I was hanging out with a guy who is in a relationship. I told him nothing could happen, and we decided to keep things friendly. A while ago, I made the drunken mistake of climbing into the backseat of a car with him (elegant, I know). Things got racy pretty quickly, mostly a bunch of making out and touching, but then he asked if I was on birth control. I told him yes, because I was, and he penetrated me and came inside of me after one thrust.
The next day, I got all emotional about our situation in relation to his relationship, and OMG what kind of girl does he think I am now, and blah blah blah. He’s since stopped talking to me because I freaked. Here we are a bit later, and I just had a pregnancy scare. Had I been pregnant, I would have had an abortion. If I’d actually been facing an abortion, I would have called and told him. Would that have been the right thing to do?
I wouldn’t have asked for money or support; I would have told him solely because it would have felt wrong not to. I had some feeling, like he should know—because he has a right to know, you know? I can’t imagine I’m the only woman who’s been faced with a “to tell or not to tell” situation. Weigh in?
Classy Lady
A woman who is pregnant and has decided to have an abortion should tell the guy who knocked her up about the pregnancy and her decision to abort… unless she sincerely believes—or even legitimately suspects—that the guy is gonna bully, badger, and/or do violence to her in an attempt to prevent her from choosing abortion.
Guys need to know when they’ve dodged a bullet, CL. Being made aware that he came this close to 18 years’ worth of child support payments can lead a guy to be more cautious with his spunk—and, in some cases, more likely to support choice.
Take the guy you fucked: He needs to know that not all birth control methods are foolproof and not every woman who claims to be on birth control is telling the truth and/or being diligent about taking those pills every day. Hearing that almost-a-daddy bullet whiz past his head may convince him to put on that condom the next time he’s fucking a woman he isn’t serious about, even if she is (or claims to be) on birth control.
And… um… gee. This bit is going to get me scratched off NARAL’s Christmas card list, which will be a real bummer (last year’s card was great: “The Crusades, the Inquisition, clerical sex-abuse scandals—all of this could have been prevented. Happy holidays from your friends at NARAL”), but I gotta be me. A guy—a good, decent, nonabusive guy—should be told about an impending abortion so he can, if he feels the abortion is a mistake, make a case for keeping the baby. It’s still the woman’s choice in the end—there should be absolutely no question about that—but the fetus, if not the uterus, is his, too. It’s only fair that the same guy who would be on the hook for child support payments if you decide to go through with the pregnancy be heard out before you follow through on your decision to end it.
I’m a 24-year-old mostly straight girl with a great GGG boyfriend. My problem is with an ex-boyfriend. We met when I was on a break from school. A few months after we got together, I went back to finish my degree in a different state. He was wary about a long-
distance thing, but I wanted to try it, and I made promises about our future that I probably shouldn’t have. Then the day after we broke up, one of my ex-boyfriends died. I was a total mess for months and completely incapable of dealing with the breakup, which was hard for the guy I’d just broken up with. We wound up ending things on a really bad note.
But it’s still not over. He hasn’t ever gotten over our relationship, and every few months he calls or e-mails with some new issue or wanting to talk. He’s been verbally abusive, and I often want to cut off contact, but because of the death of my other ex-boyfriend, I’m really scared about losing contact with exes. He told me he almost killed himself a couple of years ago; I don’t know if it’s true, but I can believe it. He accused me of raping him—saying that he’d consented to sex with the understanding that we’d be together forever, and when we broke up, I violated the terms of the agreement under which he had consented to have sex with me. Now he’s demanding that I admit to having raped him and threatening to post that I raped him on my Facebook wall.
I don’t know what to do. I have no interest in getting back together, but I know I hurt him and I feel responsible. I’d do a lot of things differently in hindsight, but I don’t think I’m a rapist. I know this sounds like a typical crazy-ex story, and I should probably just cut him off, but that feels wrong and I’m worried about him.
Freaked Out Feeling Stuck
Everyone you’ve ever dated—including the boy you’re with now—is fated to die. (You, too, FOFS.) Which means that, as the years grind on, you will eventually lose contact with each and every one of your ex-boyfriends, should you be fortunate enough to outlive them all. You will also one day lose contact with your current boyfriend, if you stay together, or he will one day lose contact with you if you precede him in dropping dead. It might help you cope with the coming inevitable losses, FOFS, if you cut your crazy ex out of your life now, while he’s still alive. Think of it as an exercise in letting go.
Stop taking his calls, stop returning his e-mails, and block him on Facebook. You can urge him—in one final e-mail—to move the fuck on already, to get help, and to get a grip. Tell him that you’re both too young to waste the rest of your lives processing a failed relationship, and you can add, perhaps in a P.S., that consensual sex in the early stages of a relationship—the stage at which dreamy, ill-advised discussions about a shared future are most common—does not retroactively become rape should that relationship end.
Finally, FOFS, while your ex sounds nutty and vindictive, your reasons for staying in touch with him are slightly batshit. People lose contact with exes all the time. Get over it. If you’ve convinced yourself that hashing shit out with your manipulative ex is the compassionate, loving thing to do, you’re wrong—it’s not helping him and it’s making you miserable. Or so you say. The longer you go on helping your ex pick at his scabs, the more you look like the kind of controlling, vindictive ex who doesn’t really want her exes to get over her.
HEY, EVERYBODY: There’s a bill moving through the state legislature in Tennessee that would make it a crime for a teacher to say the word “gay.” If this bill passes, a bullied gay kid wouldn’t be able to go to a teacher or school administrator for help—as if things weren’t already hard enough for gay kids in the Bible Belt. More info at www.wesaygay.com.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
What kind of caretaking did FOFS think she owed the guy she just broke up with? I think calling her vindictive is a little much, but certainly she seems to relish controlling people by “caring” for them.
There’s a petition on the wesaygay website. They’re looking for 2500 signatures, they’re almost at 2300 now. Please go check it out!
Thank you!
I don’t think a guy like the one in CL’s letter has any right to know about her decision to abort. The fetus is not his. This is about her body and it’s her choice alone. She would be seriously mistaken to tell him about it unless she honestly needed for herself to know what his wishes were. By all means tell him afterwards if you feel that would be safe for you and you want to educate him as Dan describes.
Yes, after the baby is born then it’s his responsibility. But he already made his choice when he came in her so he can’t complain.
“It’s only fair that the same guy who would be on the hook for child support payments if you decide to go through with the pregnancy be heard out before you follow through on your decision to end it.”
No, it’s not. Of course some men think this. And I can see why their puny man brains think this is a logical argument. But it’s not. You know why? Because men and women aren’t equal and they’re not the same. A baby in a woman’s body is IN HER BODY. All a man had to do to was blow a load once. This is not an equal contribution, no matter how “good,” “decent” and “non-abusive” the man is.
Life isn’t fair and it’s not even. Women don’t get to make as much money as men. They don’t get to be as physically strong. They don’t get to wave dicks around. And men don’t get to decide whether a woman should get an abortion, and they certainly don’t ‘deserve’ to know what a woman’s choice is.
Would I tell my boyfriend, who I love? Sure. But not because I think it’s moral or “fair.” Because I love him and he’s my partner. Following this reasoning, I get the argument that it might be smart to tell a guy to scare the shit out of him, and maybe make him think he should have safer sex. But do I think Dan is right to say that “it’s only fair” and that a woman SHOULD tell a man, so he can “make a case for keeping the baby?” Hell the fuck no.
(ESPECIALLY because his reason for this is that “men have to pay child support.” Ah, so familiar: another law being used to tell me what I can and can’t do with my body! How progressive.)
“It’s only fair that the same guy who would be on the hook for child support payments if you decide to go through with the pregnancy be heard out before you follow through on your decision to end it.”
No, it’s not. Of course some men think this. And I can see why their puny man brains think this is a logical argument. But it’s not. You know why? Because men and women aren’t equal and they’re not the same. A baby in a woman’s body is IN HER BODY. All a man had to do to was blow a load once. This is not an equal contribution, no matter how “good,” “decent” and “non-abusive” the man is.
Life isn’t fair and it’s not even. Women don’t get to make as much money as men. They don’t get to be as physically strong. They don’t get to wave dicks around. And men don’t get to decide whether a woman should get an abortion, and they certainly don’t ‘deserve’ to know what a woman’s choice is.
Would I tell my boyfriend, who I love? Sure. But not because I think it’s moral or “fair.” Because I love him and he’s my partner. Following this reasoning, I get the argument that it might be smart to tell a guy to scare the shit out of him, and maybe make him think he should have safer sex. But do I think Dan is right to say that “it’s only fair” and that a woman SHOULD tell a man, so he can “make a case for keeping the baby?” Hell the fuck no.
(ESPECIALLY because his reason for this is that “men have to pay child support.” Ah, so familiar: another law being used to tell me what I can and can’t do with my body! How progressive.)
Did anyone else notice that the woman in the first letter, if her version of the story is to be believed, was RAPED? C’mon, Dan, how’d you miss that?
Did anyone notice that the woman in the first letter, if her version of the story is to be believed, was RAPED?!?! I’d be more concerned about having been violated than about whether the rapist’s right to know whether he impregnated you…
6 This letter was a letter of the day and there was disagreement then about this being a rape. She doesn’t seem to think it was rape or be worried about it being rape. So, if it seems like rape to you, I think it’s that her sparse description left room for you to fit that reading into it.
@6 ppaatt
The language of the letter is certainly a condensed and confusing account of events. It just sounds like hurried, bad sex. The letter writer doesn’t talk about it like she was raped.
I don’t get it. What’s the point of preventing teachers from using the word “gay”? How does that help the anti-gay movement? Maybe the teacher could be saying “gays suck” or something. Wouldn’t the nazis want that? I’m confused.
And don’t they know gay also means “happy”? And isn’t there an NBA player named Rudy Gay? Didn’t he play for Memphis for a while? Isn’t that ironic?
I don’t get it. How does it help to prevent teachers from saying the word “gay”. What if the teachers want to say something like “gay people are evil” or some other shit like that? Would they get in trouble too? Wouldn’t the Tennessee nazis want that though?
And also, don’t they know gay means “happy”. Or are they all at 4th grade level in the South and simply can’t speak English good?
And isn’t there an NBA player named Rudy Gay? Doesn’t he play for Memphis? Is he now going to be de-facto illegal?
I’m very confused.
I’m not sure who is crazier, FOFS or her hateful ex. How much post-breakup processing does one need to do? She says that they broke up and the day after the break up, she found out about the death of another ex, which so unsettled her that she “was a total mess for months and completely incapable of dealing with the breakup, which was hard for the guy I’d just broken up with. We wound up ending things on a really bad note.” But wait: weren’t they already broken up? It sounds like the ex (the crazy, manipulative one who is still alive) is very good at controlling her.
I can hear the conversation: He: “You need to help me deal with our breakup. You’ve neglected your duty to deal with the break up, so I hate you. Since I had sex with you under the assumption we would be together forever and then you acted in such a way as to change that outcome, I retroactively rescind my consent to have sex with you. You raped me. Take me back or I’ll tell the world (via Facebook) that you are a rapist.”
She: “Oh, I feel so guilty that I was mourning the death of an old boyfriend so I was incapable of showing you the love and support you needed to get over being with me. I must be to blame for your insanity, and if I don’t let you blackmail me I will suffer horrible pangs of guilt when you die as you surely will, because I am cursed and all my ex-boyfriends die, plunging me into emotional trauma.”
Sweet Mary’s afterbirth, as Canuck would say.
These two should write for the soaps. Too bad ABC just cancelled All My Children.
I did not get the impression that CL was raped, and she did not seem to have that impression, either. Crappy hurried back seat sex, yes; rape, no. I personally believe that the only reason for telling the guy about the pregnancy would be so that he could pay his fair half of the bill, which she should have no doubt that he SHOULD. Dan didn’t address that question (there were lots of others to be addressed, and he couldn’t get to it all). IMHO, IF her mind was made up to have the abortion, AND she did not need his financial support (and he seemed unlikely to give emotional support), she had no reason to tell him for one of two reasons: 1) he would be the opposite of supportive, or 2)this news would burden him in a way that did not burden her and would leave him scarred for a long time just because of her need for him to know.
@13 – she didn’t lie about being on BC. But BC doesn’t always work 100%. Guys should use a second method (ie condom) if they really don’t want to be a dad.
FWIW, I don’t think it was rape either – but I think she should learn who her friends are, and avoid drinking with assholes.
It sounds like TN conservatives are setting-up the gay-taboo law to be struck-down by the courts, and to use that as a precedent to also strike-down the prohibition against practicing religion in public school.
Well, JFTR, just because a woman gets drunk and into a backseat with someone to “make out and touch” doesn’t grant cart blanch for the guy to, after asking if she’s on birth control (“Why, yes, I am, why do you a…OOOOMPH!”) suddenly penetrate her w/o explicit consent and void his nuts.
And just because a woman doesn’t CONSIDER it rape(blames herself and/or the situation instead of the guy who penetrated her w/o her overt consent) doesn’t mean it’s not.
Not arguing for or against in this particular case, just saying.
There can be a very thin line between two generally consenting adults just getting carried away and rape. And many grey areas involved, incl. intoxication levels of each/both. And it’s not as if she had TIME to object between him penetrating her and him ejaculating into her.
But in my general experience, even my HUSBAND/LOVER sticking his dick into me w/o clear consent, either via SOBER body language or other expressed willingness to play that game, is a no-no. Much less say some otherwise involved acquaintance
in a backseat.
I signed the petition.
Love,
another flying monkey
The fetus may partly belong to the father, but the pregnancy is all the woman’s. The day that he can pull the baby out of her womb and pit it into his is the day that he gets a say on whether or not the pregnancy is terminated.
Mike @16
That sounds much too clever.
are y’all watching Glee? there was just a commercial for Google Chrome featuring the It Gets Better Project and Dan and Terry. great googly moogly!
CL – I’m going to call shenanigans on this one. I think she wants to tell him about the abortion because she wants to break-up or cause drama in his relationship. If you’ve already made the decision, and it’s to abort, there really is no reason to tell the guy unless you’re asking for financial or emotional support. “Hey, here’s this decision that involves/affects you to some extent, but you have no power to affect or persuade me regarding it, but I just wanted to let you know anyway…” WTF?
Either she’s looking for some sort of assurance for her decision, looking for him to persuade her otherwise (perhaps if he was really into having a kid, she’d rethink her decision to abort, especially if he made promises of undying love and to leave his relationship), hoping for emotional support through the procedure, looking to him to help pay or wants to cause drama in his relationship.
I think it’s the drama issue because she says that she got all emotional about the sex the next day “in relation to his relationship” and was worried about “what kind of girl does he think I am now” — sounds like a homewrecker in the making. Not that he’s any prize either for cheating on his gf, but I just find her whole letter very odd and likely to create drama more than anything.
@22: If I got someone pregnant, and she miscarried or had an abortion, I’d want her to tell me. I’d just like to know.
Okay, maybe this is just my own bitter experience talking, but… why do guys even want a say when the woman has decided to terminate? Isn’t the stereotype that particularly those men who are not planning for it are TERRIFIED of becoming a dad?
I guess I have just never heard of a woman deciding to terminate, and the guy going “No no I want this responsibility!” but I’ve heard plenty of women deciding to keep it, and then men endlessly bitching about child support payments.
My impression from CL’s letter was that she was really just asking the question “should a woman tell a random hookup that he got her pregnant?” I think all the other details were fairly irrelevant. She seems to think that if she had gotten pregnant, she would have had a moral obligation to tell him.
@22 it’s even more removed than that, she isn’t pregnant and never was. This is entirely hypothetical to her, more of a “should a woman inform a man when she’s about to abort a fetus created with his help”
I think, as Dan said, if you’re sure it puts you in no danger, you should inform a guy. But I think you should inform him afterward. More of a “in the future, wrap it up because the next girl might not take care of things like I just did”
but then, as a lesbian, this conversation is even more hypothetical to me than it ever could be to CL
Wow Dan nailed it with FOFS. Precisely the right mixture of wisdom, firmness, and even a little assholery.
Wisdom because we are all going to die. I always say: Tell me a story with a happy ending. There is no such thing.
Firmness because this guy needs to be cut off last week. This would border on stalking if she wasn’t egging him on the whole way.
Assholery because she really has some latent batshitcraziness that is helping to perpetuate this thing. The girl has not even defriended the ex on Facebook. I call flowersand.
As for CL, I had a similar question come up in one of my classes. What are the moral and legal duties of a pregnant woman to father? Dan gets an “A”.
He gets right to the nut in 333 words! Not as fast as the one thump thunder but pretty fast: “Guys need to know when they have dodged a bullet.” Brilliant argument!
w/r/t the TN bill: obviously it’s bigoted in the saddest, grossest way, and obviously it would prevent teachers from helping protect bullied students.
Besides, that, however, it is unworkable, bad policy written by someone who hasn’t seen in the inside of a K-12 classroom in decades. Kids call each other “gay” CONSTANTLY. This is unacceptable, disruptive behavior. If teachers are not allowed to explain what the word means and why its pejorative use is unacceptable, the behavior will continue. If students see that teachers condone homophobic teasing (by not engaging with it for fear of running afoul of the law), the behavior will escalate. This is bad for gender non-conforming students, clearly, but it’s also bad for classroom management, something you’d think TN legislators might give the slightest shit about (unlike, say, those bullied kids).
Everyone’s assuming that CL actually had an abortion, and she didn’t – she had a “scare,” which makes her all the more batshit for obsessing about this.
FOFS, you need to cut all contacts with your ex NOW. Do not try to convince him that you are not a rapist. Do not argue with him at all. He has you exactly where he wants you: feeling guilty. And he will continue to manipulate you with his twisted logic, feeding on your guilt and sympathy, until you do everything he wants. Please, please, leave.
Turn about is fair play. FOFS manipulated the live-ex into a long distance relationship he didn’t want by making promises she couldn’t or more likely didn’t want to keep. He took a chance on her, possibly against his better judgment, relying/trustjng her assurances/commitments and got badly burned because of it. I find it interesting that she got more bent out of shape by the death of a former boyfriend than by the break up with what the day had been current boyfriend. WTF
Sounds more like she had already moved on and finally got around to giving the news to the live exBF. I think a lot of people would be bitter and bewildered by her actions. The live exBF can’t get closure because a former boyfriend dies (just how may boyfriends ago was he) and he finds out just how little he meant to her. Either she truly messed him up or he’s getting some payback for the pain she inflicted on him. I call BS on FOFS.
Screw “gay,” us queers are good at making up new words. We picked “partner” in place of “husband” and “wife” and the straights liked it so much they stole it. Tennessee doesn’t “gay” they can just start a new trend instead. I vote for “crooked.”
@10 – the bill isn’t so much about the word “gay” as it would be prohibiting teachers to discuss homosexuality at all. And that’s for 9th grade and lower. They could talk about straight sex in health class, but not anything else.
I’m not sure I understand the mindset of people who want to read rape into the first letter. Could it have been rape? Sure. All you have to do is read in that she withheld consent but that he did it anyways.
But if we’re reading things in, then it’s equally easy to read in a story where both consented, both were into it, both wanted it, and then both woke up in the morning a little chagrined. That’s not rape — that’s college.
Hell, if we’re reading things in, why not read in that she initiated the sex? It’s every bit as likely as the “rape” interpretation — and I’ve known more than a few girls who get horny and aggressive when they’ve had a few. That’s not rape — if anything it’s the opposite.
All we really know is that the sex was bad. One pump? That’s some rotten sex. But rotten sex, while regrettable, isn’t rape. He doesn’t owe her an apology for rape, or deserve 20 years in the slammer. He owes her some head.
As to why men should know about the pregnancy? Because he might want to know. Reproductive choices are important — but they’re important for everyone. Yes, it’s true that men are non-voting members when it comes to abortion — and that’s as it should be.
But non-voting doesn’t mean that your feelings shouldn’t be taken into consideration, or that you should be treated like some sort of cum-soaked rag that happened to float by. He was involved with making the fetus, and he would be involved in raising it — so he should at least be allowed the courtesy of knowing about its existence, so that he can deal with the situation in whatever way is right for him personally. (For many men, that’s a big sigh of relief — but for some, it may even be a little grieving, as odd as that may sound.)
That right is not absolute — it’s perhaps a courtesy, even. And if the man is likely to be abusive, then it’s a courtesy that can’t be extended. But when it can, it’s important to allow the man to be at least some type of participant in the reproductive choices that affect his life. It’s not something that you have to do — but it’s something I think decent people should do.
Your advice here is shit, Dan. A woman should tell the guy who got her pregnant that she wants to get an abortion so that he has the chance to argue with her and try to talk her out of it because he wants a baby? NO. Why do you think she should subject herself to such arguments after she’s already made the choice to have an abortion? Why should she give the guy a chance to guilt her into something as major as having a child when she doesn’t want to? Why should she give him the chance to blackmail her in any way- to threaten to tell her family or friends that she did something that she has every legal right to do, for example? Just to be fair to the guy? Oh shit, those poor oppressed men. Those poor, poor, oppressed men being denied the rights to fetuses (and thus the uteri they’re in).
I don’t think I’ve ever been pissed off by one of your columns. But this, this is seriously bullshit. AS LONG AS THE FETUS IS INSIDE THE WOMAN, IT ISN’T SOMETHING THE MAN HAS ANY CLAIM TO. It isn’t a born child he has any parental custody of. Just because he contributed the sperm that led to it’s existence doesn’t mean he owns part of it. Jesus fucking christ.
@35: read 29.
I’m not really commenting on her situation, just Dan’s advice to her. Where he says that he thinks a fetus inside a pregnant woman partially belongs to the man who contributed the sperm that made it, and where he says that he thinks it’s only fair to the men for women to tell them they’re decided to have an abortion so that the guy ,”should be told about an impending abortion so he can, if he feels the abortion is a mistake, make a case for keeping the baby.”
Dan need to pull his head out of his ass and realize that it doesn’t FUCKING MATTER if the guy thinks the woman is ‘making a mistake’. HER OPINION IS THE ONLY ONE THAT MATTERS. IF she decides she wants to go ahead and share information with that guy- private information about her choices about HER BODY- it should be because she wants to, not because someone else thinks she needs to give him an opportunity to ‘make a case’ and argue that he knows what’s best for her, all in the name of ‘being fair’ to the guy.
@ FOFS, what a shitty situation. I think anyone who takes those kind of promises seriously after a few months is either delusional or very inexperienced, or both. Break ups are never pretty, especially a situation that you described. Difficult shit happens to us and we make mistakes, sucks, but don’t put up with this guys bullshit. Cut him off, let him get over you, and add that if he can ever just be friends in the distant future that he can contact you via email.
I do find it very strange that you have such an issue with keeping all exes. Exes are just people, each one is only a good as he is, be careful about evaluating someone to a higher status just because you dated them. If they are an asshole why do you want to keep in contact with them?
FOFS: Your ex is seriously batshit.
I say call his bluff, let him call you a rapist on Facebook so long as he posts his entire line of reasoning. He will be laughed off the face of the planet, and maybe he will learn to not be such an insane drama queen.
Cut him off. You have been entirely too nice for entirely too long, particularly in the face of him being verbally abusive.
I think people are being too hard on FOFS. She was traumatized by the death of someone who’d been very close to her — shit, I’ve felt pretty messed up about deaths of people I barely knew, especially if they were young and it was sudden. Not to mention that she’s being emotionally abused by this ex, which just makes the trauma worse.
That’s not to say that everyone isn’t right that she needs to cut the guy off immediately. I just think calling her “batshit” is a little harsh.
Good advice to FOFS, harsh but true, she needs to let go for her own good and her ex’s. I just have one thing to add, if she doesn’t want him posting crazy accusations on her facebook wall she can simply remove him from her friends list, block him and set her page to friends only. I have never understood why people carry on these ridiculous facebook fights, block the motherfucker already!
Classy Lady, your lucky you didn’t get AIDS instead of a pregnancy scare, pretty foolish move to have unprotected sex
Good advice to FOFS, harsh but true, she needs to let go for her sake and her ex’s. I just have one thing to add, if she doesn’t want him to post crazy accusations on her facebook wall all she needs to do is remove him from her friends list, block him and and set her facebook to friends only, which is a good idea to avoid everyone from crazy ex-boyfriends to curious new employers. I’ve never understood why people carry on these ridiculous facebook arguments, block the motherfucker already!
Did someone else write this week’s column? Dan’s answers to both letters are thoughtful, balanced, thorough, and highly logical. There wasn’t one sentence from him that struck me as batshit crazy. Nice to know Dan isn’t always off his rocker. Kudos, dude!
Actual life-revering cultures, like the Buddhists and Hindus, don’t have reservations against abortion like in the US, because they are still patriarchies, and abortion is just another freedom for men.
The US has historically been hostile to the Catholics. But the rise of feminism was time to go easy on them, and observe their sanctity of life. In the US, abortion is a faux issue to undercut the freedom of women.
Telling the potential father is going to give him the opportunity to give the baby a name, and for that reason think it’s ok to abort without telling the father. Giving the baby a name is a shitty thing to do, but I still actually think that it’s fair game to do to the pregnant woman. But I also think it’s fair game that if it isn’t born and it doesn’t have a name, it isn’t murder.
seems to be some man-hating going on in regards to whether or not the sperm-donor should be informed about impending abortions and whatnot. I can’t really complain about it, though, because I don’t really understand the kinds of shit women have to deal with growing up and living in a man’s world. I mean, I’m aware of it, but I can never really understand it. So rage on, ladies, it’s a small price for us men to pay, I guess.
oh yeah, and even trying to call what happened in the first letter “rape” is ridiculous and reactionary. at the risk of busting out a sexist cliche, she obviously wanted it.
I can’t be the only one who sees why Dan put these letters back-to-back. At least I hope I’m not.
Spot-on advice for the both of these, with one footnote. The whole point of Facebook is to keep tabs on somebody without all the time and energy requirements of a full-blown friendship. That’s an ideal place to keep exes. One who needs constant contact under the guise of “further processing” should be seen for exactly what it is.
