I read with amusement the article entitled “Women are Facing Sexual McCarthyism” at Politico making the rounds in the blogosphere:
Guys, I’m thinking it’s hard for you to imagine what it’s like to have your most private decisions made for you. By women.
Let’s put it this way: Imagine that you need Viagra. Imagine that a law passed by an 80 percent female Legislature mandates that to obtain a prescription, you have to procure an affidavit from a sexual partner verifying that you are indeed incapable of an erection.
Or maybe, before obtaining a vasectomy, you have to undergo an ultrasound on your testicles — wherein a technician must apply gel and press a hand-held transducer on your private parts.
I have to laugh because over the past few weeks, I have been writing a chapter for my new book on the lack of reproductive rights for men. What the writer of this Politico article should be stating instead is:
“Girls, I’m thinking it’s hard for you to imagine what it’s like to have your most private decisions made for you. By men and women.”
Women have absolutely no concept or understanding of the lack of reproductive choices that the average guy has in this country. Maybe, if they came up for air from every once in a while from their narcissistic quest to turn the country into a female-centric one (congrats, it already is), they would have a bit of empathy for how the other half lives. But don’t count on it.
Imagine, if you will, that you are a 13-year-old boy and the 34-year old lady down the street decides to seduce you or the 25-year old babysitter pushes herself on you against your will or with your blessing–doesn’t matter. And she gets pregnant. What’s the outcome? You are stuck paying child support for at least 18 years. Don’t believe me, check out Professor Michael Higdon’s paper: Fatherhood by Conscription. In his research, he found that not one court let a kid off the hook, even if the woman committed a felony by having sex with a young boy. Imagine if a 13- year-old-girl was forced to have a baby by the courts against her will. All hell would break loose. But boys, no one cares. After all, they have no feelings or rights and most of all, no lobby.
Now imagine you are a guy who finds out that a baby you thought was yours is found through DNA evidence not to be. Think you off the hook for child support? Of course not, you will be using your body for the next 18 years to pay for that child. The law says so, and there is no one to look out for you and while you toil and spend your time paying for this betrayal, society will make sure you pay up. If you don’t you will go to jail against your will. There are up to 50,000 men on any given day in jail right now on child support arrears, the majority poor and destitute, but no one cares, only women matter.
I can go on and will go on when my book comes out but the main point I want to make is this: Women have reproductive choice, men essentially have none.
In a perfect world, there would be laws that would give men the reproductive equivalent of abortion. So, I ask readers, what would that be, if women have abortion, what should men get so that we don’t have sexual McCarthyism for men?
At least a minor who fathers a child will get paternity rights in exchange for paying child support. It’s a fair exchange.
No they don’t. They have exactly as many rights as the women thinks they have. Which is none.
Also not mentioned is that “choice” only applies to women. If a man discovers that he’s fathered a child and wants to raise it, but the woman wants to abort, guess who wins. A man’s ability to reproduce at all depends on a woman being willing to spare the offspring for 9 whole months. The invention of artificial gestation would bring a lot more equality to this situation.
Hey, as an American I am at least $15 trillion dollars in debt, and my sons are too, partly to support the children of others I never even met. And most of those children don’t even look like me mostly because that lady you didn’t see me with last night was not my wife. Life is not fair, but men don’t get a free ride just because they are not the father.
The vast majority of men complaining about their “lack of reproductive freedom” are not raped adolescent boys or cuckolded husbands. I love the conflation of those 50,000 men supposedly in jail for child support arrears — all of them because they knocked up the babysitter at 12 or because little Dwayne and Shawna aren’t their spawn? Really? I’d love to see that proof, Doc.
If these strawmen are the best examples you can come up with, this is a pretty weak position to take. (Although for the raped-adolescent-boy situation, perhaps parents should teach their sons to apply locks to their zippers, much as parents are advised to teach their daughters to hold aspirins between their knees.)
The substance of your argument is that it is “unfair” to require men to financially support children born of their choice to enjoy themselves with recreational sex. Yet as your own ideological bigmen repeatedly assure us, “pregnancy is not an unforeseeable outcome of recreational sex,” blastocyts are precious to the point of applying government force to people’s private decisions, and consequences are a two-way street.
What goes unmentioned in this childish screed is that condoms and vasectomies are available on demand, and sexual self-control is actually free of any cost at all. But those obvious options, somehow, are not reproductive “choices” here.
