this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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It's insane how many removed call lots of the ideas here "Eugenics". Eugenics is about producing the best GENES possible, while a lot of the replies here say that bad parents should not be allowed to make kids. Nobody talked about stopping people who aren't so "perfect" (biologically-wise) to make kids. Just not have more kids suffering by growing in abusive and broken households or been poor and have it very hard in life.
People are Lemmy are not much smarter that those on Reddit, it seems...
Eugenics is a system of controlling reproduction. Many eugenesists may have believed that being a member of a certain race or having certain congenital diseases made one inferior (and thus unworthy of the right to reproduce), but the basic principle some people should reproduce and some people shouldn't.
Like why do you think people are against eugenics? Because they're afraid we might accidentally bring an end to genetic diseases? That there might be too many blonde people? That they care deeply about people who don't exist yet's rights to be some particular way?
So yeah, when you propose a rule controlling reproduction...
your semantic understanding of eugenics doors not seem to understand why people opposed eugenics and eugenics policies.
"Eugenics" was a term decades before "genes"
Even if the etymology was different, you'd still be very wrong [about what "eugenics" is]
Eugenics is the action of preventing it. Saying someone shouldn’t isn’t advocating for its forceful eugenics.
I'm not saying that discouraging reproduction is eugenics. I'm saying that @Aitherios@lemmy.ml's attempt at defining Eugenics is wrong. Saying it's about producing the best "GENES" possible is just post-hoc reasoning to make it sounds more scientific.
Eugenics is based on 19th century racial science. If someone is advocating for any sort of population control that uses that framework (of bettering the "race"), they're doing eugenics.
A good example of what's not eugenics is China's one-child policy. It wasn't aimed at creating a "better" race of any kind, and It actually provided exemptions for ethnic minorities. The goal wasn't to create a better type of human race, it was to prevent the population from growing faster that what the economy could support. IMO it was probably unnecessary, but definitely wasn't eugenics.
However, if there was an alternate reality where china instituted the one-child policy only for ethnic minorities in an effort to make the nation a pure Han state, that would be eugenics. If they did it based on IQ, that would be eugenics. And if they exempted minorities from the policy out of a belief that the Han were inferior, that would also be genetics