Kevin Moore Mocks “Choice For Men”
| December 6th, 2007
This cartoon is perfect. Go read the whole thing.
176 Responses to “Kevin Moore Mocks “Choice For Men””
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December 6th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Holy crap, that’s hilarious.
This comment was written by Raznor.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Where can I buy one of those?
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I love it, hilarious…except for the part where it is more indicitive of pregnancy by rape than by consensual sex by making the prenancy completely one persons doing. Oh, and the part where they leave off a whole string of options…like keeping the baby and making the doctor pay for 18 years. Maybe it would be funnier if we saw the doctor making out a check in a subset frame where the guys parents are raising his kid while he is out drinking…THAT would be funny..huh? Well, I guess only if you find rude generalizations funny…
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Bjartmarr, do you want me to ask Kevin about that? I’m suspect he’d be willing to email you a print-quality copy you could print out yourself for a reasonable price, for example.
Anyway, that’s all up to Kevin, but I could give him a head’s up if you’re interested.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Ed, do you really think it’s unfair — in the situation described by the cartoon — if the doctor was forced to pay child support for the resulting child?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I think it misses the point by setting up a non-parallel situation. First off, I think most men are pretty cavalier about the idea of having an abortion — what it actually means simply doesn’t seem real. Secondly, the “impregnator gun” engaged him without notice or consent. It’s more like rape than sex.
A better argument — the one I use — is that a man’s choice is made at the time of intercourse. A contract signed at different times is still valid. Women have an additional “right of rescission” in abortion, but that’s neither here nor there.
This comment was written by Tom Geller.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Amp, thanks, but no, it was the machine I wanted, not the comic. ;)
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Amp,
It is not unfair that men help raise thier children financially. There is definately an unfair list though. I agree with Tom, as I said earlier, that this looks more like a rape than sex situation. I think it is truely wrong to say that men walk away saying “not my problem” and that is the end of it for them. We all know that is not true and there are many legal, moral and personal ramifications no matter how they deal with an unwanted (by them anyway) pregnancy just like there are for women.
I think depicting unwanted pregnancy situations like this cartoon did is wrong and unfair. I think making it seem that this situation is a parrallell for female unwanted pregnancies…like they didnt have a choice to not have sex or use protection…is unfair. I think expecting men to just be wallets and respect a woman’s decision to keep them out of the child’s life without complaint is unfair. I think giving women a way to escape the financial hardships of unwanted pregnancy by choice and not allowing that same freedom to men is unfair. I think expecting men to settle for the argument that his time of choice is at intercourse when a woman’s is basicly infinite is unfair. (if she never discloses who the father is she can put the child up for adoption until age of maturity) I think using the argument that genetics doesnt make a “father” to get men to pay for children they originally thought were biologically thier children that dna tests proved otherwise and then flipping it around and demanding men pay for children because they share genes with them is wrong. But no, in this depiction of a man forcing an unwanted pregnancy onto someone with no input or consent…I don’t think asking for child support in that case would be wrong.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I think giving women a way to escape the financial hardships of unwanted pregnancy by choice and not allowing that same freedom to men is unfair.
I’m not familiar with the law. If a woman gives birth, then gives up custody to the father, is she liable for child-support payments? (Let’s assume that she’s in a better financial position than he is.) If so, that invalidates your argument. If not… hmm, I’d have to think about it.
I think expecting men to settle for the argument that his time of choice is at intercourse when a woman’s is basicly infinite is unfair.
I believe in absolute sovereignty of the body. So your argument is with biology, not law.
This comment was written by Tom Geller.Your qualifier, “if she never discloses who the father is…” is a straw man: In that case, *he* wouldn’t be liable for child-support payments, either.
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December 6th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Tom, it is definitely the case that when fathers have sole or primary custody, mothers can be ordered to pay child support to fathers. This isn’t a “in theory, but it would never happen in real life” thing either; one of the employees where I work had her child support payments garnished from all her paychecks.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
The problem with the “a man’s time of choice is at intercourse” is that the EXACT SAME argument is used by anti-choicers. Most people can see how it’s repugnant to tell a pregnant woman that she should have kept her legs crossed.
This comment was written by outlier.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
If the man can get custody then yes, the woman pays support. I do not see how it invalidates my argument in any way though. If she has the option to give up the child and never even tell the father he has a child, she has a way out. If she can use safe haven laws or adoption to walk away (abandon) an unwanted child, then she has a choice a man simply is not given, totally seperate from sovereinty over her body.
I love the biology argument because it is so one sided When a woman wants complete control over her pregnancy or custody at birth, it is biology. But when it comes to accepting more responsibility for pregnancy or a child if she is unwed then we should discount the biological truth and pass laws that make men equally responsible. There are a many instances of legislating to overcome biological differences (not just pregnancy/childbirth) but I can’t think of even one that is done to protect/favor the male.
I know my viewpoints are not popular here and I don’t want to jump up on a soapbox. My initial statement was just about how wrong and unaware of the male situation the comic was. It is fun and funny to oversimplify situations and pretend they are easy and incontrovertable, but that doesn’t make it true or insightful. I hate the double standard. Would a comic of a woman laughing and yelling out the door “just a minute” in a burger king bathroom as she gave herself an abortion with a coathanger and mumbled “I hate when this happens on a first date” be funny to you? It is a very crude way to frame women who abort…as the doctor character is a very crude example of how a man acts in an unwanted pregnancy situation.
People are corrupt. If we keep building a system that allows people to play it to their advantage they will, male or female. To pretend females are incorruptable and pure is just being in denial. Right now if child support, custody, or any family court related events were a game of poker, they are handing women an extra deck of cards to keep up a sleeve for the whole game. Not all will use it, but they could.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
The problem with the “a man’s time of choice is at intercourse” is that the EXACT SAME argument is used by anti-choicers.
But that’s a completely valid argument!
The debate is whether a woman should have the later “right of rescission” offered by abortion.
Incidentally, unilateral rights of rescission — where one party can take it back but the other can’t — are fairly common. In certain circumstances, a homebuyer or borrower can nullify the contract up to three days after it’s been signed; the seller or lender can’t. (I’m writing a book about foreclosure, can you tell? :) )
This comment was written by Tom Geller.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Ed: I see your point now — thanks. You’re right that the “right of (financial) abandonment” is allowed women, but not men. It’s unquestionably an unequal situation.
But you know what? I can live with that. It’s an inherently unfair situation, and I’d much rather face the threat of financial inconvenience over pregnancy.
There are a many instances of legislating to overcome biological differences (not just pregnancy/childbirth) but I can’t think of even one that is done to protect/favor the male.
Hmm, that sounds like a challenge. I can’t think of any either. Here’s one in the non-judicial arena, though: Health care for men’s issues long had funding priority over women’s issues. I don’t know the current state.
I love the biology argument because it is so one sided.
Hey, that’s life. :)
Anyway, we agree that it’s a clumsy, poorly written comic. Nice drawing, though — and not far from Amp’s style, coincidentally. :)
This comment was written by Tom Geller.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Yup - it is funny. Sorry, dude - actions have consequences. If you have sex with a woman, she can get pregnant. Should that happen, she can make choices that you have no say in and that can obligate you for the rest of your life. Don’t like it? Keep your pants on.
I’m told the Porteguese have a saying - “God says ‘Take what you want - and pay for it.’”
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Re: Women paying child support.
I know that my mother-in-law was required by PA law to pay child support to my father-in-law because their youngest child was under 18 and living with him. She refused, claiming that child support was something only men should have to pay, and she also claimed that any money she handed over was used not for the child, but for the father (probably true). Though I had sympathy for her specific situation (she’d supported the violent, alcoholic, non-working, husband for several years before the divorce), I had a few arguments with her about how child support is about the CHILD, and her being female didn’t make it inherently unfair that she was required to fork it over.
I think the cartoon is pretty smart, of course it doesn’t cover all the angles or make a PERFECT analogy, but it stirs up conversation and makes the excellent point that unwanted pregnancy is a situation that affects women in ways that men cannot really find a parallel for.
This comment was written by Rosemary Grace.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Tom, you say the ‘right of financial abandonment’ is given to women but not men - yet the fact of financial abandonment frequently runs in the other direction. I’m sure we all know families where someone hasn’t been paid the child support they were due, and what hardship that can cause. Some men complain about the unfairness on perfectly reasonable grounds; others do so to justify the abandonment they’ve already made.
Oh, if we’re on the topic, I do know a woman who technically owes child support - she gave up her son to be raised by another member of her family, because she was poor, widowed and struggling with an addiction, and the two of them have amicably agreed that the child support will not be claimed.
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I have to say that I think those of you who critique the cartoon becaue the “sex” it depicts resembles rape more than consensual sex are missing the point. The man in the first panel asks a question: Why does the asymmetry he is talking about exist? At issue, in other words, is not how a woman gets pregnant, but what her situation is once she is pregnant. And the fact is that it is possible for men to do precisely what Dr. Mentorr does; the fact that most men don’t do it is not the issue. They could; we could; and so it is not unreasonable for the law to try to account for the resulting asymmetry. Please note: I am not arguing that the law does so as effectively as it might; I am just pointing out that the cartoon is not making a generalization about men’s behavior; it is pointing out the fact that men can walk away from pregnancy and that women ought to have access some protection/redress when a man does.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Tom, you say the ‘right of financial abandonment’ is given to women but not men
Right.
yet the fact of financial abandonment frequently runs in the other direction.
Irrelevant. If what’s been said earlier is correct, it’s *legally* permitted for a woman to stop financial support, but *illegal* for a man to do the same.
But now that I think about it, we weren’t looking at parallel situations there, either. In cases where a man was granted full custody, and the woman disappeared, couldn’t he also abandon the child at a safe haven?
So I take back what I said, but for a reason different from the one you raise. :)
This comment was written by Tom Geller.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Can’t let this one pass:
What do you mean by “long”? If you mean “last 1000 years” then yes, but if you mean “last 30 years” then no, because in the last decades women’s health care has received several times more funding. I will also argue that if there was any advantage that men had gained as a result of male health research having been prioritized for hundreds of years when medical practice mostly consisted of bloodletting and firecupping, and medical theories were often so incorrect as to recommend therapies that worsened patient’s condition, that advantage is offset a hundred times by the advantages gained by women as a result of female health research being better funded in the era of MRI, SEM, HGP, CABG, IVF, and highly advanced understanding of causes and mechanisms of diseases as well as of how a healthy organism functions.
This comment was written by BASTA!.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Neither adoption nor safe havens are examples of child abandonment. If you make sure that the child is cared for by capable, responsible people, in a legal fashion, it’s not abandonment.
And the reason she has that choice is purely biology. There is no way to equalize the fact that women get pregnant and men don’t. Yes, all of that is unfair. It’s also unfair that 100% of people injured or killed giving birth are women; what do you suggest should be done to remedy that unfairness?
Other than ones involving pregnancy and childbirth, or redressing past job discrimination, what ones can you think of? (Also, there’s no legal barrier to laws about redressing past job discrimination being used to assist men.)
For your information, in nearly every state with a “safe haven” law, not only can either fathers or mothers drop off the infant legally, but the state will attempt to locate the other parent before letting the infant be adopted. Women don’t need that protection, of course — there’s no such thing as a woman having a baby but not knowing about it. The main reason for this law is to mitigate the biological inequity involved in mothers, but not fathers, knowing about the birth.
Incidentally, I would happily favor “choice for men” if we can convert to a fully socialized economy, so that no child suffers economically just because daddy refuses to take responsibility. But I don’t believe that we should make children poorer just so that men can have a special right to fuck and run.
Finally, if we do pass “choice for men,” there will be an increase in single mother births, because some men will be less motivated to use birth control. So “choice for men” wouldn’t just mean that the current level of children without fathers would exist; it would actually increase how many fatherless children are born. (Studies have shown that the weaker the child support enforcement in a state, the higher the rate of single-mother births). How are you planning to pay for the social effects of that?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Amp,
Jobs- How about any of the hundreds of jobs/careers in this country that require physical standards tests? When is the last time you argued against reduced standards for women because it is biology not discrimination?
Safe haven- fathers or mothers, but mothers are afforded the natural “right” of custody… if fathers want to give up a child for adoption and a mother doesnt it is always called abandonment. If a mother does the same thing and the father is never informed of the pregnancy she is (your words) making sure that the child is cared for by capable, responsible people, in a legal fashion. As for the “legal fasion”…it is the law that I am disputing. ( I have a whole argument about how when women want a fetus to be inconsiquential it is a mass of cells, but when she wants custody of a born child it suddenly was a child she has been bonding to for 9 months and men could never understand that)
Choice for men (don’t like the phrase, it is yours) - If it follows that men will be less responsible without responibility being thrust upon them, would it not also follow that women would be MORE responsible with the threat of responsibility set squarely on them and balance that out? Again, that goes back to the biology argument and how we afford women biological rights but legislate to relieve biological responsibilities.
I just want to see a more legitimate “equality”. It is too unbalanced as it is now.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
A better argument — the one I use — is that a man’s choice is made at the time of intercourse.
An even better argument is that “choice” has nothing whatsoever to do with your obligations toward your born children. Child-support laws do not say “you only have to take care of a kid if you wanted to have sex,” or “if you meant to have a child”. Some states deprive a rapist of all rights (and obligations) towards a child born of an act of rape, but that’s as far as “choice” goes in mattering.
The whine “why should he have to pay for it” is nonsense when you realize that a woman, too, is financially responsible for a child whether or not she made the choice to have that child.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 2:57 am
No.