So now we get down to the actual core of this argument. What you’re implying is that, for “fairness,” a man should be allowed to require a woman to have an abortion in order to avoid the lifestyle consequences of his rutting “fun.” That’s called “abortion on demand,” Doc, and that brings the pro-force blastocyst-fetishists howling right out of the trees. The alternative, which is probably what you’re after, is that Deadbeat Dick can impregnate his fun-partner and walk away free of charge or responsibility for the obvious and foreseeable consequences of his pleasurable personal indulgence. And in your dream of a society, the woman will be forced to bear the physical dangers and financial liabilities of the pregnancy and the child that results. These two options, in your world, are “reproductive choice” for males. Recreational sex without responsibility or consequences — a proposition that, when applied to women, makes an entire segment of our society froth and snarl like rabid dogs.
Try harder and maybe you’ll eventually be able to think your way out of a paper bag.
Dr. Helen is right. Men don’t have rights when it comes to reproduction.
“I love the conflation of those 50,000 men supposedly in jail for child support arrears — all of them because they knocked up the babysitter at 12 or because little Dwayne and Shawna aren’t their spawn?”
Well, I don’t’ think that they raped all those women and forced them to have the babies either.
The law gives women the sole right to decide whether or not they have the baby and thus it should be their sole responsibility. Of course, if the couple was married then the law must assume that the man agreed to have children and is thus responsible. But if there is no marriage and no proof of consent, then she is on her own.
You cannot hold a man responsible for a decision that he had no part in. Yes, he agreed to have sex, but he didn’t necessarily agree to being a sperm donor. Women keep babies which were conceived by men who have no desire to be fathers and they abort the babies of men who want to be fathers. (I have personally known people in both of these categories.)
If you want to keep the exclusive right to decide the fate of your pregnancy, then you must give up the right of expecting someone else to pay for that decision.
The female of the human species bears the young. This is just a fact of life and no frothing and snarling like a rabid dog is going to change that. If you don’t want babies and can’t be responsible enough to tend to your own contraception, then don’t have sex;—or go get spayed.
Turn what you said around. Here, I’ll do it for you:
“Yes, she agreed to have sex, but she didn’t agree to become a mother.”
“If you don’t want babies and can’t be responsible enough to put on a rubber (thus preventing the sperm donor part) or get a vasectomy (ibid.), then don’t have sex — or go get neutered.”
But let’s take your arguments at face value. Let’s make the right “nonexclusive,” which means Deadbeat Dick gets to Decide, even though he apparently wasn’t capable of deciding to put on a rubber. What’s the proposal? Forced abortion when a male wishes to escape the normal and foreseeable consequences of his selfish sexual pleasure, but forced pregnancy in all other cases (I am assuming you are pro-force, which seems likely). Or, if forced abortion is a little too nauseating even for the He-Man Woman-Hating Throw-Rocks-At-Those-Awful-Whores Club, will it be careless, recreational sex without lifestyle consequences or responsibility for an easily foreseeable natural outcome — but only for men? It’s one or the other.
Seriously, it really doesn’t appear that most of these “reproductive choice for men” folks can think their way out of a room with one door.
“Yes, she agreed to have sex, but she didn’t agree to become a mother.”
If she got pregnant and didn’t abort, then, yes, she did agree to become a mother.
“But let’s take your arguments at face value. Let’s make the right “nonexclusive,” which means Deadbeat Dick gets to Decide, even though he apparently wasn’t capable of deciding to put on a rubber. What’s the proposal?”
How about the father has the ability to denounce paternity just as easily as the mother can denounce maternity? Once that has happened the father is no longer liable for child support or any parental rights.
You really are a particularly special flavor of stupid, aren’t you?
This whole conversation makes me very, very sad. Sex is a gift, an expression of love between man and woman who’ve chosen to become family to each other, i.e., lifetime commitment. To regard it as anything less is to demean not only the act but woman and man themselves.
And to hear children – who are human beings just as we are – spoken of in such cold and callous terms breaks my heart.
How sad and joyless and utilitarian sex has become. It’s supposed to be about LOVE.
“If she got pregnant and didn’t abort, then, yes, she did agree to become a mother.”
