美國和印度的生育政治利害關係

讓我們從生育的角度來檢視兩次重要的全國選舉：一場選舉最近在今年夏天在印度結束，另一場選舉進入了一個新的、更有希望的階段，今年冬天將在美國舉行。

The upcoming US presidential election and the recently concluded Indian national elections both feature a focus on reproduction in right-wing discourses. This highlights feminists' argument that all politics is reproductive politics.

即將到來的美國總統大選和剛結束的印度全國大選，都是右翼話語再現的焦點。這凸顯了女性主義者的論點，即所有政治都是生殖政治。

In the US, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance labels childfree individuals as “the childless cat ladies,” while Indian Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi pillories the Muslim community in his speeches for their fecundity, marking them collectively as “zyadha bacche paida karne waale log (people who produce too many children)”. Both Vance and Modi focus on women’s reproductive bodies.

在美國，共和黨副總統候選人JD 萬斯將沒有孩子的人稱為“沒有孩子的貓女士”，而印度印度教民族主義總理納倫德拉·莫迪在演講中嘲笑穆斯林社區的生育能力，將他們統稱為「zyadha bacche paya karne waale」 log（生育過多孩子的人）」。萬斯和莫迪都關注女性的生殖身體。

Despite their seemingly contradictory visions, pro-natalist Vance and anti-natalist Modi both draw from a shared political understanding of reproduction, population, and national wellbeing. In caricaturing both child-free choices and that of birthing more than one child, Vance and Modi pull from a politics of reproductive futurism whereby the absent child and too many children (of a particular sort) endanger their respective nations. Both men lean into competing anti-choice positions, as they mark Black, brown, and Muslim reproductive bodies as selfish, irresponsible, and anti-national

儘管支持生育的萬斯和反生育的莫迪的願景看似矛盾，但他們都對生殖、人口和國家福祉有著共同的政治理解。在諷刺無孩子選擇和生育多個孩子的選擇時，萬斯和莫迪脫離了生育未來主義的政治，即缺席的孩子和太多的孩子（特定類型）危及各自的國家。兩人都傾向於相互競爭的反選擇立場，因為他們將黑人、棕色人和穆斯林的生殖身體標記為自私、不負責任和反民族的。

For Vance, it is the feminist/queer reproductive subject who, in abandoning their procreative responsibilities towards the nation, demonstrate their lack of sustained, long-term investment and commitment to national wellbeing. For being reproductively derelict, Vance is proposing to disenfranchise these individuals and rewarding those with more children with additional votes. In refusing to produce future citizens for the nation, child free individuals automatically forfeit any legitimate claims to citizenship and hence, he is proposing they be denied their right to the ballot. On the flip side, those who have responsibly reproduced should be rewarded with more than one vote, voting on their children’s behalf. Citizen’s worthiness is unequivocally tied to their commitment to producing the next generation of Americans. In Vance’s national vision, reproductive choices qualify and disqualify American citizens to vote. His extrajudicial definitions impose reproductive worthiness as a litmus test for citizenship as he regards childfree women as “parasitic” freeloaders who, in refusing to reproduce, are not “productive” citizens.

對萬斯來說，女性主義者/酷兒生殖主體放棄了對國家的生育責任，這表明她們缺乏持續、長期的投資和對國家福祉的承諾。由於生育能力被忽視，萬斯提議剝奪這些人的選舉權，並獎勵那些擁有更多孩子的人額外的選票。在拒絕為國家培養未來公民的過程中，無子女的個人會自動放棄任何合法的公民身份要求，因此，他建議剝奪他們的投票權。另一方面，那些負責任地繁殖的人應該獲得不只一票的獎勵，代表他們的孩子投票。公民的價值明確地與他們對培養下一代美國人的承諾聯繫在一起。在萬斯的國家願景中，生育選擇決定美國公民是否有投票資格。他的法外定義將生育價值作為公民身份的試金石，因為他將無子女的婦女視為「寄生」貪圖便宜的人，拒絕生育，就不是「有生產力的」公民。

While Vance’s attacks are aimed widely at child-free Americans, they are also laser focused on the Democratic nominee Vice-President Kamala Harris. Through his tortured logic, Vance seeks to ridicule her for both being a woman of colour and what he considers to be her reproductive unworthiness. In choosing to be child-free, Harris, he argues, should automatically be disqualified from the possibility of leading the nation and becoming the next commander-in-chief. Harris’ reproductive body is marked as nationally suspect even as she has two stepchildren from her marriage. What we are witnessing in the current moment is a conservative push-back against impressive feminist success in divorcing definitions of womanhood from biology. In the face of this feminist rewriting of gendered scripts, we are encountering a fierce resurrection of the idea of biological motherhood as the mark of “true” womanhood from various right wing constituencies.