@19
You can be pretty sure that once the time comes that human technology allows us to pull a fetus out of a womans body (if she wishes an abortion) and bring it to term in a test tube (if the father wishes to keep it) that a large part of the population will be strongly against this.
Even though it would be a perfectly fair and we are almost there with our technology, say 25-50 years. The woman gets all the choice as long as it is in her body, but if she doesn’t want to have a baby the father gets to veto it (and the woman can then ignore it completely and just pay child support like men do today if that is her wish).
But I have a strong suspicion that even when we have the technology and the means all the religious fanatics and women who are not too keen on losing their power over deciding everything regarding if they will children or not when they get pregnant will strongly protest it.
Anyway I agree with Dan on his view that it is only fair to tell the father. It is not his right to know, nor is it the woman obliged to tell him. However it would be fair and it is the decent thing to do, kind of like it’s only fair for a guy to at the very least leave contact details after having sex with a girl so she can reach him in the event that she gets pregnant and she doesn’t get stuck with a child with no father.
@27… flowersand?
Was it rape? Who knows…but even if they were having some hot and heavy makeouts, it’s damn creepy that this guy only asked “are you using birth control” instead of, say, “what’s your STI status” or “would it be OK if I put my penis in you now”. Echoes of the Julian Assange accusations here: even consent to sex isn’t necessarily consent to unprotected sex.
FOFS’s letter rather amazes me. What must it be like to be Dan and to wake up every morning to an in-box full of examples of the ABSOLUTELY CRAZY ways people find to make themselves miserable? Human beings really do have far too much brain power for their own good.
great response to the first letter. men have a right to know (with the abovementioned caveats, of course) and a right to be heard. this doesn’t mean that they should have the last word in decision-making. not being able to see the difference between these two things is being willfully obtuse.
#3) the fetus is his, in the sense that it was made by him. babies are not made by women alone. and #14) burden him? leave him scarred? you mean, in the same way she was by worrying that she was pregnant? great. he ought to know what it’s like.
@6 How is this rape? It sounds like there was a good bit of pre-meditated (even if inebriated) discussion about BC – so again, how is this rape? Sounds like she kept on nursing her crush despite the “no action” policy, and then changed her mind about that too. The guy does sound like douche, and of course, women being as bad as men about wanting what they ‘can’t have’, she is drawn like a moth to the flame, but he’s still just a douche.
@34 Well-reasoned and thoughtful response. Thanks.
“Life isn’t fair and it’s not even. Women don’t get to make as much money as men.”
Because they don’t work as long. Look it up, dear. You are about two decades behind the research. (I know, dear, you really *don’t* want to know, but then you are no better than the Darwin-denying fundamentalists.)
“[Women] don’t get to be as physically strong.”
Blame nature. But men don’t get to have lower centers of gravity. Your oint?
“[Women] don’t get to wave dicks around.”
Again, nature. And men have no uteri.
“And men don’t get to decide whether a woman should get an abortion, and they certainly don’t ‘deserve’ to know what a woman’s choice is.”
This is entirely and completely a construct of laws passed, unlike all the foregoing.
If anything is “unfair” in that list, dear, it would most likely be the one thing imposed by regulatory fiat, as opposed to either market transactions or millions of years of evolution.
But you keep preaching the faith, sister. I am sure dad’s money spent on those Womyn’s Studies classes is well spent.
In no way does asking about someone’s hormonal birth control status constitute negotiating consent for vaginal penetration, protected or not. CL, you may have “freaked” because the CPOS (the way you describe him as “in a relationship” and not “in an open relationship” makes me think he doesn’t have the okay to fool around with people who are not his girlfriend) you’ve been hanging out with raped you (assuming you’re not leaving a whole lot out of the narrative between him asking about your use of hormonal birth control and him penetrating you, like a conversation about whether you want to have penis-in-vagina intercourse, whether you’re going to use additional protection like condoms or withdrawal, etc.). Consenting to making out and manual sex does not mean you consented to vaginal penetration or that you were asking for that particular kind of sex. For everyone who doesn’t think this is rape: if I ask a random stranger on the street if shes on birth control, an answer of “Yes” does not mean she wants to fuck. I know the context is radically different, but unless CL left out an important question like, “Do you want to fuck?” or, “Can I enter you?” her consent was not obtained, and based on her freak-out reaction, I’d hazard a guess that she experienced it as a violation. CPOS raped her, and the fact that anyone thinks that this is normal and especially okay is why we talk about “rape culture”; rape is normalized in our society.
@17: Yes yes yes!
@34: Based on what we know, that is, what was in the letter, the guy penetrated CL without consent and immediately came. That “penetrated CL without consent” part = rape (see #17). Could she be leaving an intervening conversation (even a few words back and forth) out of the story? Absolutely. But that requires reading in to the letter; if one takes it at face value, it was rape. And her reaction suggests that she processed it as rape.
@47: From what is it obvious that she wanted it? Being drunk (I don’t actually think that this categorically precludes consent, but it’s part of the consideration)? Answering the question, “Are you on birth control?” Freaking out the next day? I agree she wanted to make-out and get fingered and feel him up/jerk him off. In no way do any of those mean she wanted to be penetrated and ejaculated-in.
@51: And consent to one kind of sex isn’t consent to any/all kinds of sex.
@53,54 mmw1
“it was made by him”
So the fuck what? How does that give him any rights during the pregnancy? Men have a right to be heard? That’s an entitled thing to say. You seriously think that the guy in this letter, the guy who basically spilled some bodily fluid in this woman by accident and without a care in the world except his momentary desire, that that guy deserves even a second thought from this woman?
@58 et al: Can you conclusively prove that FOFS obtained explicit verbal consent to every step of every sexual encounter she ever had with her ex? If not, she’d better wear that rapist label her ex wants to pin on her with pride.
@4 I am one of those puny-man-brained individuals–complete with the dick-waving capability–of which you wrote. I am also a staunch 3rd wave feminist [with a hint of misandry even], so I hope that you will take the following to heart:
You are a ridiculous, reactionary twat.
Guys, if you want to lessen the chances of ever hearing “I may be pregnant,” do everybody a favor and take responsibility for your own fertility. It is not fair that the burden of birth control lay so completely on the woman’s shoulders. Man up, gentlemen, and use a condom, get snipped, or dig yourself into this website http://www.malecontraceptives.org/
If only there was some way for men and women to plan families together. That way men could be “heard” in the decision making process. They could discuss whether to have a child in the first place. After the baby is born they could have parental “rights.”
@58: in context, asking about BC is a shorthand way of saying “I would like to fuck you, is that all right with you?” That’s what he’s asking; why else would someone ask like that in that situation? If she didn’t want to have sex, or didn’t want to have sex without a condom, she could easily have said so. It does take a minute to remove the clothing and get lined up and put some spit on your dick and her pussy.
Maybe she regretted it afterwards, or maybe there was a misunderstanding, but honest misunderstandings happen. They’re not the same as rape.
I agree with Dan that a guy who gets a woman pregnant and who is not a bully/jerk/threat should have a chance to talk to the woman about what he wants her to do with the pregnancy. I see no contradiction between saying that it is 100% her decision because it’s her body and saying that it would be good for her to listen to what he has to say.
As for FOFS, she not only absolutely needs to cut off contact with this asshole, but she also ought to speak to a lawyer about what to do if he really does try to accuse her of rape. I mean, there is no question at all that what happened is NOT rape, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t cause trouble for her, and there’s no guarantee that he won’t change his story and make up an even worse accusation.
#46, it can’t hurt you to try to understand it. You have to realize that it wasn’t long ago that women were pretty much considered property, a husband could rape his wife if he felt like it with no legal actions taken against him, etc… There’s a whole ugly (and recent) history behind these feelings, it isn’t just ‘man-hating’.
It isn’t much to ask to be in control of your own body and what happens in it.
You (and Dan) just need to appreciate how women are being treated even today. There are a lot of people in this country actively trying to chip away at the right we have over our own bodies. You need to appreciate that, and you need to realize how women who dare to get abortions are treated- despite the fact that it is our legal right. Dan doesn’t seem to get that women can/ are treated like shit, lose relationships with their friends and families, and often subjected to abuse if they dare to disclose they’re considering an abortion. He doesn’t seem to appreciate how many women are abused by their significant others- especially during a pregnancy- because those assholes think they have some kind of ownership over the woman’s body.
To say it’s only fair to the man to disclose the pregnancy is to ignore all the facts, and ignore the way women are treated in society.
It isn’t much to ask that you realize that a traditionally oppressed group doesn’t owe shit to those who have traditionally oppressed them in the name of ‘being fair’.
“Void his nuts”, nice. Hey 17, thanks for my new favorite term!
CL hadn’t wanted sex with him when she was sober; if she had stayed sober, she would never have wanted sex with him. But: it is not legally rape to use alcohol or drugs to get a girl to consent. Since she was able to answer questions, she was not incapacitated. I don’t see how you persuade a jury that it’s rape.
It’s scummy to press the advantage when the other person isn’t thinking clearly. But quite common. See: “Candy is dandy / But liquor is quicker” (Ogden Nash).
On the other hand, the great Mignon McLaughlin wrote: “The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.” So there you go.
The Tennessee legislation does not prohibit the word gay being spoken, and it does not prohibit any student of any age from discussing their sexual orientation, the orientation of their parents, etc. It doesn’t prohibit teaching about / talking of someone who was/is gay. In a literal sense, it prohibits a [public] elemantary or middle school from “instruct[ing] or provid[ing] materials referencing any sexuality other than heterosexuality”
It’s a largely meaningless bill (my middle or elementary schools never “instructed” me about homosexuality or provided me any materials discussing the matter) but the real intention is to move the center of the debate over gay rights further to the right. The R’s may end up conceding on this one in order to make a gain somewhere else. This is part of the republican game plan (essentially, legislation in bad faith).
I know we all take Dan’s word as higher than any gospel, but for gawd’s sake, read the bill. Nothing hurts protestation of a bad bill like ignorance of the same.
Oh.My.God. A highly politically correct, intolerant leftist telling women that they should inform the father of a baby of its existence, rather than trotting out that old “MY BODY MY CHOICE” argument? Actual thought and consideration for the father, pointing out that if a woman chooses to keep the baby the father is fucked for support for 18 years regardless of his wants, BUT if he wants to keep the kid and Mother Uterus wants to abort it the daddy has NO FUCKING SAY WHATSOEVER? Jesus…I need to lie down…I didn’t think the bigoted left had the ability to think logically beyond all the rhetoric…
@58
the “freakout” the next day wasn’t because they had sex, it was because he was in a relationship and she was worried about his opinion of her.
and i say she wanted it because she was in the fucking car with him, most of their clothes were off (if not she would have had to remove her pants after he asked about the birth control), and they had already progressed pretty far sexually when he asked “Are you on birth control?”
that question, in that context, is so FUCKING OBVIOUSLY asking to take things to the next level (i.e. penetration). nutting in her after one pump was a shitty thing to do, but guess what? those are the risks she’s taking by being sexually active and getting half naked with a guy in a fucking car and then saying “Yes i’m on birth control” when sex is the obvious next step in the situation.
If men don’t get any say in the pregnancy discussion because “they knew what they were getting into when they had sex”, then this woman sure as FUCK wasn’t raped. she knew there was an inherent risk of this guy being a one-pump chump when she decided to get sexual with him in the car. she knew what he meant when he asked about birth control.
she decided the pleasure of the situation was more important than the risks, and she had worries about her reputation the morning after. it’s part of being an adult and accepting responsibility for the situations that you chose to put yourself in.
@69 (heh): You’re totally right about moving the Overton window.
But if your middle and elementary school didn’t teach about orientation along with human biology and sex ed, it should have. I don’t know if Tennessee schools currently do. Probably most of them don’t. But this isn’t meaningless: good teachers, in the course of teaching about human sexuality, should talk about sexual orientation, and this bill is a way to get them in trouble.
OK, people who are getting so bent out of shape about a woman’s having the sole right to choose:
Yeah, it’s the woman’s choice, and the woman’s choice alone. She has the only vote. That does not mean that the man has no say at all. If a guy gets someone pregnant, he is involved. There are circumstances where the woman has no obligation to inform the father of the child, and it’s not an iron-clad law that she must tell the father in any case, but it’s his potential kid too, and a man is entitled to his feelings.
@66, Sure, women have been treated like crap for millennia, but I don’t see that there’s any reason to let this poison our relationships. It’s absurd to just abandon ourselves to misandry, and to claim that we are atoning for centuries of inequality by treating men is if they were not entitled to any reproductive rights of their own.
Bottom line, yes, the woman is the only one who gets to decide what happens to a pregnancy, but it’s unrealistic and unkind to assert that while the guy has the right to have the sex that creates the pregnancy and the responsibility to pay for the child if it is born, he has no right to express his feelings on the issue or even to know if the issue exists. I guess I’m some kind of stone-age misogynist, but I think that’s unfair.
Oh my god this is so dumb! You don’t need to ask someone if you can put your penis inside them to obtain consent. You’re making out, you ask about birth control, the clothes start coming off… If you don’t want to get fucked then say “don’t fuck me.” If you are on a date and someone leans into kiss you, you don’t allow yourself to be kissed and then say you were sexually assaulted, you turn your head.
At no point in time does CL even hint that it could be rape. All of those nuts that are claiming it was rape are reading way too much into the letter. Yes, rape is bad and should never happen, but I refused to get a handwritten notarized letter each time before sex. Stop jumping to conclusions that have nothing to do with the question!
My read on the letter, was that they were friends, and they liked each other, but agreed that nothing sexual would happen between them because he was in a relationship. Then one night during a drunken escapade, they hooked up, briefly, and the next day she regretted it. She freaked because it was against her moral code to screw a guy in a relationship, and she broke that code, and helped him cheat. Later, she thought she might be pregnant as a result and freaked again, but it turned out to be false.
Her question, was again about her questionable morals, and whether she should tell the sperm donor IF she turned out to be pregnant. My answer to that would have been “No”, given how she already freaked out in front of him once before.
This is what’s wrong with the focus on consent/rape.
It allows 71/74/75 to pretend that since she didn’t scream or push him away, this was a fun “hookup”, and “she wanted it.” No it wasn’t, and she didn’t. It was bad sex, that she arguably consented to. If that’s what you think of as a fun hookup, stay away from my friends.
#70, the man has no say in what goes on with the woman’s body. If there is a baby born, then it is a minor in need of parental support.
Until then, there is no separate child, only the fetus inside the woman. It’s the woman’s body, try to understand that. It isn’t somehow shared property just because the man came inside her. His sperm doesn’t grant him ANY ownership over her. I think it’s rather sick that you think the man should have a say in what sort of medical choices she should make. And then what, if they were to want different things? Force the woman to go through a pregnancy and give birth against her will? Maybe have her go to court and try to argue that she should control what happens in her body, or just default over to what the guy wants because women are lesser in your eyes anyway? Comments like yours just show how much people like you DON’T view women as equals, but rather lesser beings who don’t deserve the same rights over their bodies that you do. How would you like the idea of being forced to give up part of your body against your will? How about being forced to donate even blood or bone marrow if you didn’t want to? You wouldn’t like that, would you? You’d view it as a gross imposition to have others decide on what happens with your body- even if the others had a connection, say the mother of your child demanding you donate your kidney to the kid, and you not wanting to for whatever reason (say a valid health reason, or you wanting to donate that organ to someone else).
Classy lady is a filthy whore. A dirty, dirty whore with a lot of churching up to do. This vile whore needs to be cast out or stoned.
Freaked out has hundreds of ex boyfriends, and is a filthy whore, too. Perhaps this stalker ex will set her on the path to godliness, but my money’s on her getting stabbed/slapped around for being a “loose woman” and finding dog after those trials by fire. Whore.
People are creating their own rape narrative for CL’s letter. They’re assuming she’s omitted nothing and given an exhaustive play-by-play of every moment leading up to this guy penetrating her, even though the letter doesn’t read that way and she doesn’t mention anything about fearing that she was raped or even having felt particularly pressured to consent. I guess people love to write about rape.
#73, chicagogirl, until there is no likely danger to the woman who wants to have an abortion, her right to her privacy is more important than the man’s desire to know if the woman he had sex with may be getting an abortion. It is WAY more important. That isn’t ‘misandry’, it is acknowledging the imbalance in power, the way women who get abortions in this society are treated, and so on.
A man is entitled to his reproductive rights, but his reproductive rights end where the woman’s start. It isn’t reasonable to say, “Well, he could get stuck with child support so he should at least be entitled to inside information about what the woman is doing with her body”. Child support is to support a separate little person he helped create. But until there is a pregnancy carried to term, there is no separate little person in need of parental support- there is only the woman and her body. The answer is for men to take more responsibility in using birth control, and to acknowledge that sometimes birth control fails so he should at least have some dialogue going with who he has sex with about what she would do in the event that the birth control failed (and then not engaging in sex if he couldn’t bear whatever her choice would be). The answer is NOT for women to give up any of their privacy regarding their medical choices, or any control of their bodies. THAT is what is ‘fair’, ‘fair’ is NOT asking the traditionally oppressed group to try to make concessions to try to be ‘more fair’ to the group who has traditionally oppressed them.
@Erica P/#76
My personal take is that it isn’t rape because both parties share equal responsibility. 99% of what happened was entirely shared responsibility, the first/last thrust was the whip cream on the milkshake, as it were.
My biggest problem with the “woman must explicitly consent” standard for rape is that it strips women of any responsibility – and therefore any agency – for the outcomes. Additionally, in my view “harm” must be done. Physical harm, humiliation, emotional abuse, intimidation/coercion, whatever. Some bad must result. Because otherwise, I and any man I know has been raped several times over when I didn’t ask a woman explicitly to have sex with me – and of course that sounds laughable, but the only real difference is the presumption (by you) that man have *inherently* more power – both physically and mentally/emotionally – in sexual negotiations
@76
oh please. I’m not pretending she was enjoying it, I don’t have to, because it’s pretty obvious from the letter she knew what was going on and she was down for it. the only way the guy could’ve been MORE obvious would be to have an index card ready with “PENETRATION? YES/NO” written on it and a magic marker for her to circle her answer.
obviously no girl’s gonna be happy with a one-pump fuck, but life ain’t fair. and don’t worry, if i’m in the same situation with one of your friends, i’ll make sure to put a condom on before i fuck her. i’ll even bring the aformentioned index card so that i can be extra sure i’m not raping her.
Criminey, fetish@81. I’m one of the people saying it’s NOT legally rape.
They may have “shared responsibility” in your words, fine. But they did not share fun. He got the fun part. She got the not-fun part. Not the Same As Rape. And Much More Common.
@82, do you think that if he had asked her “Hey, do you want to go back to my place and fuck,” she would have said “Hell, yeah!”? No, that question would have “spoiled the mood.” He took advantage of her state. Not rape, but not cool.
As a woman and a feminist, I fully agree with Dan’s advice to CL. Even though I fully endorse every woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants to see a pregnancy through, I think the man who got her pregnant ought to have some say in the matter. I get that it’s unfair for a man to be liable for 18 years child support if she choses to have the kid, but has no legal say in the matter before it’s born. But in this case I believe a woman’s right to chose what happens to her body trumps the unfairness. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got at the moment.
So yes, I think men do have a right to know if they got a woman pregnant, and they do (or should) have the right to voice their opinion on what should be done about the pregnancy. But the pregnant woman does and should have the final say.
I think an exception can be made for a sex worker who was unfortunate enough to get pregnant on the job.
@81 “he penetrated me” = he made the decision.
If she said “I sat on his cock,” then she would be the one making the decision. And the guy knew from many conversations that she had decided not to have sex with him. So your analogy to all the times you had sex without explicit consent does not apply, unless your partner was on the record as saying many times that he/she did not want to have sex with you.
@73 chicago girl
I don’t think you’re a misogynist. It’s good that you think enough of men that it’s unkind to keep them uninformed of a pregnancy. I think you are overly generous in your estimation of men in general though.
When people refer to a man as having a right to know and a right to be heard before a woman decides whether to terminate then they are going way beyond simple courtesy. This implies some sort of remedy the man would be entitled to if he isn’t brought into the decision. I just can’t accept that. Her body, her choice. She doesn’t have to listen to anything any man has to say. Yes, it would be nice if he was the kind of man whose opinion mattered to her. But don’t assume it to be the case.
I’ll keep coming back to the guy in this specific case. Here is a guy who mindlessly sprayed his semen out into the world like a salmon. Had it landed on an egg and caused a pregnancy then people are saying he has rights. I think that’s bullshit. This is no better than people forcing women to look at fetal sonograms before they can have an abortion.
Men already have reproductive rights. Go out, find a life partner who wants kids, plan to get pregnant together, and have a family. But don’t expect much respect or courtesy if you behave like a salmon. Definitely don’t expect rights. Just expect to be held responsible. That’s fair.
@ 6 – If that description is rape then lawdy, my whole sexual career throughout my 20’s was one big rape! Geesh. She told him she wasn’t going to do anything with him – and that was NOT in a sexual situation but to keep up the pretense of “being a good girl” – because he was in a relationship and then booze was brought in and inhibitions went down and she got her wish (which was to fuck him – but stupidly didn’t use a condom. Stupid, stupid, stupid and the dumbass AND the other dumbass with the penis BOTH need to be frog marched to the nearest STD clinic to make sure loverboy isn’t spreading a bit of chlamydia around, or have folks forgotten about THAT one?!).
It sounds like the sex should win the crown for lousy sex of the millenium as well. How old is this kid? 17 or so. He busted a nut after one thrust AND he has a girlfriend as well.
That letter couldn’t have been more ridiculous and a non-issue. I understand teenagers have sex all the time but come on, the FIRST piece of advice for BOTH of them is to use a condom! Pregnancy is the least of a teenager’s worries nowadays. As mentioned before chlamydia can cause infertility and there is a new strain of gonnorhea that is resisting antibiotics left and right – or does Dan bother to keep up with research in his job as a SEX columnist?
The last letter is infuriating simply because that guy throwing the word rape around as some mealy mouth attempt at manipulation is a dickheaded asshole! That guy needs to be frog marched to the nearest rape support center and sat down and educated on WHAT exactly IS rape. What a little prick. It sounds like she is pretty full of shit herself too. Also, ditto on my sexual career being rape in my 20s again if that dumbass’ definition of rape is anything to go by: “she swore she’d be with me forever and I had sex because of that and therefore I’ve been raped, boo hoo.” What a piece of shit! You know, about 98% of American men better start telling the truth when picking up women now because it looks like a hell of a lot of “rape” is going on! The amount of times I’ve heard the word, “love” thrown at me when what they really meant was “fuck” should have had them arrested for “rape” on the spot.
Where DO these shit heads come from. That letter sounds fake as hell, by the way.
What? Did Dan deliberately choose the most immature, idiotic, asinine, imbecilic letters he could dig up from the bottom of the barrel to post today? Oh, wait, the barrel has to be made of something!
Holy tempest in a teapot, Batman!!! There REALLY isn’t enough info in the first letter to be debating consent. The letter writer doesn’t seem to be concerned about it and did not give us enough information to debate this point.
The second letter writer might also want to reevaluate her attitude to exes in general. There is this notion in the culture that it’s somehow good or noble to be friends with all of your exes. It’s nice when it works out that way, but often it doesn’t. And if being friends after the break-up doesn’t come naturally then both parties should just walk away and not try to force it. Don’t forget, they call it a break-up because it’s broken!
#77 Oh, would you shut up already? You started out bad and you’re just getting worse with every post. Dan explicitly wrote that the woman should feel no obligations to tell if “she sincerely believes—or even legitimately suspects—that the guy is gonna bully, badger, and/or do violence to her in an attempt to prevent her from choosing abortion”
Yet you keep going on and on and on with your stupid straw-men arguments about how Dan and everyone else who does not agree with you wants pregnant women to be locked up in dungeons and have their bonemarrow sold on the black market and blahblahblah.
Only “a good, decent, nonabusive guy” should be told. And there are plenty of those out there, even if you are to blind with rage to see them. And what kind of woman has sex with a guy whom she thinks would take control of her body, in the first place anyway?! You?! You can’t have your cake and eat it, you know. You cant have sex with a guy and maybe even be in a relationship with a guy like and equal and then when you get knocked up, treat him like he’s some kind of Neanderthal POS who wants nothing more than to continue millennia of abuse and should be treated like a dangerous psycho until the abortion is over afterwards things go back to normal.
“I know this sounds like a typical crazy-ex story, and I should probably just cut him off, but that feels wrong and I’m worried about him.”
Feeling wrong about cutting the crazy ex off and being worried about the crazy ex is part of EVERY crazy ex story. Those are the kinds of feelings crazy exes use to manipulate people.
The dude’s verbally abusive and is threatening to defame you. Even if you did hurt him when you broke up, there’s not justification for him treating you this way and there’s no reason to stay in contact with someone who treats you this way.
@58 – Or maybe the letter writer was leaving out unnecessary/personally embarrassing information. Maybe she kept chanting “put it in me” and he asked about birth control because he was looking for an excuse not to. Maybe she actually raped him, because he’s 70 pounds lighter than she is and she was just throwing him around.
The point is, we don’t have all the facts. We only have what she wrote us about. And what she wrote us about was concern about how she should handle a pregnancy scare.
So please, don’t accuse people of rape when you don’t know what actually happened. Because, as Dan has argued before, false accusations of sexual assault is a form of sexual assault. You have one paragraph from a possibly edited letter written about an event that seems to have happened a few weeks to a few months ago and does not bring up the subject of rape. Stop jumping to conclusions and remember that people are innocent until proven guilty.
@86 She did not claim to have told him anything “many times”. She said she told him which sounds like once to me.
She didn’t say, “I will never want to have sex with you though I may want to snog at some point.” She said she told him “nothing could happen”. Once they were getting racy in a car, he had every reason to think she had changed her mind that nothing could happen.
I am another who really objects to this easy victimization of women.