But as Ed pointed out, the position of the doctor is analogous to that of a rapist who deliberately impregnates his victim, not a partner in a consensual act of non-procreative sex.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 3:00 am
A woman who has the option of the day-after pill, and declines it, and who has the option of an abortion, and declines it, has unilatterally made the choice to have that child.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 3:15 am
It is possible to agree that women should have some protection/redress when a man does that, or tries to, while disagreeing that the actual protections/redress in place are fair to men.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Ampersand (quoting Ed):
Er no. Biology allows the woman to have the child without telling the father. Biology also allows the father to walk away from the pregnant mother. Either or both could walk away from the born child. Nor is there a biological obstacle to the parents flushing the baby down the toilet. Or eating it.
It is society which steps in to deny the parents some of these choices and to give them others. Given that the reason society steps in is to remedy the inherent unfairness of pure biology, it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether the result is fair, and if not, whether it could be made more fair.
If you and I were involved in an accident which left you injured, paraplegic, for example, and it were determined that I was 50% responsible for the accident, then a court would require me to pay you 50% of what it would cost to remedy your loss. If your injury could be remedied by a $10000 operation, then I should pay you $5000. Now I agree that you should not be forced to have that operation. If you prefer to be paraplegic, then fine. But I should not be forced to pay half the cost of the lifelong care you need as a consequence of your decision.
A pregnancy is a 50-50% shared responsibility between two people who had consensual sex. A birth is the 100% responsibility of the woman who declined both the morning after pill, and an abortion.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Even if I were to agree with you that morality is determined by “hot potato” (i.e., the last person to make a decision bears 100% of the responsibility), I’d still think you were wrong.
After all, not everyone finds out about their pregnancy in time for a morning after pill. Not everyone can afford an abortion, or has access to an abortion provider (indeed, in many areas, leading politicians have worked very hard to make abortion inaccessible). So even accepting your premise, you’re simply wrong to assume that if a woman has a baby that means she had and declined reasonable options to stop the pregnancy.
(But I am curious: Under your proposed system, if a father wants to raise a child and the mother wants nothing to do with the child after birth, does she have to pay child support? Assuming that she could have had an abortion but chose not to.)
But your “hot potato” morality is nonsense. If you knowingly sell my cookie shop tainted cookie dough, and I knowingly sell the tainted cookies to customers, you don’t get to avoid liability by saying “Barry could have prevented all those deaths by not selling my tainted cookie dough at all, so it’s all his responsibility, and not at all mine!” When two people’s freely made choices lead to an outcome, and when both of their choices were essential in leading to that outcome, then they share responsibility.
In post #26, you frame your analysis in terms of what’s “fair to men.” But that’s a problematic approach to this issue, because there are three parties here: the father, the mother, and the child. Asking what’s fair to just one party, as if only men (or women, or children) count, inevitably makes the total situation worse.
There is no reasonable solution that’s fair to everyone. The situation is inherently unfair. So the question should be, what solution best distributes unfairness between the three parties? And Choice For Men — by saying that men must be 100% protected from consequences, even if it means increasing the consequences for the other two parties — utterly fails to provide a reasonable response.
Yes, it’s unfair that men have to support children when they’d rather not. But that’s less unfair than children being poor because they have only one parent taking responsibility, or a custodial parent getting no support at all from the other parent.
Often morality isn’t about trying to find a party you can blame everything on (”it’s the mother’s fault! She could have had an abortion!”) so that other folks can be absolved of responsibility. This is such a case. A child is not an auto accident.
I would be willing to accept C4M (and for women) in a really generous welfare state, by the way, where the financial support needed to mitigate the unfairness of a one-parent family is provided by taxes instead of by the non-resident parent, and where society was prepared to take on the increased numbers of single-mother households C4M would bring about. But I don’t see any hope of that happening in the US (where I live), and I suspect it won’t happen in the UK either.
ETA: “A child is not an auto accident.” Of course, you might respond, a child is not tainted cookie dough either. That’s true. My point, however, is that there is no generally agreed on morality that states that “the last decision-maker in a chain of decisions leading to outcome A bears sole responsibility for outcome A.” Since no such general rule exists, you can’t cite it to prove that men should have no responsibility for their children.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 4:46 am
Daran:
Why, in comment 26, did you leave out the sentence prior to what you quoted me as saying: “Please note: I am not arguing that the law does so as effectively as it might”?
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 5:30 am
There is no way to equalize the fact that women get pregnant and men don’t.
Yes, there is. Developing nearly 100% effective, safe, free contraception, for both men and women. If the resources were put to the effort, it could be done. It wouldn’t “equalize” the risk inherent in planned pregnancies, but it would go a long way to help.
This comment was written by outlier.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Hi,
Best assumption is that any sex with a woman can lead to pregnancy. It used to be so…showing my age…before birth control. Any sane male would have efficient and available BC on hand at all times. No crap about “mood” or “moment”. Condoms are cheap and handy and prevent little “mistakes”.
Coming from a poor area I am familiar with the need for women to have children by men that at least can hold down a job. Not pretty or fair but just the reality of life. I am pudgy, bald and well past 30 and I get phone numbers because I am working steadily. Even teens find me a catch because the “goods are odd”.
Without a helpmeet male, the woman in poverty has few palatable options. That is why the calculation on his fitness for fatherhood or, at the very least, providing income. So, any male from this background would assume that the partner might want a pregnancy and the male should plan accordingly. Fatherhood is the default choice.
Quit whining that she chooses. Duh, so do you and if you can’t stand the thought of kids then find your own self-outlet or make better choices
This comment was written by Mold.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Ok, short and simple one more time since the core message seems to be lost. A woman can choose (legally) to walk away from a born child…something most here adamently oppose a man’s right to do. A man can choose to walk away from a born child (legally) WITH the womans/mothers permission. That, simply, is unfair and unequal. You say biology doesn’t give her the right to do so unilaterally but use biology to defend her presumption of custody….you simply can not have it both ways. It is a fairly common thing I see here to bounce back and forth between reality and legality using whichever is most convenient toward the argument.
Thanks to all of you for not doing the “go away womanhater” thing and actually considering my viewpoints. By the most base of definitions I am a feminist (no guffaws please), I want equality. I just happen to be an equality of oppertunity over equality of outcome guy.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:24 am
“A woman can choose (legally) to walk away from a born child”
With the father’s permission, I’m pretty sure. Mythago?
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Okay, I’m not going to leap into the fray here. I’m just amused by the symmetry in the cartoon - mostly because, not too long ago, I saw a conservative use the exact same scenario, but in reverse, to justify the “father’s consent for abortion” stuff that was being pushed in the midwest.
His suggestion was: if the father used a ray-gun to kill the unborn foetus, which did not interact with the woman’s body in any way (and thus does not violate her body), how would the mother feel?
Obviously, this is wholly offtopic, I just thought it fascinating that people used ray-guns to argue both sides of the a similar debate.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:31 am
“His suggestion was: if the father used a ray-gun to kill the unborn foetus, which did not interact with the woman’s body in any way (and thus does not violate her body), how would the mother feel?”
Assaulted. As it’s her fucking body.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Ray guns are cool.
But to the subject at hand. Child support is not about a father’s or mother’s rights - they are about the right of a child to be cared for. Which is why if a child is given to foster care after birth, BOTH the mother and father will be hit up for child support. Because the state certainly does NOT want to pay for the child - that is for the parents to do.
The one unfortunate thing about it is where a parent can be reduced to a paycheck - with no say in how that money is spent in the interest of the child. That is the one thing I’d want to work on in the system, above all others. Some might complain that this unfairly inserts the non-custodial parent into the custodial parent’s life, giving control over how he or she lives it, but then, as I said about, it is about the child, not the parents.
As far as abortion - that is the mother’s choice for the simple reason that it is the mother who has to risk death if she carries to term (or risk complications from an abortion if she has that instead) - either way, no one else should be dictating to her that she have a medical procedure. And keep in mind, if she elects to risk death by giving birth, and she and the baby end up dying, the man is “off the hook” and is not held responsible. Because it is solely her choice to make.
This comment was written by Disgusted Beyond Belief.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:52 am
But as Ed pointed out, the position of the doctor is analogous to that of a rapist who deliberately impregnates his victim, not a partner in a consensual act of non-procreative sex.
No it’s not. The man asked a question. The doctor answered it. Just not in a way that the first man had expected or agreed to. Definitely unethical–not giving full informed consent–but not rape. More analogous to “don’t worry, you can’t get pregnant the first time” or “we don’t need a condom, I’ve had a vasectomy” (if the speaker hasn’t).
I also note that the man seems to have ended up about 7 months pregnant. Nice trick–avoids the really nasty parts of pregnancy. And since he’s almost certainly a c-section candidate he also misses labor.
BTW, if there are any men out there who desire a pregnancy, it probably is doable. Implant an embryo on the intestinal lining, maybe give a little progesterone to help it get started properly…should be workable enough. Any volunteers? (Preferably multi-millionaire volunteers: medical experimentation doesn’t come cheap you know.)
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Mandolin (”quoting Mythago”):
Ed is talking about safe abandonment legislation which has been enacted in many if not most US jurisdiction.
What these laws provide for, is that the carer in whose immediate physical custody a new born baby is, is not liable for abandoning it if they do so in any designated place, typically hospitals, police stations, and the like. The latter are obliged to receive babies and not to require the abandoner to disclose their identity. There is usually provision for either of the child’s parents to reclaim it within a period of time.
Even if the laws allow either parent to do this, the practical effect is to enable mothers, who are more likely to have physical custody, to walk away than fathers.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:00 am
A woman who has the option of the day-after pill, and declines it, and who has the option of an abortion, and declines it, has unilatterally made the choice to have that child.
Again, Daran: ‘choice’ has no impact on the parents’ financial responsibility for a born child. A woman who doesn’t have the option of the morning-after pill, or who doesn’t have the option of abortion, is not excused from her financial and legal obligations to her child. “Choice for men” is really giving men a right women don’t have either.
(Daran’s analogy, by the way, is similar to the obsolete “last clear chance” doctrine in tort law.)
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:03 am
I wonder how that would fly in court.
“Yer honour, I didn’t rape her. I just knocked her up without her informed consent.”
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Not avoiding the hard questions, but I’ve got to go.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:08 am
The irony here is that a woman impregnated through rape or deceit is still responsible for her child. “But I didn’t know he slipped off the condom!” or “I didn’t consent to the sex!” doesn’t have a thing to do with alleviating the mother’s obligations to her child.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Daran: If someone came up to you and said, “I really want to know what this sex stuff is all about, can you show me?” and you demonstrated it to her, I doubt that she’d have much of a case for calling it rape. She might be pretty annoyed if you failed to mention that the demonstration might make her pregnant, but that wouldn’t make the sex rape. The guy in the cartoon wanted to know why women have more options concerning a pregnancy than men. His question was answered. He didn’t much like the answer, but there you go. Even though both acts are clearly unethical.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:17 am
I’m pretty sure most, if not all, safe harbor laws include a provision to ensure that attempts are made to find the parents of the child and make sure that neither parent wants custody before putting the child up for adoption. If I understand the law correctly, any person can leave a child at a “haven”, no questions asked. That person doesn’t have to be either parent. It could be the babysitter. It could be the carjacker who didn’t realize that there was a baby in the back seat. And so on.
Even if the laws allow either parent to do this, the practical effect is to enable mothers, who are more likely to have physical custody, to walk away than fathers.
And this would be because…men are able to walk away from a pregnancy but women aren’t. So they are more likely to be stuck with a child they can’t cope with than men. I’m not sure that makes the point you wanted to make, really.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Mythago,
You are right, it doesn’t alleviate anything, because she has no actual enforcable obligations to a born child. She can disapear and by law the system will never look for her. A man who is saying “she said she was on the pill” on the other hand can be jailed for shirking his obligations to her child. (her is intentional, as most fathers in that situation are given little if any consideration as a parent, just a wallet)
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:18 am
I wasn’t quoting Mythago; I was asking Mythago. I don’t really know how you got “quoting.”
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:24 am
A woman can choose (legally) to walk away from a born child…something most here adamently oppose a man’s right to do.
Unless I’m very mistaken about the law, a non-custodial parent can not walk away from their legal obligation to provide child support if the custodial parent requests it for the child, regardless of gender. If a child is left in a fire station and the other parent claims it, I would expect that the relinquishing parent is still liable for child support payments. As far as I know, except in Oregon, a child can be placed for adoption only if both parents agree to give up their parental rights. In Oregon, a man has parental rights only if he shows some minimal interest during the pregnancy, but if he does then he has full rights. Sorry, I’m not sure where the inequality comes in. Men don’t have the right to control the pregnancy, but it’s not going on in their body.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:25 am
ed, under “safe haven” laws, a father can abandon his baby and by law the system will never look for him, just as with the mother. A woman on the other hand who says “but he told me he had a vasectomy and then he wouldn’t let me get an abortion” can be jailed for shirking her obligations to their child.
And interesting that you seem to agree that a father ‘in that situation’ really isn’t a parent, because you happily assert that the child is the mother’s, not ‘his’ child as well.
Mandolin, correct. In order for a woman to “walk away”–that is, be freed of all financial and legal obligations to her child–either the father has to agree to give up his obligations and rights too. There are some exceptions where the law has deprived one parent or the other of obligations and rights; for example, it is my understanding that in Oregon, an unmarried father who has nothing to do with the pregnancy loses his right to prevent an adoption. (Which apparently makes Oregon a rather popular state for adoptions, as there is no chance that Dad will show up and prevent or reverse the adoption because his parental rights were never terminated.)
