Daddy Nobucks: When Involuntary Fathers Are Forced to Foot The Bill
Okay, so here’s the thing.
As much as we would like them to be, because it would make things simpler, men and women are not equal players in sex. The woman always has more to lose than the man. Not only can a woman get pregnant, women’s reputations are far more likely to be harmed by sex than a man, they are more likely to get/be seriously harmed by many sexually transmitted diseases, and so on. Guy’s are much more likely than women to be able to just get up and walk away from a sexual encounter and forget about it forever.
Society’s response to this has been to try and make men and women more equal by pushing some of the penalties off on the man. The idea, I suppose, is that the vulnerability and cost of sex should be spread around.
The problem with this, of course, is that it just doesn’t work. It’s artificial, clumsy, and it allows women to act like they haven’t been given (biologically) a greater burden.
The solution? People need to face reality. Women need to realize that they have more to lose, and therefore need to be more involved in protecting themselves. There was a time when culture and technology didn’t make this possible, but now it is. Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world and a lot of girls still don’t have the education and/or confidence to protect themselves, but ideally, women have the ability to protect themselves. And men need to realize that every time a women has sex with them, there is probably more at risk on her side of things than his.
Of course, we can’t count on everyone to be good responsible people, and we can’t legislate proper casual-sex ethics. But we can get rid of the stupid laws that are easily gamed and put some better ones in place that truly protect women AND men from victimization without infantilising either party. The goal of these laws shouldn’t be to make things fair, because things are never going to be fair. The goal should be to prevent serious harm and punish those responsible when it occurs.
And we can also encourage more sex-education and frank discussion about the manners and consequences of casual sex. Because it is going to happen, and being all uptight and stupid about sex is what has got us so screwed up in the first place.