Yes, men can and do ply women with alcohol to get what they want. It is also true that women will drink in order to more easily do something they want to do but feel they shouldn’t.
For all we know, it could have been her idea that they go out for drinks.
@84
she very well might have, it’s obvious her regret is of the morning after variety, worrying after the fact that he might think less of her or whatnot, which sucks. but nowhere did she imply in her letter that she didn’t want to have sex with the guy.
but i guarantee she didn’t want to have sex so brief and disappointing with an added pregnancy scare. if he had lasted longer and pulled out, the only problem would be regret of a drunken hookup.
in short, it wasn’t bad sex because he didn’t get a clear, written statement of consent, it was bad sex because he lasted one pump and came inside her.
@ 57, Dear, what is with the over-use of the word, “dear” when responding to another’s logically written letter.
Hormones getting to you, dear?
There is no way it was rape.
Clearly, someone should offer an invitation for sexual intercourse before you screw them. They may offer that invitation verbally. Or, they may allow a situation where they put their exposed genitals in close proximity to your exposed genitals.
If you don’t want to have sex with someone, at some point before you’re waiving your naked genitals in the immediate vicinity of their naked genitals, you should specify the conditions under which you are willing to have sex – with a condom, without a condom, not at all, missionary only, whatever.
Dressing slutty isn’t asking for it. Getting drunk isn’t asking for it. Going to someone’s car or apartment isn’t asking for it. Making out isn’t asking for it. Getting naked isn’t asking for it. Even oral sex isn’t asking for (more) it. But god damn, putting your naked genitals next to their naked genitals has to be considered some sort of invitation. Take care of the communication before then!
@93 – I withdraw “many times.” Once is enough, since he still was in the relationship, so her explicit condition had not been removed. Even if she invited him out, that’s not evidence she had changed her mind.
@97 You might be amazed to learn that you can get from clothed genitals to intercourse with just a little pushing fabric out of the way.
Sounds to me like she was surprised when he penetrated her. Maybe an older, wiser woman wouldn’t have been surprised, but I think she was.
#90- Nope, I will not shut up. And you’re exaggerating what I said/ trying to put words into my mouth. Give me a fucking break- if you think what I said translates to anyone “who does not agree with you wants pregnant women to be locked up in dungeons and have their bonemarrow sold on the black market…” you need better reading comprehension.
If a woman hesitates to tell the man who got her pregnant that she wants an abortion, she has NO obligation to tell him. She should make her choice based on what she feels is correct, not because people who aren’t even involved in her life think it’s ‘fair’. Just because he’s “a good, decent, nonabusive guy” doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try to talk her out of what she’s decided to do with her own body- and indeed that is the reason Dan thinks she should tell him, so he has the opportunity to ‘make a case’ and argue with her about why he thinks ‘the abortion is a mistake’. I don’t think women are obligated to subject themselves to that if they don’t want to. And just because he’s a “a good, decent, nonabusive guy” doesn’t mean he won’t become at least emotionally abusive upon finding out the woman he’s with wants to have an abortion.
Why don’t you go back and reread what I posted? And do it without the preconceived notion in your head that I’m a shrieking man-hating harpy. And try to realize that there are women- good decent women- who wouldn’t want to tell their partner that they were having an abortion despite the fact that their partners aren’t controlling psychopaths.
@98 Once she starts making out with him, she is no longer abiding by her “nothing can happen” rule. Something is happening once they are making out. At that point, she has already changed her mind.
He can’t be expected to know that she had undeniably changed her mind about racy backseat make out session but not PIV.
If she invited him out, it’s evidence that he wasn’t plying her with alcohol to manipulate her into sex.
@ 70 – pointless. If “dad” didn’t want to have children then he CAN use birth control just as easily as a woman.
What? Did you not realise that condoms exist? Your “argument” is ridiculous. An accident is different and the two should go from there but if the male has protected himself then what he says “matters” but otherwise, he’s given up his choice by not using birth control.
Even if a woman says she uses the pill, has an IUD and uses spermicidal jelly HE has no proof of any of that so he can use birth control just as easily so stop your whining!
Live and learn and stop whinging and moaning with an illogical, full of shit argument.
@ 53, 85, 95 and others, at the risk of sounding willfully obtuse, what does this right to be heard mean? If I can’t make up my mind, then sure, talking it through with the baby’s father could be beneficial. But if I decided to have an abortion, I’m not going to change my mind, so what’s the point in hearing what the father has to say about it? To give him the false hope that he can change my mind, that he’s participating in the decision making when he’s not? Or are you saying that I shouldn’t even make that decision without consulting the man first and hearing his case or whatever? I am at a loss here.
I think the Savage Love community needs to coin an alternative word for gay, whose first google result will lead to a page with all the information queer youth in Tennessee and elsewhere might ever need.
#102, Dan goes right out and states that he thinks the woman should give the man a chance to ‘make a case’ to not have an abortion, if he thinks she is making a ‘mistake’. I don’t think Dan (or a lot of people commenting here) realize what a paternalistic attitude this is.
Dan straight out says he thinks the fetus somehow belongs to the man also. He seems to think women should set themselves up to be guilted/ bullied/ or otherwise pressured into not having the abortion based on the fact that the man thinks it’s a mistake. Because like you bring up, otherwise what does it matter if we REALLY accept that it is her body and her choice, and that the man doesn’t have part ownership in her uterus now that there’s a fetus in there that he helped make. And Dan (and others commenting here) also seem to be a fairytale world where there will be no negative consequences if the woman disclosed that she’s having/ had an abortion and the man decides that he doesn’t want it.
The same point of view that Dan seems to be upholding here is one of the main reasons it can easily become a bad situation for the woman. If we say that men have partial ownership of the fetus, and if the man is anti-choice (and plenty of guys who come off as ‘good and decent’ do indeed turn out to be against abortion), then what happens? Especially if we start considering the embryo/ fetus a ‘baby’. The guy is going to look at it as the woman doing something with ‘his baby’ that he doesn’t want done. At the very least the woman is setting herself up to be badgered and bullied, potentially emotionally blackmailed.
Dan should have realized that he is in a privileged position here, as a man who will never be pregnant, and he should have asked someone- hey, why not ask someone in NARAL, Dan?- who is more qualified to be offering an opinion on the subject.
@100 Wish I had your confidence that CL was an enthusiastic participant. Maybe she’ll write in and tell us that she had a great time.
#27 and #50-
I can’t find “flowersand” anywhere else on the internet. Unless I’m missing something, I’m going to assume it’s some new nonsense word born of a typo (iphone perhaps?) and start saying it.
Last night my husband bought some bullshit “62% juice” instead of orange juice. Total flowersand
It kind of annoys me that people say the sex is bad just because he came quickly. Even if a guy comes quickly, sex can be great, if he eats her out, fingers her, rubs her clit, or waits to recharge.
What made the sex bad is that she wasn’t enthusiastic about it, and that it doesn’t sound like he cared enough to make it good for her.
@102: I’d want to know. That’s all. I wouldn’t want to change someone’s mind or participate in the decision. I’d just like to know.
@ 107, that’s not the right to be heard or to make a case to keep the child, though. That’s the right to hear / be informed and can be exercised after the abortion has taken place. (But I still suspect that calling it a right is a little extreme…)
@109: Yeah, I don’t think it’s a right. I think Dan was talking more about the case where the woman might want to carry the pregnancy to term if the guy was really interested in raising the kid.
It sounds like what FOFS’s ex needs to hear is that FOFS violated the principle that seems to underly all of Dan’s advice, which is you can a) be slick in a relationship you make your first priority, or b) make a relationship something other than your first priority if you aren’t slick in it, but you can’t be slick in a relationship that isn’t your first priority.
Being relationship-challenged isn’t anything like raping someone. But if his account doesn’t register with the relationship-challenged, then why should it even matter what the aggrieved party says?
I’d like to hear if FOFS went on record admitting she owed it to her ex to abide by the thinnest principle for maintaining a relationship with him, she failed him, and that her valid apology still wasn’t enough for him.
Give him an email admitting she owes her fabulous relationship to the progress she made from the mistake she made with him, and tell him she’s cutting him off because she doesn’t have anything more to give him. Isn’t betting on her good relationship all pluses and no minuses?
He not only has a right to know, but he also has a right to influence the girl’s decision to abort or carry to term. This notion that it is the female’s 100% undeniable right to decide based 100% on her own is just not right. The courts have made it pretty clear that if the baby is born, then the sperm owner will have to contribute financially until the child is an adult. Therefore, the owner of the sperm should have some rights on this big decision.
wow. Its pathetic straight chick drama day. snooze.
What, no third letter?
@113: If the sperm owner doesn’t want to contribute financially, he should be more careful about where he leaves his sperm.
Her body, her choice.
Generally, I agree that speaking with the would-be father is the responsible thing to do, with the exemption of certain contexts, which you seem to take into consideration when you made the statement.
Over all, I do think women need to be upfront with their partners – especially long-term relations – about their feelings on having children. Whether you’re likely to abort or keep it, and your reasons for either, he needs to know. It’s only fair that he get a heads up if he has strong feelings about the issue. I realize that the obnoxiously polarized politicizing of the issue in this country make women reluctant to bring it up, but I honestly think both sides could be saved a lot of grief if they were on the same level going into the situation.
As for the men in this situation, I would ask that you please be very certain you want the responsibility if you really want her to keep it. There are no backsies on babies.
C.L. only has the obligation to reveal medical information to her fling if she has some sort of a trusting relationship with her sexual “partner.” If a fling treats somebody like a “pump and dump” she has no obligation to tell him medical information that he could gossip to other people. That info. is private, and I wouldn’t advise her to tell him unless he was a friend or someone she thought she could trust.
People don’t get “rights” to personal medical information because of a brief fling that does not include friendship or trust. I think the legal obligation for child support has fucked us up as a society. It’s insane to advise a woman (or a man) to trust a fling who has “run for the hills” with personal and private information. This guy doesn’t even want to talk her anymore.
Dan has suggested physical or emotional abuse as only reason why she is not ethically required to reveal her plan to get an abortion. But this is way too low a bar to mandate an obligation to reveal medical information. Let’s say she’s in high school or a small college. This information could get her labeled as a slut and harassed.
Why should a teenager or a young woman be under an automatic obligation to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has refused to talk to her after a one-thrust pump and dump?
She only has an obligation if she is going to bear his child. But if she has a miscarriage after 6 weeks? If she takes the morning-after pill because she skipped her B.C.? If she aborts the embryo or fetus at 8 weeks? She should only tell him if she trusts him not to hurt her with the information. She doesn’t have an obligation to tell him unless they are friends.
Re CL: As far as the question of whether a woman should hear a man out before having an abortion, personally I think it depends on the kind of relationship they have, or don’t have. A long – term partner certainly should be told (can’t imagine keeping a secret like that from someone unless you’re being abused, in which case GTFO of there), and perhaps someone who is a friend with benefits also should be told. But a one night stand who is no longer speaking to you? I see no reason to inform that person at all.
Re FOFS: your former BF is a psycho. Keeping in touch with him will not help at all. DTMFA!
C-chic said: “Whether you’re likely to abort or keep it, and your reasons for either, he needs to know. It’s only fair that he get a heads up if he has strong feelings about the issue.”
I just don’t see it unless they have an actual relationship. Some people have very strong feelings about the morning after pill. They think it’s murder. Does she have an obligation to contact her pump and dump fling before she gets the morning after pill? What if she discovered that her anti-biotics that she’s taking for acne make it likely that her b.c. isn’t working. Does her fling have a right to know and a right to persuade her not to take the morning after pill?
And how does she track this fling down in time? Seeing as he doesn’t even want to talk to her?
People owe people to the degree that they are actually involved in a trusting relationships. Prostitutes don’t owe johns. Random strangers fucking in bathrooms don’t owe each other anything. Flings don’t owe flings, particularly when they have no relationship and don’t talk to each other. And people who aren’t trustworthy aren’t owed information that can be hurtful. There’s a reason medical information is legally private.
I hope Dan will do a whole column on defining rape. His readers surely will not all agree that he’s right, but at least we can avoid comments like we got this week where we’ll all discussing situations when we don’t know what the terms are that we’re disagreeing with.
I see a few issues. One is whether something can be rape if there’s consent at the moment but rape is brought up retroactively when it turns out one has consented under false assumptions. Like, I thought I’d have a good time, but he came after one thrust, or I consented because I thought we’d spend the rest of our lives together, but she broke up with me. Also, I consented, but that was when I thought she’d have an abortion; now that she won’t, I think she raped me, or I consented, but that was when I thought she wouldn’t have an abortion. I take a hard line view. I don’t even think it’s rape when a jerk feeds her a pack of lies, gets her consent, then brags to his frat buddies in the morning. But that’s me. (I’m straight and female, consider myself a feminist, and have disagreed with friends over this issue.)
The next issue is what constitutes consent at the moment. Again, I take the hard line view. I think there should be some effort to say no and make it stick. Just saying nothing can happen before beginning a make-out session isn’t enough, not when there have been a hundred contradictions between that statement and penetration. If it began with “we can make-out, but no penetration, ‘k?” that’s different. With that, there’s definition and negotiation.
I’d also appreciate some education from Dan on the circumstances in which women rape men. If he didn’t want to put his dick inside her, wouldn’t he fight her off and get out of there? If she was stronger than he and overpowering him, wouldn’t he go soft? If she fed him that pack of lies or blackmailed or coerced him, wouldn’t we call that sexual coercion, not rape?
Both the letter-writers are drama queens who had relations with assholes and are now keeping the drama going. All the rest is just white noise. Cut off contact with the guys, deal with your own issues.
@121 Crinoline
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I agree with you about the distinction between rape and just behaving badly. There is a presumption of lying when sex is under consideration. One would be wise to take a guilty until proven innocent approach with new partners if one cares about more than just a one night stand.
“If she was stronger than he and overpowering him, wouldn’t he go soft?”
No. The spine not the brain is responsible for the erection. The mind can get in the way but in general men can be forced to have an erection just by stimulating the penis. Men have been raped by women this way. Teenagers are plagued by unwanted erections. There is a reason for the cliche that “it has a mind of its own.”
This whole, “My body my choice” thing is great, and all. But lets be serious. Yes, if I get pregnant it is ultimately my decision to keep the baby or not. No man can force me to keep it, but why not let him have an opinion on the matter.
I have more male friends than female friends (because while I’m all for strong women, feminazis piss me off). I have seen situations in which men were “stuck with” the one time mistake they made.
I have also seen situations in which women chose abortion, and watched the man go through depression over the death of his child. Saying that its not part of him is ridiculous. Yes, it’s in the females body (which is why it’s ultimately her decision), but it is not “part” of her body, it is inside of and attached to her body. Half of the dna is his. Possession is 9/10 of the law, but doesn’t that mean he should get 1/10 consideration?
I’ve also seen situations where a woman didn’t want to raise a child, but happened to get pregnant. The father WANTED to be a father, so she had the baby and signed parental rights to him. There are multiple options in these scenarios, and none are more right or wrong than the others.
No, if I got pregnant from a one night stand and decided not to keep it, I probably wouldn’t let them know. But if it was a FWB situation, how could you care so little about the other person that you wouldn’t want to at least know their opinion? Personally, I find it incredibly difficult to sleep with someone I don’t care for at least in a friend sense, so to not even ask their thoughts seems to be an asshole move on my part.
@125 KateRose
Of course you have options and in many cases you might well speak to the man before choosing what to do. But for me at least, the issue in this letter is the question of the man’s rights. So in that sense I am saying that he has no right to be informed or to force the woman to hear his opinions. That’s not “ridiculous.” Even you say that you wouldn’t tell him in every circumstance, which is what a “right” would demand.
It’s too bad that you know guys who mourned “the death of his child.” A fetus is not a child to many people. A child exists only after being born. If these guys want kids then they can go have them in the usual way. It happens all the time. But men need to do it with women who are equally committed to having babies with them. And they need to jealously guard their sperm if they think abortion is infanticide.
@ 125, you say “why not let him have an opinion on the matter”, but what does that actually mean? Are you suggesting that no woman can be sure whether she wants to keep the pregnancy or terminate it, so talking to the baby’s father can somehow influence her decision?
What if the woman is sure that there’s no way in hell she’s having that baby (for whatever reason)? Why would she need to hear his opinion when it’s not going to make a difference at all? She may choose to INFORM him about her decision (before or after abortion, doesn’t matter) but why on earth would she ASK him for his input when she’s going to have that abortion no matter what?
Or are you saying that no woman should be sure she doesn’t want to keep the pregnancy before hearing the man’s opinion? Because that’s unlikely to work, people want what they want, I am sure there are things you know you don’t want in life no matter what everybody else thinks about it.
@107
Quickies can for sure be amazing! But if someone comes in you IMMEDIATELY? In one thrust? That’s not even sex, in my book, that’s some kind of other event that should have it’s own name.
Dan?
@105 EricaP please point me to what I wrote that lead you to the conclusion that I am certain CL was an enthusiastic participant.
Because I feel like I’ve been championing doubt this whole time.
@80, @87
Look, as a woman I understand how important it is that I be able to choose, and that’s an implicit right—someone might obstruct that right, but it is not something that can be removed. That being said, I don’t see the need to view men so harshly. Yes, of course there are millions of men who are complete and total assholes, and I’ve had the misfortune to known some of them. But, I have to say I resent it when people choose to judge women by the worst of us, and I don’t want to do the same to men. And we are talking about social courtesies rather than legal rights, or at least I am. A woman can choose to keep the news a pregnancy to herself, and there are often very good reasons to do so. But Dan is right, it is a good thing for a man to know that there have been consequences for his actions. I think it’s a mistake to be too black-and-white on this issue, and to claim that since a zygote/embryo/fetus is part of a woman’s body it is somehow entirely removed from the man who helped to make it. To say that he’s responsible for the fucking and he’s responsible if a child results from the pregnancy, but he is unconnected with the interval doesn’t make much sense. A woman has the sole deciding voice with respect to the pregnancy, but the clump of cells inside her is made with two sets of DNA. The woman has the power to choose if the man knows of the pregnancy or not, it’s her decision—but in a lot of cases, the decent thing is to tell the guy. You can say that I have an unrealistic view of men, but I don’t—I just acknowledge that they’re individuals the same as us, and that the merits of their case should be decided on that basis, and a lot of guys deserve to know.
What Dan says makes sense to me in theory, but I know if I got pregnant from a one night stand, I’d get an abortion without telling the guy — and possibly without telling anyone. I’d go into self-preservation mode, that’s just me. Then again, this is why I don’t have one night stands and don’t have sex with anyone I don’t really trust.
#125, why not let him have an opinion on it? You actually brought up a good reason in your comment- some people can’t see the difference between a 4″ long clumpy little fetus (roughly the size they are when the majority of abortions occur), and a living human baby- one you can hold and interact with as a separate little person. Now, if a woman wants an abortion and the man who got her pregnant is one of those people, do you think he’s going to just say, “Well, I don’t like that for these reasons but of course it’s ultimately your body and your choice”? Or do you think he’s going to do whatever he can to keep her from “murdering ‘his baby'”? I’m not even talking about violence or any illegal actions- rather emotional abuse, threatening to tell her friends and family if he thinks they will shun her for her choice. Or, as you seem to be against abortion rights, do you think that being subjected to potential harassment/ abuse is a suitable ‘punishment’ for women who would dare to even consider an abortion?
Quite frankly I’m horrified that you say, “Possession is 9/10 of the law, but doesn’t that mean he should get 1/10 consideration?” NO. He doesn’t even get 1/100 of a vote in what happens to her body. If you think he has some partial legal right to the fetus, fine- once she has it aborted, why not give it to him? But that isn’t what you mean, is it? Because of course without the woman’s body, the fetus isn’t anything but a clumpy lump that’s just barely starting to look human. So my question is, do you think that if a man impregnates a woman it means he should have even 1/ 10 of a control in HER BODY? Do you think I’m a “feminazi” for thinking that he doesn’t?
nobody has yet to say what a SH*T thing it is to do , to tell somebody you are on birth control when you ARE NOT, sure the guy was a FOOL for not wearing a condom, but shouldnt she be told TO GROW UP? that her behavior has UNACCEPTABLE? and if you lie about being on birth control and get pregnant you deserve whatever you get, and the guy has a right to be PISSED OFF, if you are pregnant or even if you SCARE him
@130 chicago girl
I agree with just about everything you said. I don’t think the man is ever unconnected to the fetus, I just think that we need to be extremely sensitive to the fact that a pregnancy is actually an interval that doesn’t require his opinion. I’m concerned with it being his “right” in all cases to be informed and heard. Yes, it’s probably true that most of the time it’s just the decent thing to involve him. But the letter writer specifically asked about it being a man’s right.
#130, I’m really not judging men here- I’d be willing to guess that a good percentage, even the majority of men, wouldn’t even become emotionally abusive if they found out the woman they were with planned on aborting ‘their fetus’.
I just think that women are under no obligation to disclose it in the name of ‘fairness’- mainly because by disclosing that bit of private information, there is a far greater risk to her than there is to the man. In a society where abortion rights are constantly being challenged and chipped away at, and where abortion (and female sexuality in general) is looked down upon, you can really fuck up someone’s life if you want to spread it around that they’ve had an abortion.
I’ve known a couple women who let their partners know that they wanted an abortion, when the men didn’t approve of it, and they were subjected to guilt trips and emotional blackmail. One’s boyfriend DID go to her family and together with her mother and sisters successfully shamed her into keeping a pregnancy she didn’t want. Now he’s nowhere to be seen, and she dumps the unwanted kid on whatever family member will watch it. The other just got into screaming fights over it with her fiance, as he constantly tried to talk her out of it. They broke up and she got the abortion, but she was subjected to terrible stress and harassment at a time when she shouldn’t have been.
Something you may want to look into also is pregnancy-associated homicide. Again, this isn’t to criticize men and imply that they’re all monsters who shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt, but there IS an increased risk to women who are exercising their reproductive rights one way or the other.
The right to privacy regarding one’s own medical/ reproductive choices is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than ‘social courtesies’. I don’t think we as women should be told that being ‘fair’ is more important than that.
“I take a hard line view. I don’t even think it’s rape when a jerk feeds her a pack of lies, gets her consent, then brags to his frat buddies in the morning. But that’s me. (I’m straight and female, consider myself a feminist, and have disagreed with friends over this issue.)”
That’s a hard line view, among your friends?
Thank fucking god your friends are not in charge of a damn thing. /fingers crossed
@129 Apologies if I misunderstood. You wrote @100 “Once she starts making out with him… she has already changed her mind.”
I thought you meant that if she wanted him, physically (which clearly she did, since the only reason they weren’t having sex before was that he was in a relationship), and she started to make out with him, then she no longer cares that he is in a relationship and she now can be assumed to actively want sex with him.
I think most women make a huge distinction between a make-out session and intercourse. One doesn’t involve the risks of STDs, pregnancy, and being called a slut; the other does. I don’t think she ever changed her mind about having intercourse with him. He made the decision for her, by penetrating her before she even realized what he was up to. You suggested he had every right to assume she was fine with it; I think he should have known better but pressed his advantage when she wasn’t thinking clearly.
Crinoline @121 – rape isn’t the issue. No one says she said no, or that he could be brought up on charges.
The question is: was he ethically justified in penetrating her right after asking if she was on BC, or was that a shitty thing to do.
It’s about ethics, not the law.
@133 sherrydarling – Reading comprehension FAIL.
CL: “I told him yes, because I was.”
She told the truth; she was on BC, but sherrydarling, that doesn’t always magically stop a baby from forming. In her case, she wasn’t pregnant. But you can still get pregnant while using BC – and any guy who is concerned about that should use condoms as well as whatever BC she is on.
Sherry, Darling (#133), she never said she wasn’t on birth control. Birth control, like condoms, are not magical fairies that protect you 100 percent. And pregnancy scares are not pregnancies, and thus can happen even when the birth control is working properly. That being said, yes, lying about being on the pill is a shitty thing to do, and I believe that was actually mentioned in one of the very first comments.
When it comes to telling or not telling, my stance on the matter is that it’s vastly more important to tell if you plan to keep the baby. If the woman wants an abortion, however, it’s really down to what relationship I have with her. If a random lay I had got an abortion afterwards, I wouldn’t really feel the need to know. If a friend with benefits did, I would, and if my girlfriend had one, I’d feel betrayed if she didn’t.
And I’d like to argue that it’s important to include the father of the child in the discussion about keeping it if you’re thinking of keeping it, no matter what your relations are (obviously not including rape, etc). He is the father of the potential child, and just going ahead without asking his opinion is likely to cause bad blood and resentment, which could spill onto the child. If the father is included in the decision, allowed to discuss and say what he thinks (and also given the opportunity to hear why you want to keep the child), I suspect it might help the relationship between the coming child and the father. That is, involve him as early as possible, and he’ll be more likely to be a good force in your childs life.
Rape???? Really???? OMG, the feminazis strike again *roll-eyes* Really, womyn, overuse of this word is derogatory and trivializes the experiences of *actual* rape victims. This was crappy ass sex. And yes, while quickies can be enjoyable, there is no way I would find ONE THRUST enjoyable! That doesn’t even qualify as a quckie.
Mark this day down again, I agree with Hunter 100%, wow! Thats like twice in a row, right?
Men have a responsibility not to rape us, lol. But at some point, we as women, if we do not want it, have a responsibility to SAY FREAKING NO!!! And the guys need to respect that (barring any roofies of course, that is not playing fair…and of course, and other threats, intimidation, ect). The woman being drunk, whatever…well, if a guy got drunk and RAPED you, it would still be rape right? So if a woman gets drunk and gives her consent, its still consent! Abusing alcohol does not absolve one of personal responsibility. Otherwise we would not arrest people for killing others for drunk driving.
And ITA with those speaking about telling about an abortion being depandant on the relationship status. I would definitely tell a long term lover, or someone I was in a relationship with. I am a feminist, not a feminazi…I would like the man I was in a relationship with to help me with that decision, as it would impact both of our lives. However, a quickie back seat, one pump chump when I have already made up my mind? There would be no point in telling about the abortion other then the guilt trip, unless I needed the money. Then I might ask him for half.