Unless she’s in one of the states who’ve made it difficult or impossible to get an abortion.
http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_OAL.pdf
(And are you really arguing in favor of pro-choice laws? Because that’s the only thing that makes that statement make sense.)
“How about the father has the ability to denounce paternity just as easily as the mother can denounce maternity?”
He can; guys do it all the time. That’s why there’s this thing called the “paternity test.” And if he ISN’T the father, he pays nothing.
You really are a particularly special flavor of stupid, aren’t you?
By all means punish actual deadbeats, but if a woman falsely accuses me of fathering her child, I want her in jail for fraud, and I want to be compensated BY HER for wasting my time, slandering me, and attempted extortion. I also want her name plastered all over the news so that everyone will know she’s an extortionist. I also believe men ought to have the right to sue the pants off any interloper who has sex, consensual or otherwise, with their wives. Furthermore, it should be no defense to say they didn’t know she was married. Adultery needs to be punished, and punished severely.
“Adultery needs to be punished, and punished severely.”
Absolutely right. Newt Gingrich should be in jail.
I think you over thought the column a bit. The idea I think, was to say that if a woman has a right to abort a child for purely economic reason, or in the case of rape or incest, then a man should have a choice, too. If the rubber breaks, the man’s “right to choose” is immediately given to the woman.
Where you go too far is when you assume that Dr Helen wants either party to have that choice. She’s simply pointing out the rather blatant hypocrisy of only one party having the choice, that’s all.
“She’s simply pointing out the rather blatant hypocrisy of only one party having the choice, that’s all.”
Well, once guys start getting pregnant, they get a choice in the matter.
“The substance of your argument is that it is “unfair” to require men to financially support children born of their choice to enjoy themselves with recreational sex.” No, what the article is saying is that the problem is not as one-sided as the feminists say it is. Yes, men are stuck with paying child support – on the other hand, they CANNOT force a woman to abort the child. The woman, however, has all of the choices: she can abort the child, she can bear the child and raise it herself, she can put the child up for adoption, or she can force him to pay patrimony.
Men and women have always had equal reproductive “choice”. Always. Since the dawn of time.
Both men and women have managed to screw that up for themselves while blaming each other and taking out their hostilities over their own mistakes on each other. Men and women are equally guilty of this.
If men and women behaved themselves like men and women rather than sexual objects, we wouldn’t have these problems.
Here’s the deal: if you don’t want to make a baby or be responsible for a baby, don’t engage in the act that produces a baby. It’s pretty simple stuff. And, for all that these oh-so-sexually-liberated ejits go on and on about how there should be no sexual tabus, well, you’d think they could get their rocks off plenty without engaging in sexual intercourse. No contraception required.
I come away from this whole “war on women” blather thinking the world is full of some seriously too-stupid-to-live people.
so…
For a Roman Catholic. And, perhaps for a few others too.
Fifth Commandment – Thou Shalt Not Kill
Used or approved of artificial birth control
For physicians, parents, others, – caused, counseled, consented to abortion.
In the example you use for the 13 YO boy, I hope and pray that his parents have taught him well enough not to abort. It may be or probably is that he did not fully consent to the sexual act. This is not a simple, or black and white area for this example. This does happen and we hope and pray that the boy tells his parents, pastor or another family member/trustworthy adult.
Hmmm. Not all “artificial” birth control. Barrier methods are not abortafacients.
In the case of the 13 year old boy, he can’t possibly be held responsible for his rapist’s abortion because of his age. If a 13 year old girl chooses to abort, or her parents make that choice for her, I know what the Church says, but I believe, in my heart, that God isn’t as harsh as the Church.
Remember the issue of the 9 year old incest victim pregnant with twins the Church excommunicated, while basically shrugging off the sins of her evil stepfather? Do you really think, if that child had died the next day, without benefit of the sacrament of Reconciliation, she’d have been sent to hell? And yet the Church excommunicated her on the grounds she’d incurred a mortal sin, redeemable ONLY via the Sacrament of Reconciliation and under penalty of eternal damnation.
Does forcing a 9 year old rape/incest victim to carry the children of her rapist/stepfather respect the dignity of that 9 year old? No. Carrying twins would have caused her permanent physical harm, perhaps even death, and would have caused her further emotional and mental trauma.
These issues are never all that black and white, and the more society treats human bodies and bodily functions as commodities, the greyer things get.