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Actually, Mythago’s (and to a lesser extent, Daran’s) arguments here raises a good point: should covert or coercive attempts to induce pregnancy against the will of the sex-partner be illegal?
I mean, we’ve heard the MRA’s complain about mom-traps, and there were the recent feminist-blogged articles about abusive men trying to sabotage birth-control in order to similarly capture their partners, so it seems to be a unifying issue. Why aren’t actions like that considered a crime? Obviously, if a person is having sex they must be aware of the risk of pregnancy, but if the other partner is misrepresenting the situation or is actively sabotaging the birth-control process (either through physical sabotage or through lies) then isn’t that a violation of their sex-partner’s rights?
I suppose it’s a useless point anyways, since that kind of thing is wholly unprovable.
Either way, my opinion on the “choice for men” issue is very simple: the situation is intrinsically unequal. The only way to make it fair would involve science-fiction technology. Attempts to make it fair using laws simply would make it unfair in more complicated ways.
MRAs want the “choice for men” thing because they see it as a way to avoid parenthood. I think the point that they miss is that abortion does not exist to avoid parenthood. Adoption does a fine job of that - and women have no more or less rights to unilaterally adopt out their kid than men do. What abortion avoids is pregnancy. If women didn’t care about the “pregnancy” part, they wouldn’t need abortions in the first place. But pregnancy is really, really rough. And men don’t have pregnancies.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:33 am
should covert or coercive attempts to induce pregnancy against the will of the sex-partner be illegal?
Whether or not it is illegal is a separate issue from parental obligations to the child. It’s very clear that child support, and parental responsibility, do not depend on whether you choose to become a parent. That’s because of this whole “best interests of the child” focus of the law.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:43 am
@mythago
No argument from me. Just observing that it’s something that’s come up on both sides.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Again, legally you are right..the father has to give up rights. Unless of course noone knows who the mother OR father is because the baby is left at a firehouse. Or, as recently happened in the UK the mother decides she doesn’t have any obligation to let a father know he is a father. And the “he should know” argument is useless unless you make pre birth genetic testing mandatory (can’t do that because it invades a woman’s body) so she can simply say “it isnt yours”. People lie, it is part of reality. And I am guessing we go back to the, “well that is tough it is biology’s fault” argument. Presumed custody is not the fault of biology though, that is a legal standard we built. If we presumed joint custody in all cases and required actual biological parents identified in all cases we would be taking a huge step toward true equality. Most men are not afraid of fatherhood, as so many seem to think. Most men are hurt/afraid of being held responsible for a child they can not father though… a monthly check is not a replacement for teaching and guiding a child.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:51 am
The only way to make it fair would involve science-fiction technology
Sigh, no one ever believes my offer to work on how to make a man pregnant…Ok, maybe that offer wasn’t terribly sincere, but getting men pregnant really only presents a few technical problems, and not terribly hard ones at that. The only reason it hasn’t been done is that there’s no demand. Of course, the situation would still be unequal, because men would only become pregnant after a medical procedure which would be essentially impossible to have done to them accidently or against their will. I suppose a situation might arise in which a man wanted to end the pregnancy, for any reason, while the woman who donated the egg for the pregnancy didn’t. In that situation, obviously, it would be the man who would decide whether to terminate or not.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:52 am
The other problem I have with the “choice for men” thing is that I’ve never really made up my mind on the abortion issue. I mean, the only argument that’s ever really been convincing for me are the scientific ones, and many of those look pretty fuzzy after the first month or so, which is way too late for women who took a bit of time to discover their pregnancy. The privacy/bodily autonomy issue makes it legal and gives women the freedom, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a she isn’t still killing a human being.
If I were a woman, I don’t know if I could do it. So it’s not too hard to imagine a woman who has a moral problem with aborting her child, left out to dry by a husband who doesn’t have to deal with such terrifying ethical questions using a “man’s right to choose”.
@Diane - actually, the “science fiction technology” I had in mind would be more along the lines of perfect, convenient, and visibly detectable birth-control (so no accidents are possible, even deliberate ones) that is activated by default and must be deliberately deactivated, issued to every teenager on the planet. And mainstream popularity of growing babies in tanks instead of people.
Stuff like that. Really, really science-fiction technology. And a sociological shift towards using that technology as a preference.
So yeah, I’m thinking less “Junior” and more “Star Trek”.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Silenced,
The whole abortion thing is a quagmire… A man who disagrees with it and his wife has one anyway…is he being coersive if he says he will leave because he can’t stand the thought of being married to a murderer (if that is his belief?) I am pro choice, always have been, but I also know I would offer to raise the child if she would carry it to term. I personally don’t believe abortion being illegal is forcing anything on anyone… birth control is prevelent now, and all the same arguments that get thrown out to men about not having sex or getting “fixed” apply to women as well…but you can’t put the cat back in the bag. Abortion exists, you can’t undo that. I also have the benefit of not being religious so I don’t have the complication of worrying about my eternal soul…that is a very real and terrifying threat to many.
I haven’t been here in forever, this place has gotten so civil. This discussion has almost been pleasant. I just can’t get over it.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 9:28 am
I’ve got a question for the pro-choice-for-men folks.
Are you seriously advocating that a woman, any time during her pregnancy, should have to choose between abortion, adoption, and raising a kid on a single-parent income, just because the Dad decides he doesn’t want a kid after all?
All the argument for it that I’ve seen involves some situation where the woman claimed she was infertile, or dug a condom out of the trash, or some bizarre situation like that. I want to know if you’re supporting it in the 99% of other cases, where the couple decide to have a baby, get pregnant, then split up. Or where they don’t use BC, or the BC fails.
And, since your argument is based on creating 100% fairness for the guy, why are you not concerned with creating 100% fairness for the woman or the child? Is it fair that a child grow up with financial support from only one parent? Is it fair that a woman have to choose between a morally questionable procedure, or investing 9 months in a baby and then giving it up, solely because she wants to make sure that any child of hers is supported by two parents? Why don’t you analyze fairness for all three parties involved, not just the guy?
If you want to argue that choosing between abortion, adoption, or a single-income-family is the least of evils, then go right ahead. But if you give for-examples, please use the most common kind of situation, and not some bizarre case you heard about once where the guy doesn’t actually consent to sex.
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 9:34 am
birth control is prevelent now, and all the same arguments that get thrown out to men about not having sex or getting “fixed” apply to women as well
Those arguments have always applied to women. The problem is that the anti-choice crowd sees pregnancy as a just punishment for sex, and therefore think a woman should be denied birth control and abortion. It’s not the case that “I didn’t want a baby!” is an excuse to evade child support for women.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 9:46 am
SiF: Hmm…that’s trickier. Although their have been attempts to create artificial uteri, some of which were at least partially successful in animals. They were abandoned for lack of funding which translates socially to lack of interest. Though as far as I can tell, they would have been mostly very early premie rescue devices rather than conception to birth gestation devices. Still, you’d think that the pro-lifers at least would be all over that sort of technology: it would certainly save babies as premature birth is one of the leading causes of infant mortality. Strange that they aren’t interested. (Not but that pro-choicers should also be interested in helping women save the babies they chose to gestate, but “saving babies” isn’t the stated goal of the pro-choice movement as it is for the pro-life movement, which is why I’m harping on the pro-lifers.)
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Most men are hurt/afraid of being held responsible for a child they can not father though… a monthly check is not a replacement for teaching and guiding a child.
I don’t know the law, so I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that if a man was sued for child support and said something like, “Ok, I’ll help pay but I want to help raise the child too” that a court wouldn’t grant him joint custody or at least visiting rights unless there was strong evidence that it would be against the child’s interest for him to be in contact with the child (i.e. history of abusive behavior). And I agree that in the absence of such evidence that the father of the child should have the right to be involved in that child’s life if he choses to be. (Except in the case of sperm donors who have neither parental rights nor parental obligations.)
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Bjartmar,
Ok, the easiest first. Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. Unless I miss my mark that was a battle cry in favor of abortion. Why is it different for men?
You are absolutely right about fair for all parties. As it is it is fair to who though? Who has the most rights/control of the situation? I again put forward that we should assume equal custody for biological parents at birth. That then gives a father the choice to say no, I would rather be financially burdened than raise the child, or do his part to raise the child, or if the mother does not want to raise the child either they can decide together to give the child up for adoption.
As for investing 9 months into the child see comment 22. It is consistantly argued that the child is just a part of the woman’s body until birth. She is investing that time into a part of her body, not the child. If that is not so, if it is an autonomous being she is investing time into that truly throws a wrench into the pro-choice argument, as even negligent homicide is still a crime. That would make all high risk behaviors by a pregnant woman punishible. This is another one of those arguments people don’t want associated with one another…like a hologram, they want it to change depending on what angle you look at it.
Fair for the child is always a heart-wrencher… Does that mean you support requiring disclosure by the mother to facilitate positive identification of every biological father? I can think of very few cases where knowing who the father is would not be in the best intrest of the child. For medical and emotional reasons. Or is best intrest completely restricted to financial intrest? In that case do you support an auditing requirement to make sure support money is being spent on the child by the custodial parent?( I would prefer less govt. interference myself)
Mythago, there may be people who feel a pregnancy is a punishment. I am not one of them. That seems a bit barbaric since the one being punished the most would really be the child. But, in the same vein, do I not here that it is his “fault” that he is paying child support because “he got her pregnant”? I think that argument is weak on both sides of the line. It should be about the child, about good parenting, about equal access to both competant parents, and equal access to children BY both competant parents. Shouldn’t it?
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 10:09 am
@Dianne
1)
I’ve often wondered about one thing - here’s where I get really flamebait and speculative: is our tolerance for abortion simply a legacy of our weak history with birth control?
Imagine a society where everyone’s penis and vagina had an invisible internal “fertility on/off” switch that the person could control. Thus, pregnancy is 100% deliberate on the part of both parties. As such, unwanted pregnancy would be an extremely complicated and rare affair. In that world, do you think the “pro-choice” movement would have any legs? I don’t know that it would. Or would abortion be widely seen as infanticide? I say this, because to me, that’s the default assumption - the pro-choice mindset requires building some complicated logic in one’s head. It’s simpler to look and say “look - you killed a human” and be done with it.
2)
I think the trick is that the man is, by default, the secondary parent. Again, this is created by biology, which is unfair. Birth and breastfeeding put the mother into the driver’s seat, and the functional impossibility of 50/50 custody (outside the bonds of a live-in relationship) means she never gets out of it unless she screws up or chooses to.
This is also why the “safe haven” laws are intrinsically unfair (and unavoidably so). Safe-haven laws are created by what is effectively a thousand little hostage situations. There can be no deterrent to their use, or else the mother suddenly has a rational incentive to kill the baby instead. Searching for the father and then treating him as a parent (and thus putting the mother into a non-custodial parent situation) would create a massive disincentive.
This is why the second pillar of the “men’s right to choose” - safe haven laws - is also so messy. The safe haven laws are only run as unilateral adoption because of fear for the baby’s life. But in doing so, they give a woman an opt-out that a man doesn’t have.
What’s important to remember is that safe haven drop-offs only work when none of the parents who are aware of the child want it. Otherwise, it’s trivial for the other parent to say “where the fark is the baby???” and then track it down, as is their right. This still works for preventing infanticide, since you’ve got somebody who notices the baby is missing that way, too.
Which is why “father’s right to choose” misses a second stroke - safe-have drop-offs only happen in a unanimous situation. The trick is that, by concealing the pregnancy and birth from the father (which is pretty easy if you haven’t seen him since conception), it’s pretty simple to make sure he abstains from the “vote”.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 10:28 am
SiF: Abortions would still happen because pregnancies would still go wrong, but they would be rarer and more likely to be necessary due to maternal illness or fetal non-viability. Elective abortion might still have a place depending on just how hard it was to nullify the birth control. People could still lie and say, for example, “of course I’ll marry you when the baby is born” when they have no intention of doing so. However, I can’t really think of a reason why anyone would do such a thing, except maybe because they were abusive sorts who wanted to play mind games. But those sorts do exist (in both male and female varieties) and so I don’t think that you could assume that even theoretically perfect birth control gets rid of the need for non-medical abortion entirely.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Ed,
The questions I asked basically boiled down to two things.
1) Are you actually serious? I want to hear you say that you support this, even outside of bizarre situations where the man didn’t consent to sex.
2) Why are you so concerned about fairness for men, but not fairness for the woman or kid?
I’ve read your response three times, and I really can’t see any clear answer to these questions. There’s a bunch of stuff about what other people think, and how about some other people are being inconsistent, but I really don’t see anything about what YOU think.
You are, of course, under no obligation to answer my questions. But sidestepping them is unlikely to get me to change my mind.
In the interest of quid-pro-quo, though, I’ll answer your questions. I’m not going to respond again if you don’t answer mine, though.
Consent to sex is indeed consent to the chance of pregnancy. This isn’t a political position, this is biological fact. In our laws, we have decided that consent to sex is consent to raise any progeny that result from that sex — this is a political position, which I support on the least-unfair principle. It is my understanding that you do not support it, under the everything-must-be-100%-fair-for-the-guy-and-screw-everyone-else principle. If I’m wrong on that, I’m open to being corrected, but so far you haven’t taken the opportunity to do so.
In answer to your question, “To whom is it fair”, I reiterate that it is fair to nobody, but the current is least unfair to all.
Next paragraph: The fetus is not part of the woman’s body. Her uterus is, and she gets to decide what to keep in there.