There is only one person CL needs to tell about her pregnancy scare: the woman that the one-thrust-wonder is actually in a relationship with.
Wow @127, you’ve put so many words in my mouth that I feel violated.
No I don’t believe it’s impossible for a woman to make a decision without a man’s input. That’s ridiculous. But just like in any decision I make, it affects other people. Yes (I’ll say it again), in the end it is MY decision. But why are the only options to raise the baby or have an abortion. Yes, I’m pro-choice, but I think the more choices you allow yourself the better off you are. I would want to know if the man wanted the opportunity to raise his child, because I would seriously consider carrying the child to term, then leaving it in it’s father’s care. It’s not a man’s fault that he can’t carry a child on his own. As long as you’re dealing with a man who you know isn’t going to threaten your well being, why not ask their opinion. Even when I “know” what I want, I ask outside opinions. You never know what perspective you may have after getting the opinion.
Maybe it’s not a man’s right to know, but I think it’s pretty shitty not to give him the chance to at least know that he potentially fathered a child.
I don’t understand why being a feminist seems to mean that we need to call men dogs who want to own us and our uterus… You can be strong without being a bitch. If you hate men that much, why sleep with them? And if you don’t sleep with them, this is a moot point for you.
Badgirl, in the same way that people can get behind the wheel of a car or bust out a window when they are drunk and irrational, so too can people sexually penetrate others when they are drunk. However, the very idea of consent-to-sex requires that one is mentally capable of doing so, in a way that might be impaired severely by alcohol, sleep, drugs, or other things. The law also needs to treat these things differently because in many states, meeting the standard of sexual assault requires active resistance, while the drunk person might not be capable of this even if not giving consent, either.
If you don’t grasp these basics, maybe you should stop using annoying terms like “womyn”, or trying to decide who’s a feminist and who’s a feminazi.
“the fetus, if not the uterus – is his too”
Seriously, Dan? I can understand the fetus part, but my uterus is MINE. I don’t care who the fuck’s sperm wiggled inside it. If I had a Christmas card list I would kick you off it too.
Chicago girl, this makes perfect sense to me: “The woman has the power to choose if the man knows of the pregnancy or not, it’s her decision—but in a lot of cases, the decent thing is to tell the guy.”
Thanks to anatomical differences, and the complexities and sometimes violence of the situations under which we have sex or conceive children, it’s the woman’s choice whether to disclose this to the man, and she isn’t always morally obligated to make that choice. But, as you say, in a lot of cases it is the decent thing to do.
It’s also helpful because you might uncover information that influences some very important decisions. Maybe the man is truly interested in being a parent and would be a wonderful one. Maybe he or his family behave badly in response, thus making it very clear that the woman should leave them out of it. These are things I’d like to know before deciding about a pregnancy.
@137
“You suggested he had every right to assume she was fine with it;”
I did not. I suggested that he had every right to consider her openness to PIV sex an unknown. He may have had every right to assume she was fine with it. We have no way of making that call. She didn’t include the information we would need to make that call, probably because it has no bearing on her question.
“He made the decision for her, by penetrating her before she even realized what he was up to.”
For this version of events to make sense, you have to assume she still had her underwear on. This also requires her to have not understood why he asked her if she was on birth control. Given the context, that’s a very difficult assumption to make. Harder still is assuming that he knew she was so oblivious.
FOFS, your obsession with hanging on to exes is weird, and can’t simply be attributed to the untimely death of someone you once loved. You are also behaving abominably towards your current, good boyfriend, by entertaining anything your crazy ex has to say.
But, that said, your crazy ex is crazy, completely crazy, get as far away from this nutjob as possible crazy. He accuses you of rape because of… false pretenses that the relationship would work? Seriously, you need to never speak to this person again, ever. If therapy might help you figure out why you feel the need to bother, then go for it.
@147 – all depends on how drunk she was, and how much time he gave her to process the BC question, before inserting his penis. Maybe you haven’t had unwelcome sex pushed on you. It happens quickly.
I’m asking guys to consider, along with their hunger for sex, whether it is likely that she will regret it in the morning. Legally, they don’t have to consider that. But ethically, they should.
Oy vey Suzy…just as a person who initially TAKES the drink and steps behind the wheel and kills someone needs to be held responsibility for their actions (you do understand that don’t you? I wouldn’t think *even you* would argue with that would you?), so should the WOMAN who makes the choice to drink…if she is old enough and mature enough to imbibe alcohol and drugs and be in a mixed gender setting, SHE should be old enough and mature enough to understand the risks this entails. If she gives her consent, then she GIVES HER CONSENT. If a guy takes advantage, it might make him a douche, but it does NOT make him a rapist. (I am talking about if she is still conscious of course; I know the stupid arguement about a passed out girl is coming next, I am talking about using alcohol to lower inhibitions, LIKE in the letter)
Are men now required to carry breathlyers on their dates now, in addition to getting written consent forms to satisfy you “womyn feminazis”, a term that I use to describe man-hating, frigid, scary ass bitches who seem to be all over this weeks comments. How in the hell else are they supposed to determine exactly how messed up their dates are? I, for one, carry my booze pretty damned well, I can be pretty fucked up, and a person might not be able to tell. Whereas other women might have half a glass of wine, and and act all loopy and obviously impared. I would certainly never cry “rape” if *I* made the mistake of getting ‘faced, having my inhibitions drastically lowered and going out and ill-advisedly fucking someone, and then regretting it in the morning. That is NOT rape, that is MY POOR CHOICES. WTF ever happened to personal responsibilty in this country? You feminiazis would *certainly* not let a drunk RAPIST off the hook because he was mentally impared by drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, or any of the other bunk ass reasons you list, I can guaruntee you that…
Jesus, no wonder some guys have an issue with man-hating women….I had never met too many until I started reading these comments. Holy hell, some *angry* ass womyn out there, lol!
@150 I don’t get much opportunity to comment on these boards, but I must say, the more I read of you, the more I like you. I agree, too many women are more worried about putting the blame on others instead of admitting where they messed up. If I went by the definitions of rape that I’ve heard over and over, most of my sexual encounters have been rape, and I’ve been a rapist. There has to come a point where you need to be ok with the fact that you messed up, own up to it, and move on.
Badgirl, I think you’re reacting a bit emotionally to Suzy and the others there. In principle I agree with you — a person who decides to drink and, because of that, does something stupid does have to face the fact that s/he could have chosen not to drink and therefore avoid making stupid choices under the influence with bad consequences for him/herself and/or others. I agree 100% with that.
But let’s not forget that there is another person involved — the man who took advantage of that woman’s stupid choice of drinking more than she should have. What exactly is his status? You say he’s a douche, but not a rapist. I’m inclined to agree with you; but then…
Let’s say the man in question had not had sex with the drunk woman, but stolen her money. Would that be theft — or should we say the man is not a thief, because after all the woman did make the poor choice of drinking in that place at that time.
Would it make a difference if she asked her (in her imbibed state) “can I take your money?” and she said “yeah…”?
Would it be the different if she took the money first, then said to her “I took your money! OK?” and she made some little gesture that someone might still plausible interpret as agreeing?
Would it be different if he took her money right in front of her, in full view, and put it in his pocket, while she looked and did nothing? Could this be “implied consent”, i.e. he wasn’t stealing, he was “borrowing”?
In other words, badgirl: I think the others here are concerned with the evil intentions of the guy in question, and whether or not he should be punished for taking advantage of drunk people. You’re concerned with the fact that drunk people also have responsibilities: they shouldn’t get drunk in a place where this is a bad idea. Advice valid for men and women.
I think the two sides here are simply approaching the gray area from different directions and extending their understanding of the ‘clear cases’ into the unclear ones as well.
Having said that… I am sympathetic to your position. I do think that people who get drunk should know and accept responsibility for the fact that they may be submitting themselves to ridiculous and/or potentially dangerous situations. The law accepts this fact with drunk driving (since the consequences can be so horrible: killing someone); it probably should also in cases where the consequences are less horrible.
@151 “If I went by the definitions of rape that I’ve heard over and over, most of my sexual encounters have been rape, and I’ve been a rapist.”
What are these ridiculous definitions of rape that you’ve heard over and over? Care to give an example?
@152 (and others): “I think the others here are concerned with the evil intentions of the guy in question, and whether or not he should be punished for taking advantage of drunk people. You’re concerned with the fact that drunk people also have responsibilities: they shouldn’t get drunk in a place where this is a bad idea. Advice valid for men and women.”
What I am finding interesting is an implicit assumption in several posts here that he was not drunk too. People are prepared to say that she has some diminished responsibility for her decision to get physical with this guy, and that he should have been more careful regarding her consent because of that. But his judgement may have been just as impaired as hers.
ankylosaur, I get emotional because I grow weary of our culture of “victimhood” we have purpetuated in this society. Everyone these days seems to have a diagnosis of *something* (depression, bad childhood, ADHD, autism, bad hair days, whatever, EVERYTHING is on the rise!), which is fine, but when do we have to fucking sack up and take responsibility for our actions as adults?
And your instance of the stealing money…the only thing I see it comparable to is him asking to have some of her money and her agreeing, no subterfuge needed, because I interpreted the letter as her consent was given. She seemed eager enough for the action, as poor as it ended up being. This voids all your other scenarios, since she was a willing participant. And if he openly asked her for money when she was drunk, and she gave it to him, does that make him a thief? No it does not. It makes her foolish, and him a shithead.
And Backyard Bombardier makes an excellent point. I would hope he was messed up on something with that terrible outing, lol!
And lol KateRose, Thank you…thank you very much!
@135
I think where we’re reaching an impasse is that I am only talking about informal, discretionary, varies-dramatically-from-person-to-person “rights,” and you seem to think that I’m still putting a woman’s right to privacy at risk. Nope, I am only talking about what happens between two people; it’s not like I’m suggesting that there be laws that say a man must be informed of a pregnancy. Since the woman alone decides what happens to the pregnancy, why shouldn’t the guy be allowed to say what he thinks? Your friend “was subjected to terrible stress and harassment at a time when she shouldn’t have been,” but wasn’t that guy her boyfriend, and didn’t she choose to tell him? We can’t claim to have total rights over a pregnancy (which we do, and that never changes) while also forbidding others to even state their opinion on the matter, that’s not how anything works. We don’t have a right to have every person in our life treat us well all the time, and when relationships go sour can be horribly painful. I’ve had an issue with a pregnancy and an asshole guy, and it was awful, but we run the risk of this kind of pain when we have sex.
Dear Classy Lady: You had what amounts to a 1 night stand with a guy who was not in it or you for the outcome of pregnancy. IMHO, if you were about to have an abortion, you are not obliged to tell the 1 night stand guy that he dodged that bullet. What would you have said or done, had he freaked and asked you to forego the abortion? Did you even go down that road in your imagination? I guess not. You and you alone would be shouldering the weight of the pregnancy. You are the one who gets to say whether that 1 night stand would turn out to be a life-long relationship, all based on the results of that back seat boogy. Geesh – why would you sacrifice the rest of your life for someone who wasn’t in it for the child in the first place? Don’t look back, look forward, and be thankful that YOU dodged that bullet.
Chicago girl, the guy be allowed to say what he thinks if the woman decides to tell him. Of course. But if she doesn’t want to tell him- for any reason- then it isn’t that she’s forbidding him to state his opinion. She’s not silencing him in any way, she just isn’t sharing her personal information with him. And yes, in an ideal world lovers would share personal information with each others, and there would be no bad results of sharing that information.
I could just as easily argue that every time men have sex they run the risk of facing the pain of not knowing whether or not the women they are with are getting abortions without informing them/ seeking their advice.
@153 “What are these ridiculous definitions of rape that you’ve heard over and over? Care to give an example? “
I went to a girls only high school. Not only that, it was a catholic school. Because they considered everything sexual dirty, they had someone come in and tell us what constituted rape. The woman practically told us that unless a man gets a signed, notarized permission slip, it is rape. There is such a thing as implied consent.
The one that I had the most difficulty with (and I ask that you please read my words and not read into them before I state this) was when she stated that, if you are naked in bed with a man, he has no reason whatsoever to believe she wants to have sex with them.
Now, before people start having conniptions, I don’t believe that being naked in bed with someone is an expressed consent for sex. I do however believe that its not entirely unreasonable for someone to believe it might be in the cards at that point, if not expressly discussed beforehand.
As someone who considers themselves mature enough to become involved in any type of sexual encounter (from making out, to heavy petting to PIV) should also be mature enough to discuss their boundaries. For example, when I first started dating my current bf, I explained that I didn’t want “sex” aka PIV right away, because I wanted to explore all of the other fun things we could do together. He was ok with it. Actually, I caved before he did. He was smart enough to buy condoms in case the opportunity arose, but kept them in a separate room so that we’d have to make a conscious decision to use them.
Based on the definition of rape as “no expressed consent” my first time was rape. I was in my boyfriends bed, we were fooling around and suddenly, we were having sex (albeit awful sex). He didn’t ask before he entered me, and, while I wasn’t expecting it at that specific second, I was expecting that it would be likely to happen.
It sort of falls under the “two sides to every story” idea. If a person is not direct in their expectations of a situation, it is possible to read into it that they want more than they actually do.
“the fetus, if not the uterus – is his too”
What is this? You poke it, you own it?
He does not OWN that zygote/embryo/fetus. The zygote/embryo is NOT his “too.” Modernists think DNA=ownerhsip, but that’s bullshit. He has rights if he’s her domestic partner. Ethically he gets rights if he’s her friend.
But a random back of the seat/ won’t talk to her/ has another girlfiend and feels no friendship or social obligation towards this woman? Dan, what are you thinking? He could hurt her with this information.
For all of you who think any male has a right to be informed from a casual sexual interaction:
Let’s say your 16 year-old daughter is knocked up at a frat party. How many of you think she has an obligation to inform the frat boy before she takes a morning after pill or takes an abortion pill?
How many of you will argue that an 17 year old high school boy should have a say if your teenage daughter keeps her pregnancy? Let’s say this 17 year old is dating another girl and basically just pumped and dumped inside of your daughter.
Does he have a right to persuade her to keep it? Does he have a right to know that your daughter has gone to Planned Parenthood to take RU486? What about the morning after pill?
And if not, why not? Dan: this question is also for you.
I love it when the letter writers are so incredibly naive and clueless, but it does make the column a wee bit pointless to anyone with common sense.
@159, Your school did not say rape is when a man has sex without a “signed, notarized permission slip.” That’s your exaggeration. Your second example isn’t a definition of rape. It’s a disagreement about what a guy can reasonably expect when a mentally competent woman is NOT objecting. You and your prudish school would agree that once she starts objecting, that is when it becomes rape.
Finally, I think it makes sense to tell high school boys that a girl may be naked in bed with them and still not want sex. They should be aware of that possibility.
I would tell high school girls the corollary: If you are naked in bed with a guy, especially if you are drunk – you may find yourself having sex without ever having decided to. And you will have to face the consequences.
@154 asks why assume the guy wasn’t wasted too.
He remembered to ask if she was on BC before pushing inside her. That’s pretty clear thinking. Our evidence for her mental competence is that she was still able to understand and answer his question. That seems like a lower standard – passive responsiveness, rather than active planning ahead. Still, she demonstrated enough alertness to be deemed capable of consent. That’s why it’s not rape.
@83: Really? one pump and “he got the fun part?” That doesn’t sound like much fun for either of them. I’d say likely as not he got the embarrassment-and-shame-part that comes with a tendency for premature orgasm.
The whole, “it was bad sex and she didn’t want it” angle is also pretty shaky. Sure, what she didn’t want was bad sex, but she didn’t know that was how it was going to play out until it had started.
The one thing that she can be credibly seen to not want was to be an interloper in this guy’s other relationship. But in that case, she probably really, really shouldn’t have climbed in the backseat, taken off the requisite clothing, and assumed a position where penetration could happen immediately upon answering the question “Are you on birth control?” in the affirmative.
@162 EricaP
That’s great advice for the girls and boys in high school. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if this information were a real eye-opener for them both.
@163: I think what it all points to is that there is a lot more that we don’t know about this situation than we do. Naturally, everyone observing it is filling in the blanks in a way that tends to reinforce their first impressions from this story.
I took nothing from the letter that led me to conclude that CL was “wasted”. I figured they’d had a two or three beers, each enough to lower her inhibitions – and his.
@166: This time, in English:
I figured they’d had two or three beers each, enough to lower her inhibitions – and his.
(Believe or not, I’ve had no beers today – yet.)
@154, 155: Alcohol and most drugs tend to make guys last longer and make it harder to come. So he probably wasn’t really drunk.
If only there were a drug that made it easier to come: whoever invents that will be a billionaire.
@167 – he had no inhibitions. He was happy to cheat on his girlfriend when sober.
@166, 167: That made me laugh. 🙂
Alcohol’s metabolism in women can affect her sex hormones, and this may be a factor (as well as removing inhibitions) in behavior which she may regret the next day.
I feel Dan’s advice to CL is fine in the sense he’s talking about more considerate behavior between 2 people, trying to improve their behavior, not getting on the Rights hobby-horse.
I’d suggest that those that want to do so, do some reading about inalienable rights, philosophy, and whether it’s sensible to be so dogmatic about them, when there are grounds for principled disagreement or nuancing of them. For example, rights are only defined by duties on other people to do or not do things – and it’s a really good idea to make sure that those other people have agreed to that! And inflexible attitudes to them leads to undesirable and inhumane behaviors.
Supposing Roe vs Wade had gone the other way (and I’m of sufficient vintage to be jaundiced about the morality and quality of laws anyway) – would you then be pontificating in the same way about Rights – which would be legally quite different? The law is an ass, and I think it’s up to real people in real situations to improve things for each other in the situation they find themselves. I also liked the comment that future changes in reproductive technology could render the particular woman’s “ownership” of the pregnancy moot in the case she was going to abort, in which case, what are the rights then? Or even, suppose there became the capability of a complete IVF pregnancy to term – does the woman still have complete rights over that even though all she’s done is spew an ovum. And even today in rent-a-womb situations, the surrogate doesn’t have that many rights, the biological mother does. Show some humility people!
@169: Again, with respect, you are reading things into the letter that aren’t there. The sum total of what we know about them pre-drunken-back-seat:
“I was hanging out with a guy who is in a relationship. I told him nothing could happen, and we decided to keep things friendly.”
Maybe he wanted to cheat. Maybe he wanted to dump his girl for her. Maybe he and his girl have an arrangement. Maybe… maybe… maybe…
We all bring our own experiences and prejudices to our interpretation of this situation.
@171 dameedna
I for one wasn’t talking about legal rights. My comments were strictly from the perspective of moral rights. The letter writer was clearly not asking for legal opinions, but rather was asking whether she (not the law) should recognize a man’s right in this situation.
I agree that “the law is a ass” as Dickens wrote.
Backyard Bombardier:
I want to make a general comment that I like your perspective on the shades of gray in the letter. We do all bring our baggage into this. Thanks for all of your comments in this thread. I’ve seen you around enough to know what a good guy you are.
@ 143 KateRose, I’m sorry it seemed like I was putting words in your mouth, I was just inquiring which of the positions I listed you hold. There are not really that many paths to take should you find yourself pregnant, one is to keep the pregnancy and the other is to terminate it.
It looks like you can’t imagine that a woman can simply not want to be pregnant and give birth to a baby (either at that point in her life or ever) – it doesn’t really matter what’s gonna happen to the baby, will the father raise it, will it be put up for adoption etc. when the woman *doesn’t want to be pregnant and give birth to a baby*. So you ask “why not ask for baby daddy’s opinion”, well there’s your answer, because no matter what his opinion, it won’t change the mind of the woman who *doesn’t want to be pregnant and give birth to a baby*. My question is why ask for his opinion in that case, what’s the point? When he is able to take the fetus from her body and implant it in his (as someone here has suggested) that’s when his opinion on the matter will be relevant.
@172 “Maybe he wanted to dump his girl for her.”
lol. Yeah, maybe the reason he stopped talking to her is because it hurt so much that she wouldn’t return his affections.
@128: There are definitely women who get turned on by the idea that they’re so sexy their partner comes right away. Especially if she’s enthusiastic about having sex with the guy and he takes the time to make her come as well.
Doesn’t sound like that happened with the LW, though.
@176: Or…
“The next day, I got all emotional about our situation in relation to his relationship, and OMG what kind of girl does he think I am now, and blah blah blah. He’s since stopped talking to me because I freaked.”
You said “he was happy to cheat on his girlfriend when sober.” But we don’t know that. All we know is that one night when she – and possibly he – was drunk, they had sex. And that she freaked out the next day, and that he stopped talking to her.
Don’t get me wrong – this guy is certainly no candidate for Boyfriend of the Year (or Hookup of the Year, for that matter). But (and I may be reading into things here) you seem to be trying to paint him as some sort of not-quite-rapey-but-certainly-quite-scummy guy that I just don’t see the evidence supporting.
My view? Dude had a few beers, did something stupid, regretted it, and is now desperately trying to pretend it didn’t happen. He’s hardly the first.
@178 – Yes. I am depicting him as scummy.
I don’t believe he offered to break up with his girlfriend for her;
I don’t believe his girlfriend knew/knows he has sex with other women;
I don’t believe he stayed around to keep on making out with CL and see that she was happy and got home safely;
I do believe he saw an opportunity to stick his dick in pussy, and didn’t consider any consequences except pregnancy.
I do believe that when CL was upset (“freaked”) afterward, he turned his back on her.
And, yes, all this is based on my RL experiences, rather than what is in the letter. The question is — if she wrote back to say I was right, how many Sloggers would continue to say that the guy did nothing (ethically) wrong, and she knew what risks she was taking by going drinking, and besides: “CL is a filthy whore. A dirty, dirty whore.” (See @78.)
I don’t think “she knew what risks she was taking by going drinking.” I think she knew what risks she was taking by making out with a guy who she knew was interested in her. I think she made the decision to do that in part because her inhibitions and judgement were affected by alcohol.
I don’t think he “did nothing (ethically) wrong.” Whatever his intentions were originally, at the time they had sex he was in a relationship and I agree that it probably wasn’t open. I think he did this because, like her, his inhibitions and judgement were affected by alcohol.
I also think that we don’t know who initiated the climbing into the backseat, the raciness, or the making out. This makes it even harder to determine who may be at fault – if there is in fact any fault to be assessed.
I have my own personal perspectives on this from my own life experiences, including one with a young lady who wasn’t that interested in anything romantic with me – unless she’d been drinking. So I have a sense of what goes on in a man’s mind when a woman he’s interested in starts getting drunk and flirty.
Oh, and I think @78 is a troll and an asshole, and it isn’t fair to suggest that his post is reflective of the views of many Sloggers. It certainly isn’t reflective of mine.
right to privacy –
I should have clarified better my final paragraph that primarily such a discussion should happen between two long-term or committed people – well before any pregnancy should occur. In situations where it’s a one-night stand or…whatever we want to call this, it should be more of a case by case basis. If he’s a complete stranger who you can’t get back into contact with, then I’d say it’s none of their business. But if he’s, say, a good friend or within a circle of friends, that’s a completely different situation, and one that I think the woman in question should at least consider before going it alone, especially if her feelings on the issue are conflicted. Let me establish that I do think the final choice is ultimately the woman’s; he has no right to *impose* his will on her nor would I support legislation that requires her to contact him.
While I understand what you’re getting at about the birth control issue, most of the popular EC pills (such as Plan B) are not distinguished abortifacients because they don’t involve altering the implantation of a blastocyte. Usually they work by delaying ovulation, and are unlikely to disrupt an already implanted embryo. I think we can go out on a limb and say anybody engaging in premarital sex and/or using condoms has forfeited any moral pedestal (religious morality, anyway) to delineate between what’s acceptable contraception and what isn’t.
Ms Erica @137 – While there are certainly practical reasons to consider making out and going all the way to be different, I’d see it as no more than a question of degree. Avoiding the risk of pregnancy is a mild plus in that at least one is taking care to prevent lasting bad consequences, but I wouldn’t think CL any more disrespectful of the relationship had she wanted, given enthusiastic consent to or even initated the pregnancy risk. I don’t care much about labels (I just like cross-examining people), but whatever I’d apply to the penetration I’d apply to the making out.
A lot of people I know would fall into one of two camps on this sort of point. Many have bascially formalized lists of the sort that A/B/C are permitted and X/Y/Z are prohibited. The other camp appears to follow the line from The Seven Deadly Virtues, “…and Fidelity is only for your mate.” They’d call their partners cheaters for making out, but, if they ever happened to do it themselves, would proclaim their innocence and appear hurt by being questioned.
Ms Erica @137 – While there are certainly practical reasons to consider making out and going all the way to be different, I’d see it as no more than a question of degree. Avoiding the risk of pregnancy is a mild plus in that at least one is taking care to prevent lasting bad consequences, but I wouldn’t think CL any more disrespectful of the relationship had she wanted, given enthusiastic consent to or even initated the pregnancy risk. I don’t care much about labels (I don’t go around playing Slut, Slut, Goose! – I just like cross-examining people), but whatever I’d apply to the penetration I’d apply to the making out.
A lot of people I know would fall into one of two camps on this sort of point. Many have bascially formalized lists of the sort that A/B/C are permitted and X/Y/Z are prohibited. The other camp appears to follow the line from The Seven Deadly Virtues, “…and Fidelity is only for your mate.” They’d call their partners cheaters for making out, but, if they ever happened to do it themselves, would proclaim their innocence and appear hurt by being questioned.
My apologies for the double post. I added the bit about Slut, Slut, Goose! only accidentally to hit post instead of save and then tried to override it by hitting save right away.
I shouldn’t actually play it myself, I rather think, but it does seem to be a game with some potential.
@171
“Alcohol’s metabolism in women can affect her sex hormones”
elaboration and/or citation pretty please?