True, barrier methods are actually a sixth Commandment violation- a sacrilege against the marital act.
Not really. If that was the case then the Church’s position on current NFP methods would be just as sinful.
Natural family planning does not in any way interfere with the marital act, and both its unitive and procreative aspects are left completely intact. Not so with barrier methods, though they be less heinous than taking poison to subvert the marital act, they nonetheless deliberately obstruct the procreative aspect by preventing the passage of sperm from the man into his wife.
The Church keeps spinning NFP that way, but NFP works by two adults consciously avoiding fertile times (which they’ve narrowed by using fine-tuned methods that are supposedly as effective as BC pills) so they can enjoy “the marital act” while heavily stacking the deck in favor of their not conceiving a child. NFP is always contraceptive in it’s mentality (unless you’re using it to take advantage of fertile periods, I suppose).
NFP is no more “open to life” than the pill, and, by the Church’s own claims, less so than barrier methods.
FWIW, Nora, I agree with you that a 13 YO boy is likely not capable of making a choice to engage in sexual relations with the older woman. If I was not clear with that in my first post, I apologize. The point being that these type of siutations require scrutiny from the parents and their pastor if that is necessary or desirable.
“The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe; they are intolerant in practice because they do not love.” Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
Fr Garrigou-Lagrange pretty well summs up my response to your comment about Church harshness. The Catholic Church IS the Faith set up by Christ and handed over to his apostles. He established the Church who was given to forgive or not forgive.
If possible, would you pls provide the link to the story about the 9 YO rape / incest victim? I’d very much like to see that info. Without it, I’m afraid I would not be able to respond to your other concerns which appear to be valid ones.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazil-rocked-by-abortion-for-9yearold-rape-victim-1640165.html
Here’s the first article I grabbed that was not from a feminist/progressive Catholic site, although it’s an easily Googled story.
They state the Church did not excommunicate the girl because of her age, but that they excommunicated her mother for not sacrificing her on the altar of the letter of the law is enough for me.
To insist that a small child bear the twins of her rapist stepfather because those twins’ lives were more valuable than hers is deeply disturbing, and especially in light of their track record when it comes to protecting children from sexual predators. Not to mention their track record with women in general.
It’s a hard case, but murder is still murder.
Except it’s not murder in this case.
When it comes to rape, men have no voice in these cases. Sorry. Until you can get impregnated against your will, you don’t get a say. That’s a woman’s domain.
I’ll fight for a man’s right to be free from consequences of his rape by a woman, too.
If you’re going to force rape victims to carry their rapists’ children, then you can’t exactly argue against male rape victims being forced to pay for their aggressor’s offspring.
Of course, if everyone kept their hands and their privates to themselves, we wouldn’t have these problems. Let the bishops work on that one first…oopsies…they already had that chance and they blew it. Who cares what they say about anything anymore? They have no credibility when it comes to sex, and especially when it comes to juvenile rape victims.
Alright, how about this deal: if a woman rapes me and thereby becomes pregnant, I get sole custody of the child, and she has to pay me child support. She is, after all, a felon, and therefore unfit to be a mother. The child is better off in the father’s custody. I’ll even grant that she may not be able to pay child support; I just wouldn’t want her anywhere near my kid.
I think you have a valid case, but you’d have to rely on a court to sever her parental rights, which is not likely to happen.
Under those circumstances, I don’t think child support should be required, and that goes for women who’ve been raped and want sole custody of the child. Once we agree that a rapist has no place in his or her subsequent progeny’s lives, then no child support. They should automatically lose parental rights by nature of their crime.
Of course, people have to come forward and report these crimes and establish the facts in a timely manner, too.