Next paragraph: In the vast majority of cases, there is no need to force the woman to identify the father. In certain bizarre situations, the rights of the child must be balanced against the rights of the mother…but those are the vast minority of situations, and if that’s the only way you can support your argument, you’re not going to change many minds.
As for an “auditing requirement”, no, I don’t think that an “auditing requirement” is necessary, because I think that in the vast majority of cases the custodial parent does spend CS money on supporting the kid. If they’re not, then that needs to be dealt with, but I don’t support an “auditing requirement” that presumes all custodial parents are guilty until proven innocent.
OK, I answered your questions. Your turn.
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 11:50 am
This is a great cartoon.
If there is one thing the men’s rights movement has achieved is making us all believe that men, in particular strait white men are now the victims of evil feminism.
Thanks to the MRAs one would think that women and more specifically feminism is to blame for all problems and men do not have to take responsibility for anything especially if they are strait white men. Because clearly they are the ones been wronged.
I think this cartoon covers that pretty well
This comment was written by Herra.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 11:59 am
In response to the 2 questions.
1 Support this? You mean a more fair and equitable solution to parenting custody and parental responsibility. Absolutely. Men opting out? Absolutely again, After they opt out the woman still has the right/ability to opt out, as we have discussed time and again. Even more so as she doesn’t now need to lie as she is the only legal parent remaining. If she chooses to raise the child on her own she is accepting responibility for raising the child as a single unsupported parent. Don’t say it is any more unfair to the child than a mother who voluntarily excludes a father from the childs life by not revealing his identity or not revealing the existance of the child to that man. I have yet to see laws that prosecute that.
2 I don’t think you read a large part of my post. Unless you define fairness for the mother and child as fairness DEFINED by the mother for the mother and child I am very much concerned with it. What is unfair about wanting equal legal access to both parents for the child and equal legal access to the child for both parents. What is unfair about wanting the parents to be on equal footing?
As for the uterus argument, fair enough. As I said, reckless endangerment/ negligent homicide are still crimes. If you neglect a child by throwing it out of your womb/uterus it is absolutely your choice…the same as dropping a baby out of my arms is a choice. I do have soverignty over my arms don’ t I? Again, I am on weak footing in this argument because I am pro-choice…but saying the child is both part of the mothers body AND autonomous is unrealistic.
As for treating the custodial parent as if they are guilty, in most states non custodial parents are treated exactly like that. They have wages garnished from their paychecks by law as if they would refuse to pay the support. They then submit these garnishments to the federal gov’t. as “collected monies” to get federal assistance. I see no difference in the intrusion of privacy between those 2.
To turn it around on you just a bit, why are you so concerned with protecting the rights and privacy of women and not of men or children?
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
My first thought on reading this cartoon was to picture my father, who abandoned 7 children by 3 different wives. I’ve been reading the different articles on here about men’s rights and reproductive choice and it interests me that these discussion always focus on casual sex resulting in unplanned pregnancy. Child support laws are principally written to address the situation of long term relationships/marriages where children result and one parent then decides that they no longer want to participate in the family.
Back to my father, who left my mother and I when i was two and she was eight months pregnant with my brother. Do MRA’s suggest that in this instance my father would have the option of not bearing any responsibility for his children simply because he decided to leave and it was my mother’s choice to raise us rather than put us up for adoption? Are you really seriously proposing this?
Child support is part of an obligation parents have to provide for the welfare of their children. We as a society have chosen individual responsibility for children’s welfare over collective responsibility for people’s welfare. That means that the many choices made by BOTH parents that result in a child, regardless of who has more or less choice, mean that BOTH parents are responsible for the child. To put it succinctly, child support is not a payment to the custodial parent for services rendered in raising your child, but rather your obligation to support the welfare of your child
Finally, the last panel of the cartoon really resonated with me. I’ve known women who got pregnant in all kinds of relationships from casual to committed where the father was all excited and supportive of the pregnancy until late in the pregnancy only to waltz merrily away leaving the mother holding the bag, as it were. How come these MRA discussion never talk about this guy? Why do they always focus on the poor man who just wanted to get off with a pretty girl and then finds out she’s gone and gotten pregnant without his consent and there’s nothing he can do about it?
This comment was written by bradana.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
“I don’t know the law, so I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that if a man was sued for child support and said something like, “Ok, I’ll help pay but I want to help raise the child too” that a court wouldn’t grant him joint custody….”
If you don’t believe this exact thing happens all the time, both for mothers and fathers, you are just not paying attention. This stuff is family law lawyers ‘ bread and butter.
This comment was written by Jim.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Support this? You mean a more fair and equitable solution to parenting custody and parental responsibility.
No. I mean “that a woman, any time during her pregnancy, should have to choose between abortion, adoption, and raising a kid on a single-parent income, just because the Dad decides he doesn’t want a kid after all?”, as I asked in #56. But, although you haven’t come out and said it, I’m thinking that the answer is yes. And I think that that’s repugnant. And I am beginning to suspect that you’re avoiding couching it in the terms that I used, because you also recognize that it’s a repugnant to force women to make that choice. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.
Don’t say it is any more unfair to the child than a mother who voluntarily excludes a father from the childs life by not revealing his identity or not revealing the existance of the child to that man.
OK, I won’t say that. Actually, I specifically said that I wasn’t going to talk about that weird shit, because it’s, you know, weird shit. I have no idea why you’re telling me not to talk about it.
I did in fact read your post many times, however I had a hard time understanding parts of it because you kept bringing in straw men about fetuses being parts of a woman’s body and bizarre cases involving women who won’t identify the father and auditing requirements and crap like that.
If you neglect a child by throwing it out of your womb/uterus
It’s not a child. It’s a fetus. Once it’s born, then it’s a child.
And yes, if you happen for some bizarre reason to have a fetus in your arms, then unless you are a surgeon of some sort you should feel free to drop it. (ugh)
Noncustodial parents who refuse to pay support ARE guilty. So I see no reason not to treat them as such. The custodial parents whom you propose to subject to auditing, on the other hand, haven’t done anything wrong, so treating them as guilty would also be wrong. Is this so hard to understand? What’s the controversy here? I don’t get it.
To turn it around on you just a bit, why are you so concerned with protecting the rights and privacy of women and not of men or children?
Oh. My. God. Are you serious? I support LEAST UNFAIRNESS. I think it’s LEAST UNFAIR that a man financially support his biological children, even if he would rather not do so. I know you disagree, but that doesn’t mean that you have to pretend that I have no concern for fairness for the father.
As for my not supporting the rights of the child, I have no idea where you’re even coming from with that. The child’s rights deserve the MOST consideration. That’s why the child should be financially supported by BOTH parents, despite the burden on squirt-and-run dads. Because it’s LEAST UNFAIR.
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I just wanted to pause and give Bjartmarr a box of internet cookies, for his rocking so very much.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
We will simply have to disagree. I think it is least unfair to presume equal custody upon birth and work from there. If you minimize the value of a man as a parent outside of finance then we are simply too far apart.
By the way you are using that exact split argument I mentioned way up in comment 22. She invested 9 months into the “child”…until you want the child to be a fetus, then it is a fetus and inconsequential as a person. Please, pick one. That topic only came up because you mentioned the “child” she invested 9 months into in your comment 56.
As for mothers lying about who the father is or keeping the father out of the childs life, I hope it is as rare and “wierd” as you seem to believe.
Why, if I can ask, are you so obsessed with the finance part of raising a child? Do you truly believe that is the most important part of child rearing? If so shouldnt we simply award custody, ALWAYS, to the parent that is most financially secure?
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
If you minimize the value of a man as a parent outside of finance then we are simply too far apart.
Oh, cut it out. My position has absolutely nothing to do with minimizing the value of a man as a parent outside of finance and you know it. Argue your position in good faith, and I’ll participate, but I’m done with these childish straw men.
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I haven’t raised a single straw man. I am stating a position and you keep throwing up statements and arguments that conflict your own position. You have yet to mention a single thing about fatherhood that was outside of the context of “pay the support”. I was off for the night but thought about something you said and wanted to address it.
“that a woman, any time during her pregnancy, should have to choose between abortion, adoption, and raising a kid on a single-parent income, just because the Dad decides he doesn’t want a kid after all?”
What choices are you allowing men faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Do you want to equalize the choices? Right now the man has the choice to do what the woman tells him and get the scraps she allows…or bankrupt himself fighting her in court because he made her angry. (and go to jail after the bankruptcy for being unable to pay support). Or walk away, as you say, and again, go to jail for not paying support. She can at least choose to raise the child as a single parent. He needs her permission to do that. It is repugnant to limit a womans choices…and nearly as deplorable to you, it seems, to give a man any.
I am off for a bit now. Thank you for the discussion.
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Right now the man has the choice to do what the woman tells him and get the scraps she allows…or bankrupt himself fighting her in court because he made her angry. (and go to jail after the bankruptcy for being unable to pay support).
Hey, ed, your slip is showing.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I am against “choice for men” because it is ridiculous for many reasons.
If choice for men were to be implemented, it would have to be done in such a way that recognizes that a man’s choice results in another child in the world, needing alimentation, while a woman’s choice does not. One way to recognize that would be by taxing men extra, to support social structures and mothers parenting alone. But somehow that never comes up…
This comment was written by Tara.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Let someone who just walked into the discussion explain this with a cool head.
Men and women have the same rights on how to deal with instances of unwanted parenthood. Let’s call these Case A rights. Either or both can sign away custody of the child, but would be liable for child support if the other parent wants to keep her.
Men and women don’t have the same rights regarding unwanted pregnancies, because they don’t both *get* unwanted pregnancies. Let’s call these Case B rights. To “equalize” men’s Case B rights with women’s naturally entails giving a man and a woman an “equal” stake on her body and livelihood. We’re not going to do this. There is to be no such “equity” here; a person’s body is entirely their own, and the notion that we need to give up the concept of bodily sovereignty in the name of equality is just about the weirdest perversion of the concept you could come up with.
Naturally, then, women have A and B rights, while men only really receive A rights. In a perverse example of placing equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, Choice For Men proposes to give men special case A rights that even women don’t have, so that somewhere a point by point T-chart has columns of equal length. The ability to force the other parent to raise the child with no support or prior agreement whatsoever isn’t a right that women have.
Now, I’m not so by the book that I’ll never agree with special or unequal treatment if real world circumstances call for them, but I don’t think they do in this case. In fact, Choice For Men usually argues exclusively on abstract, moral grounds, which will continue to be a huge strategic blunder for them from now until the time fathers who want nothing to do with their children become one of the beloved mascots of society.
I don’t see it that way at all. Abortion appears to be tradeoff of two, possibly three people’s rights: the mother’s, the fetus’, and the father’s. That a messy clump of cells sans nervous system is a full human being is not a position that I can credit a reasonable person to take. Even if no pregnancies were accidental, abortions should be accessible before viability, and for any reason whatsoever. If the woman is getting it just for fun, that may unnerve me a bit, the same way kids burning ants with a magnifying glass unnerves me, but the two situations would evince the same amount of concern from me at day’s end. Which is to say, not much.
At some point, I think the fetus gains rights. The mother still retains her rights to bodily autonomy, but I consider the conscious fetus’ right to life to be more important at this point, and the only place where the mother’s autonomy rights comes into play would be is if there are medical complications with pregnancy or delivery. The father’s rights during pregnancy are hard to work in, but I do believe that they aren’t exactly nonexistent. In a society where babies can be painlessly, instantaneously moved out of the mother’s womb and into an artificial surrogate uterus of some sort, should a father be able to insist on keeping a child that the mother wants to abort? Yes, I think he should. But as of now, doing anything like this would require a dangerous, possibly life-threatening surgery to be undertaken on the mother, so I cede the balance in favour of women’s bodily autonomy.
This comment was written by sylphhead.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
“Men and women don’t have the same rights regarding unwanted pregnancies, because they don’t both *get* unwanted pregnancies. Let’s call these Case B rights. To “equalize” men’s Case B rights with women’s naturally entails giving a man and a woman an “equal” stake on her body and livelihood. We’re not going to do this. There is to be no such “equity” here; a person’s body is entirely their own, and the notion that we need to give up the concept of bodily sovereignty in the name of equality is just about the weirdest perversion of the concept you could come up with.”
Men don’t get unwanted pregnancies they get unwanted children that they are %50 responsible for.
Equal stake on her body and livelihood? you are kidding right?
She still decides if the child goes to term or not. Unless you are somehow arguing that single parent’s can’t raise children on their own how is this impinging on her own body or livelihood?
Iv always believed choice goes along with responsibility. Responsibility with no choice is slavery? right?
This comment was written by leta.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Um, isn’t the morning-after pill alwaystaken before you find out about your pregnancy?
I’m not assuming that women have practical access to post-coital birth control. I am conditioning my advocacy of choice for men on women having such access which in my opinion should be a human right.
I think it should be women’s responsibility to ensure that any children they give birth to, are adequately provided for, and, conversely, to not give birth to children who aren’t adequately provided for. The answer to your question depends upon whether the father is willing and able to take on the entirety of that burden.
If I sell you engine oil, in the expectation that you are going to put it into engines, and instead you use it to fry chips which poison people, then it is 100% your responsibility.
It is also their parents’ choice to have them, the mutual friend that introduced them, The college who admitted both him and the mutual friend, resulting in their becoming friends, and so on, whose choices in lead to that outcome. However only one person’s choice guaranteed that a child would be born.
Observing that a particular situation is unfair to one of the parties, does not imply that fairness to that party is the only consideration.