雖然萬斯的攻擊主要針對沒有孩子的美國人，但他們也把矛頭集中在民主黨候選人副總統卡馬拉·哈里斯身上。萬斯試圖透過他痛苦的邏輯來嘲笑她既是有色人種女性，又認為她不配生育。他認為，哈里斯選擇不生孩子，就應該自動失去領導國家和成為下一任總司令的資格。哈里斯的生殖身體在全國範圍內都受到懷疑，儘管她在婚姻中育有兩個繼子女。我們目前所看到的是，保守派對女性主義在將女性定義與生物學的定義分開方面所取得的成功進行了反擊。面對女性主義對性別腳本的重寫，我們正面臨著作為「真正」女性標誌的生物母性觀念在各個右翼選民中的猛烈復活。

On a lighter note, Vance’s imagination is flawed by his overly masculine and anthropomorphic bias. This imagination is also bankrupt in its failure to recognise that not all child-free humans are singularly feline lovers and that many extend their affections to all sentient beings, including household canines, farm cattle, and/or botanical marvels. Nor are their families solely determined by bloodlines perpetuated through conjugal sex located strictly within monogamous heterosexual matrimony. They forge close and loving bonds with fellow humans and our young ones through exploratory familial and community partnerships. Therefore, what Vance fails to recognise is that child-free individuals can, and many are, deeply committed to kin-making that is expansively interspecies and planetary rather than being strictly tied to human children and man-made national borders.

更輕鬆地說，萬斯的想像力因過於男性化和擬人化的偏見而有缺陷。這種想像力也因為未能認識到，並非所有沒有孩子的人類都是獨特的貓科動物愛好者，並且許多人將他們的感情延伸到所有有情眾生，包括家犬、農場牛和/或植物奇蹟，這種想像也破產了。他們的家庭也不僅僅由嚴格在一夫一妻制異性婚姻中透過夫妻性行為延續的血統決定。他們透過探索性的家庭和社區夥伴關係與人類同胞和我們的年輕人建立了密切而充滿愛心的聯繫。因此，萬斯沒有認識到的是，沒有孩子的個人可以而且許多人都堅定地致力於廣泛的跨物種和全球性的親緣關係，而不是嚴格與人類兒童和人造國家邊界聯繫在一起。

Shifting our gaze to India, Modi is proposing the opposite argument of overly fecund Muslim reproductive bodies as nationally suspect. Muslim bodies in India are seen as differently derelict from childfree Americans. Historically, the trope of over-population has dogged elite public discourses and sensibilities about India since the early 20th century. Paul Ehrlich’s infamous doomsday book, The Population Bomb, which opens with a dehumanising description of Delhi streets, played an important role in generating alarm about hyper-fecundity and planetary destruction. Even as his was not a new argument, either for Indians or for the global community of eugenicists and neo-Malthusians, the hold of over-population as the principal, if not the singular cause of India’s “under-development,” has been impossible to shake off even in the face of declining national fertility rates across the board, including among the Muslim community.

將我們的目光轉向印度，莫迪提出了相反的論點，即穆斯林生殖系統的生育能力在全國範圍內受到懷疑。印度的穆斯林屍體被視為與沒有孩子的美國人不同的被遺棄者。從歷史上看，自 20 世紀初以來，人口過剩的比喻一直困擾著精英大眾關於印度的言論和情感。保羅·埃利希（Paul Ehrlich）臭名昭著的世界末日書《人口炸彈》以對德里街道的非人性描述開始，在引起人們對過度生育和地球毀滅的警報方面發揮了重要作用。儘管他的論點對於印度人或全球優生學家和新馬爾薩斯主義者來說並不是一個新論點，但將人口過剩視為印度「欠發達」的主要原因（即使不是單一原因）也是不可能的。即使面對全國生育率全面下降（包括穆斯林社區）的情況，也能擺脫困境。

Mapping the political trajectory of India’s reproductive history illuminates the workings of power across intersecting axes of gender, class, community, and caste. Within modern Indian history, a differential reproductive worth was assigned to subaltern subjects, carrying with it a special burden to prove loyalty to the nation

繪製印度生育史的政治軌跡，揭示了權力在性別、階級、社區和種姓等交叉軸上的運作。在現代印度歷史中，底層臣民被賦予了不同的生殖價值，並承擔著證明對國家忠誠的特殊責任