Speaking of fatherhood by conscription, only 18 year old males suffer legal sanctions for failing to register for Selective Service, that national personnel list for the emergency draft or conscription. If your male and not on the list, no federal educational benefits or loans for you, sucker–Suzie next door will still get her loans though. Thanks to the cold war draft and the Korean War, the military was racially integrated almost overnight. You certainly can’t say that about, say, Harvard’s cold war optional racial integration history among the student body–unless you’re counting the foreign students from the upper classes, say, from Columbia and Kenya as part of Harvard’s domestic racial quota. And of course, the last I looked at the stats, 99 percent of the current American military casualties are males. Truly, in the military Title Nine doesn’t apply to playing hand grenades, females are grossly under-represented, and only males are still dead men walking. Of course, at 9 out of ten criminals, males are grossly over-represented in jails and state prisons, and females generally get a pass on executions for similar situated behavior. In the interest of Title Nine numerical equity in correctional environments, perhaps lower class single female mothers who can’t or won’t provide for their children to the exacting standards of Beverly Hills and Brookline should be criminalized and sent to jail along with the hit and run males? Surely a year in jail for a home alone latchkey kid prior is in order for mommy dearest? Surely, when an eighteen year old male has to go to jail for having consensual sex with a seventeen year old girlfriend, the “seduced” female “victim” should dance to the same equality before the law tune and do some time? Now that males and females under the age of eighteen are no longer subject to capital punishment because they’re children, why are we still letting seventeen year old children join the Army and Marine Corp to be killers? Now that childhood for the American male seems to extend to twenty-six, perhaps the minimum age requirements for the military should be raised? Of course, since females of the same age as males tend to be ahead of the boys by three years in the emotional maturity department, surely the surplus of girls forgoing motherhood could still provide a young mature cohort of eighteen year old eager beaver baby killers for infantry duty? Surely capable mature Suzie’s abortion or contraception experience is translatable to learning the spirit of the bayonet is to kill?
uh. predators? sexual predators? come in female form, too. There’s a whole genre of comedy where the guys’ equipment goes on alert, when he doesn’t want it. An erection can be forced. An erection can be used. An erection can be seduced out of a kid.
when the common words are “confused” “aroused” “disgusted” and “afraid” and “curious” in one police report about what happened, we can be sure that the child is not Errol Flynn about for an evening stroll. He’s being preyed upon by another.
Teachers, right now, aren’t at the top of the heap, GRE-wise. They can be hustled like a legislator. They can be told, and believe, that exposing too young minds to too much information- is liberating, healthy, progressive and sensible. An otherwise decent new teacher took it upon herself to screen high-school material for her fourth grade class, with the consent of the Assistant Principal and the Principal, at my sons’ school. I hadn’t worried about the school before, b/c the teachers before this were all sunday school teachers, who were very, very conservative. My son came home. He was sad, he was drawing sad chalk characters, he was having outbursts- “don’t make me say those words!” he was hunched over, flinching from contact- he was saying “don’t let x or y see this! I need to protect them!” They broke my kid, on one stupid, overwhelming, highly sexualized, propaganda lesson. It was unreal. I am still angry about this.
The principal and assistant principal both lost their jobs, not on this, entirely, but on similar bad judgment calls. The teacher was invited to not teach for a year. She came back at a lower grade, and then was asked to leave in the middle of the year, for failing to teach the basics:reading, writing, and math. She couldn’t even teach 4th grade math. But she could corrupt 4th graders. I’m still stunned.
Teachers want to be enlightened guides. Sometimes that shades over into sexual depravity. Why are you kicking the kids for being bollixed by an “angel of light.”
It’s a pretty straightforward statutory rape case, and for whatever reason, judges and police aren’t seeing that.
and, no, I have no idea why anyone is enforcing that a rape victim has to pay for the infant’s maintenance. I’m good with what was the law until the late sixties: proven rape is a capital crime.
The question is oddly framed, as if abortion were some great technological boon, like a clothes washer, instead of the moral issue of our day. Slavery used to be the moral issue of the day. Many people saw nothing wrong with slavery, since it was pervasive in the culture. Today we as a society clearly see and repudiate the evil of slavery.
Since Roe v. Wade, approximately 60 million lives have been terminated. The population of the United States should be 370 million instead of 310 million. Those individuals would be productive citizens today. Unimpeachable logic will eventually win the day, and we as a society will clearly see and repudiate the evil of destroying human life in the womb.
Many men have been greatly traumatized by the termination of their wanted sons and daughters. Abortion is a boon only if the goal is to destroy the moral fabric of society and wreak demographic disaster on a nation.
That’s an underestimate. Some of those victims would have children of their own by now. A more accurate estimate is about 400 million.
Apparently, physically forcing people to do things with their bodies that are against their wills still remains “a moral issue of the day.” In your slavery analogy, Anonymous, what does that make you?
By “forcing people to do things with their bodies” do you refer to slavery (and rape has always been a part of slavery), rape only, or to a biological father’s forcing the mother to have an abortion?