The feminist solution puts women first, born children second, and men last. (Now there’s a surprise.) Since there will be some cases in which the child cannot be provided for, a “born children first” approach would demand that pregnant women abort in such circumstances. Feminists do not do this.
My solution is 1. provide women with practical access to post-coital birth control at every feasible stage of pregnancy, and 2. Attach to that choice the responsibility to ensure than any born child is provided for. Mothers can discharge that responsibility by entering into binding contracts with fathers or other willing parties. If she cannot find willing parties, and cannot provide for the child herself, then she should not bear it. The state would be the provider of last resort for the child, as it is now.
There will always be poor children. There would be fewer of them if fewer women gave birth to inadequately provide-for children. Perhaps in addition to demanding abortion rights for women, feminists should start demanding that women take responsibility for their reproductive choices, not the choice to have sex, but the choice to have a baby.
If she chooses to have a baby it’s her choice.
Strangely enough, I’ve used the word responsibility several time, but not either of the words “blame” or “fault”.
That increase would not necessarily come about if there was a cultural shift toward women taking responsibility for their choice to give birth.
I agree that there is little hope of such a shift.
The tainted cookie dough analogy is inapposite because the purpose of the transaction between you and me is that you end up with tainted cookie dough. However a pregnancy is not the purpose of recreational sex.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 1:50 am
If a man who has fathered a child and wants to be part of the child’s life, then yes he should have some rights. But when a man has fathered a child and wants no part of the child’s life then he should have no rights.
I have not read much of this blog so I am not too sure what most contributors’ feelings are towards MRAs. So I hope I wont offend anyone when I say that they are a total menace.
If you look at the make-up of MRAs they are predominantly white men. As the corporate world, judiciary, military and government are controlled by white men one can only assume that an MRAs understanding of protecting men’s rights is the protection of male privilege and domination despite history proving how disastrous this is.
When a woman falls pregnant, she is the one who must carry the child for nine months, go through the pain of child birth, bring the child up and put the child through college etc.
Once a man has had sex with a woman and she falls pregnant he can just walk away. The worst that can happen to the man is that the court can order him to make a financial contribution.
To the MRAs this is a complete attack on a man’s rights. After all pregnancy is the woman’s fault, it can never be a man’s fault.
MRAs have done a really great job of making white men look like the biggest victims on the face of the earth. If you believe white men are victims then you believe men need not take responsibility for anything as women and more specifically feminists are the cause off all the grief. And you firmly believe male privilege and domination is the right way to move.
By understanding the MRAs you can understand why some men believe their rights are been attacked if they are been forced to contribute financial to a child they did not want.
The nice thing about this cartoon is it forces the man to see things from the woman’s point of view by suddenly making him have to experience everything that the woman must experience. Maybe if MRAs tried a bit harder to see things from the woman’s point of view instead of their own privileged point of view they would not be so quick to make a scene each time a law or article or a speech etc showed empathy to a women or a female cause.
This comment was written by Herra.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I know this is a derail - I’m not going to say it more than once - but the initial post does give a little leeway for making criticisms of the cartoon that aren’t related to the parentage/pregnancy/child support debate.
This Kevin Moore fellow never draws people of color - at least not as far back as the beginning of September 2007. The two maybe-exceptions are one depiction of Musharraf and one of a bearded, bespectacled, turbaned “average Iraqi.”
I am really tired of reading this man’s cartoons here and no one acting like there’s anything wrong with that. Amp makes an effort to include all different sorts of folks, at least. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that he do the same.
This comment was written by Katie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Hi,
Not all white men are Bushies with wealth, position, and freedom. Many are working proles that have not even a glimmer of the world of the elite. They might have actually had the golddigger experience and now are sadder and much poorer.
Do women use pregnancy to gain money? Yes. Especially in impoverished areas. The choice is simple. Mom, whore, or factory slave. Of those three, Mom is the least restrictive and most valued. I am not upset because the male could have used methods to avoid pregnancy and decided not to. Some women do entice men into being fathers. Just as some men are deadbeats.
This comment was written by Mold.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Daran, you keep avoiding the point that the woman’s choice, or lack of choice, has no effect on her parental rights and obligations.
If you rape your wife, and then lock her in your basement for nine months so she can’t abort, she is still responsible for the child. Period. If you refuse to agree to sign away your rights to your child, she can’t exercise some kind of ‘choice for women’ and wash her hands of the kid. She would have to hope that her state has a statute that would allow the law to sever your parental rights because you fathered the child through rape; but “I didn’t choose this” is not a get-out-of-parenthood-free card for women.
What you are really advocating is destroying the concept of parental obligations in favor of giving men a unilateral right that women don’t and won’t possess.
Men and women have the same rights on how to deal with instances of unwanted parenthood. Let’s call these Case A rights. Either or both can sign away custody of the child, but would be liable for child support if the other parent wants to keep her.
Or, more accurately, that both parents have legal obligations to the children that include financial obligations, and while one parent can choose not to exercise their right to spend time with the child as long as that doesn’t result in neglect (what happens if *both* parents say “Go live with the other one”?), neither can jettison their obligations unilaterally.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Katie, that’s obviously a legitimate critique. I’ll tell Kevin about your comment.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:49 am
How important is the bolded language?
Seems like there’s an enormous difference between, say:
This comment was written by Sailorman.-Agreeing to this demand before pregnancy, just in case the BC doesn’t work
- Making the decision in the early first trimester, and
- Making the decision in month 8.
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December 8th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
“I am really tired of reading this man’s cartoons here and no one acting like there’s anything wrong with that. ”
There have only been two cartoons posted here, right? So while this is a legitimate complaint about the cartoons themselves, I don’t think it’s a legitimate complaint about the commentariat. Most of us haven’t read much of Kevin Moore’s work.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Actually, I have a couple other comments related to the Kevin Moore cartoons:
1) Would Mr. Moore give us permission to post the whole things? I would prefer that, if he’s okay with it.
2) As I mentioned to Amp, I’m not enormously fond of these cartoons as political or artistic pieces. They’re too sledge-hammery for me. I do like them being posted on Alas, though. I like the new content and new idea generation; I like the pieces as conversation starters. I’d like them more if Mr. Moore starts to address the issue of showing people of color.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Before sex both men and women have equal rights - the right to use contraception and the right to abstain. If both forgo the right to abstain…
Men’s choices in contraception are:
1) condoms (cheap, sometimes free, extremely easy to get, no side effects unless one has a latex allergy, and they’re as effective as the pill),
2) withdrawal (we all know how effective this one is), and
3) a vasectomy (surgery but there is a possibility of reversal)
Women’s choices are:
1) the pill and other hormonal contraceptives (expensive, can be hard to get, many side effects, effectiveness can be diminished by common life events like getting sick or by forgetting a pill)
2) Inserted contraceptives (expensive, can be hard to get, messy, could cause an infection, etc)
3) Morning after pill (expensive, if you can even find a place that carries it good luck finding a pharmacist who will dispense it, many side effects)
4) Abortion (expensive, invasive, side effects, not everyone has access to one so they can be very hard to get)
If both the man and woman decide to have sex and they both decide not to use protection then they must accept that they’re putting themselves at risk for pregnancy.
If a woman gets pregnant she can use her last option of contraception - abortion. If she can’t or won’t obtain one for any reason (religious beliefs, personal beliefs, money issues, no clinic in her area and no transportation or time to drive to another, protesters scaring her away from the clinic, being promised by her mate that he’ll help if she doesn’t get one, etc) then she’ll keep the pregnancy.
Once the baby is born both the man and woman have equal rights regarding parenting:
1) They can both sign away their parental rights and put the baby up for adoption.
2) Both men and women can be the custodial parent while the other pays child support. Both men and women can choose to pay child support and they can both choose what role, if any, they want in the child’s life.
3) Both can share custody.
4) Both have the option to leave the baby at a safe haven.
5)Both are responsible for the care of the child and neither have the right to abandon the child.
So there you have it, everything is as fair as it can be.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
“So there you have it, everything is as fair as it can be.”
This comment was written by leta.Unless of course if one parent wants the child and the other doesn’t. Then the guy has no choice. She has choice he has no choice but he shares 50% of the responsibility for the child.
Responsibility without choice is wrong regardless of gender.
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December 8th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
He has choice regarding all reproductive decisions that involve his own body.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
but doesn’t have choice regarding reproductive decisions that involve his own money?
This comment was written by leta.You do realise some guys have had to re enlist in the army to pay child support or face jail?
It was the only way to maintain the same income they had before.
Not paying child support doesn’t affect her body. Why doesn’t he have a choice to not pay child support if he didn’t want children?
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December 8th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Why doesn’t he have a choice to not pay child support if he didn’t want children?
Because the focus of the law and of policy is what is best for the child.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
the law is an ass.
This comment was written by leta.Women and men should both be held accountable for the choices they make. It was her choice to allow pregnancy to term if he had no choice he shouldn’t be held accountable. If she can’t afford to raise her children that she decided to have it was her own choice. Just because he happened to be the sperm provider and one time sex partner is hardly an ethical reason to tax him for 18 years. If he backed out before the child was born she knew he wasn’t going to be there. Holding someone else accountable for the decisions of another is morally bankrupt.
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December 8th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Holding someone else accountable for the decisions of another is morally bankrupt.
Not in this context. The child needs financial support. The law will look to available parents before looking to the government to provide that support.
Would you say not financially supporting a child, walking away from it, is less morally bankrupt?
A “yes” answer is, to me, morally bankrupt.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Anne:
These are not contraceptives, but forms of post-coital birth control. Your framing these as equivalent to men’s choices (all pre-coital) is an attempt to obfuscate the distinction that is at the heart of the issue.
It is birth, not pregnancy, which gives rise to a need for child support. If she gets pregnant, and if post-coital birth control is available, then she and she alone has the choice to avail herself of these options, or to decline to, which means that it is her choice and her choice alone which determines whether a baby will be born or not
If she can’t obtain an abortion, then he should not be entitled to C4M. I have already said that choice for him should be contingent upon the practical availability of post-coital birth control to her.
If he will enter into a binding contract with her to “help” which spells out exactly what help he will provide, then of course he has renounced his right to not provide that help. If he won’t, then she should think twice about placing trust in any informal “promise” he might make.
If she doesn’t want an abortion for personal or religious reasons, then she is willing to bring up the child on her own (or can find another person/people willing to help her) then she has to choice to do so. Note that if he is opposed to abortion for personal or religious reasons, and is willing to bring up the child on her own, then she could still have an abortion against his wishes. C4M still leaves her with more choice than him.
The man does not have the right to even know that the baby exists.
Only the person in whose physical custody the baby lies at the time has the option to do this. In practice this is far more likely to be the mother.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
If you walk away from the child before it is born it is the same morally as having an abortion. She was the one who decided against the potential fathers wishes to become a parent.
This comment was written by leta.If the child is born against his wishes he should have the same rights and responsibilities as an anonymous sperm donor.
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December 8th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Mandolin:
Leta:
In what way does being forced into the army or go to jail not “involve his own body”?
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
No it is not. And just so that everybody is clear: My argument in favour of choice for men does not depend upon this false equivalence.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
similar morally?
This comment was written by leta.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
to proclaim a desire for the child not to be brought to term is equivalent to an abortion?
This comment was written by leta.Is that more appropriate?
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December 8th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
So the law forces drug addicted pregnant mothers into cold turkey for the duration of their pregnancy, in order to prevent the newborn child being drug addicted? No of course it doesn’t, and feminists would be horrified if it did.
The focus of the law is what is best for government funds. The focus of feminists is women’s autonomy. Children’s interests come second, and men’s (including the interests of baby boys, who will grow up to become men) come nowhere.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
No. To proclaim a desire to see something happen is not morally equivalent or even similar to causing it to happen. If I were to proclaim my desire to see George Bush choke on a pretzel it would not be morally equivalent to choking him with a pretzel.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
how bout firing a laser at her that magically makes her aborted? I hear that’s acceptable behaviour.
This comment was written by leta.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Is using fictional lasers to mess with the reproductive autonomy of other fictional people to use as a metaphor against the rules?
This comment was written by leta.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Mythago:
And you keep avoiding the point that, in advocating C4M contingent upon the women having post-coital choice, and I’m arguing about how I think the world should be not saying that it is so.
It should be, and would be, if I had my way.
No I am not. That you keep attributing views to me that I do not hold and have not expressed is getting tedious.
What I am advocating would give women more choices, and commensurately greater responsibilities than men. Pregnant women would have the choice to have an abortion, or not to have one, but would also have the responsibility to ensure that any child they bear is adequately supported. Ideally they would arrange this provision before the option of an abortion was no longer available.
I’m not trying to abolish the concept of parental responsibility. I am trying to make it “opt in”. If a pregnant woman cannot (or will not) provide 100% of the support the child needs, and cannot find (or will not accept) another or others (possibly the father) willing to make up the shortfall, then she should not bear the child.
Feminists want women to have post coital birth control options. I do too. Where we differ is that I want to attach responsibility to those options, the responsibility to ensure that any child a woman does bear is provided for.
I also realise that holding women responsible in this way doesn’t mean that they will always act responsibly. There will always be unwanted babies which is why the state must be the provider of last resort. But maybe we could reduce the number through an advertising campaign, similar to the “men can stop rape” ones. “Women can stop producing babies they can’t support and nobody else wants”.
Yeah, I can really see feminists going for that.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
That’s probably because it’s sophistry. It is women’s choice, to have an abortion, or not to do so, which in the latter case results in another child in the world.