@181 Hunter
cute. but that’s not what I meant
I don’t know if I missed it, but was there no reference in here at all about the guy who fucked the first letter writer not wearing a condom??? EricaP said she thought the letter writer was surprised when he penetrated her – I sure as hell would have been if I were her. You don’t just fuck someone bareback, even if you are on BC, even if you know them. Especially if they have a girlfriend and an obvious willingness to cheat on her. Don’t care if you are drunk. There was a missing step here – he asked if she was on BC, she says yes, she is, because she was, and then wham – dick. Well, there’s an intermediate step between most not-in-LTR consenting adults and it seems likely that she expected condoms to come into the picture before dick. He should have at the very least asked about it. I don’t think you get to put your dick naked in anyone without asking unless she’s the one putting it in. Being drunk and trusting this guy a bit too much would make it likely that she didn’t expect condomless sneak-attack sex. And a friend definitely wouldn’t come inside you without at least running it by you. Not ok. I’m with EricaP all the way on this. Guys, I guess you haven’t been suddenly unexpectedly penetrated by someone, but I tell you, not only is it easy to make happen on the part of the sneaky dick owner (panties are not a defense against anything, especially when you are straddling his lap in the traditional back of the car make-out position), but when making out the only thing keeping that from happening are two thin pieces of fabric – his pants and your underwear, sometimes just your underwear. Not saying it’s rape but it can’t be consensual if you aren’t expecting it.
@187 – especially if she didn’t know his dick was out and about. That would be a shock. If she did know, even if she hauled it out herself, doesn’t make any difference. There is a huge difference between making out and full out fucking, and I would make out with lots of people (especially when drunk) I would NEVER let inside me, drunk or sober. If he was a stranger, yeah, not smart to get in the car. But he was a trusted friend, so she felt safe. And he was still an ass.
@187 – not to mention his assholishness in not watching out for his unknowing girlfriend’s health! Putting her at STD risk, while cheating on her = double douchebag.
TELL THE GUY!
What sort of world are we trying to make here! Talk people!
Do what you gotta do. But afterward, be a human in a civilized society and share.
Also to you freaks screaming about “the man doesn’t need to know anything….”
Shut up. You read a one sided, very short description. You know nothing.
Badgirl, you’re the one who sounds angry here. There are reasons why consent to sex has been defined this way, and I guess you can choose to ignore those reasons, but do you really think that our rape laws have been written by “angry womyn feminazis”? Especially the ones that require evidence of physical struggle and resisting?
Like I said before, a person who drinks and then chooses to get behind the wheel or penetrate someone else sexually is making a particular active choice to do something, regardless of drunkenness. Meanwhile, the person who drinks and is penetrated may not have made any such choice at all.
I find it pathetic that you attack “feminazis” while saying things like: “if she is old enough and mature enough to imbibe alcohol and drugs and be in a mixed gender setting, SHE should be old enough and mature enough to understand the risks this entails.” Old enough? Honey, kids drink and take drugs, kids who are legally considered incapable of consenting to sex. But stick with adults: why should women have to be afraid of having a drink in a mixed gender setting? Why is a woman assuming the risk of being raped if she does that? Are you a representative of the Taliban or something?
This has nothing to do with personal responsibility, so please put that tired old ax down. I would certainly teach my daughters to use their heads when partying, and understand the risks of different situations. However, it is completely normal in this culture for men and women to socialize with each other, including drinking, without any assumption that sex is on the menu.
Just to clarify: if someone gets wasted and you sexually penetrate them, you are raping them. This isn’t a matter of opinion; it’s typically the law. If you think that’s a bad law, fine, but at least let’s begin by accepting reality. You’re also really confused about what would constitute a theft under these circumstances. Not everyone is a lawyer, I know, but please–there are actually facts about these issues, and you could consult them before saying false things. Otherwise, I need to come to your house when you’re wasted, and arrange to buy some of your stuff.
I feel pretty, oh so pretty, I feel pretty, and witty, and [gulp]…
Exactly, Suzy. Very well put.
@186 “Alcohol’s metabolism in women can affect her sex hormones”
See for example: http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content…
While the link between changes to sex hormones and desire/libido is not nailed up, evidence from gender change experiences indicates that it can be a factor. From personal experience, DW’s behavior when she’s had alcohol goes way beyond what I feel attributable to lowered inhibitions – she’s sexually aggressive. Her desire is active (in Basson’s terms) and goes beyond what her normal (reactive)stance would be – to a situation where I wonder about my consent! And it makes me very leery of the integrity of rape-while-drunk laws because of the alteration of values and consent (which may be distorted at the time).
Certainly, while there are laws in my jurisdiction about it, prosecutors are very reluctant to press charges in most non-violent circumstances, and juries have usually thrown the cases out – rightly in my view because there’s far too high a risk of conviction of the innocent. Which means that it’s a really good idea to manage the situation early, and have people around you you trust, and take some responsibility yourself. Part of that responsibility is understanding that alcohol can distort values and reactions so that one is not only consenting but actively seeking outcomes they regret the next day. The law can’t always protect you, as well as it being an ass.
@173 the trouble with legal rights is that people use them to justify moral rights – but only when convenient. When the law says the “wrong” thing for them, they ignore that. Sounds like we both have the same opinion of the moral quality of laws! I also have the feeling that state coercion may be as bad as individual coercion sometimes, because those laws reflect a flawed balance, and far too often are interfering where the state has no valid claim at all (e.g. the tyranny of the majority).
As far as moral rights are concerned, I’m always uneasy when people push hardline individual rights, because that can over-weight autonomy and individuality. We are social creatures and fairly pathetic on our own. I prefer the notions of distributed justice, and in a way I think that’s what Dan’s trying to say – do the decent thing in this circumstance.
Hey, FOFS: I’m completely over my totally batshit ex-husband, and have been much more happily so over the past 10 years.
Aaaaaaaaand, he’s totally over me, too. Six months after our divorce, he remarried some mail-order bride who he met on the internet. My condolences to his Wife #2, and any kids they might have had together.
FOFS, you’ll get over it. I did. It just takes time. I’m sorry about your ex-boyfriend who recently died.
Well, I tried to reply yesterday to some of the posts, but, apparently, it won’t let me do it from my phone. So here’s hoping I can follow the same train of thought I had yesterday.
@162 “@159, Your school did not say rape is when a man has sex without a “signed, notarized permission slip.” That’s your exaggeration.”
Indeed it is my exaggeration. That’s why I didn’t say she SAID that, I said she practically did. And as far as my second example: Yes. They did use it as an example of rape. Not me, the person that spoke to my class.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but, from reading your other posts, it seems we have a pretty similar opinion about what is/isn’t rape.
You also said:
“I would tell high school girls the corollary: If you are naked in bed with a guy, especially if you are drunk – you may find yourself having sex without ever having decided to. And you will have to face the consequences. “
That was actually exactly my point. If you consider yourself mature enough to engage in any sort of sexual activity, you should be mature enough to set up ground rules ahead of time, or at least realize that boundaries may get unknowingly pushed because you didn’t vocalize what they are.
@175 “It looks like you can’t imagine that a woman can simply not want to be pregnant and give birth to a baby “
I can imagine that. And I can imagine circumstances like in many of the examples where it would be just plain bad planning to tell the father, whether because he would become abusive mentally/physically or because he was a one night stand and you don’t even know his name or how to contact him. I don’t think that its a right that should be held up by a law or anything of the sort. I just think it’s being a decent human being to tell someone that you care about when you make a decision that affects their life. And, when I make decisions for myself, I do give friends, both male and female, the option to talk me out of them. Because if they can, I wasn’t all that sure of my decision anyway. When I’m sure, you can’t change my mind for anything. If someone is the sort that does not now, and never will, want to carry or give birth to a child, you won’t change their mind. But why shouldn’t you give a friend/bf the chance to at least know they potentially fathered a child. Maybe, as Dan said, they’ll learn to be more careful in the future. Maybe they’ll only do things like not using a condom with someone who would be ok with having their child.
So much raging sexism in here. So a woman gets sole choice whether to abort, adopt-away/abandon, or raise for 18 years, but a guy never gets any choice. Child support laws are out-of-date and un-just. A man shouldn’t have control over her body/the fetus/her life, but likewise she should not have control over his.
–J5A
So much raging sexism in here. So a woman gets sole choice whether to abort, adopt-away/abandon, or raise for 18 years, but a guy never gets any choice. Child support laws are out-of-date and un-just. A man shouldn’t have control over her body/the fetus/her life, but likewise she should not have control over his.
–J.
So much raging sexism in here. So a woman gets sole choice whether to abort, adopt-away/abandon, or raise for 18 years, but a guy never gets any choice. Child support laws are out-of-date and un-just. A man shouldn’t have control over her body/the fetus/her life, but likewise she should not have control over his.
–JA5
P.S. Sorry for the multi-post..the registration/posting system here doesn’t work too well when you’re a first-time post-er.
@201 JA5
Is there an epidemic of sperm-stealing women that I’ve haven’t heard about? Don’t want a baby that bad? Don’t fuck. Your choice. Your control.
@203 And you could also say:
Want individual rights, no responsibilities for others, and complete autonomy? Don’t fuck. Your choice. Your control.
So much raging sexism in here. So a woman gets sole choice whether to abort, adopt-away/abandon, or raise for 18 years, but a guy never gets any choice. Child support laws are out-of-date and un-just. A man shouldn’t have control over her body/the fetus/her life, but likewise she should not have control over his.
–JA5
P.S. Sorry for the multi-post, but the system here works extremely poorly when you’re brand-new registering.
@202/203 Mr. J./dameedna
Don’t have sex? That’s your answer to sexism and unequal rights? Awesome. I bet that advice would’ve gone over great with women decades ago. Are you a pro-choice woman? Too bad, you don’t deserve that right, don’t have sex. Do you like to vote or own property? Too bad, you don’t deserve that right, move to another country. Upset about unequal pay? Marry a rich man.
Women have complete freedom to give up responsibility. They can abort, adopt-away, or abandon. Men have zero likewise freedoms.
P.S. Argh, even with a re-load this page isn’t always showing the latest comments, mine or others’
@ 204 dameedna Huzzah! I think that sums it up perfectly for BOTH genders.
@ 205. I don’t believe it’s ridiculous at all. They’re not saying people shouldn’t have sex. What they’re saying is that, should people CHOOSE to have sex, they need to realize that they have at least a minimal responsibility to the person they’re having sex with. Even if that responsibility boils down to “don’t be a douche”. If you don’t want to have even a .0000001% chance that you’ll have to have responsibility to someone else, than you shouldn’t do the thing that puts you at risk of it.
Backyard Bombardier @180 mentions “a young lady who wasn’t that interested in anything romantic with me – unless she’d been drinking.”
What do you mean by bringing this personal example up? That everyone acts badly when drunk? If you had sex with the woman who only wants you when she’s drunk, then who felt bad in the morning – you, or her, or both? nobody? What does go on in a man’s mind when a woman he’s interested in starts getting drunk and flirty? Are you saying that men’s sexual urges mean it is not reasonable to expect them to hold back when a woman offers sex, even if the man knows she will regret it the next day? (Serious questions, here.)
dameedna@195 notes that a woman who has been drinking is sometimes “actively seeking [sex] they regret the next day.”
If women get so much hornier when drunk, and men cannot be expected to keep from fucking them under those circumstances, then we have an answer to Suzy’s question @192 about “why should women have to be afraid of having a drink in a mixed gender setting?” Well, let’s say 3 or 4 drinks. One drink is probably not the problem.
KateRose@198 So your school lecturer said: “Rape is when a man has sex with a woman without any evidence that she wants sex besides her being naked in bed with him.” Is that right? If not, please provide the “ridiculous definition of rape” in the form of a definition, so we can discuss it.
We do agree on what advice to give girls about drinking & socializing with guys. Do you agree, also, that guys should understand that a girl naked in bed is not thereby consenting to having sex, and may be thinking they are just going to make out?
@JA5: Actually, you can have all the sex you want. The only thing you can’t do, if you don’t want to risk becoming a father, is put your sperm in someone’s vagina.
Fuck your heart out with a (properly used) condom. Enjoy all the oral you can handle. Get hand jobs until the cows come home.
Just be careful where you put your sperm.
@208: Glad to answer you:
“What do you mean by bringing this personal example up?”
I’m just disclosing some of my own history, which I am aware will bias how I look at this situation.
“That everyone acts badly when drunk?”
Not at all. Just that there are some people who act one way when sober and another when drunk. I don’t think CL acted badly; I think she did something while drunk that she regretted when sober. That’s not bad; that’s human.
“If you had sex with the woman who only wants you when she’s drunk, then who felt bad in the morning – you, or her, or both? nobody?”
I didn’t have sex with her. I’m guessing that I was older and more experienced than CL’s hookup was when this happened. I had enough maturity and self-respect that I didn’t want to have sex with someone who only wanted me when her judgement and inhibitions were impaired. It also helped that I wasn’t usually drunk when she made the offers.
“What does go on in a man’s mind when a woman he’s interested in starts getting drunk and flirty? Are you saying that men’s sexual urges mean it is not reasonable to expect them to hold back when a woman offers sex, even if the man knows she will regret it the next day?”
I think a man should be able to hold back, but that requires exercising some judgement and self-restraint. The example I was thinking of from my life happened during my forties; if it had happened during my twenties I probably would have gone for it. I’m not a bad person, and I wasn’t back then either. But I am human. Temptation is… tempting. Throw some booze into the mix and people don’t always do what they should.
@Backyard Bombardier/#210
Condoms aren’t perfect, even when perfectly used. Even vasectomies have failure rates comparable to The Pill (the vas deferens can re-grow).
Why are women the only sex allowed any say what happens with an unplanned pregnancy? Why are they allowed to demand child support? They can even do that when it’s proven the man wasn’t the father.
Women can always choose to avoid all responsibility. Men currently have zero rights once an unplanned pregnancy occurs. Even if they took precautions. Even if they were deceived.
This is sexism (a sexism that women like though). Men should be able to disclaim parental rights, then the woman can choose whether to abort, adopt-away/abandon, or raise. That would at least give the man 2/3rds of the rights that women have.
@205 JA5
“Don’t have sex? That’s your answer to sexism and unequal rights?”
No, that’s my answer to your assertion that “a guy never gets any choice.” You clearly have a huge problem with accepting the responsibility for children that you father. I’m saying don’t have sex until you accept the possibility of a pregnancy that you will not have control over. That’s a foolproof way to make a choice to not have kids. Yes, it’s extreme but you are an extreme case. Men in general are not faced with the “problem” that you have.
If you want kids then go have them with a willing person. That’s your choice as well. Carelessly impregnating random women doesn’t entitle you to decide for them whether they will give birth.
“Are you a pro-choice woman? Too bad, you don’t deserve that right, don’t have sex. Do you like to vote or own property? Too bad, you don’t deserve that right, move to another country. Upset about unequal pay? Marry a rich man.”
This is all nonsense. No one is denying you reproductive rights. See above.
“Women have complete freedom to give up responsibility. They can abort, adopt-away, or abandon. Men have zero likewise freedoms.”
None of the things you list involves giving up responsibility. Men can and do abandon all the time.
I am a pro-feminist, anti-rape woman, but I can’t fathom how #1 was raped. Please let’s not allow the legal system to turn sex into a ridiculous version of “Mother, May I?” May I kiss you, touch your breasts, rub your clit, penetrate you? Those of us who have actually had sex on this planet know that consent is granted through body language, not always verbally. If both people are too drunk to be able to think quickly enough to say ‘No’ or zip up their pants, that’s the outcome of both their decisions to abuse alcohol, but it’s not a crime. It’s not that easy to penetrate an unwilling woman without the use of force. Even at my wettest, hottest, most eager moment, I have to assist penetration by opening my legs, lifting my hips, shifting my weight, etc. If a woman changes her mind in the heat of the moment, it’s her responsibility to make that clear with her words and body language, and it’s the man’s responsibility to honor her decisión.But If she’s too drunk to know/verbaluze!show what she wants, that’s not his fault, unless he has drugged her against her will. So please, let’s not trivialize the topic of real rape, conceprualuze women as passive idiots, or turn the wonder of sex into a legal contract that has to be reaffirmed every two minutes and/ or when moving from base to base.
JA5, the only point in the situation where the woman has control is when it involves only her body. The man can control the situation while he is having sex- by using birth control properly, or by choosing to have other forms of sex besides vaginal if he 100% doesn’t want to risk a pregnancy. Don’t try and make it sound like there is nothing men can do, that they are poor little victims and women are sucking out their sperm in while they sleep with their demon vaginas.
And if a woman gets pregnant and decides to have a baby, why do you think she is the only one in control of the situation once the baby is born and separate from her body? The father has parental rights then, the mother can’t put it up for adoption without the father’s permission. And mother’s have the ‘complete freedom to abandon’ their children? What? Abandoning a child isn’t legal.
It sucks that human bodies are set up so that women have to deal with 9 months of the reproductive process compared to only a brief moment for men. But if the options for a man to avoid creating children he doesn’t want are 1. Taking more responsibility in birth control and not having riskier sexual encounters, or 2. Forcing another person to submit partial control of her body to him, the only reasonable answer is the first.
@209 EricaP
I wish that I could remember the exact wording that was used in the presentation. Unfortunately, having been more than a decade removed, I’m not able to.
Maybe “definition” was the inappropriate word. I apologize for that. I was using it as a way of stating that the way people in some of the other posts defined rape for themselves.
To answer your question: “Do you agree, also, that guys should understand that a girl naked in bed is not thereby consenting to having sex, and may be thinking they are just going to make out?”
Yes. I absolutely believe that a man should not have higher expectations in a situation like that. No one should assume.
More or less, my point is, that, when entering a situation with another person (sexual or not), you should not assume what will come of it. You can’t expect a girl to have sex with you just because she’s naked in bed with you, and you can’t assume a man doesn’t consider sex a possibility if you are naked in bed with him (of course gender pronouns can be changed to fit whatever scenario). Simply put, don’t expect them to know your wants/needs unless you state them.
@211 Thanks for explaining. Both people were human & young & made mistakes. Hopefully, both people will learn from their mistakes, before they cause too much damage to third parties.
@216 – agreed – people should learn that their assumptions will often get them in trouble. Also, drugs/alcohol can do that too 🙂
@JA5: Yes, yes, condoms aren’t perfect, vasectomies aren’t perfect, women lie about birth control, etc. etc. Sexual intercourse will always bring with it a risk of unplanned pregnancy. As a man, you (and I) have options to reduce the risk.
Every human behaviour carries risks. I risk my life every time I board a plane, or get in my car, or step in the shower. As a rational human being, I take steps to mitigate these risks. Some behaviours carry risks that are too severe for me to take, even with mitigation, which is why I don’t take them.
Jesus. Man up. If you want to have sex, know the risks, and either accept the risks, mitigate them, and go for it, or don’t have sex.
@214 “It’s not that easy to penetrate an unwilling woman without the use of force.”
See @187. Trust me, under the right circumstances, men can suddenly penetrate a woman before she knows what is happening.
@Mr. J/#213
>None of the things you list involves giving up responsibility.
I think you need to re-read. If a woman decides to abort, she has removed any responsibility upon herself to raise a child. If she [legally] “abandons” the baby at a hospital/fire dept/etc, she has removed any responsibility upon herself to raise a child. If she puts it out for adoption, she has removed any responsibility upon herself to raise a child.
Women have rights to give up responsibility all through pregnancy, and even after birth. Men have no rights from the moment of conception.
>No one is denying you reproductive rights.
Yes, the law is. Read the above 2 sentences.
>You clearly have a huge problem with accepting the responsibility for children that you father.
No, I have a problem that legally-enshrined sexism says I get no choice from the moment of conception, while women retain choice even after birth.
>Yes, it’s extreme but you are an extreme case.
I’m not extreme at all. I have sex. My partners & I agree on b.c. I haven’t had any unplanned pregnancies in my past.
>Men in general are not faced with the “problem” that you have.
They all are. However most are sheep that accept legal sexism.
its guys like #1 that give us a bad name. most guys are not like that! even the dirty ones. sounds like teenager / early 20s thing. i hope.
@Pinky/215
>the only point in the situation where the woman has control is when it involves only her body.
No, she has control over the next 18yrs of the biological father’s life (if he didn’t want a child), and over his potential baby (if he did want it). And she retains decision-making control all through pregnancy, after birth, and for the next 18yrs. The man has virtually no options from the moment of conception.
>The man can control the situation while he is having sex- by using birth control properly
Properly used, condoms still fail. Vasectomies have failure rates nearly as high as The Pill (due to the vas deferens re-growing). Also, some women lie about using b.c. Should a man never trust his partner?
>And if a woman gets pregnant and decides to have a baby, why do you think she is the only one in control of the situation once the baby is born and separate from her body?
The father has limited rights, after the baby is born. He never had any option to avoid raising a child, from the moment of conception, while she has many.
>And mother’s have the ‘complete freedom to abandon’ their children? What? Abandoning a child isn’t legal.
Yes, it is, in the entire U.S., at hospitals, fire depts, etc. Read about Safe Haven/Baby Moses laws.
You entire post shows you aren’t aware how unequal men’s & women’s rights are here.
@Backyard Bombardier/218
The risk you talk about is artificially imposed by sexist laws. Maybe you meekly accept sexism, I prefer to see society move toward equal rights for all.
@223: No. The risk I talk about is imposed by biology. When I put my sperm into a woman’s vagina, she may become pregnant. If she does, I have responsibilities as a father.
You appear to wish to put your sperm into vaginas without consideration of your responsibilities as a result of that choice.
If you are truly concerned about “equal rights for all,” I could suggest a few other areas that are more in need of attention than this one.
Others have touched on this, and I may have missed it, ’cause damn, this is a long thread, but, while the hypothetical question posed in the first question is interesting, I think I look more at her reasons for asking it. The answer about informing a sexual partner about an abortion/pregnancy scare is one thing, and leaving aside the rape question (not that the rape question isn’t important or that rape and what constitutes it shouldn’t be discussed), it seems like they were both interested in each other, but since he had a girlfriend that he doesn’t seem to have been willing to dump, they decided to be “friends.” “Friends” with sexual tension. I wonder if part of her “freak-out” after this incident occurred was her wondering if they should tell the gf, which, if he wasn’t in an open relationship, or one where he had permission, would definitely be a reason he would stop talking to her. I can see there being many many phone calls from her to him and I see that being hard to cover-up. Not that he doesn’t seem like a jack-hole, but she was hanging out, presumptively alone (or at least without the gf) in such a situation that she could “easily climb into a car with him.” He already knew, I think way before that point, that she was “that type of girl.” The type of girl who will hang out with another girl’s boyfriend with whom she has at least some sexual attraction knowingly (this is not a comment on the sex part, more a comment on the his opinion of her part).
While informing a sexual partner of a pregnancy scare can be a good thing, for all the reasons Dan lists (bullet flying by), I think that’s something this girl doesn’t need to hear. What she wants is this guy to talk to her again, she wants closure, and maybe to drive a wedge between him and the girlfriend (assuming she’s still in the picture). He obviously wants nothing more to do with her, maybe because once he had sex with her the fun was over, maybe because he feels bad about it, maybe because the gf caught on and he wants to move on from it. Maybe he’s just a douche. But the best thing for her to do right now is to forget it, forget him, and not keep running after him for attention. She is not pregnant, and, from what we know in the letter, hasn’t contracted any STDs, it’s time to just let that go.
@224 Backyard Bombardier
It seems that what JA5, in his absolutist mindset, is really concerned about is his lack of total control over every step of the reproductive process, even the ones governed by nature. That and having to part with money for the scores of kids he is forced to bring into the world.
@Backyard Bombardier/224
So you’re fine that sexist law gives women rights to choose to avoid responsibility (they can abort, or adopt-away/legally-abandon), but that men get no similar choice. You can choose to accept sexism, I prefer to see society move toward equal rights for all. The laws should change, men should be allowed to disclaim a child before birth (and women would still continue to have the choice even after birth).
@Mr. J/226
I’m only concerned about the complete lack of control due to sexist laws, which are artificial constructs, not laws of nature. Sexist law gives women rights to choose to avoid responsibility (they can abort, or adopt-away/legally-abandon), but men get no similar choice. The laws should change, men should be allowed to disclaim a child before birth (and women would still continue to have the choice even after birth).
@227: Yes, I am fine with laws that permit a woman freedom of choice over her body, and that require men to accept responsibility for their choices.
The alternative places all the responsibility on the woman. That is sexist.
And to @228, maybe I need to shout it:
YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER WHERE YOU PUT YOUR SPERM.
For fuck’s sake. Exercise some goddamn restraint if you are so damn worried about being made to accept that you are responsible for what you do with your dick.
@228
Have you been visited by a succubus or what? Why the rage against women and children? You have yet to express the slightest recognition of women and children as human beings deserving of love. You’re just all about your desire to dump the kid if you want to, all the while howling about other people’s supposed lack of accountability.
Having the child is not the only thing that constitutes responsibility. Abortion, adoption, and abandonment all involve responsibility too. As does impregnation.
@223 – wait. So “equal rights for all” means that men have power over a woman’s right to abort or give birth? Jesus wept, that is the one of the more horrible things I’ve ever heard in my life. And you’re accusing us of being sexist? Really?
backyard bombadier is a rapist. Don’t trust men that are okay with rape, like that person is. They’ll rape you.
@233: That’s an interesting analysis of my position regarding sexual responsibility. I’m curious how you have reached your clearly well-thought-out conclusion.
@222:
“Vasectomies have failure rates nearly as high as The Pill (due to the vas deferens re-growing).”
This is completely false.
@208/209:
Are you saying that men’s sexual urges mean it is not reasonable to expect them to hold back when a woman offers sex, even if the man knows she will regret it the next day?
There’s a balance between being paternalistic and refusing sex even when both people want it because you think she’ll regret it, and taking advantage of someone with impaired judgment.
You can’t know whether or not someone will regret it. If the person is completely sober, I don’t think it makes sense to make decisions based on what you think they’ll regret in most cases.