This is the logical answer to the question posed, “What do men get if women get abortion?” The male version of abortion must be the right to force a woman he has impregnated to abort the inconvenient child.
You are attempting to say that I would like to force people to bear children they do not want, in the same manner that a slave owner forces labor from slaves. I am not for forcing people but rather for enlightening them from within morally and spiritually to understand the value of new life and their need to act responsibly towards it.
An abolitionist. The only people being treated as property here are the unborn, whose very lives are regarded as things to be disposed of arbitrarily.
I’d like to see courts treat men and women equally when deciding custody. That would challenge the basic assumptions of feminists. How can they justify that courts almost always give custody to the mother? Are men and women equal or not? Are children really always better off with the mother? If the roles were reversed, feminists would certainly call that sexism.
I agree Steve, fathers get the shaft when it comes to custody protection. I know several great dads who are struggling with this. All any woman has to say is “he’s abusive” and the man’s life is ruined or she’ll insist that he leave the house, and that becomes the beginning of the end of his parental rights. I just advised a male friend going through a divorce to stay in the home until the agreement is in writing, as hard as it may be to do so. Loads of women are willing to use their kids against their ex, it’s awful.
Isnt sex with a child always rape, since there is no legal ability for the underage victim to give consent for the act?
In this example of an underage male having sex with an adult woman, How does the rapist have have any standing to sue the victim of the rape for damages incurred as a result of the illegal act?
Wouldnt the victim of an act of rape (the gender of the victim seems highly irrelevant) have standing to sue the rapist for damages resulting from the act and not the other way around?
You would think that it would be rape, but courts have said that even though the woman may have committed a felony, the child is still held responsible for child support. In the article from Michael Higdon that I linked that actually studied such cases (which are fairly numerous), it was found that every time the question of whether a male victim of statutory rape should be made liable for child support comes up, every single court case has answered in the affirmative–holding that yes, the minor father is liable.
Or put in simple terms, its our gender makes us the criminal, not the act itself.
Seems kind of, you know, whats that word….“unconstitutional” to me.
Yes, just like the new Obama administration rules for colleges that basically demand that colleges evaluate sexual assault , date rape etc. and make decisions by administrators without concrete evidence. All they need is around 50% (whatever that means, maybe just the woman’s word?) to expel or bring charges against a male student. There is no due process, something afforded to a common criminal, but if male on campus, one is presumed guilty. Men and boys have no lobby and the strong lobbies of women groups and governmental agencies make sure that women get privileges and men get punished. It is important that men and even boys are aware of what is happening and take action, but it’s hard to get them interested. Any suggestions are welcome!
Do you think we are not interested? There are men’s rights websites proliferating throughout the internet, such as A Voice For Men. That perticular website has over 90 contributors. The men’s rights group on Reddit has over 30,000 members.
We’re interested.
What we want to know is, why is the conservative AND liberal movements letting men hang out to dry? You are a rare, rare conservative commentator who will utter one word on these issues. Besides you, we have Phyllis Schlafly, Suzanne Venker, Dr. Christina Hoff-Sommers, and, uhhhh…yeah. Tumbleweeds.
Even conservatives who are well-aware of these issues keep their mouths shut. Ann Coulter, supposedly the great fearless voice, is only willing to say “I don’t talk about Feminism. Read Phyllis Schlafly.” Gee, thanks for speaking truth to power Ann!
I respect you so much for researching and speaking on these issues. But if you really think men don’t care, you must not be looking very hard.
“What is the Equivalent of Abortion for Men?”
First degree murder.
We’re interested,
I think the websites are great as are men talking all over the internet but that is only a first step. A lobby and organizations need to be formed and that is an area where I think men have a hard time. I don’t blame them. Who wants to think of themselves in some “victims” organization but things are not changing. Since Warren Farrell wrote his book, The Myth of Male Power in 1993, it seems like things for men have gotten worse. That’s great that there are 30,000 members at Reddit, but there should be 3 million men ready to lobby and fight for their liberty, freedom and due process, picking specific issues like paternity fraud, lack of due process for men at college, etc. Is there a leader out there to start this fight? Where is he?
Dr Helen,
Because whoever “he” will be committing instant career suicide. He will be vilified by both political parties and the media, given the current environment of massive female privilege. Conservatives like to pretend they are pro-male and anti-feminist, but how many of them would be willing to see any female privilege go by the wayside of making things better for males? The GOP establishment would throw “him” under the bus in a heartbeat, to the raucous cheers of men and women.