Men’s choice, in this context, refers to the choice to commit to supporting a (future) child, or not to do so. It has no effect whatsoever on whether there is another child in the world, unless the woman bases her choice on his, which she’s entitled to do. But it’s still her choice.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Going or not going into the army is no longer a reproductive decision.
Paying child support is an obligation to a born child. It is not a reproductive decision.
This has been explained to you, Daran. Your faux-ignorance is not amusing.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Also: Leta, you’re both rude and tedious, a combination which does not incline me to allow you to keep posting here. It’s your choice, become 1) less rude, 2) less tedious, or 3) less here.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:05 am
you are intellectually dishonest but never mind if all you can think of as an argument is “think of the children!” combined with “women have rights men have responsibilities”… i give up. wont post again.
This comment was written by leta.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:09 am
And that’s 3. Adieu, Leta.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Richard Jeffrey Newman:
So save people from hunting through the thread, here’s your comment in full:
And my reply after quoting the above from “I am just pointing out…”:
In your comment, you used the word “asymmetry” to refer to two things. You first used it to refer to the asymmetry between how the law treats pregnant women and unwilling fathers. The second time you used it to refer to the underlying biological asymmetry which the law “tr[ies] to account for”. So the instant sentence parses to me like this:
“I am not arguing that the law accounts for the underlying biological assymetry as effectively as it might”. I took that to mean that you think it perhaps insufficiently accounts for the underlying biological assymetry, and “might” account for it better by being made even more favourable to the women or disfavourable to the man.
However I agree that it could be read to mean that you think it perhaps overaccounts for the underlying biological asymmetry. If that is what you meant, then my reply was redundant.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:39 am
What ignorance, faux or otherwise? I have been pointing out the difference between child support and woman’s reproductive decisions many times in this thread, included the comment which immediately preceded yours.
My point here was that the man’s obligation to support the resulting child means that her post-coital reproductive decisions involve his body.
The feminist argument against prohibiting abortions (or making them mandatory in certain circumstances) is that this denies women their bodily autonomy.
So does bodily autonomy only matter in reproduction?
This comment was written by Daran.Or does it only matter for women?
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December 9th, 2007 at 12:58 am
You can control all reproductive decisions that happen within your body. I can control all reproductive decisions that happen within my body. This is true for everyone.
Once a child is born, that child has a right under the law to be taken care of. Therefore, it requires support from both mother and father. Both mother and father must support the child. If it is a loss of bodily autonomy for the father to support the child, then it is also a loss that affects the mother since she must do likewise. They remain on equal ground.
However, it is stretching the term outside common use to say that the requirement to provide money is a loss of bodily autonomy. If that’s true, then you have lost bodily autonomy since you need to provide your own food and housing. This is not a good argument, as you are — being not stupid — well aware.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 2:00 am
The ground is not equal if she - having access to post-coital birth control - choose instead to have a child, and he did not. You say that born children have “a right under the law to be taken care of” and we both agree that this is how it should be. Then you say “Both mother and father must support the child”. That’s correct as a statement of the law as it is, but it’s not a necessary consequence of born children’s right to be taken care of.
I am aware of it, which is why I’m not making that argument. For those who are capable of it, having to work to support themselves is not per se particularly problematic. Neither is having to work to support children you chose to have. What is at issue, is having to work to support children you didn’t choose to have.
Also having to work, even if it’s only to support yourself, becomes problematic when the only available economic choices are physically harmful or dangerous. Feminists are rightly concerned about women forced economically into prostitution or sweatshop work. For men, workplace dangers are that much greater.
The situation Leta described is where these cases intersect, and men are forced, not just economically but by law, into performing dangerous work to support children they didn’t choose to have.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:13 am
And that should be addressed. Under issues like worker rights where those jobs should be made less dangerous. Yes, it’s wrong to force *anyone* to re-enlist.
However, neither of these is an argument against child support. It’s an argument against dangerous work environments.
Let’s repeat the basics again:
1) All parties get access to reproductive decisions that happen within their own bodies.
2) All parties must support born children.
That’s it. That’s all. It’s simple, and finished, and fair. You may abort any and all pregnancies that happen in your body, or you may choose to continue them, and so may I.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:33 am
Mandolin,
I run into a problem with treating “bodily autonomy” as some sort of inviolable thing. Why should it be? Why IS it, in your view?
Yes, it is unpleasant to have someone violate your bodily autonomy. but of course, it’s also unpleasant to have someone, say, toss you in jail. it is unpleasant to have to take a job, or live a life, that you do not wish to do.
It is not apparent to me that the impact on a woman from having a man be able to “declare nonfatherhood” at some reasonable time post conception is necessarily worse than the the impact on a man from having a woman declare him liable for fatherhood. This would obviously be modified if there were no abortion available, but let’s hypothetically say that they would be so.
The main argument against that is, as always, bodily autonomy. So what? We all know that an abortion is safer than a pregnancy, for example, as well as cheaper. So what if EXTERNAL forces (the availability or lack thereof of the genetic father to support, care for, etc the mother/child/both) oush someone towards making a particular decisino? Why is taht a bad thing?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:42 am
“The main argument against that is, as always, bodily autonomy. So what? We all know that an abortion is safer than a pregnancy, for example, as well as cheaper. So what if EXTERNAL forces (the availability or lack thereof of the genetic father to support, care for, etc the mother/child/both) oush someone towards making a particular decisino? Why is taht a bad thing?”
Seriously — go read some of the writing of women of color on the subject.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Start here and here.
It’s probably not an appropriate subject for the thread, ftr.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 9:50 am
It is not apparent to me that the impact on a woman from having a man be able to “declare nonfatherhood” at some reasonable time post conception is necessarily worse than the the impact on a man from having a woman declare him liable for fatherhood.
1. It’s about the impact on the child, not the impact on either the man or the woman.
2. The woman does not declare the man liable for fatherhood - the law does.
[Sailorman, if I remember correctly, you're an attorney?]
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Let’s repeat the basics again, C. 1807 or thereabouts:
1) All parties can walk away from the other party.
2) All parties must support the children who emerge from their bodies.
That’s it. That’s all. It’s simple, and finished, and fair. You must support any children you birth, and so must I.
Except, of course, that it’s not fair at all. It’s highly unfair. to women and to children. Add a child support obligation for men and you make it more fair. Add a basic level of state support for inadequately supported children and it becomes fairer still. Not perfectly fair, but about as fair as it could be made, given the differences between male and female biology.
Next, develop new and safe methods of post-coital birth control, and make them make them practically available to women. Add this to the previous set of ingredients and what was previously fair become unfair to men.
Besides being unfair, your statement of your own position is inaccurate. It’s not true that “2) All parties must support [their biological children]“* There are several circumstances in which biological parents do not have to support their children. The option not to do so, is as a practical matter more available to women, because women are more likely to have physical custody of the child, and are more likely to be in a position to deny the father the knowledge of its existence he needs in order for him to be able to assert his parental rights.
*You said “the children they bear.” Of course, only women bear children, but that is not what you meant.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Let’s force drug-addicted women who won’t accept abortions into cold turkey for the duration of their pregnancy.
The women is not obliged to identify the father to the law.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
1) Why “post conception?” If we were to have C4M at all, why do its advocates not favor having an “I won’t do shit for any child of mine” contract signed before sex takes place? That seems the fairest place; then both parties are forced to explicitly discuss their preferences in case of pregnancy and childbirth before pregnancy can happen.
(For at least some C4M advocates, the reason they don’t propose this is because they think they won’t get laid if they have to be honest with women about what kind of guy they are from the start. But I don’t think this is the case for all of them.)
2) Sailorman, run your comparison again, this time asking which is more harmful from a child welfare perspective: the impact on children if their fathers are allowed to say “sorry, I was just in it for the fuck, I won’t ever pay a dime to support you” versus a system where fathers and mothers are both expected to support their born children.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Daran, quoting me, wrote:
Sigh.
Will there be fewer or greater numbers of poor children if men have the legal right to refuse to support their children?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
I’d also point out that C4M is being discussed here as if it’s veto power only. In its original formulation, it also involved forcing women to “compensate” the father for aborting a fetus he didn’t want aborted. And if the father wanted the mother to carry to term a fetus which she did not want, then he would be required to pay her for her “time” and “expense.”
I think the veto power argument is much more tenable, but let us not forget its much more baldly sexist/evil roots.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
The women is not obliged to identify the father to the law.
And when a woman does not identify a particular man as being the probable father, then out fall arguments that she has taken away his rights as a father. Re: this thread.
Nice double bind for women, with enormous repercussions for children, all in the interests of “fairness” to men - who want either to walk away or to be the daddy.
Again, at the expense of a born (I inadvertently did not use that word before) child.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
[Now y'all just stop it! I have a final tomorrow morning! ;) ]
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Daran, random question:
If the father and the mother both decide that the fetus should be aborted, who pays what percentage of the cost of the procedure?
This comment was written by Doug S..Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Thanks, Amp. I hope he takes it seriously.
Mandolin - that’s fair. I was simply peeved, as I’d brought it up the last time as well, with no response. I went over to his site to confirm that it was not an anomaly.
This comment was written by Katie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
1. The mother decides whether or not to abort the foetus.
2. In a child support court action against the father, the court will determine a) if the child is his, b) whether the father has entered into a binding contract with the mother to support the child, and c) whether, as a practical matter, post-coital contraception was available to the mother. If the answer to these questions are “yes”, “no” and “yes”, then his maximum liability to her should be limited to the cost of her abortion.
3. His actual liability would be awarded proportionate to the court’s determination of his percentage responsibility for the pregnancy. Ordinarily this would be 50% but there may be exceptional circumstances in which a different percentage would apply, for example, if either had told the other than they had been sterilised, when they hadn’t been.
Edited the above, and also to add: Any man, who knows about his sexual partner’s pregnancy, and who wishes to avoid a parental support liability, should go out of his way to ensure that she has 100% of the cost of an abortion available to her. If he was not aware, he may need to argue that she could have informed him and that he would have made it available to her. She of course is free to argue that she could not have informed him, perhaps because it was not safe to, or for some other reason.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
The whine “why should he have to pay for it” is nonsense when you realize that a woman, too, is financially responsible for a child whether or not she made the choice to have that child.
That’s perfectly true.
I do think there is something spectacularly dubious about all of this. Before contraception and abortion became widely avaliable unmarried women were able to give their children up for adoption, voiding their child support responsibilities, without any reference to the father. This was basically Choice 4 Women Plus. Only when contraception and abortion became legal and available, and unwanted motherhood became a very unlikely possibility, did people completely reverse their opinions and start making pious declarations about equal responsibility.
So I don’t think what we’re seeing is a principled opposition to C4M. Support for equality of obligations is pretty much contingent on that obligation being very unlikely to fall upon women. If abortion and contraception suddenly became illegal, you’d all change your positions and would find yourself on the other side of the argument.
This comment was written by james.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
That you keep attributing views to me that I do not hold and have not expressed is getting tedious.
The fact that you have not really thought through the implications of your views got tedious a long time ago. (Or perhaps you have, and you don’t really care because you’re perpetually angry at women, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt an assuming ignorance rather than petulance.)
You are, in fact, advocating a total destruction of the legal principle that absent some intervention changing that status, biological parents are financially and legally obligated to care for their children. In its place, you want to implement a cumbersome, expensive and rickety legal framework that is wholly concerned with sparing men from paying child support.
You keep casting this in terms of ‘choice’, with the cute acronym C4M. Neither parent has a choice regarding their obligations to their children. The only ‘choice’ involved is this: Under limited circumstances, the government has no right to prevent a woman from terminating her pregnancy. No pregnancy, no child and therefore no obligations. But the law does not ask “Did she have a choice and the ability to exercise it?” when determining HER obligations, including the dreaded child support.
As ahunt has pointed out elsewhere, certain MRAs don’t apparently see the flip side of their argument, which makes fathers utterly disposable. If you get rid of the notion that children are entitled to the presence of their fathers, that kicks the supports out from arguments about how Fathers Matter, and mothers who deprive children of visitation are hurting their children, and so on. You can’t (well, not believably) argue that we should strengthen the bonds between father and child, and assure men’s rights to be with their children, but only if they feel like it and the bitch didn’t change her mind about the abortion.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
She may indeed be denying him his rights as a father. She may also have good reason for not so identifying him. However, the point of my observation was not to argue the rights and wrongs of this, but to point out its practical effect: that women are more likely than men to be in a position to unilaterally absolve themselves of the obligation to support their own born child.
Moreover the fact that you* (presumably) agree that women should be able to do this, undermines your argument that both parents contributions are necessary to support the child.
*You = all you who are arguing in favour of women’s choices and against men’s.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
*You = all you who are arguing in favour of women’s choices and against men’s.
“Disagrees with Daran” != “against men’s choice”.
The only intellectually honest “C4M” is to simply deprive men of all rights and obligations towards their offspring. No child support, no visitation, no ability to say “Hey, don’t put our son up for adoption, I’ll raise him.” Then you don’t need endless litigation about whether she could have taken Plan B and whether he changed his mind after it was too late for her to abort. The sperm-stealing hussies of MRA nightmares would be out of business; you can’t get knocked up and take a man’s wallet because if you’re pregnant, you’re own your own, sister. Men need never worry about a surprise Father’s Day call.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
As ahunt has pointed out elsewhere, certain MRAs don’t apparently see the flip side of their argument, which makes fathers utterly disposable. If you get rid of the notion that children are entitled to the presence of their fathers, that kicks the supports out from arguments about how Fathers Matter, and mothers who deprive children of visitation are hurting their children, and so on. You can’t (well, not believably) argue that we should strengthen the bonds between father and child, and assure men’s rights to be with their children, but only if they feel like it and the bitch didn’t change her mind about the abortion.