If I meet a girl who has had one or two drinks, say, and she actively wants to have sex with me, I’m probably going to assume that she is ok with it, probably won’t regret it, and had the drinks knowing that there’s a chance she may want to have sex.
Obviously if someone is so drunk they can’t walk or talk or answer questions, then it’s rape (well, unless she told you when she was sober that you could have sex with her when she was drunk).
It’s a blurry line, and I suspect most guys find it hard to turn down sex when it’s a borderline case.
As far as extreme definitions of rape, some extremist groups think that sex with someone who has had any alcohol at all is rape. Or that sex with someone who doesn’t give explicit consent is rape. Or that sex with a drunk or sleeping person is rape even when you’ve had sex before and they told you ahead of time they were fine with sex. These are not the law, and it’s only extreme groups that say this.
@215: The real problem with child support laws is that they make men pay even when the men are raped by women. Or when the men are underage (statutory rape). Or when the man isn’t the biological father. Those are cases where men don’t really have a choice. They’re rare but they happen.
Peyote?
Criminy you’re stupid. You’ve effectively disappeared up your own asshole (program person). I think you think of yourself as a sensitive feminist man, but you’re a total asshole who death can’t visit soon enough. Get a motherfucking life, you single stay at home testicles in wife’s purse “dad”…you too, erica…you claim to have a penis (BB) yet have all of the substance and style of an obese beauty shop gossip. I still say you’re a rapist, though…I thought this thread defined all penetration as rape, which is why so many people are screaming rape and hand wringing and gnashing their teeth. Shoot yourselves, please. Tedious morons.
PCP. I stand corrected.
@237: Well done, sir! Most of our unregistered trolls have been rather tedious and stupid as of late, but you are truly raising the bar.
Pour yourself a drink… er, I mean another drink. You’ve earned it. 9/10.
I didn’t believe that you could quite pull it off, but you managed to call me exactly what I called you minus the rapist bit, you fat ugly rapist. Verbatim. It takes a particular skill to parrot the insults of another back at them. But I digress– was that supposed to be funny? The funniest part is that you think it’s funny, fat ugly rapist. I do hope you aren’t operating under the delusion that you’re some kind of wit, or are interesting, educated, and are anything other than a fat ugly rapist, fat ugly rapist. This is the best part of this comment section.
Hm. Quality declining rapidly. Maybe you shouldn’t have had that last drink. 2/10.
233-241 for the win.
Masterful, all around.
That’s hilarious! Pretending that you’re some kind of judge or something (that you have beliefs based on sound arguments or any kind of refinement that enables you to distinguish good thinking from bad), and then spluttering through an accusation of drinking to discredit someone who called you a big fat ugly rapist, big fat ugly rapist. I think it’s about time that you stripped down naked, slathered yourself in peanut butter, and hid in an old woman’s bedroom closet with a recording device….big fat ugly rapist.
@243: Woof?
Are you seriously whoring your shit blog? Your thoughts and such (and I use the term loosely)? Don’t nobody click the link! You’re a total cunt if you click the link.
Erica’s here! Thank god…it wouldn’t be the same…she’s like a guest on jerry springer frantically searching for a way through the goons holding her back to attack one of her many half sisters for sleeping with the father of her fifth child. “OH NO YOU DINT, BITCH!”
Whoa, JA5, whoa. Let’s get a few things straight: during the 9 months of pregnancy there are only 2 persons in the picture: the man and the woman. No third person. The third person comes to existence at birth (the US Constitution). Before birth, the woman is in charge of her body and the man is in charge of his. No sexism there!
It obviously bothers you that when people make decisions about their bodies other people who are affected by those decisions aren’t able to influence them. You complain about having to pay child support, what would you say about someone’s decision not to give their kidney/blood/bone marrow to a person who would otherwise die? Yes, when we make decisions about our bodies, other people can DIE, which is far worse than having to pay child support for 18 years, and yet no one in their right mind will even entertain the possibility of tying up a kicking screaming person in order to get their kidney/blood/bone marrow to save some other person’s life. Sorry but that’s called human rights. Every person decides what happens to their body, period.
After birth, both mother and father are equally responsible for the child. No sexism there either. If mother chooses to raise the child alone, the father will pay child support. If father chooses to raise the child alone, the mother will pay child support. If either mother or father wants to put the child up for adoption, they need the consent of the other parent. Where exactly do you see sexism here?
@245: Meow?
BlackRose @235 “If I meet a girl who has had one or two drinks, say, and she actively wants to have sex with me, I’m probably going to assume that she is ok with it, probably won’t regret it”
What if she has previously said that she won’t have sex with you unless you’re single? What if she has had 3 or 4 drinks?
@Backyard Bombardier
The alternative is not sexist. She still has several ways to avoid responsibility, if she chooses. The same choices she always has, but that men never have.
And maybe I need to shout it…condoms fail. Vasectomies fail. I guess you’ll advocate abstention rather than to give men semi-equal rights to women. I think granting semi-equal rights is much more sensible.
@Mr. J.
You equate wanting equal rights to “rage against women”? Uhm, ok. I guess you drank the feminist Kool-Aid.
Abortion, adoption, & legal-abandonment are all legal choices women have if they decide they do not want responsibility for a pregnancy for the next 18yrs. Men get no such choice to avoid responsibility for a pregnancy. Even if they take precautions, even if the woman lies, etc.
@sanguisuga/232
>So “equal rights for all” means that men have power over a woman’s right to abort or give birth?
Wow, how did you manufacture that insanity? Try reading.
I never said a man has any rights over a woman’s body. I support her right to choose (I donate to NOW & Planned Parenthood too). “Equal rights” means the man gets some right to disclaim responsibility, just as she has that right. She does it via abortion, adoption, or legal abandonment. He should be able to do it via a legal disclaim of rights, before birth.
@251
You don’t want equal rights. You want to cum and run.
@#192, Suzy: I’m pretty sure Badgirl wasn’t referring to the risk of being raped when she was talking about the risks of going out in a mixed gender setting and having a drink, but rather the risks of lowered inhibitions leading to a sexual encounter that went further than you had expected and that you might regret the day after. If you and I met at a party, had several drinks, and found ourselves naked, making out and using our hands/mouths to pleasure each other, it would not be rape if you, straddling me, put my penis inside you. If I told you “no, I don’t want to do this”, or something like that, and you didn’t immediately stop, then, yes, it would be rape (also, if you could reasonably assume that I was unable to protest, but with me having just recently been an active part in another sexual act, you wouldn’t have much of a reason to believe that unless I had suddenly lost responsiveness), but a “natural progression” from making out to sexual intercourse, where both partners were active participants at least up until the point where the penis gets into the vagina, and no part shows signs of protesting, then it’s not rape. It might be a bloody stupid mistake, on both parts, but it’s not rape.
To say otherwise, in my opinion, is to remove agency from the potential victim, effectively telling us that women are weak little creatures that can’t stand up for themselves, and need somebody else to protect them. I don’t believe that. I believe women are just as capable as men of making decisions and standing up for themselves.
I’m not saying a woman who has been raped has herself to blame for it. Not at all. But if she actively participated all the way up until penetration, then didn’t in any way protest this turn of events, then she is at least in part responsible. Or would you call the boy who hooked up with a girl, but just after penetrating her realizes – through the girl showing signs of discomfort or protest – that she doesn’t want this, and withdraws, a rapist?
(you can of course spin all of these some way or another. If the guy is violently aggressive, and the woman fears that she by protesting will come to harm, then there’s a reason for her not to protest beyond a discomfort of saying no, and so on and so forth, and that I might agree could be defined as rape)
@BlackRose/235
Yes, vasectomies have failure rates nearly as high as The Pill (on average nearly 0.1%, due to the vas deferens re-growing)
http://www.jurology.com/article/S0022-53…
Though some studies have found much higher failure rates (even after years), and some much lower failure rates.
>The real problem with child support laws is that they make men pay even when
And that it may not be fairly calculated. The courts are extremely paternalistic and sexist when it comes to divorce & family law.
@tiare/246
I’m fine if she makes decisions about HER body if they only involve her. I support her right to choose. I donate to NOW & Planned Parenthood.
However, she has at all times the right to decide not to deal with an unplanned child. She can abort, adopt, or legally abandon. A man has no such right yet to decide not to deal with an unplanned child, and he loses that right from the moment of conception. Once pregnant, she can freely makes decisions that obligate him, while all the while she retains the right to choose to not be obligated. That’s very unequal rights. He should be able to disclaim responsibility, just as she has several recourses to avoid responsibility.
@Mr. J./253
>You don’t want equal rights. You want to cum and run.
Women currently have the right to get pregnant, then “run” (abort, adopt, or legally abandon). They currently have the right to lie to a guy, get pregnant, then demand support. They have the right to abort a baby the guy would really like to have. Except for #2, I support all those rights.
Given all those rights, it would be a small measure of partial equality to give the man the right to “cum & run”, as you put it.
248: “What if she has previously said that she won’t have sex with you unless you’re single? What if she has had 3 or 4 drinks?”
If she’s busy kissing me, walking up to my room on my arm, taking off her own clothing unassisted (or taking my clothing off of me), and climbing on top of me under her own power, that’s a plenty clear indication that she has changed her mind.
This insistence on a literal verbal consent is simple-minded. You (the generalized “you”) expect a man to be sensitive enough to detect when a woman is uncomfortable and back off without a word being said — but that same guy can’t use that same level of sensitivity to intuit a “yes” from overt, enthusiastic, and escalating participation?
@ 256, it looks like you’re objecting to the unfairness of nature/biology rather than unfairness of laws. Laws are not sexist, laws treat men and women as equals. Women legally decide about their bodies, men legally decide about their bodies. Men and women have equal responsibilities towards their children, men have access to all the options you have listed bar abortion (and that’s because of biology, not because of sexist laws – I am sure if men could bear children they would have access to abortion too).
As I have pointed out, when we make decisions about our bodies it can influence other people. But you can’t expect to be exempt from laws just because someone made a decision about their body that affected you unfavorably. (Because, you know, where would it stop? Your partner didn’t put out last night so you want to be free to trash someone’s car? Etc.)
You can be against all child support of course (that includes the cases when father is raising the child and the mother pays child support), but there is a reason why the society doesn’t want children to potentially grow up in poverty, so I don’t think child support is going anywhere at least in the foreseeable future.
@259 I was trying to bring it back to this case, where she did not walk to his room, and she did not climb enthusiastically onto his penis.
If he has reason to think she’ll regret sex in the morning (from her previous statements), isn’t it worth his time to find out if she really wants sex, before he escalates to penetration?
@209: “Do you agree, also, that guys should understand that a girl naked in bed is not thereby consenting to having sex, and may be thinking they are just going to make out?”
It isn’t consent in and of itself, but it is a strong enough indicator that if she really does want to just make out, she ought to make that clear. In this case, yes, verbally, because the non-verbal indicators are pretty much all saying just the opposite.
(sorry, reading the comments thread kind of in random order.)
@JA5 You’re looking at it all wrong. Once the child is out of the womb, assuming there’s no adoption (which, if what’s been said earlier here is true, requires the consent of both parents – I’m no expert on these laws in the US), it’s no longer about your rights. For that matter, it’s no longer about the mothers rights. It’s about the CHILDS RIGHTS. You have no obligation towards the mother to pay child support, you have it towards the child. And honestly, as a man, I think you should man up and take that responsibility.
Not taking it also means lumping the cost over on the rest of society, either in the form of the state having to support the mom, or in a higher risk of the child ending up a burden to society when he/she grows older (or both).
@tiare/260
The legal system is sexist. Women are given several options, if they choose, to avoid being obligated to an unplanned pregnancy for 18 yrs (abort, adopt, legally abandon). Men are given no options. But the law could let them, if it weren’t sexist. How are you saying men now have the same options? If she unilaterally decides to have the baby, I must pay. I can’t avoid the obligation.
Men can’t make any decisions here that bind women (I can’t make her abort or have a child), and that’s fine. But women are allowed to do so in reverse (she can force me to pay), and that’s not ok.
>But you can’t expect to be exempt from laws just because someone made a decision about their body that affected you unfavorably.
The law should change so that she cannot bind a man who doesn’t want to be. If she still wants to raise the kid without support, she can bear the financial consequences of her decision.
>where would it stop? Your partner didn’t put out last night so you want to be free to trash someone’s car?
That’s a ridiculously extreme example.
I’m not against child support. Unless the man, before birth, says he does not want an unplanned child.
@262, I agree with the advice to girls.
Will you agree that guys should remember that naked girls sometimes don’t want intercourse, and aren’t expecting it?
@Thomas/263
So you’ve drunk the feminist Kool-Aid. She gets the rights to avoid obligation of a pregnancy (abort, adopt, or legally abandon), force a child on a man, or abort a child the man wanted (a right she should have), and the man has no similar right to choose to avoid obligation of a pregnancy. Sorry, I’m not going to agree with such sexism. And yes, I know there is sexism that goes against women, I don’t support that either.
JAS – what if the system were that you had to get a notarized statement, BEFORE INTERCOURSE, signed by both the man and the woman, revoking the man’s rights/responsibilities towards any possible child with this woman?
All of us tax-payers would bear the cost, then, of raising your (unwanted) children.
Would you put up with that? With the hassle of getting the notarized statement before sex with a new partner? And with the extra taxes?
@ 264, the legal system is not sexist because
A) women have the right to medical interventions (because of biology one of those interventions can be abortion), men have the right to medical interventions (it’s not legal system’s fault that one of those interventions can’t be abortion)
B) mothers have the right to put up children for adoption (with father’s consent), fathers have the right to put children up for adoption (with mother’s consent)
C) as for legal abandonment, while it’s not familiar to me as a concept, from what I’ve read I haven’t found one jurisdiction where it applies to women only so I can’t see it as sexist – please correct me if I’m wrong
D) if one of the parents chooses to leave the child with the other parent the non-custodial parent shall pay child support – again not sexist
So my conclusion is that men have the same rights as women. As I have pointed out, the third person comes into existence and becomes a person by being born – from that moment on, both parents can stay with the child, both parents can walk away, or one can stay and one can walk away (and pay child support) – regardless of their gender. The woman can’t legally renounce her future obligations towards the child before birth, and neither can the man. (For example if the man persuades her to give birth and promises that she can leave the child with him – if she gives birth and leaves the child with him he can sue her for child support and win, because it wasn’t legally possible for her to waive her parental rights and obligations before the birth of the child.)
Before the third person comes into existence, both men and women are entitled to do whatever they want with their bodies. The fact that one specific medical intervention performed on women prevents the third person from coming into existence is your beef with biology, not the legal system – as you can see the legal system doesn’t give more rights to women.
Just what kind of contact does FOFS want with her exes and is her current GGG boyfriend aware that she wants tu maintain contact with her exes? Are these her former lovers and is her current boyfriend comfortable with that?
I would feel ackward if I was in a committed relationship (an assumption, since I have no clue as to the nature of their relationship) and found out that my partner still had a thing for her former lovers. She was more affected by the death of a former lover than breaking up with what was her then current boyfriend (assuming she still thought of him as her boyfriend)
@JA5: “Men are given no options.”
For the love of God, grow the fuck up.
You have the option not stick your dick in a woman if you are too much of a fucking pussy to take the responsibility for your own actions. You spin all this “you’ve drunk the feminist Kool-Aid” like you are so much more of a man because you are fighting for your “rights”.
Go fuck yourself. You’re not a man, you are a petulant child that wants ice cream then whines when he gets a tummy ache. Men live up to their responsibilities, they don’t cut and run.
Asshole.
Thank goodness for you, BB! Without your wisdom and understanding, self righteous “sensitive feminist men” may never have been heard from. And what a shame that would be. A loss unparalleled in the last twenty, thirty, perhaps thirty five seconds. I think I’m speaking for the entire human race in proclaiming your insight, banal cliche riddled prose and ambitious thirty days to a larger vocabulary overreaching one of the crowning accomplishments of western civilization. Sally forth and share your crunchy wisdom with “less evolved” menfolk. Tell them what they want to hear, or rather, what you think they do…that is, women.
Rape! Rape!
@272: Glub?
Anyone that stands in the way of more abortions being performed in the u.s. is the enemy. If that means that misguided frat boys who want to evade responsibility by forcing the women they date raped into pregnancy (penetration is rape, folks…just accept it like you do everything else in your pointless lives. A penis isn’t just like a loaded gun, it is one…and you take your very life in your hands when you take one in hand, playing….gambling) to get abortions, it must be law. Of course you can justify it by saying you drank the feminist koolaid, but in reality, a woman’s right to choose is a choice too far…preventing deserving fetuses from being properly disposed of in equally deserving biological waste containers.
When a man can be on the hook for child support payments during the pregnancy, then he can have a say in whether or not the pregnant woman should have an abortion. Until that time, it is the woman’s decision alone, and she has no obligation, moral, ethical or otherwise, to disclose an unwanted pregnancy if she is ending it in abortion or adoption. The only time she is required to disclose is if she is keeping the baby as the man will have a legal responsibility to support the child / right to see the child.
Point being: men, the only way you get a say in not becoming a father is to not get a woman pregnant.
@259 – maybe. Not necessarily. But does that give you the go-ahead to have unprotected sex with her without asking/making it clear what you are doing/without her ok? Like in this case?
@276: I think “are you on birth control” in context made it pretty clear and was a way of getting her ok.
@273: I love all the confused animals! Where are they from?
@267: I’d support that system. If I were fertile, I doubt I’d go to the trouble of ever using it, but it would be good to have as an option. Why only before intercourse, if both people agree?
The idea would be to encourage the woman to get an abortion. We could even deny tax dollars to a woman who went ahead and had the kid after such an agreement, and offer free abortions, or even pay people to get them. That would take care of your tax dollar objection.
@277: I’m pretty lazy. I just do this.
@277 why before intercourse? So the guy wouldn’t beat up the girl to get her to sign it. And so the girl won’t get pregnant as a way to pressure him into a commitment. The point is to make the possible consequences real to both parties BEFORE they have sex.
The idea is NOT to encourage abortion. The idea is to encourage effective use of birth control. The woman is just acknowledging that the guy isn’t going to help later. We can’t make the mom care for the baby and support it too – that’s crazy talk.
Sorry. Taxes would go up, way up. I just want to know if JAS would be on board.
Good news, JA5 – it’s just occurred to me that men can abort a child too, albeit after it’s already been born, and women don’t have a say in it.
Abortion is effectively refusing to use one’s body to support another being. Well should the child get sick and need organ/tissue donation, and the only matching donor was its father, the father is also able to refuse to use his body to support his child’s life. Since it’s his body, he can do whatever he wants with it, even if the mother
1) wants the child to live and will resent the man for killing her baby
2) is a non-custodial parent who would rather not pay child support and would prefer the child to die. Can she demand the right to ditch her obligation to the child before the man decides whether he’s gonna preserve the child’s life or not? Because, you know, the decision is not in her hands, she should have as much right to avoid the obligation as the man, wah wah. Hell no.
So yeah, no sexism in the legal system. The right to one’s body belongs to both genders.
@268 tiare: Actually, the system is a bit sexist, de facto if not de jure, but it’s in the complete opposite direction of what JA5 talks about: Child custody. As far as I’m aware, when it comes to child custody battles, the mother is generally awarded a lot more rights than the father (though the law may well be non-gender-specific – I’m talking about actual outcomes here).
There’s also a bit of a problem with the adoption thing, seeing as the mother has the possibility of not informing the father of the child, and so could adopt it away without him having a say in it, simply because he’s not aware there is a child (obviously, this would generally only happen with one-night stands, etc, and I’m sure the father would often just welcome the child being adopted away, but in some cases, it might not be that way).
Not sure if it can be described as sexist in the first case – only if the court is choosing to give the custody to the mother just because she’s a woman even though it’s clearly better for the child to stay with its father. Which is obviously wrong and against the spirit of the law. However, if in most cases the mother simply is the better choice for the child, it’s not sexism really.
The other problem is actually a problem with biology, not the legal system. Yes, it is more difficult for a man to track down his offspring, but you can’t blame it on the law. If a man is so invested in the destiny of his sperm, maybe checking on every woman he’s had sex with several months later would be a good idea. Yes, it’s a drag, but being a woman can also be a drag, and we can’t blame every bit of perceived unfairness in nature on the legal system.
[…] grow the fuck up […] fucking pussy […] Go fuck yourself. You’re not a man […] Asshole.
The discussion would be more interesting without all this “righteous rage”. Why all the insults?
@284 – Not rape. Just, not ethical. If I know someone can’t afford to give me $1000 in gambling chips, but I talk him into it when we’re having drunken fun at the gambling table — that’s not ethical of me. It’s not theft, but it’s not ethical.
Wouldn’t expect a troll like you to know the difference though. “If I want to do it, I will! It’s not a crime!”
@285: Why? Why not?
JA5 was becoming rather tedious, just repeating the same old whines about how his freedom to fuck without regard to consequences was being infringed. So I stopped being civil. That happens around here.
And, to be honest, “men” like him who have a huge sense of entitlement where their sense of responsibility should be regarding sex and relationships are a hot button for me. I have one son and two daughters; my goal is to prevent the former from becoming that way, and to protect the latter from those who have.
*sigh*
@JA5 your theory is that the law bends in favour of the woman, you argue that it should be bending more in favour of the man.
WRONG WRONG WRONG
The law is there in the interest of the CHILD. as it should be – and when it isn’t, it should be changed. The rights of the (born – this isn’t a pro-life rant) child are the most important when any is in conflict.
If a parent is unfit their child is (hopefully) taken away. A safe home is the child’s right, the right to have custody of a child is less important. (I’d argue it’s a privilage but that’s me)
To say that the woman ‘controls the man’s life’ is why people think you have rage against women. It sounds like you’re talking about your mother, not anyone elses. Because it’s 100% irrational. The woman is legally entiteled to a small portion of money from the man to help raise that child – is that fair to the man? No. But it’s ideal for the child.
Would it be ideal to prevent “mother abandonment?” as you described? Preventing women from putting their children up for adoption? No. Those children are better off with families that want them.
If you think in terms of the CHILD’S rights and not the fathers or mothers the laws make more sense.
It’s impossible to have perfectly gender-equal laws since the genders are different.
And last but not least: it’s exceedingly easy to dodge paying child support. Ask anyone.
oh and for the record: I find myself wildly at odds with most women that call themselves feminists
These letters make me so F@#$ing glad I stopped dating women 15 years ago. Why you all think bat shit drama is ok is beyond me.
NARAL should be angry with Dan. Once the semen is out of the guy’s dick its no longer his. Once it fertilizes an egg its no longer semen, its something else (zygote, fetus, clump of cells, etc.) and still no longer his. What it has become belongs to the woman who it now resides inside and it is her, and her alone, who gets to choose what to do with the clump of cells. That’s why its called a CHOICE. Yes, even if he’s married to the woman in which the clump is growing, its still her choice.
Oh looky! Backyard Bombadier @287 is raising children to be sensitive feminist men like him. They’ll be great UU ministers, wearing dumpy formless sweaters, sport ratty ass beards, and birkenstocks. A mug of some hot beverage (and they’ll use words like ‘beverage’) will never be but an arm’s length away as they amuse themselves by memorizing the works of great hippie liberal douchebags that came before them. They’ll honor/ defer to their life partners and equals, and will waste endless hours inflicting their fascination with the intersectionality of oppression on others. I look forward to the future douchebags of america.
@292 Right, when a sexually adventurous woman disparages your ethics, call her a hooker. If only I didn’t like hookers so much, I might be hurt. Or, not.
@294: Don’t listen to the trolls. You’re awesome. 🙂
@279: Well, even so, it’s still possible that a guy would pressure or abuse a girl to get her to sign, and then they’d have consensual sex. (It does happen in abusive relationships, sadly.) Either way, coerced agreements aren’t legally valid, though there’d be some difficulty proving coercion.
I’m not sure why the idea is not to encourage abortion (which is one form of birth control — it does control births). The way I see it, abortions (and all BC) should be freely and easily available to anyone, and raising a child should be a conscious, informed choice that two people make together.
I don’t see why public funds should go to someone who decides not to get an abortion even if she can’t support a kid and doesn’t have the father’s support. I don’t think we’re “making” her raise and support the kid; she’s making the choice to not get an abortion, and I don’t think that choice should be encouraged or funded.
(All this requires a lot more public funding and support for abortion than is politically feasible, of course.)
@294 EricaP
I still adore you.
@255: That abstract you cited doesn’t say anything about the pregnancy rate for vasectomized men.
Here’s some information:
http://www.vasectomy-information.com/art…
“Vasectomy is usually quoted at less than 1% technical failure rate. Remember that most men do eventually become clear, so the technical failure rate is misleading as in the vast majority of cases a technical failure does not mean a contraceptive failure. The man just keeps submitting samples until he’s proven to be clear.”
It gives the pregnancy rate for vasectomies as 1 in 2000 to 4000 and for the pill as 1 in 20 to 1000.
And keep in mind the pill is easy to mess up: forget it a couple times or go on some antibiotics and it loses a lot of effectiveness. But once you’re snipped, you’re snipped.
Also: “So what are the chances of a vasectomy rejoining after the all clear has been given? This is known as late recanalization, and is in fact very rare. It develops in only about one in 4,000 (0.025%) of vasectomies. It has been known to occur as late as 17 months after vasectomy.”
In other words, there has never been a case of the vas rejoining itself after more than 17 months, so if you’re clear after 17 months, the failure rate is 0.
Not all vasectomies are the same. Or so I was told when I got mine. But that goes more to the issue of reversibility. There’s no repairing what I had done. Forget growing back spontaneously, surgeons can’t even do it.
That was over 10 years ago and I must have had sex like 20 times since then without making babies.
@299 – you crack me up.
@293: Okay, it was fun before, but it’s starting to get creepy. Maybe you need a hobby?
@300 Hi beautiful. What are you up to tonight cuz I’ve got this thousand bucks…
@295 – The system I facetiously proposed is not possible politically, but the only thing that could make it even less popular is to say it promotes abortion. And tax monies would still flow to feed the kid, because kids born to irresponsible parents have enough suckitude in their lives without starving as well.