Women are male’s biological kryptonite. We are living with the legacy of hundreds of thousands of years of genetic programming that says women are more important to survive than men. Plus, we have had 100 years of Feminist mythologies and lies indoctrinated upon the public consciousness.
Men are not allowed to discuss these issues publicly, period, without being vilified. Women are vilified too – but it is still easier for them. I’m sure you’ve heard of Phyllis Schlafly and Suzanne Venker’s book “The Flipside of Feminism – What conservative women know, and men can’t say.” In this book, they correctly point out that if change is going to come, it is going to have to come from women. Once enough women are willing to talk about this stuff, it provides cover for men to talk about it publicly.
Men have spent all of human history literally dying for the protection of women. But in our current time of need, I can count on two hands the number of women (conservative or progressive) who are willing to state publicly how bad men are getting screwed right now. It is to your credit, Dr. Helen, that you are one of them. But maybe you can start to convince other conservative women to pull their big girl pants on and start talking about this stuff.
Because the great men’s rights leader is never going to appear, otherwise.
Alternatively, conservative women could fall back to their default position of buying Feminism hook line and sinker, except for abortion, and pretending like they are anti-feminist. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I expect to continue to happen.
I don’t know if conservative women are the answer, they too, have too much invested. Warren Farrell says that for a revolution to take place, there has to be a combination of emotional rejection and financial hurt. Check on both of those accounts for men. Men have been rejected and treated poorly by women for some time now and their wages have declined possibly 28% since the late sixties according to some research such as that done at the Brookings Institution. I believe that men have to be the face of the movement, they cannot wait for women to fight their battle for them. Yes, it is hundreds, thousands of years in the making that men have been protective of women but the very ones who they insist on protecting are willing to allow them to be thrown under the bus. Men’s psychology must change. Yes, it will take time but the truth is, we change human nature a little at a time. Our true nature is to beat the crap out of each other but we over time, we have learned not to do that. Same with men, they can learn over time that protecting women at the expense of their own liberty is a mistake and an injustice, not just to themselves but to the future generations of boys and men who come after them who must live with the consequences.
So what if a man steps up and some nasty conservatives or liberals yell at him and “throw him under the bus?” Guys like Rush Limbaugh make a living that way. Maybe this guy will too.
BTW, I am not anti-feminist. I believe that men and women are equal. I thought that is what feminism was about. Apparently, it’s not, it’s about female privilege. I don’t want to live in a society that uses the state to take revenge on its citizens just because they happen to be born male in this country. If women and the government are using the state this way, men eventually must learn to overcome their reluctance to go along with it. It will end in their loss of freedom, it already has.
I’m a woman, but I gotta speak up for the fellas here.
What about:
1) A woman aborting a man’s child when the man wants to keep the child.
2) A woman denying visitation out of pure spite, despite pocketing the child support.
3) FALSE accusations of rape – and that happens a lot. Most of the instances are not as high profile as the Duke lacrosse team, but it’s just as devastating to the man. And if there’s no child from the alleged sexual act, which may not even have taken place at all, it’s pretty hard to prove a negative.
4) False claims of paternity. Not all paternity tests are conclusive. An inconclusive paternity test can happen when the accused is related by blood to the actual father, whether he is aware of the relation or not.
Easy Answer: The Male equivalent of Abortion for Men.
The Male has nine months after a live birth to legally administer infanticide.
Problem solved.
I think the Swedes are working on this….
[sorry if this is a double post -- I started it earlier, then apparently lost it, don't see it as 'awaiting moderation']
That vasectomy example is utterly laughable in TWO ways:
1) When I had a vasectomy a few years ago, my wife had to sign a form acknowledging she knew what I was doing, what a vasectomy did (sterility), and that it was very likely irreversible. IOW, getting her permission w/o quite calling it ‘permission’ — if they didn’t have her form they would not do it.
The thing is, I don’t really object to it, because the whole thing about being married in the first place is joint efforts & decisions in having/raising children. Basically it is a sort of ‘truth in advertising’ requirement. (similar to the way the Catholic Church would have no problem in granting an annulment if the bride or groom knowingly hid their infertility from the other before the wedding.
Of course, the de facto vasectomy permission thing grates because, as a husband, I have zero right to be informed (much less give ‘consent’) if my wife was seeking an abortion. On one hand the woman has power over the man’s potential children, while he has no influence on her aborting his *actual* child.
2) The other absurdity is the dreaded ultrasound violation. The horror.
WTF?
If I am having a vasectomy I am asking the doctor to CUT my private parts.
How in hell is a hypothetical ultrasound more invasive?
That is just as ridiculous as a woman who is consenting to be penetrated in abortion with a suction wand, or given a D&C, to scream that a mere ultrasound is a violation tantamount to rape.
There are other grounds to object, but that one is freakin’ nuts.
Yet this is supposed to be some big intellectual slam dunk ‘…sauce for the gander’ ‘gotcha’ counterargument. I am spectacularly unimpressed.
Anyway, absent a marriage, the proper parallel to the vasectomy on the single man side is a tubal ligation on the single woman side. Abortion utterly fails as a foundation of a shoe-on-the-other-foot argument because abortion and the vasectomy (or the tubal) are in fact not symmetric at all — whereas the single man or woman using surgery to deliberately sterile only involves him/her, the abortion involves the woman AND her [proto-child]. Completely setting aside any arguments about the beginning of ‘personhood’, that embryo/fetus is a distinct human organism (with its own unique genetic identity… that’s *science* ,folks) that is firmly set on the path to become a person — barring an abortion, whether induced, or spontaneous thru medical bad luck.
The attempt to draw a parallel to mere sperm in a vasectomy is logically inept, and is really just a rhetorical bait-and-switch.
I’m not sure I accept as true with what you said but still a good post.
>>Guys, I’m thinking it’s hard for you to imagine what it’s like to have your most private decisions made for you. By women.<<
Since abortion is the legally-condoned extinguishing of a life, A much better analogy would be capital punishment. So ladies:
Imagine that your decision to have an abortion had to go before a jury. Imagine that if the jury ruled in your favor that the other side could appeal and appeal and appeal. Imagine the best legal minds available lined up to argue that you should not be allowed to have an abortion. Imagine that if your wish is finally granted it's all over the news and throngs of people gather outside the clinic to hold a candlelight vigil for the unborn baby you are about to kill.
The closest male equivalent I can think of to abortion is something called the “unwritten law” which permitted a man to kill anyone caught in adultery with his wife. Back in 1859, Representative Daniel E. Sickles pleaded this law in his trial for the murder of Philip Barton Key, who’d been trifling with his pretty wife. The pro-abortion fascists who call murdering an unborn child a “right” are, of course, horrified at this law, but that’s because as murderers themselves, they always side with the perpetrators against the victims.
If we really want men to have rights equal to those of the murderous feminist fascists who support abortion, then I say we should rewrite the unwritten law, and update it to include the right to execute female rapists and send their families the bill for the execution. If the rapist gets pregnant, the execution should be delayed until the child is born (or miscarries, or is murdered), and her family should also be billed for any costs of child support.
Alternatively, we could outlaw abortion, and punish it according to existing laws for what it is: murder in the first degree. We could cut off all government funding for colleges, which would bring about the long-overdue demise of all those misandrist “studies” in college (along with a lot of other politically correct fascist garbage), and we could declare that anyone found guilty of statutory rape is unfit to be a parent, and order her (or him) imprisoned for twenty years and denied all child custody in perpetuity. I prefer this latter course.
Something I neglected to mention: the “unwritten law” also sometimes applied for anyone caught messing around with the *daughter* as well. Sometimes instead of having a shotgun wedding, the aggrieved father could just apply the shotgun. While I don’t recall a test case, probably the mother could have gotten acquitted on the same grounds if she were the one hefting the shotgun. If updated to reflect modern notions of equality, this law could certainly have put a stop to that female rapist’s shameless demands for child support once and for all!
Holy shit. I don’t expect much from PJ but shit, Helen’s not even trying. Or she’s really fucking stupid. The epedemic of young boys raped by cougars so as to get the riches of child support has been missed by the Lamestream media, I guess. How you can compare the rights of men to the rights of women which are under assault from the child fuckers in the Catholic church, is mind boggling. You idiots really don’t get irony, so I won’t try to explain it but good God. Just when I think we have reached peak wingnut…