I have a question for Daran that follows from this idea.
In a situation where a heterosexual encounter results in a unplanned pregnancy and the woman has access to abortion, you propose that, should this woman bring the child to term, she is responsible for this existence of this baby. “Only one person’s choice guaranteed that a child would be born,” as you @77… So, the man involved should have the option of walking away, because his actions didn’t actually bring a child into the world — the woman’s actions did.
By the same token, does the woman have the right to say, “My choices are responsible for the existence of this baby; I choose not to invite you into this child’s life”? Assuming that she’s doing this simply because of her personal preference to be a single parent (or to raise the kid with someone else), not because the fellow is dangerous, or a criminal, or otherwise extremely unfit to be a parent (just like the man’s choice to opt out of parenthood is simply his preference).
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Daran, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a typo in your link.
You wrote:
Yes indeed! When have I, for instance, ever argued that if a mother wants to give up a child for adoption, the father should be able to take custody of the child (if he’s not an abuser or otherwise unsuitable)?
Besides, I’m not arguing that either women, or men, should have an infinite range of choices. I don’t think mothers, or fathers, should have the right to make these decisions without any regard for the well-being of their born children. It’s you [*] who are arguing “for men’s choices,” but with apparent callousness towards what happens to anyone who’s not an adult male.
The “feminist critics” and anti-feminists here are arguing as if men are perpetual children who it’s unjust to expect to take any responsibility.
[*] “You” meaning those arguing that men shouldn’t bear any unwanted responsibility for their born children.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Mythago:
.
Sure, I’m angry at feminists; I have reason to be. I have never, however, expressed anger at women. If an opponent of feminism defamed a feminist the way you have just defamed me, Ampersand would be right in, demanding that they 1) apologise, 2) substantiate, or 3) leave. I’m not asking you to leave, and I know you can’t substantiate. An apology would be appreciated.
Regardless of who I am or am not angry at, my arguments stand on their merits, your ad hom notwithstanding.
“Total destruction” is loaded language. I am indeed advocating a change from that legal principle to one in which mothers are legally obligated to ensure that their children are provided for, or else not bear them. Legal principles are not set in stone. They should and indeed do change as factual circumstances change. One such change is the fact that women now do have the ability to safely not bear the children they conceive.
The idea that women should take responsibility for their own choices, and not expect unwilling men to bail them out, I call “the radical notion that woman are adults”. It amazes me that feminists oppose this at every turn.
Nor need the system be cumbersone, expensive, or rickety. Marriage, or any other formalisation of a relationship between a man and a woman could contain a clause establishing the father’s parental responsibility for any issue. In the absence of such formalisation, pro forma child support contracts could be available for a couple of dollars from any stationers, just like pro forma wills.
I would suggest that a system in which fathers (or others) explicitly agree to support their children would be far less cumbersome, expensive and rickety than the current system, which has unwilling men dragged kicking and screaming into supporting them.
I use the acronym because it is convenient, not because it is cute. Most people in these discussions know the broad range of positions that fall under the rubric. Those that don’t can ask. Of course I am not defending every C4M position, just the one I’ve been putting forward.
This is not generally true. Both parents can agree to put the child up for adoption. Or the mother can do so unilaterally if the father doesn’t know he has a child. Or she can just abandon it in a safe harbour without making any formal arrangements for its care.
So you are simply wrong about this. As someone recently remarked, you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Note, that if I had felt entitled to my own facts, I could just say “women can get post-coital birth control”. But I recognise that sometimes they can’t, which is why the version of C4M I advocate is explicitly contingent on their ability to do so.
And here’s another reason why feminists should support my proposal: More men would support choice for women, and fewer would oppose it, if it was packaged with choice for men in this way. This is particularly significant in the US, where the current balance of support appears to be tipped away from women getting that choice.
Note also that I am not an eeeeequalist. I don’t say “If men can’t have choice, then women shouldn’t have it either”. My support for C4M is conditioned on the practical availablity of C4W. My support for C4W is unconditional. As I said before in this thread, C4W should be a human right.
I agree that the law does not ask this. But to use Ampersand’s formulation: there is no generally agreed on morality (even among feminists) that states that what the law does and does not do is right. Since no such general rule exists, you can’t cite it to prove that what the law does and doesn’t do is right.
I’m not defending certain MRA’s or their arguments. I’m only defending the argument that I have been putting forward.
The current situation, which feminists seem generally to support, makes fathers largely disposable. As has been repeatedly pointed out. Mothers do not even have to identify the father.
I would make fatherhood “opt-in” if motherhood is opt-in by means of post-coital birth control. Any man who wanted to ensure that his parental rights to any possible issue were established would be well advised to enter into a binding contract with a potential mother before having intercourse.
This is a red herring. Forcing men to pay has very little to do with providing children with a loving father figure. In fact it is more likely to foment resentment among unwilling payers toward their children.
I am concerned about the lack of a father figure in so many children’s lives. I just don’t believe that this can be remedied by squeezing blood from stones.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Daran…this is a bit OT, but I was wondering if your vision of C4M allows for the relationship of paternal grandparents to their grandchild(ren)?
Admittedly, grandparent rights are a murky area of law, one that I’m not sure I understand at all. What I gather is that visitation may be granted if it can shown that denial of the grandparent-grandchild relationship harms the child. Very iffy, but I imagine a good case might be made if the visitation rights are coupled with financial aid for an obviously deprived grandchild.
But for the sake of discussion, let us assume that with Mom’s good will, paternal grandparents are willing to step up financially on behalf of their unsupported grandchild. In your POV, C4M severs the paternal relationship, but would have no impact on the grandparent relationship, right?
This comment was written by ahunt.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
By the same token, does the woman have the right to say, “My choices are responsible for the existence of this baby; I choose not to invite you into this child’s life”? Assuming that she’s doing this simply because of her personal preference to be a single parent (or to raise the kid with someone else), not because the fellow is dangerous, or a criminal, or otherwise extremely unfit to be a parent (just like the man’s choice to opt out of parenthood is simply his preference).
Gets dicey…don’t it, Daran?
Yet another fair question, Daisy…and yet another reason why Choice for Men is a non-starter.
The precise reasoning Daran uses to justify Choice for Men will also justify the denial of paternal rights and obligations outside of marriage. Whatta mess.
This comment was written by ahunt.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Ampersand (quoting me):
I don’t recall putting a link into the post you quote here, nor in any of my recent comments before you posted this. If there’s a typo in any of my links, and you can reasonably figure out what it should be, please fix it. If not then please identify the comment so that I can give the correct link.
I don’t know. It seems to be the consensus around here that:
1. Mothers should not be obliged to identify the father to the authorities.
2. Mothers should not be obliged to notify the father of the child’s existence.
3. Where there is no involvement by the father in the child’s upbringing, then the mother can unilaterally put the child up for adoption.
4. Where there is involvement by both parents in the child’s upbringing, then they can jointly put the child up for adoption.
The consequence of 1 and 2 is that mothers can exclude fathers from involvement with and knowledge of their children. The consequence of 3 is that if they do this, they can unilaterally put the child up for adoption with no way for the father to oppose. Note that I am not expressing disagreement with any of these points, merely noting that feminist support for them undermines their arguments that both parents are necessary to provide for the child.
If you or anyone else here actually disagrees with any of points 1, 2, 3, or 4, then feel free to say so. But otherwise I have no intention of searching for evidence of your agreement with them.
Neither am I. Our disagreement then, is which limited choices men and women should have.
On the contrary, it appears to be feminists who are arguing that women should be free to birth any foetus they conceive without regard to the wellbeing of the future child, or anyone else.
I’m certainly not callous toward women who fall pregnant outside of a stable relationship and who face what may be an agonizing decision. I simply do not agree that their interests should in every case trump everyone else’s, including the future child’s. I’m not arguing that any woman should be forced to abort. (Hell, I’m not even advocating that drug-addicted women who won’t abort should be forced into cold turkey. I raised that scenario to demonstrate that feminist claims to put the child first are false. Feminists put the woman first in every situation.) My argument is that women who are pregnant and who won’t abort should be responsible for ensuring that the child is provided for. And I’ve specified in considerable detail how society could enable them to discharge that responsibility.
Finally I’ve specified that, in the event that a woman bears a child without having discharged that duty, then the state should be the provider of last resort.
I don’t know that there are any other Feminist Critics here, as I define the term. Leta, who has been banned here, is a welcome and respected guest on my blog, but I don’t consider him to be an FC. Otherwise I don’t recognise any of the other participants here. In any case, I’m defending only one person’s position in these matters: mine.
Nor am I saying that it’s unjust for men to take any responsibility. I’m saying that, given that women have post-coital choice after post-coital choice after post-coital choice which enables them not to have to support children they concieve, including in some cases, post-birth choices, it’s unfair to oblige men to refrain from intercourse entirely if they wish to avoid the same responsibility.. This argument, by the way, is functionally identical to the argument that feminists make against the “pro-life” position.
This mistates my position. I’m saying that men should not bear unagreed responsibility for the results of women’s choice to bear children. It is the essence of adulthood that one takes responsibility for ones own decisions, not foist them onto other people, and that one can enter into binding agreements.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Okay. But how do you get the kid to sign it?
This comment was written by Bjartmarr.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I don’t know, Amp. Maybe if, in addition to giving women both pre- and post-coital birth control options, we drummed it into their heads from their teenage years onward, that they are responsible for ensuring that any children they bear are provided for, there would be fewer children born without that provision in place.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Bjartmarr (quoting me):
Hell, let’s include pro forma consent to sex with optional commitment to support children in with packets of contraceptives.
If you mean the child: Ha ha. Very funny.
If you mean a youthful male partner, if it’s that important to you, don’t consent to sex until he does.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Sorry, I was unclear.
If you look at your name at the top of each of your comments, where it says “Daran writes,” there’s a typo in the link the word “Daran” leads to; it leads to “feministritics.org” rather than “feministcritics.org.” I can of course correct any individual case, but only you can correct the typo in your browser’s memory (which reproduces the error each time you post here).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I haven’t addressed that question. I do so now.
My view is that, without an agreement, if a man is forced to support his children by reason of the mother not having had practical access to post-coital birth control, then he would gain parental rights along with his responsibilities. (This of course, assumes that he hasn’t behaved abusively toward the mother, child, or other children. If he has, then he could gain responsibilities without rights.)
Otherwise, if there is no agreement, then he has neither rights nor responsibilities.
If there is an agreement, then his rights and responsibilities should be as specified in the agreement.
It’s all very clean, and very simple.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Fixed. And thanks for the heads-up. I wouldn’t ask you to fix them all by hand. You could do it en mass using mySQL or whatever database managment too you use, but I wouldn’t recommend it: the possibility of disaster if you got it wrong is too great a risk.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
It allows for it, (they could contract with the mother) but doesn’t give them a right to it, same as for fathers.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I think it’s time to stop using the euphamistic phrasing of “choice for men” proposed by the pro-domestic violence set. Any suggestions for progressive reframing?
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
MARs - Men Avoiding Responsibility.
Done.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Daisy:
I refer you to points 1 and 2 in my comment #137 above.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Daran, having read your points in #137 and thoughts in #142: so you do in fact advocate a system where the default status of men upon the birth of their biological offspring is “sperm donor” instead of “father”? I understand that women can refuse to identify the father (or claim to be unable to, or actually be unable to), but in cases where the father is known and has been notified, do you grant men an inalienable right to “opt-in”? Or do I, as a woman, have the option to block men who know of their children from having a relationship with them (in the event that no contract was signed before sex)?
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
One of our longstanding complaints about feminist-controlled forums generally, and Alas in particular, is how unfairly we get treated on them. It was because of this that we set up FCB, with it’s covenant to treat feminist guests fairly.
Yet as I’ve been contemplating putting up a post, basically to direct our readers to this thread, I was thinking that I should also acknowledge just how fairly I have been treated in this thread on the whole, by guests and bloggers alike, certainly every bit as fairly as we are able to achieve for feminist guests on FCB, given our limited moderation abilities, and the constraints we operate under.
Then someone, a moderator no less, comes out with this:
Shame on you!
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
How about MWBTKaUCLs - Men Who Believe Teenagers Know and Understand Contract Law.
—–
See now, there is a huge and fundamental flaw with the contract model as applied to teenagers: While in some jurisdictions teenagers are permitted by law to enter into contracts (meaning said contracts are not void at formation) such a contract is voidable at the teenager’s option prior to the age of majority - for any reason (standard defenses to formation) or for no reason at all. One would be hard pressed to enforce a contract against a teenager concerning child rearing when that same kid can void a contract at any time prior to attaining majority on the purchase of a computer or an ipod.
Further, in re: adults signing contracts prior to and / or shortly after sex, if as many people who don’t go to the stationery store to pick up a child-rearing contract (to conveniently keep in their pocket or bag, ready at a moment’s notice, natch) is equal to the number of people who don’t go into the stationery store and pick up a will kit, I predict yet another flaw in the contract theory - there will be significant numbers of people not buying and signing these contracts just as there are significant numbers of people who die without a will. (Oh, and those stationery store wills? Anyone who believes they are ironclad is sorely mistaken. Draw what conclusions you will about child-rearing contracts.)