@302, hey, baby needs a new pair of shoes…
Hunter78, you said, “Their position is once women start drinking, they lose the power of assent. And any sexual contact becomes becomes rape by the man, unless there’s written approval.” That’s not how the law generally sees it, though. Rather, you can’t have sex with someone who is too incapacitated to give consent. I should hope that most drinking doesn’t impair a person that way. However, when it does, consent is no longer possible. This is true for both sexes, not just women. It’s also false that “any sexual contact” is considered rape; generally there are degrees of sexual assault or battery.
Here’s an example (from Wisc.) of sex with a drunken person as a second degree sexual assault: “Sexual contact or sexual intercourse with a person known to be intoxicated, known to be unconscious, or known to suffer from diminished capacities of any sort that temporarily or permanently render the victim incapable of understanding the consequences of such conduct.” This doesn’t apply to any and all drinking, obviously.
Thomas, the cases you’re talking about also don’t seem to involve being incapable of consent due to intoxication. If they did, then yes, they’d be wrong.
What EricaP says about theft of gambling chips depends on the circumstances. Was the person slightly or severely drunk? Did you know this and use it to manipulate someone into doing something that would otherwise not be chosen? If I sign a contract when I’m wasted, it might not be enforceable. I have to have a legal capacity to contract. If you get really drunk I can’t take advantage of this opportunity to purchase your nice car for a dollar. Obviously the rape case is different from a contract for a number of reasons, but they share the same underlying idea that a person needs to be mentally capable of consent.
I guess I don’t understand why this is controversial. If you pass out, can I penetrate you with some object? Surely we want the law to address that. The fact that there’s a continuum of intoxication levels doesn’t mean we have to toss out this whole category of cases that involved impaired consent.
@271: Well said!!!
I could not have phrased it any better myself!
@301
You’ll shut your fat ugly trap when I tell you to. Until then, talk at us about how forward thinking you are, vaginaface.
EricaP, you are an enchantress. With your world weary “this twenty year old con man haints my dreams” air of overweight shut in, I am at a loss for words. I’ll regain my composure when you stop insinuating your handicapped worldview in things that you so clearly’ve never experienced…like rascal free mobiliteee.
Both LWs are drama queens. The second more obviously so, but the first–what was the point of her frickin’ letter anyway? She WASN’T pregnant, and that’s great that she decided to get all philosophical about her scare, but the fact remains that she had NOTHING to tell this guy, except maybe to beg him for some more of his spunk.
I emailed you about this, but felt obligated to post it here also. It Gets Better, Although not Necessarily in Tennessee.” I’ve tweaked things slightly on the post since emailing you. http://www.theneonlounge.com/2011/05/07/…
Hunter78 @180: “Anastasia’s, as others’ here, accusation of rape is clear proof, if anyone was wanting it, that the left can be as vicious and inhuman as the right.”
Speaking of false accusations. What I actually wrote: “Not arguing for or against in this particular case, just saying.”
It’s fine to disagree with my definition of rape, but don’t twist my words to fit me into some little box of your design.
@309 – she was wondering about her ethical obligation to inform a one night stand/jackass as to whether or not she was pregnant if she were. If you are female and fertile, this is an absolutely relevant question that inevitably at some point will cross your mind. Hopefully it won’t actually happen, but if it does, what is your obligation to the guy? There really isn’t a consensus or a protocol so she asked Dan and by proxy, us. And from the sound of it, pretty sure she’s had enough of his spunk.
Suzy @305, I believe drunken transfers of cars & real estate are legally different from other kinds of transfers, because of the question of title. Intoxicated gamblers who sue to get their money back from the casino seem to lose in court. See, for instance, http://ftpcontent.worldnow.com/wdrb/news…
So – if the drunken gambler hands me the chips instead of the dealer, I think that legally I get to keep them.
Dan, give us a column on rape, please! Here’s my take:
Situation 1. Man and woman go out. They’re both adults. They’ve both had drinks before. They’ve both had sex before (not with each other). They have drinks on this particular occasion. They begin making out. He, with his wits about him and with his inhibitions lowered, goes further than he otherwise might have. He has sex with her and has misgivings in the morning. She, with her wits about her and with her inhibitions lowered, goes further than she might have otherwise. She too has misgivings. My verdict: No rape.
Situation 2. Both are adults, though she’s young. Both have had drinks before, but she in particular doesn’t know her reaction to alcohol very well. They go out. He pressures her to drink more than she’s comfortable with. He does this because he’s hoping to get her drunk. She drinks too much, and he’s only too glad to help her drink more than she should. Then, with her coordination shot and her decision-making seriously impaired, he has sex with her. This was his plan all along. My verdict: Rape.
Of course, there’s a great deal of grey area between the 2 extremes. That’s why there are lawyers to argue both sides of each case. That’s why there are juries to consider both sides. A lot of the argument about what constitutes rape comes down to people not understanding how the legal system works. It’s not cut and dry. Similar cases can have different outcomes depending on slight variables.
In light of the attempt on the part of some politicians to redefine rape, I believe this discussion is important, and Dan, please, give us a column with your views.
Crinoline @315 – do you believe that all acts that aren’t criminal are thereby morally acceptable? Why are you so interested in Dan’s thoughts on rape, as opposed to Dan’s thoughts on when one should walk away from legal but ill-advised sex? Dan is not a lawyer, and should not give legal advice.
Hunter78, you said that once women start drinking, they lose their power of assent. I’m quoting you at least one state law (representative of various others of its ilk) that shows this is not the case, yet you think it reflects what you said. No, it doesn’t say that any drinking means that a person is no longer capable of giving consent. It means that if you are intoxicated, passed out, and otherwise impaired to the point that you don’t understand the consequences, then you can’t give consent and it’s rape. For example, if I were so drunk that I couldn’t tell the difference between you and my spouse, and thus had no grasp of the consequences of what I was agreeing to do, then that would be rape. There is no bright, clear line to distinguish these cases along a messy continuum, but that’s real life.
Erica, it still depends. If I’m drunk and we make some agreement, it matters whether you knew that I was incapacitated and were using that to your advantage in forming the agreement. It’s not just about transferring titles.
Thankfully, not all women are as blindingly sexist and antiquated as most of the post-ers in here are (men & women)…a woman lawyer (Melanie McCulley) was one of the first to advocate that men deserved post-conception choice (financial “abortion”), just like women have (abort, adopt-away, legally abandon). And a woman, that used to be president of NOW (Karen DeCrow), agrees.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2000/1…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_suppo…
On other blogs I’ve seen “regular” women posting that actually believe in equality. I’m a little surprised Dan’s comment-ers are all so determinedly closed-minded & backwards.
I’m also surprised how incapable of discussion some of you post-ers are. You’re so closed-minded & incensed, you descend quickly into rage, profanity, name-calling, personal attacks, etc. Though I suppose that all just illustrates how incredibly closed-minded some of you are.
Someone remarked that my posts were repetitive. Because some of you are so closed-minded that you’re unable to have a conversation…you state your point, I state mine, then apparently since you didn’t read or understand mine, you state your exact same point again. So I try again to explain. I suppose that’s a bit futile when the person I’m trying to talk to is completely closed-minded.
@320
Everyone here understands you. We don’t agree with you. The reason you are so repetitive is that you don’t understand that to convince people you need to do more than make yourself understood. You don’t persuade. You simply repeat.
I don’t care what famous person agrees with you if the assertion you are making doesn’t make sense to me. Someone else’s resume doesn’t override my judgement.
@ 320,
If you have read my comments you should have realized that both parents can deny the child the right to use their body, even if the child’s life depends on it, and neither parent can deny the child the right to use their bank account. It puzzles me why you think that is called sexism, the word for that is actually gender equality.
@318 – The casino gave Jimmy Vance free drinks, got him drunk, then lent him money so he could keep gambling. He lost the money, and tried to get out of the debt, saying he was too drunk to know what he was doing. No one denied he was drunk; but the judge said it didn’t matter. So you can get someone drunk for the purposes of affecting his judgment, and legally, you can still keep his money. At least sometimes.
Not ethically, of course. But legally.
@319/320 So would you take the deal I offered @267? Or is it all about your own convenience?
Jesus Suzy: “if someone gets wasted and you sexually penetrate them, you are raping them. This isn’t a matter of opinion; it’s typically the law.”
Ummmmm, fucking bullshit? How many women are “raped” based on that BULLSHIT definition DAILY on college campuses then. That is one of the most asinine things I have read, and you have said some pretty stupid shit. I like to drink, and like to fuck. Does that mean the guys I have fucked when I have had a couple of glasses of wine and GIVEN MY CONSENT are “raping me”? HELL NO!!! Even if I am a bit fucked up, I am aware of my actions, and I am OK with this. Again, no where am I saying that its ok for a guy to proceed once a girl says “no”, but it IS a girls responsibility to maintain enough sobriety to say no if thats what she wants. If she consents, then SHE CONSENTS AND ITS NOT RAPE!!!
Really, what the hell are the poor men to do these days? Where do yuou people draw the line? Is a glass of wine ok? How about 4 beers? How is the man to tell, you never answered me there…..I am beginning to think you FEMINAZIS will require written consent and breathalyers soon!
And you know what? I am not too worried about you buying my shit when I am fucked up, because #1, I would never party with you, I don’t party around strangers or people I don’t like. Duh, again, common sense. This held true even when I was younger, and something that should be taught to teenagers as well. And #2, I typically don’t get SO wasted that I do things I would not do sober anyway.
not gonna lie, the Guy_Fieri troll is crackin’ my shit up. but i think that’s because i’m picturing the real Guy Fieri speaking these rants into the camera while eating a big plate of chili-cheese fries.
I tried to follow your argument @320. I tried to look at it through your eyes. And, I guess I failed, because I sense that you are angry at biology. To me it makes sense that because the burden is upon the woman that the laws exist as they do. Sometimes laws have to exist to provide balance, males in our culture earn more for equal work amongst many other privileges in our society. Your bodies do not have to undergo the stress of pregnancy and childbirth, nor does society expect you to be the primary caretaker. The burden to miss work for a sick child usually doesn’t rest on men’s shoulders. If you are honest then you can recognize these truths. The majority of the burden physical, financial, and emotional rests on women.
It think it would be helpful for you to know what the laws are where you reside. For example here the law states that if the male is uninvolved with the pregnancy, then the state considers him to have had an orgasam and not fathered a child, thus his rights are not consulted for issues such as adoption. If this is a deep concern for you then you could bank your sperm and then undergo sterilization or maybe you could wear a condom or two everytime and not rely on your partner’s birth control not to fail. At the very least discuss this with your partner, let her know in advance that should conception occur that you will not provide her with any financial help. Then you two can go forward with integrity on the subject.
Good luck.
Kim, I think he really just wants to behave as sexually reckless as he wants without having to take responsibility. I can’t imagine the person making the comments above having a thoughtful conversation with, or taking an interest in the lives of, the women he has sex with. Money is the most important thing to him.
Mr. J
If there is an accidental, unintended, unwanted pregnancy and the two are not married, the woman has quite a few options. She can abort the child, she can give it up for adoption or even have the child and keep it. She can do any of these things without informing the father his child exists or ever existed.
If she wants to have the child and make sure she never has to pay child support, she can simply give it up for adoption without ever telling the father his child exists.
But, if she wants to keep the child, she can force the father to give her financial aid. Once he’s been forced to be a father and required to support the child, he finally gets to have a relevant feeling. Does he want some visitation rights?
Is it really so difficult to understand why some guys might honestly find that unfair without being selfish, irresponsible whores?
I am a woman and it seems unfair to me. I do think that it must be unfair in favor of the woman to some degree because of the biology involved. But, the actual unfairness doesn’t seem commensurate with the biology, to me.
shw3nn: I agree completely. I think that guys should have some sort of “opt out” policy….women have the right to abort (definitely a good thing!), but guys have no equvalent measure. What I am hearing is “guys need to be careful where to put their sprem”, which is essentially the same thing as telling women “don’t let boys put sperm in your vagina if you don’t want to end up pregnant.”
Well, yeah, nice, in theory, but this is the real world we are living in . Shit happens, people are going to have PIV sex. I certainly am NOT advocating abortion as birth control, but man, I am sure glad it exists as a last resort. What do guys have as an “oh shit, I am really not ready to be a father, and I want no part of this” equivalent? Just because I fucked this chick one or twice, now I am stuck with 18 years of child support, when I want nothing to do with being a father? The woman has the right to abort, shouldn’t the guy have a right to waive over his rights, and thus get out of child support? But again, by doing this, he loses ALL parental rights, then and forever.
@330: “What I am hearing is ‘guys need to be careful where to put their sprem’… nice, in theory, but this is the real world we are living in . Shit happens, people are going to have PIV sex.”
And if that PIV sex results in a pregnancy, people are going to have to deal with the results.
If I get in my car, drive home from the office, and run someone over with it, can I say “Oh, sorry, I didn’t intend to run over anyone. In fact, I have this sworn affadavit stating that it is my firm intention not to run anyone over, on this day or any other day. So, very sorry to the person I ran over but I will be exercising my right to opt of of compensating you for your injuries.”
Wait, no, that’s ridiculous. No one could possibly argue that someone should be relieved of responsibility for the results of their actions, even if the result was accidental and unintended.
“The woman has the right to abort, shouldn’t the guy have a right to waive over his rights, and thus get out of child support? But again, by doing this, he loses ALL parental rights, then and forever.”
The problem with this is that, if the woman decides to carry the pregnancy to term, there will be a third party here: the child. Whatever the father chooses to do, the child has rights also, including a right to support from both of her parents.
@330 to prevent the spread of STDs (and unwanted pregnancies), we want people who are not committed to each other to use condoms. For guys like the one who penetrated CL (without a condom), maybe the ever-present fear of child support can help them accept that they need to wear a condom.
@331 nicely done!
“The problem with this is that, if the woman decides to carry the pregnancy to term, there will be a third party here: the child. Whatever the father chooses to do, the child has rights also, including a right to support from both of her parents.”
Then it should be illegal for a woman to withhold information about a birth from any man who could potentially be the father.
And adoptive parents should be able to sue the birth mother for child support if they run into financial difficulty. Make it the law that adoptive parents have to sue for child support in order to receive government aid.
332: you are never going to hear me advocating AGAINST condoms use. However, we know they fail. We know sometimes pregnancies result. We also know they sometimes don’t get used even when they should.
The woman can opt out after the fact, in several different ways. Which I think is good! I just think a man should have a way as well; he could fuck his life up from one ill-advised sexual encounter, and has no such recourse as abortion or adoption like the woman has, its SOLEY in her control.
@331: Your analogy is not quite correct, because, if you have a vagina, you have these last minute, emergency methods that can get you out of this scrape, its 100% your choice. If you have a cock you are completely at the mercy of the person with the vag.
You could stick to blow-jobs and anal… Very very low risk of pregnancy…
“The problem with this is that, if the woman decides to carry the pregnancy to term, there will be a third party here: the child. Whatever the father chooses to do, the child has rights also, including a right to support from both of her parents”
We are having a TON of hypocracy on this thread here….a TON. Are the womyn’s rights supporters here even noticing this? And please believe me when I do state that I AM a feminist! I just think that for some people here, the tide has turned in the other direction, towards female supremecy.
Look…we have people here beyond pissed at the very notion that this woman owes the potential baby daddy the right of knowing she has aborted (Its HER body, he doesn’t have the right to know *anything* that goes on in her body!)….but then, when it comes out….want to smack this poor sucker for 18 years of child support for his pump and dump. Can’t you see how convulted this way of thinking this is? Its 100% hers until it pops out, and then he owes for 50%, and he has ZERO say in the matter! Somehow this strikes me as unfair…..
I would say that *hopefully* the decision to bring a child into the world is a joint one. I realize this is not a perfect world however, and if you are not going to share this decision, then you need to accept the responsibility for raising it. Being a sperm donor does not = being a daddy. Saying “he needs to be careful where he puts his sperm” is every bit equivalent to “well, she just needs to be more careful about spreading her legs”, and I can see reproductive freedoms being stripped with THAT line of thinking!!! If you can NOT handle the burden of raising the child on your own, perhaps you need to make a baby with someone who WILL support you.
It is my understanding that here in the US:
“Approximately 44 States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands make provisions in their statutes that allow putative fathers to revoke or rescind a notice of intent to claim paternity.9 Of these States, approximately 15 allow revocation at any time.10 Revocation is effective only after the child’s birth in Arkansas and Iowa, and Florida allows revocation of a registration prior to the child’s birth only. Approximately 28 States, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands limit the right of rescission to 60 days after the paternity claim is submitted or prior to a court proceeding to establish paternity, whichever occurs first.11 In 19 States and the Virgin Islands, a claim of paternity may not be revoked after the 60-day period except by court action on the basis of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.12
Most States will accept a written, notarized statement for rescission. Seven States, however, require a court proceeding for revocation of a claim.”
http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/l…
I’ll be honest I’m a bit confused, by the thought that a man who does not wish to revoke his paternity of a child would be unwilling to pay child support. It doesn’t make sense that he would insist that the fetus not be aborted or given up for adoption and then refuse to ignore his legal responsibility to provide parenting support to the child. If he doesn’t want to provide support, why is he angered by the idea that the pregnancy could be terminated or that the child be given up for adoption. This is where knowing the laws in one’s individual state become important, because in some states three (3) unreturned phone calls is enough to determine that his lack of involvement during the pregnancy is sufficient to terminate his rights. Child support exists for the child, does anyone really want a child to penalized, and it is the legal responsibility of the parents to support the child.
Perhaps, my life is too small and the vast majority of single mothers that I know are DV victims that I have worked with, but the child support they receive (determined by the court) does not really make a dent in the cost of raising the child on a monthly basis. I’m sure they are grateful for every bit of help, but these women often work multiple jobs trying to make ends meet. They are the ones who must stay home with a sick child and often are the ones that go without dinner.
The reality of life is that every action has a consequence. Fertilizing an egg is no different. the system isn’t perfect, nothing in this life is, but I’m willing, perhaps foolishly, to bet that the majority of those fathers that want rights and a say are individuals who want to be responsible parents. And, my hat is off to them.
kim: that is interesting information, and I certainly was not aware of it. I am definitely in agreement with you about the confusion of a man who is unwilling to revoke paternity and then refusing to pay child support. You cannot have it both way folks.
And yep…the fertilization of an egg does have consequences; but women have choices after the fact. It would just be nice for men to as well. I do wish there were some more reliable b/c for men, other then just condoms.
Um…no. Unless there is some magical way to transfer the uterus into the man so he can stop his life and go through pregnancy and possible surgery and at least six weeks off work for healing time, he does not get to make a case to keep the child. If she keeps it, he’s on the hook for child support, she is also on the hook for supporting the child with not just money, but the time and effort it takes to raise a child. You yourself should know Dan, it takes more than money to raise a baby. If she wanted to keep it, she’d be signing up for the more-than-money part in addition to her portion of the money part. He just becomes responsible for some of the money part. If he wants to keep the child, that puts her responsible for her portion of the money part, and all the bodily harm part, all the illness part, and all the parts where she has to miss work for doctor’s visits, labor, delivery, possible c-section, and recovery time. It’s not even. Blame biology.
Badgirl: Me, too. I tip my hat to any person who realizes that parenthood isn’t for them. And, I can’t think of a way to protect men who do not wish to risk conception yet still wish to engage in PIV sex other that what is already available to them: banking their sperm and sterilizing themselves. (Just as sterilization is an option for women.) And, I do know of some who have done just that, although, most didn’t wish to bank any sperm first. This is another example of why communication is so very important, and both individuals must be using contraception.
You are correct that women have choices after the fact, but they also have the greater burden. Both pregnancy and abortion have a physical price upon the body. They also have a financial price. Raising a child has an impact upon career aspirations as well. Society assumes that women will elect to have children, and consequently that is considered in their employment, salary, and advancement. Giving a child up for adoption also has a price to be paid emotionally. Every option a woman has costs her. Biology didn’t make this fair.
@337: “We are having a TON of hypocracy on this thread here….a TON… we have people here beyond pissed at the very notion that this woman owes the potential baby daddy the right of knowing she has aborted.”
Hm. You quoted me, then talked about hypocrisy. I have not expressed an opinion here on whether or not a man has a right to be informed by a woman that he has impregnated her, so I don’t see my hypocrisy. The drum I am (tediously, no doubt) pounding is a simple one named “Take Responsibility for Your Actions.”
If my position favours the woman more than the man, I think that is only fair as pregnancy places a disproportionate burden on her. She has three choices, each life-altering in its own way: abort, adopt out, raise. I am very close to several women who have had to make one of these choices. All three choices are represented in their decisions, and all of them have one thing in common: their lives were totally changed by the decisions they made. No woman is unaffected by an accidental pregnancy. She will carry the effects of it, whatever she decides to do, for the rest of her life.
Given that, I don’t have a problem saying that men shouldn’t get a pass.
(And for what it’s worth, I think that in most cases the man should be informed by the woman if she is pregnant. Unless he’s a rapist or abuser, he has a right to know – and she has the right for him to know.)
@338 Thanks. I was glad to learn that.
I was infuriated by your response to Classy Lady. So she was supposed to tell that guy who fucked her about the pregnancy scare and potential abortion because he has a say in it? So as not to hurt his potential paternal feelings? Really?
No. She is supposed to tell the asshole that he dodged a BIG bullet because he is RESPONSIBLE for it. And if he doesn’t want to pay child support to somebody else, he better think twice before having unprotected sex next time. And he better make serious amends to that slut, Classy Lady, because abortion, even potential abortion, is not the most pleasant medical procedure out there.
shw3nn, badgirl
I think you are forgetting that the whole problem arises when the man and the woman decide together that they will have PIV sex. He is co-equal in that choice (let’s just assume consent okay?) and that choice carries risk. Most of what I’m objecting to is JA5 saying that the woman has all the choices and the man has none. That’s ridiculous. How did he get in the situation to begin with? Through his own choosing.
So having decided together to change the woman’s body, she is now faced with a momentous choice of what to do with her body. He doesn’t get a say. He doesn’t get to force his opinion onto her ears. It’s her body and how she goes about making her choice is up to her. That may or may not include consulting him. It’s not a trivial choice for her.
The only way to “force” him to be a father is to literally steal his sperm. No one here is talking about that. We are discussing consensual sex. Feel bad all you like for the poor man having to give up money (and nothing else) because that’s the only downside for him as you all have described it. You can’t force him to love or parent the child.
Women and children are deserving of love and respect. Any man worth thinking about wouldn’t hesitate to support a child that he brought into the world through consensual sex. Otherwise who are we talking about? Who are these poor men fathering unwanted children over and over to the financial ruin of all involved? And why should I care about them so much? Pity, yes. Free pass, no.
I need to straighten some of you out on a few points. I haven’t drunk any kool-aid, I happen to be a family lawyer who has seen the system in action for over 20 years, and can tell you why it is designed the way it is.
The child support laws do not give a shit whether your condom broke, whether the woman lied about being on the pill, whether the man wants the responsibility of supporting a kid or any of this drama. There’s only one issue: the fact that there’s a kid who has the LEGAL RIGHT to be supported by BOTH his/her biological parents based on how much money they make.
Take a moment and let that sink in. It’s not about the woman’s rights, it’s not about the man’s rights, it’s about the CHILD’s right to support, and a standard of living somewhat like he or she might have had if the parents were living together. So take all of the stuff about “the woman has all the rights, blah, blah, blah” and don’t even THINK of trotting that out in front of a judge. Not only will it avail you nothing, you will have your balls handed back to you in a paper sack.
I agree, that women do still have something of an advantage in custody matters – but NOWHERE near what they used to have, and it very much depends on the judge you are in front of. There is now, in most states, a presumption that the parents should have JOINT custody. Usually one parent has primary physical custody, and it is not uncommon for it to be the father. It is not uncommon for it to be close to 50-50, either. There is often a formula that the court uses to adjust support based on the number of overnights per year spent with each parent.
This has made custody much more of a battleground than it used to be, because fathers are fighting for custody because they don’t want to pay support to the mothers.
And what usually happens when they win is they dump the kid at day care or with their own mother. What progress we’ve made.
I have had more clients than you would think offer to give up support if the father would just agree to relinquish all his rights with respect to the child, because the child has been used as such a pawn to inflict expense, stress, conflict, etc. on the ex.
Reading these comments has been painful because it has been a display of ignorance, chauvinism and immaturity that makes me pray that most of you put off having children until you have grown up, which in many cases may be never.
And btw most of this is academic. Men bolt on women all the time so they don’t end up paying anyway.
Biology isn’t fair, but it’s not biology that dictates child support laws. Child support laws come from decisions individuals and legislatures make, and they need to weigh the various interests.
If a women knows she won’t get support, and doesn’t want to put up the kid for adoption or get an abortion, then there’s a few different interests to consider: society’s interest in preventing kids from being raised by single moms, society’s interest in making sure kids get taken care of, respecting the mother’s rights, and respecting the father’s rights. This is a complex question, and there is a case for the state taking custody of the kid (essentially forcing adoption), or for the mother not getting child support, if she insists on keeping the kid when it’s clear that the father didn’t want to support the kid from the beginning.
@316: Rape is not a legal term: the actual legal term is criminal sexual conduct. The question of what should be considered rape is an ethical one, independent of what sexual conduct is criminal.
@338/339: What about the men who are renouncing their paternity rights, and don’t want to pay child support? They still have to: renouncing paternity rights doesn’t take you off the hook for child support.
@347: A lot of states automatically garnish your wages and take away your driver’s license if you don’t pay child support.
“Child support exists for the child”
Oh Kim, this needs to be written here in CAPS, several times. And so should btmom’s comment #346. Maybe it would sink in eventually. Or not.
“I think you are forgetting that the whole problem arises when the man and the woman decide together that they will have PIV sex.”
