bemoaning the multifarious nature of sex-specific issues for conservative women, while in reality only focusing on one or two topics: gender discourse and the transgender agenda (easy win) and, second, reproduction. It is as though the conservative female experience is only limited to these two issues. There is also the consistent prioritization of traditional femininity and what that exactly means. This could be an interesting area to conceptually explore, however, that is not fully taken advantage of. “Traditional femininity” is regulated to being another saccharine talking point in the “culture wars” given that the commentary provided involves little more than the aesthetic features of Hepburn-esque “classy fashion” and the youthful development of psycho-sexual submission.
While I have little qualms with a conference focusing on these issues, it does strike me as odd that an event like YWLS procures these issues, inherently sexual in nature, while mainly marketing itself as an event for teenage girls. While YWLS is an event for all ages so long as you are biologically female (or an employee who happens to be male) the target audience for YWLS is teenage girls, with the select age starting at 16 years. After all, the “Y” in YWLS stands for “young.”
Revisiting Higher Education
How is this a problem? Living in an age where we still accept higher education as a requirement or living a fulfilling life and having it be treated as a universal good, Big Con’s pro-natalism will drive young women into situations they are not adept at maneuvering.
Considering that the young female susceptibility to propaganda is, let’s say, quite high; pro-natalist messaging to teenage girls is irresponsible given that we presently do not attempt to solve the cultural issues perpetuating low TFR. One of the main reasons why heritage Americans are not having kids is because women defer this activity until after they lay claim to a professional degree.
Divorcing ourselves from the artificially placed necessity of higher education degrees in order to earn a comfortable living is a first, practical step, to solving the low TFR problem. I want to emphasize comfortable living, as fulfillment comes to everyone differently with different life paths. However, diluting the value of the higher education degree is largely what is causing the collective postponement of replacement birth rates.
Identifying the initial signs of individualized talents and passions (which can be recognized at a fairly early age within positive conditions) and tailoring the student’s education to those talents, is a viable resolution to low TFR, given that we maintain caregiving and homemaking as a viable outcome. However, something like this requires that teachers take their jobs seriously, and must place an adequate amount of attentiveness on the student which American educators evidently lack.
However, targeting the fragile mental state of young girls, and inundating them with pro-natalist propaganda, is a misdirected attempt at solving the issue of low TFR. It is, if anything, a sloppy slap of a bandage on a cascading hemorrhage.
Allowing individuals to achieve comfortable living standards, made possible by willingly not oversaturating the market with useless degrees, will prompt them to fill roles they feel most adept in.
For this, Charlie Kirk deserves some degree of credit. He does communicate the unnecessary emphasis we place on higher education degrees in his “magnum opus” The College Scam. Unfortunately, the vitriol Kirk exemplifies in his piece poorly responds to the growing issue of an oversaturated degree market. The entirety of higher education is not an accursed institution if that is where your skills are to be found; I will always draw attention to the need for conservative educators, thinkers, and writers. Other figureheads in the movement are aware of this need and are making positive impact to change the outlook on major Postmodern education institutions.
YWLS should be honest about its intention: it is a pro-natalist conference. Big Con’s treatment of young women in the low TFR phenomenon is a lackluster attempt at answering the question of essentialism and natural hierarchy. Increasing birthrates for the sake of increasing birthrates at the expense of the young female psyche is a recipe for a disastrous generation. For a generous number of the population, the quality output will be poor, and expensive social safety nets are also more likely. Leading a horse to water can only go so far, and persuading the modern teenage female to give birth before she is resolute in her future is irresponsible. Instead, it would benefit Big Con to provide a framework from which we can identify future early mothers, as well as future late mothers, and, even more so, future non-mothers. Once again, identifying future caretakers is surprisingly easy and can be recognized at a young age.
Changing the future from low TFR is not a question of culture alone; one must understand the mentality of the female, and why she chooses not to have children. Wheeling out Alex Clark, Morgann McMichael, Savanah Hernandez, or Lauren Chen to sign over the wonders of early motherhood may convince a fecund teenage girl to have children before her individual readiness, but it will be a bastardization of purposefully and healthy breeding.
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I admit that I don’t always agree with you, but I definitely do agree here. This kind of fetishized pro-natalism is rather disturbing to witness and I am convinced that it is bound to fail in the long term. It is just a different flavor of the usual flashy pretense of “female empowerment”, but then it even seems to lack the strong impetus of the old women’s liberation movements.
The image of you grimacing at this plastic conference like some kind of Wednesday character is pretty amusing.
I think women will just always gravitate to fertility issues just because it’s their prerogative.
Yeah, For women that young, teaching Jane Austen style discernment would have been better. They could be causing some suffering there.
To me it’s really TFR quality over quantity. Resolving the issues or reservations of the brightest women who will have to go university or the women who would be suited to run a high powered career is the big game.
Traditional femininity would be great for most women but that leaves like 20% where the opportunity cost and ambition makes it a very difficult decision for them.
And I think smart people easily brainwash themselves which is another human capital shredder.