Also, as with any contract, a party (either one, man or woman) could allege the contract is void, raising one or even several defenses to formation: duress, misrepresentation, fraud, basically anything that will void a contract.
Finally, this contract model is unlikely to hold water with legislators and with the judiciary. Under the current model, the no-contract model, by default parents are automatically held responsible for born children - in some cases, even if said child is not biological, if the adult has been acting as a parent, as in living with the other parent, providing financial support and nurturing, in the event the adults’ relationship dissolves, they are still held financially responsible for the child. Changing to a contract model, where there would definitely be allegations of a void contract, would significantly burden the court system and that is something lawmakers generally are loathe to do.
I believe these are absolutely fair and legitimate criticisms.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Mandolin Writes:
I don’t agree with Daran - fundamentally, “choice for men” is NOT the same thing as an abortion or a safe-haven. Avoiding any arguments about misogyny or abuse or whatever, this is all it takes for me to dismiss the concept.
But your reply is rather disgusting. Real, actual, decent guys _are_ roped into servitude by “accidental” pregnancy. Could they have avoided it? Obviously. Should they be responsible for the children they helped create? Likewise. Is “Choice for men” an asinine solution? Definitely. But are they “pro-abuse” or evil for noticing that they’ve been royally screwed over, and coming up with a flawed, one-sided solution to their problem? Hell no.
I equate “choice for men” to be the men’s equivalent of things like James Sterba’s asinine “reckless sex” crime idea (in which the burden of proof should be automatically on the male suspect). That is, a real problem exists, but radicals propose a solution that is so thoughtless, extreme, and utterly one-sided that it embarrasses those who’ve actually suffered through the problem.
This comment was written by Silenced is foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
They’re pro-abuse for other reasons.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
[...] on Alas, (starting here) I’ve been arguing a coherent version of Choice for Men which, in my opinion is as fair as [...]
This comment was written by Feminist Critics.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
It boggles the mind that it seems that Daran thinks it is better to advocate the creation of a whole new area of family/contract law that will result in instability for millions of children and families as well as skyrocketing costs in legal and court fees than to advocate for universal sex ed and accessible safe and reliable contraception. Or maybe it doesn’t really - it’s a great example of men thinking that the universe should be grateful to revolve around them.
Still, maybe it would be good for the lawyers…
This comment was written by Tara.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
[snip] the creation of a whole new area of family/contract law that will result in instability for millions of children and families as well as skyrocketing costs in legal and court fees [snip]
Yes, indeed.
And may I repeat: See now, there is a huge and fundamental flaw with the contract model as applied to teenagers: While in some jurisdictions teenagers are permitted by law to enter into contracts (meaning said contracts are not void at formation) such a contract is voidable at the teenager’s option prior to the age of majority - for any reason (standard defenses to formation) or for no reason at all. One would be hard pressed to enforce a contract against a teenager concerning child rearing when that same kid can void a contract at any time prior to attaining majority on the purchase of a computer or an ipod.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Haven’t read all your posts but my view is that the female if she keeps the child has a lot more responsibility. Her whole career is affected so in most cases maintenance payments do not reflect the true cost of proper housing healthcare and security etc unless th male is well endowed ( with money). Most single mums are poor even when maintenance is payed. By law in my country you are not allowed to leave kids under 14 alone. This means you cant even leave the house for a break unless you can afford to pay. This is why men don’t want custody because the single parenthood thing is damned hard and they know it.
This comment was written by Sally.A bit of maintenance for the average girl doesn’t cover it and she often doesn’t get the maintenance anyway so it shoud be her decision unless you want to slap a whole lot of extra laws on men to make them pay properly for the lifetime of 24/7 devotion a mother needs to and usually gives.
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December 10th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Tara, I would be quite shocked if Daran was less than a completely enthusiastic supporter of universal sex ed and and accessible, safe, and reliable contraception.
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 4:23 am
It’s just absurd to call it “unfair” that a man can be legally forced to provide for a born child just because the mother -could have- had a physically invasive surgical procedure to kill the fetus inside her body or -could have-taken fetus killing poison.
This comment was written by kiuku.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Mandolin, where did Daren advocate domestic violence? Did I miss a comment somewhere? As far as I could see Daren was politely arguing his position when you comment came out of left field? For the record I don’t like Daren’s proposal, but I don’t see how it equates to domestic violence. You comment seems rude and insulting for no reason.
This comment was written by Joe.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 4:50 am
I see MRAs as supporting domestic violence through their actions. Pro-abuse set = MRAs. And now I’ve said that twice, and am done answering questions on the subject.
Moving on:
Progressive suggestions for retitling “Choice for men” so that it’s less euphamistic?
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 4:54 am
And getting back to a strain of conversation:
I’m sorry, Katie. :( For some reason, I missed your comment in the other thread, or didn’t remember it.
I hope Mr. Moore takes your note to heart.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 6:21 am
I’m not an Mens Right’s Activist. In general I think they’re silly and I don’t pay much attention to what they have to say. (I think Daren’s policy is ridiculous and about as politically likely as Heart’s Man Tax but that’s beside the point)
I think your labeling position is absurd and/or dishonest. Is this now a rule at alas? Can I re-label anyone who disagrees with me in a generally offensive way? Can anyone who thinks that a particular group, or policy position, has a negative outcome label them as being ‘for’ that outcome? Also, in this case,it really looks to me like you’re saying that Daren is personally in favor of domestic violence.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 8:01 am
but doesn’t give them a right to it, same as for fathers.
Okay, speaking as Grandma, Daran :-*…this one is a non-starter.
Grandparental rights is a muddy area of law, but it does exist. Your proposal appears to simply wipe out legal recognition of familial relationships that have stood the test of time and culture.
Grandparents do have legal standing. If I understand correctly…grandparents are the default preference if Mom and Dad are absent/incompetant/incapacitated for whatever reasons. Your proposal to reduce paternal grandparents to mere bystanders in the lives of their grandchildren is frankly…horseshit. If you think for one heartbeat the BH and moi will surrender our legal standing to intervene if bad things are happening to one of our grandchildren, getting in line behind the state or other “interested parties”, think again. As far as I’m concerned…your “right” not to pay child support does not supercede our “right” to see to the wellbeing of our grandchildren.
This comment was written by ahunt.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 8:31 am
An apology would be appreciated.
Really? If we’re going to be trading fake outrage, then I’d appreciate your apology for defaming feminists with “Children’s interests come second, and men’s (including the interests of baby boys, who will grow up to become men) come nowhere.” But we both know you’re not really feeling defamed and outraged; you’re just looking to score points by pretending that you’ve been “defamed”. And yes, I’m afraid that you very much come across as being angry at women, period.
And speaking of private facts:
This is not generally true. Both parents can agree to put the child up for adoption. Or the mother can do so unilaterally if the father doesn’t know he has a child. Or she can just abandon it in a safe harbour without making any formal arrangements for its care.
Daran, I know you’ve been around for many, many discussions on this topic. So you know exactly the extent to which these statements are true. I don’t understand why you think repeating them louder changes that.
A woman who puts a child up for adoption unilaterally risks that adoption being undone. A woman, like a man, can abandon a child in a safe harbor without fear of prosecution, but this does not automatically end her rights and obligations, nor the father’s to the child. All you’re really arguing for is better enforcement of laws that say “you need the father’s consent to put the kid up for adoption”.
You natter on about the ‘consensus’ of whether the law is wrong or right, but again, your proposal comes down to this: A complete change in the legal principle that the child’s best interests are paramount, and that rights and obligations attach to both biological parents as the rule, absent some exception severing those rights. You want this in order to insure that men don’t pay child support if they don’t want to.
If you’re willing to do that, I don’t understand why you support an ‘opt-out’ system rather than an ‘opt-in’ system. The only reason to support ‘opt out’ is a desire to give men special rights women don’t have; ‘opt in’ does a much better job of fending off child support.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 9:01 am
But, bu, bu Myth..does not “opt out” leave room for the possibility of Dad getting religion down the line, and subsequently seeking the legal restoration of his parental rights? Wouldn’t this approach be ever so much better for Dad? After all, children need their fathers. :-*
“Opt-In” precludes this possibility, as Dad who failed to “opt in” has no standing to seek parental rights.
Gee…I wonder why “opt-in” is not gaining traction. Can it be that in the end, MRA’s still want the “choice,” even if it comes down the line?
This comment was written by ahunt.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 9:15 am
I see lots and lots of bashing of Daran’s idea. But because I feel critisism without any correction or input is unfair, does anyone have any idea of how to stop the current “Pay up, shut up, and stay out of the way” system that men seem to be facing now that is better than what Daran suggests?
This comment was written by ed.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Lessee.
We don’t agree with you that the system does the things you claim it does.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Oops!
This comment was written by Tara.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 9:41 am
@ed
If you look at Sacks or any other MRA sites, the really egregious stuff doesn’t come from the laws themselves, but from the actual system built around those laws - men pushed into bankruptcy (or suicide) by utterly erroneous child-support arrearages. Putting the foster system before willing, capable parents. Allegations of “sexist” courts that assume that the father could never be a better parent (I’m not going to debate whether these allegations are true or not here). Things like that.
These are implementation issues, not issues with the laws themselves. The biggest flaws with the CS system are organizational and oversight issues - NOT the underlying laws. Fundamentally, the idea that
a) If you are a parent of a child (including if you knock up a woman in a one night stand), you’re responsible for the child, and
b) there must be some time-share arrangement so that the child gets to be with both parents
are not really disputable.
There may be some custody issues where MRAs do have some legitimate gripes - after all, society is still mentally stuck in the patriarchal model where the mother is assumed to automatically be the primary care-giver, and the father is, by extension, secondary parent. But those issues are far more complicated to solve (has anyone actually figured out a 50/50 custody arrangement that wouldn’t completely screw up the kid?) than simply stating “dad doesn’t have to be a parent if he doesn’t want to be”.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 9:49 am
(has anyone actually figured out a 50/50 custody arrangement that wouldn’t completely screw up the kid?)
Yeah.
I’m sure it would be a lot harder with babies and very young kids, but my parents divorced when I was 11 (my brother was 7) and they had no trouble arranging 50/50 custody which worked very well for everyone involved. The important things they did were: put my brother and I far, far ahead of their grudges against each other; recognize that both were good parents and that my brother and I loved and needed both; stayed far, far away from the courthouse. By living in the same town (which I know isn’t always easy, what with jobs, housing, etc) and continuing to talk to each other, there was really no trouble at all.
So a healthy 50/50 custody arrangement is definitely possible.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
ed, I’m not sure you read my critique at comment #150 above?
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
You know, in Iran–and I think in Shia Islam in general, but I am not sure–they have something called temporary marriage, in which a man and a woman can contract to be married, with all the social, legal, cultural, etc. rights, obligations and responsibilities attached to marriage, for (as I understand it) a time period of their choosing. As my wife, who is Iranian, has explained it to me–and I am not trying to position her as some kind of authority–temporary marriage is a mechanism whereby people can legally (in Iran’s terms) have what we would here call casual sex. (I should add that I am not saying this is the only purpose of temporary marriages; I don’t know if it is or not; but this is one purpose my wife has said that the institution serves.) If a couple conceives a child during their temporary marriage, when the marriage is over, there is no question that the man involved is responsible for the support of that child in the same way he would be if his marriage had not been temporary and he and his wife had gotten divorced.
I am not suggesting this as a solution to anything that is being discussed here, though I do think what I have described does, at the least, acknowledge that no matter how casual the sex is that two people might have, any children that are born as a result of that sex are unambiguously the responsibility of the people who concieved them, whether they wanted to conceive the child or not.
I don’t know why, but Daran’s very complicated contractual system put me in mind of temporary marriage, not because they are so similar in content, but because the each seem to share the impulse to nail down as unambiguously as possible the fuzzy social and cultural aspects of non-marital sex.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
RJN - Thanks for that. I have had conversations, internet and IRL, where various contract-based models for marriage have been examined. I talked with a very interesting law professor several weeks ago who proposes IIRC 4 different models.
It was a most interesting conversation. I would like to continue to explore the area as I, at present, do not see that they would be received in the US because the result of implementing them would be to throw out the current marriage / union scheme.
This comment was written by Bonnie.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Daran’s system actually puts me in mind of those “pre-industrial” cultures where men imitate childbirth, either because their female partners are giving birth or as part of a shamanic ritual.
If, as Daran claims, the law’s priority should be “no man has to be responsible for a kid if hethey didn’t ask to,” then the opt-in system is far superior. It also has a feature of which Daran heartily approves: namely, women would always know that they can’t impose any obligations on a man, and would conduct themselves accordingly.
The “opt-out” system not only gives men rights women don’t have, it’s ridiculously complicated and nigh-impossible to enforce. What does a woman have to prove to show abortion was “available”? What if one or both of them is above the age of consent but below the age where they can legally enter into a contract? What happens when somebody changes their mind?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
December 10th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Myth, I think the reason “opt-in” has not caught on is because the men want to hedge their bets.
What happens when Mom raises an amazing kid solo, and Opt-out Dad suddenly wants a piece of the action? Oh look…paperwork! Dad relinquished all rights…but now has a change of heart? Don’t think that with “opt-out,” it won’t happen!
Yes, “opt-in” covers all of Daran’s concerns. The problem, I am guessing, is that with “opt-in,” there are no “do-overs.” My sense is that with a kid in this world, men are not truly willing to burn their bridges.
Hmm.
This comment was written by ahunt.Report this comment to the moderators
December 11th, 2007 at 6:10 am
That, and the need to start off from a position of power that they can volunteer to give up.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators