Antinatalism (procreation is unethical) thoughts?

Extremely stupid belief that I'm surprised has gained as much traction as it has. The logical conclusion to anti-natalism would be to just kill everyone, since the only way to not suffer is to not be alive, but anti-natalists are against human genocide and mass suicide. So they're essentially against being alive because being alive is suffering, but they're also against dying, because dying is suffering. It's contradictory. The only way someone could be against human genocide or mass suicide is if they believe being alive is better than being dead.

I struggle with anti-natalism sometimes.

I am, notably, not an anti-natalist, and I don't think I'll ever declare myself as such. But its premises are often attractive. Unlike the person rambling about how its an apparently illogical belief, I believe there is a logic and an ethos to it.

Anti-Natalism sees the non-consensuality of birth as problematic, but not necessarily in an already living person choosing to continue to live. Many of them are inevitably quite okay with suicide, even "mass suicide", but not genocide; genocide is markedly unconsensual.

Many of them do continue to keep living, even if this may to some extent be irrational in their own world-view. Though, many of them rationalize it as being part of their effort to make living more worthwhile. To be kind and good to people, to lessen the overall suffering that they see as so central to the way the world is.

But again, I don't really think anti-natalism is correct. Firstly and mainly, anti-natalism makes a mistake in the logical inconsistency that you cannot ask someone who does not exist if they want to live or not-live. This "person" is totally hypothetical, totally virtual. If this unreal-person responded that they did want to be born, then it would be unconsensual, or at least immoral, theoretically, to not bring them into existence. But, of course, no such person exists.

To answer the other questions though, I don't plan to have children (though thats also a dysphoria thing) and if I end up wanting them I will adopt. So many lost souls in the world, I do not want to bring more in quite yet.

i agree with this reply here from LuciLucilla. i can understand where antinatalism is coming from, and i can empathize with the idea that it's unethical to bring more children into the world when so many are already homeless or in foster care systems, but ultimately i really do think it's stupid and illogical to think that way, personally, and adoption agencies and the foster care system are both poor solutions to these problems. many people cannot provide what is needed for foster care children, who have often had difficult lives, and adults who were adopted have on many occasions spoken about their experiences of being adopted as akin to human trafficking, with some of the disturbing amounts of specifications you can tick off for the kind of child you want being straight up fucking creepy. not to mention that the government takes children away from their financially unstable parents and then gives money to strangers to house them, instead of just giving the original parents more money to care for their kids. people of color, queer people, and disabled people are all, of course, going to be more likely to get denied the ability to adopt or foster children as well, and many children of color or disabled children are getting forced into the homes of white or abled families that don't understand and abuse them.

there's never going to be a perfect solution to the problem of orphaned/unwanted children, or children of parents who are unable to care for them, but these systems are not a solution to that problem, and antinatalists shouldn't be parading around acting like this will solve the problems they're seeing.

and all of this is ignoring the fact that no longer reproducing is not going to solve the problem of suffering. suffering is a natural part of life, that's how things work. that's not to be pessimistic, that's to say that you can do everything right and still suffer, because life isn't based on what you want out of it. you can have a nice family one day, and then a catastrophic earthquake kills them all and leaves you the sole survivor, and that sucks, but that's how it goes. just because life can and does include catastrophic amounts of suffering does not mean that it's inherently not worth it, or that the only solution is for everyone to die, or stop reproducing until we all die. that's a stupid and self destructive mindset that will never catch on in the mainstream. 

if you want to kill yourself, by all means, but don't bring everyone else down with you just because you can't get around the fact that suffering being inherent to life does not make life not worth it. it seriously just feels like an illogical, crab-bucket mentality born of one's own depression and nihilism to me. we're basically biologically programmed to focus on the negatives more than the positives for the sake of our own survival, and this mentality seems like a natural culmination of that instinct. 

not to mention that reproduction is a natural instinct of many people. trying to spread the mentality of antinatalism as morally correct, or legislating such a thing is inherently fascist, imo. you'd never be able to get away with it without the current powers taking a hard right turn into eugenics (because they'd never even try to attempt true antinatalism), because "breeding the perfect human to eliminate suffering" or whatever, so i don't even fully understand what the end goal of the antinatalist even is. in the real world it would just never work in the same way that something like legislated veganism is never going to work.

this is all in addition to the LuciLucille's big point: the fact that you can't ask a person who doesn't exist if they would like to exist or not, which by itself makes antinatalism a stupid and illogical mentality, imo, lol. i empathize with it, and i wouldn't outright shit on an antinatalist to their face for believing in the idea, because like i said, i can understand where they're coming from, but i don't agree with it or think it's smart by any stretch of the imagination.