Hate for transwomen and gay people is often deeply misogynistic and sexist. Case in point: this stupid meme right here.
Let’s pretend for a minute that the bigots are right, and LGBT people are “choosing” the wrong lifestyle. Somehow. I don’t know why it would be any of your business, but pretend that’s the case. Why would you still insist on saying things that were backhanded insults to everyone else?
“[Straight People] Can Make Babies”
I’m not sure why this is the most important metric of the value of a human being, but let’s continue with this premise. There are still so many things wrong with this statement, both implicitly and explicitly.
Not everyone is fertile.
First, it assumes that a straight couple is fertile. That isn’t always the case. Sometimes they need medical assistance to have biological children, and sometimes even that doesn’t work. Why is that misogynistic? Because the blame for infertility usually falls on women. She “waited too long“, she wasn’t eating right, she was drinking too much, she was too promiscuous, she had an abortion, etc. Researchers bend over backwards trying to blame women for infertility. There’s a list a mile long of ways to blame women for the supposed baby shortage, even though factually men are just as responsible for infertility issues as women. Some are even calling for teenage girls to be taught how to get pregnant, and Cambridge University is hosting fertility seminars. You don’t see the same thing for men.
Focusing on how straight people “make babies” is a good way to immediately insult a significant percentage of your audience.
Not everyone wants babies.
Second, not every couple wants to have babies at all. 1 in 4 couples are choosing to never have kids at all. And why would they? We treat mothers like garbage across the globe. (That’s a whole separate post.) When it comes to parenthood, the bulk of responsibility lays on women. Choosing not to have kids results in a lot of sexist abuse towards women.
Gay people still make babies.
Third, this implies that gay people can’t produce babies. That’s absurd on its face. Being gay doesn’t make you inherently infertile. Some lesbian couples choose in-vitro fertilization, sure, but some just choose to get pregnant the old fashioned way. ‘Cause they can. Same goes for gay male couples – they are perfectly capable of impregnating women. Sometimes they do because they were previously in a heterosexual relationship. Sometimes they use a surrogate. You’ll recognize these as the same methods that straight people use to make babies.
Actually, here’s something a little scary – gay and bisexual teenagers are more likely to become pregnant than their straight counterparts. I’d definitely say that means they’re able to make babies just the same as straight people.
And, of course, we should all know by now that transmen can still get pregnant and have babies.
Childless women are portrayed as villains.
It’s such a common trope, you probably haven’t even noticed it. When a woman is portrayed as a villain on TV, she typically does not have kids. In the 80s, it became popular to portray women with fertility issues as villains – the type who would kidnap your baby and kill the mother just so she could be “normal.” It’s the rationale behind stepmothers being evil. They’re not your “real” mother, so they lack the motherly instinct they’re supposed to have, and therefore… evil.
Women who don’t have children are either doomed to die alone, or live long enough to become the villain.
A woman’s value doesn’t end at her ability to incubate babies.
Within the false dichotomy that these people live with, straight people are more valuable than gay people because they can “make babies.” Since we place nearly all of our social expectations, from fertility to child-raising, on the woman, it’s not hard to see that this sort of meme is just a way of reinforcing sexist expectations of women.