Except that that’s not true: as a commenter on Nerve-dot-com points out, the problem can also arise if a woman obtains a man’s semen through trickery, deceit, or even statutory rape. This is, in a word, unacceptable, and no laundry list of excuses and past injustices suffered by women will change that, because two wrongs don’t make a right.
@350
To frame a discussion of ethics around an outlier example is to trivialize the discussion. Next you’ll have us worrying over which person to eat in a lifeboat.
BlackRose @348 “Rape is not a legal term… The question of what should be considered rape is an ethical one.”
In common usage, as on Wiki or the FindLaw legal site, rape is considered to be unlawful sexual assault. Determining that a particular sex act was rape centers around questions of consent (due to age, intoxication, mental capacity, or duress).
When you say that “what should be considered rape is an ethical [question]” — do you mean that if I falsely tell someone that I love him to get him to have sex, that’s rape? Unethical, to be sure, but rape? That’s as bad as the crazy ex-boyfriend in FOFS’ letter this week.
Please. I’m having a hard enough time getting Sloggers to agree that sex acts may be legal and yet unethical.
EricaP
For what it’s worth I totally agree “that sex acts may be legal and yet unethical.” I haven’t spoken up just because you handle yourself so well and because I really don’t know what to make of anyone resisting that statement.
@350 – all totally irrelevant, as I said. The support obligation has nothing to do with how the female became pregnant.
If the male is a minor, of course that would be considered in determining his support obligation, for some period of time, but once he is able to work, he will be expected to do so.
The court has the right to determine whether either or both parents are voluntarily earning less than they are capable of earning, and to calculate support based on the income it finds the parent should be earning. This is not that common, but it happens. So if you quit your job at the brokerage firm for that job at the bowling alley, just to spite your child’s mother, don’t be surprised if the judge makes you grab your ankles. We have a case of this nature right this moment.
You’re wasting time talking to me about pre-conception choices. Duh, of course, we all have a lot of pre-conception choices. The only point I’m ever referring to is post-conception choice, where men have none but women have several.
Some of you seem to think only reckless, shallow men care about post-conception choice. The point of asking people to read the Salon.com article is to show that women do, feminists do, women well-versed in the law do, etc.
Yes, biology is unfair. So women will ALWAYS pay some price for the post-conception choice they make, that doesn’t mean men should never get a post-conception choice.
So if a guy’s vasectomy re-grows (it happens), and his condom fails, and she’s lied about her tubal ligation & being on the pill…even then screw the man, right, he has no post-conception rights ever?
Having rights over a man’s wallet IS having rights over his body. Forced to raise/pay for an unplanned child will affect all of his choices and the outcomes of his schooling, work, personal goals/choices, etc. Someone posted “it’s just money”. Uh, owing child support is quite easily life-altering. Ok, if you are already a hedge-fund manager, it probably doesn’t alter your life too much, but most of us aren’t hedge-fund managers. If women want rights over a man’s body for 18 yrs, then perhaps he should have rights over your body post-conception. Or…neither men nor women should be able to force the other into a particular action.
Yes Mr. J., the 2 parties together took the risk of temporarily altering her body. I don’t think that equates to she should then unilaterally get to decide next whether to alter his life for 18 yrs if an unplanned pregnancy results.
If women don’t want an abortion, adoption, or burden of raising a child alone, maybe they should just keep their legs together. That’s just the flip-side of “if a guy doesn’t want to pay for a kid, don’t have sex”. Both sets of advice are ridiculous.
@Mr. J.
>To frame a discussion of ethics around an outlier example is to trivialize the discussion.
Not at all. It establishes whether and how extreme your position is or is not. Does the man never have post-conception choice, no matter the circumstances? If he has a vasectomy (that reverses itself, or he’s not “clear” yet) & tries to seal himself in latex 24×7, but a woman drugs him and gets his semen and impregnates herself, does he still have no post-conception choice, other than to be at the whim of the woman?
@ 355, “Having rights over a man’s wallet IS having rights over his body.” Sorry JA5 but you’re wrong, courts can make you pay fines from your wallet, but they can’t extract your internal organs, blood, bone marrow etc. That’s because your bodily integrity is inviolable, much unlike your wallet. Hope you can notice the difference between the two.
@356: Tell you what. Get a vasectomy and wrap yourself in latex 24/7. If a woman then drugs you, takes your sperm, inseminates herself, and sues for child support, you can tell your story to the judge. I expect that – under those insane circumstances – he’ll find in your favour and won’t award her support.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, when men fuck women and get them pregnant, the children that may result will still have rights to child support.
@353 – thanks – kinda figured 🙂
JA5@355 So it’s inconvenient to deal with this issue before you get someone pregnant. You only want to figure out some way to get other people to pay for it afterward. Suppose no men ever paid child support for children they didn’t want? Are you prepared to pay higher taxes, to prevent those innocent children from starving?
Also, all those talking about the child’s rights, if men were allowed to opt-out and she decided to have & keep the child anyway…we allow people to voluntarily “short-change” children all the time.
Two people with mediocre IQs and no high school diploma and on welfare are allowed to have a child. Two people are allowed to decide they want to quit Wall Street and raise their child in a family lifestyle of asceticism, or in a commune/hippie/subsistence-farming situation. A woman with a billion-dollar bank account can still legally abandon her child or put it up for adoption (with slim chance that another billionaire adopts it). A single woman can have a bunch of one-night stands until she gets pregnant, keeping no contact info on the fathers (so there’s no one to ask for support), and raise a child herself.
We let it happen all the time. It’s legal. Most of you probably support people should get to make most of those choices. But somehow in this one scenario, an accidental pregnancy, it’s apparently critical to let the women have complete control over a man’s life, for the good of the child. What about the good of the child in all those other situations?
Maybe women shouldn’t be allowed to put a baby up for adoption, unless they can prove their earning potential is lower than most adoptive parents. Screw whether or not she feels ready or has other plans for her life, all that matters is what’s best for the child, right?
Maybe no one should be allowed to have sex without a license from the state, showing earnings, parental suitability, etc. Then we’ll really be protecting children/potential children.
@354: “The support obligation has nothing to do with how the female became pregnant.”
Then the law has to change for two reasons: one, because it’s unjust, and two, because it’s inevitably and indelibly contributing to male hatred of and violence against women.
To be as blunt as possible, being forced into an obligation to which he did not and/or could not consent (i.e. oral sex, statutory rape of the male, or just poking pins in a condom) is a tremendous incentive for a man to commit murder, or at least an assault sufficiently violent to induce miscarriage. People are going on and on about men trying to keep women from getting abortions, but I think the converse is far more common — Dan totally missed the boat on this one, she’d be in far more danger if she were pregnant.
You want to say that spouses or co-habiting partners can’t get off the hook, fine. But casual hookups or one-night stands? No man or woman should have to live with the consequences of that, unless they WANT to — which is why we should have free access to abortion for women, and the right to relinquish paternal rights AND fiduciary responsibilities for men.
sdfj is spam. He just copies a bit from the post above, and pastes in his link – don’t click it.
“I am a woman and it seems unfair to me. I do think that it must be unfair in favor of the woman to some degree because of the biology involved. But, the actual unfairness doesn’t seem commensurate with the biology, to me.’
Of course it’s “unfair” that women get to choose whether to have an abortion or bear a child. Biology is UNFAIR.
What do you wanna do? Make it legal to tie a woman down and force her to have an abortion? Do you want to tie her up and force her to bear a child?
No?? Then your problem is most likely with the state and the state’s role in collecting child support.
I do think that child support payments have fucked up gender relations in this area. It’s obviously not ok for high school boys to get stuck with that kind of economic debt. I’m cool with ending any and all child support and paying single parents out of a general tax fund.
But do you know what else is unfair?
It’s really unfair that women have to gestate kids. The nausea? the throwing-up? The not sleeping in the 3rd trimester? Pushing a baby out of your body? Tearing and then sewing up your vaginia? Uterine prolapse? (Uterus falling…) Totally unfair, man! Why can’t men do some of this work? Why is it all on women to continue the species? We have no choice unless we pay another woman to do all of this work. But men can’t carry any of this load.
Which, in the final analysis, is really very unfair.
“Maybe women shouldn’t be allowed to put a baby up for adoption, unless they can prove their earning potential is lower than most adoptive parents. Screw whether or not she feels ready or has other plans for her life, all that matters is what’s best for the child, right?”:
What is up with you people? Don’t you know basic law?
A woman can’t put a baby up for adoption unless the father also agrees. If a woman refuses to raise the baby, but the father doesn’t want to adopt, the baby cannot legally be adopted.
In the above case if a woman doesn’t want custody she would have to pay child support to the father.
Didn’t you hear of cases like Baby Jessica? If a father doesn’t sign the paper the adoption isn’t legal.
@291: Have you ever thought about running for President? I’d vote for you!
MD man 2012!!!!
“Yes, biology is unfair. So women will ALWAYS pay some price for the post-conception choice they make, that doesn’t mean men should never get a post-conception choice.”
JA5,
So tell us what you want.
Do you want to drag an unwilling woman into surgery and force her to have an abortion that she is unwilling to undergo?
Do you want to tie her down, forcibly?
What about forced pregnancy. Is that what you want?
Be explicit here about how you see this choice operating in practice.
If you’re talking about $$$$ – you aren’t actually talking about making a medical choice for someone else. But if you want to force a medical choice on somebody else, be explicit about it.
@364: All those things are a choice (well, if women always had access to abortion).
@352: I’m not saying any unethical sex act is rape. I’m saying that criminal sexual conduct laws are different in different states, for instance, and in some situations an act that is clearly rape according to the normal way the word is used might not be illegal. Spousal rape is one example: it was legal to rape your spouse in North Carolina until 1993. Another example is that some states use a “force” definition of rape, so unforced rape might be legal or at least a lesser degree of criminal sexual conduct.
So I think defining what should be considered rape is an ethical question, as opposed to the legal question of whether a certain act constitutes a certain degree of criminal sexual conduct in a certain state or country.
@367: No, I don’t think anyone should be forced to have an abortion. That would be an abuse of human rights. (Though women are sometimes tied down and forced to have a Caesarean when they don’t want one, if the doctors and courts think it’s necessary for the baby’s health.)
I do think women should be encouraged to have abortions, using the carrot of getting benefits from the state, and the stick of being penalized for having a kid they can’t support.
I also think in some cases the State should deny child support, or take custody of the kid.
I honestly wish JA5 and the other men here who are whining and ranting about the possibility of being held responsible for supporting kids they might father as a result of consensual sex: you really ought to post under your given names, so the women who might want to fuck you can give informed consent to sex with someone with the brains of a neanderthal and the morals of a jackal. That alone might convince her to have an abortion if she still decides to sleep with you and accidentally conceives – she might want to do society a favor and make sure your genetic material doesn’t pollute humanity’s future.
@371: Not sure if you mean me, but I think the most moral thing to do is to discourage single mothers from having or raising kids. None of this affects me personally.
As far as child support, I’m more concerned about men being held responsible for children they didn’t father through consensual sex.
@368 – it’s no longer legal to rape your spouse in North Carolina. And I’d like to see you name a place in the US where “unforced rape” is legal.
More to the point, why are you interested in using the word “rape” to differentiate among different unethical sex acts? We have a word, “unethical” which means good people don’t do that. How is the discussion improved by bringing in this idea of “legal (but unethical) rape”?
What do you hope to achieve, besides diluting the power of the word rape?
JA5
I don’t think that people should have a license to have sex.
But I would absolutely support a license to have children (or to keep the children you have). Nothing extreme just basic pysch screening and a little class/test on basic nutrition, maybe first aid.
If anything I would support women who put their children up for adoption paying a degree of child support. How’s that for equal?
@373:
It is no longer legal to rape your spouse in NC, but a man who raped his spouse before 1993 could not be prosecuted today. I’m not sure what your point is: do you think rape changed from being an ethical issue to being a legal one in 1993? What about the countries where spousal rape is legal still?
As far as unforced rape being legal, this is from my Criminal Law textbook: “Although force or threat of force is a prerequisite to conviction in most jurisdictions, several states have made intercourse without consent criminal in the absence of force. See Michelle J. Anderson, All-American Rape, 79 St. John’s L. Rev. 625, 629-633 (2005) (finding that in the absence of force, only 14 states punish nonconsensual intercourse as a felony; an additional 8 states treat such conduct as a misdemeanor, and in the remaining states, such conduct is not punishable at all).
So 6 years ago, unforced rape was legal in the majority of states. It doesn’t say which states, though I can look up the article for you, and things may have changed in the last 6 years. But the traditional definition of rape was in terms of force, not consent. It seems that the trend is to move towards a consent-based view though, but even then you have to deal with messy questions about what constitutes consent and what if the defendant was mistaken. For instance, even in a consent-based state there may be a court case saying that act X constitutes consent, when this isn’t necessarily true.
You said to Crinoline Why are you so interested in Dan’s thoughts on rape, as opposed to Dan’s thoughts on when one should walk away from legal but ill-advised sex?
I see your point. The real question is what we should do, not what is legal.
Saying that rape is not always the same as criminal sexual conduct is not diluting the word. Quite the contrary, it would be diluting the word to limit it to the legal definition of criminal sexual conduct in a state.
I’m saying that we should discuss it from an ethical perspective rather than a legal one, because every state has different rape laws. When people talk about rape, they are not normally talking about statutes and court decisions, but rather questions of ethics. And I think both “what sexual activities should be criminalized” (in other words, what rape laws should say) and “how should ethical people act sexually” are good questions to ask and discuss, for Dan as well as everyone else.
If the girl had ended up pregnant and had the baby, shouldn’t he have been “on the hook” for parenting? Why is child support the only thing he should be thinking about when he has a child? Children need their fathers to be more than just strangers paying support. – a single mother
@346, @371, for the learned legal btmom, some cross-examination if I may be so bold:
a) Do you have reliable statistics and evidence to support your assertions regarding how custody has changed?
b) “don’t even THINK of trotting that out in front of a judge. Not only will it avail you nothing, you will have your balls handed back to you in a paper sack.” Does this approach apply equally to women, or is the de facto possession of rights by women 9/10ths of the law?
c) Since you’ve had over 20 years experience as part of a system that is notoriously biased and opaque in decision making and the criteria for that, when did the situation miraculously change? It hasn’t in my jurisdiction.
d) Do you believe that an adversarial – and expensive – legal system is in fact in the best interests of the child?
e) Do you think legal rights & decisions are synonymous with morality?
f) Do you believe your comments reflect a balanced and even-handed reflection of gender equality? – they don’t come over that way to me.
Regarding “whining and ranting”, what do you want men who feel a situation is unfair to do? Shut up and lump it? Are women who complain about the situation with women’s rights “whining and ranting”?
” someone with the brains of a neanderthal” – um, Neanderthals had a larger cranial capacity than Homo sapiens, and they were artistic and cared for their young and sick. They also interbred with modern humans, though I guess that would be statutory rape with the nasty Neanderthal brutish male forcing the sweet innocent Homo sapiens maiden – and not even paying child support.
“morals of a jackal” – in comparison with the morals of a lawyer, where does that stand?
If you don’t mind, please could you dial back on the polarising stuff, you put yourself in the same boat as the people you don’t like.
@371: Are you willing to back up your modest proposal by suggesting that all women who abort or adopt out because they feel they are unready to be mothers also post under their real names, so that future potential spouses can see their misdeeds and their unfitness, and steer clear?
Funny how when a woman walks away from a pregnancy or a child, she is self-empowered, but when a man does the exact same thing, he’s a worthless deadbeat.
@365: “A woman can’t put a baby up for adoption unless the father also agrees.”
What happens when a woman insists that she doesn’t know the paternity of the baby? Can a man that she refuses to acknowledge as a possible candidate for biological father walk in and demand a paternity test?
@364: “But do you know what else is unfair?
It’s really unfair that women have to gestate kids.”
“have to” gestate kids? Really? You do realize that between abstention, contraception, emergency contraception, implantation prevention, and abortion, gestation these days is entirely voluntary?
@ 379, why on earth wouldn’t he be allowed to do that? Otherwise the woman and the system are kidnapping his child, no one in their right mind would support that. And if he IS the father, and wants to raise his child, and the mother doesn’t want shared custody, the mother IS gonna pay child support. That’s where this whole whine about the sexist legal system seriously fails at reflecting the reality.
The government can’t tell either men or women to use their bodies to support the life of their child; the government will tell both men and women to give a part of the money they earn to support raising their child. NO SEXISM there.
avast and dameeda *clap clap clap*
@271: I think its *immoral* to gestate to term a baby when the sperm donor does NOT want to be a father….and I am a woman!
As avast pointed out, there are a lot of options, both pre- and post- conception. If you want to make a baby, find a man who wants to be a father. If you cannot, and still want to do it, be prepared to do it on your own.
But hey, call me old fashioned, I think people should be prepared and able to provide for children before they bring them into this world, because YES there are options for accidental pregnancies. But I am sure I am going to get a lot of shit for this *totally* unreasonable viewpoint, LOL!
So it’s immoral NOT to have an abortion.
How is that different from pro-lifers telling women that it’s immoral TO HAVE an abortion? And some of these pro-lifers are women, yay, aren’t anti-choice women so special and awesome!
@375 I agree that “how should ethical people act sexually” is a good question to ask and discuss, for Dan and the rest of us.
I hope you agree that determining which acts are rape and which are not rape will NOT resolve the question of which acts are ethical. And I hope you are right that most people here are interested in what is ethical, rather than in what they can get away with.
@346 I read that post and had a hard time believing your claim that you practice law.
Got a law degree and passed the bar, maybe. But the idea that people give you money to make arguments was hard for me to buy.
Then I thought, you know what? There are lawyers who make a good living off of sheer histrionics. There are lawyers who can become famous by making their case in the fashion of an eight grade student being weaned off of his Ritalin.
I began to think it possible that you are a lawyer.
So you know what I did? I reread all your posts in Nancy Grace’s voice. It helped.
EricaP @ 336 “You could stick to blow-jobs and anal… Very very low risk of pregnancy…”
Do most (many? some?) women get off with just this? What about tit-fucking?
Don’t most (many? some?) women want PIV sex?
@”forced abortion/ forced birth?”/367
>So tell us what you want.
Your suggestions are ridiculous. I have said what I want many times. Are you reading what I write? Or go read the Salon.com article. Maybe I should put a sig at the bottom of EVERY post I make?
Women have the post-conception choice to abort, or to have the child but give up responsibility (legally abandon, or adopt-away). Sexist laws should change so that men have the post-conception option to give up responsibility as well. He disclaims his rights & responsibilities. The woman still has the choice then to abort, legally abandon, adopt-away, or raise on her own.
@unfair/364
>It’s really unfair that women have to gestate kids.
Gestation is a choice, she can abort if she wants. And yes, it’s all unfair. However, compounding the unfairness of nature by having unfair, sexist laws, is not an appropriate response.
>What is up with you people? Don’t you know basic law?
My suggestion was facetious. But it still applies…if she doesn’t know who the father is, or lies & claims not to know…if we’re all about the “good of the child”…maybe she shouldn’t be allowed to give the child up unless she can prove she + any future husband will earn less than the average adoptive parent. And yes, this comment is facetious as well, poking at the people that scream about the “good of the child”.
@mydriasis/374
>I don’t think that people should have a license to have sex.
I was being facetious. Poking at those who selectively scream about “the good of the child”.
@Backyard Bombardier
>Meanwhile, back in the real world, when men fuck women and get them pregnant, the children that may result will still have rights to child support.
You write this as though sex is something men do TO women, that pregnancy is all the man’s doing (the woman has no role in it), and as though the woman has no choices post-conception. Are you also selective about the welfare of the child, or would you prefer a more fascist state?
You’re really enjoying that misandrist Kool-Aid, eh?
After reading and rereading JA5s comments, I actually think I get what he’s getting at. I think the issue is more in the wording than the message. But, please, if I’m wrong, let me know.
I believe he’s not saying that he should be able to have sex without responsibility. Or that he should be able to force a woman to have an abortion. However, if a woman has an abortion, the man has absolutely no say. If a woman wants to give the child up for adoption, assuming she’s “aware” of the paternity, he does have a say. If she chooses to keep the child, again, he has no say and is “stuck” paying child support without an option to rescind his claim.
As many have pointed out, because of biology, there is no way for it to not be skewed in some way towards women. Unfortunately, laws to make it the other way around would require so many intricacies, it would take ages to come about if it would be possible at all.
How many women have chosen not to abort because the babies father says all sorts of romantic things about their future family, only to run away once reality sets in? Should this man not be responsible for the child he created? Had he stated up front that he wanted her to abort or give the baby up for adoption, she would have. How long do they have to make this decision? And how far into it can they change their mind?
To say that a man got “trapped” by a women who got pregnant is ridiculous. I cannot get myself pregnant. I need a man, whether in person, or just his frozen swimmers. So no woman gets herself pregnant to trap a man. This is not to say that no woman has ever lied to a man and said she was on bc when she wasn’t, but that, as much as it’s a woman’s responsibility to keep herself safe and unfertilized, it is a man’s responsibility to protect himself, even if a woman tells him she is on bc. Yes, pregnancy could still happen, but if both parties take every precaution available to them to avoid it, it is less likely.
I would agree that if a man stated, well before the baby was born, he didn’t want to be a father, he should be able to opt out of child support, assuming he also opts out of any possibility of custody. But it’s difficult to arrange that because the decision would have to be made within a time frame to allow the woman to make a decision based on his. This is a limited time opportunity, which probably has something to do with why it is not an option.
(also, I apologize if this is in any way tough to follow, I am on little sleep and lots of caffeine)
@389: Facist? Misandrist? Bitch, please.
You are asking for the right to have intercourse with women with no regard for the potential consequences, for her or for any child that may result. You spin paranoid fantasies about women taking your precious bodily fluids against your will and using them to create a child that you are then responsible for.
Men fuck women*, impregnate them, and abandon them all the time. For every woman that has the resources – personal and financial – to pursue the man who got her pregnant and make him accept his responsibilities – there are many who do not. Men don’t need any more help in avoiding their responsibilities.
Stop playing the damn victim card. Sex is a grown-up activity. If you want to have sex, act like a grown-up.
*Yes, I am using language that implies that sex and pregnancy are something done by men to women. I am doing this deliberately because the kind of men I am talking about – who would walk away from their responsibilities – treat it that way. Women are holes for them to masturbate into, and when it’s done, they treat them no better than a piece of sticky kleenex that gets thrown in the trash.
@391…See, WHY would a woman choose to make a baby with a man like this? Yes, I realize that it takes two. But, again, *hopefully* we are being grown-ups like you said, and using protection until we are ready to make a baby. But let’s say, something goes amiss, or we forgot, or just something in the works is messed up, and conception happens accidently. When the going to be father reveals his complete horror and unwillingness at the thought…here is where I think the man needs some opt out choice. The woman THEN should be able to decide…do I choose abortion, the morning after pill (if its not too late), etc, OR do I decide to do this on my own, KNOWING the sperm donor does not want to be involved? And in the instance that you mentioned, where the guy was a total dick (why am I fucking him again?????), gee, I would be RUNNING to the local clinic. Again…old fashioned here…I want to bring kids into this world with a supportive and loving, and more importantly, willing daddy.
I think Black Rose mentioned this should be a small window, and ITA. I realize the logistics make this super hard, I am just coming from an ethical standpoint here. For the douchebags who initially claim that they will stand by their woman and baby, and THEN decide when the going gets rough several days/weeks/months/years down the line? Yeah, throw the books at those guys and take them for all they are worth, but I do think that post-conception opt out should be there for men as well as women.
“I am doing this deliberately because the kind of men I am talking about – who would walk away from their responsibilities – treat it that way. Women are holes for them to masturbate into, and when it’s done, they treat them no better than a piece of sticky kleenex that gets thrown in the trash.”
That does sound an awful lot like misandry to me that you can’t imagine how a man could be a good person and want to walk away.
Say a man was raised by an abusive father. He is young and just starting out in his life. He’s still in college and he’s also grappling with a lot of emotional issues from his childhood. He has not even begun to deal with the damage done to him by his own father nor can he afford to get help with it at this stage in his life.
If the woman forces him to pay child support and there is no other father figure around…what a horrible dilemma to put him into. If his own assessment that he is not ready to be a father is completely accurate, how is it a good idea to tether him to his child for the first 18 years of the child’s life?
@393: I can imagine how a man could be a good person and want to walk away. I just don’t see, if he is a good person, how he could.
The situation you describe certainly is a horrible dilemma. There are lots of horrible dilemmas that people end up in, through combinations of random fate and their own choices. Life can be horribly unfair.
That doesn’t mean I support compounding the unfairness.
And let’s step back a second here: we aren’t talking about “tethering” a man to his child. He doesn’t have to take custody – hell, he may not be granted custody even if he wants it, if his life is messed up enough. And support payments, if any, will be geared to his means.
I don’t deny it is a shitty situation for him. But it will be shittier still for the child, and the woman, if we just give him a pass.
That’s not misandry.
I would also lie to addm that many states don’t allow abortion or it’s extremely restricted. Especially now with the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood. They force women to see the ultra sound, have a very limited time frame, special circumstances, ect. What is the woman supposed to do? What if she can’t afford it or get out of the state? The man should obviously pay for half of the abortion, you realize too, right? At least it’s not the dreaded 18 years of child support, which you JA5 seems terrified of. You’re still half responsible. There are just too many intricacies in state laws and women’s bodies to make it that cut and dry. That is why the law leans slightly more toward the woman in the case because she has to go through the pregnancy, abortion, adoption, ect.
Also, those arguing for “fairness” in laws also forget the emotional trauma that women have to go through whether it be abortion or not. Even if they decide to have the child, she won’t know how she feels after she sees the baby.
Anyway, just always wear a fucking condom and you may not have to worry about it. Oh, and get the fuck over yourselves.
@377 – I base my assertions on 20 years of practice in 3 jurisdictions, as well as the research which accompanies it. In addition to that, the cases handled by my partner and my associates, and the cases discussed by my colleagues. Attendance at continuing legal education seminars taught by top practioners in the field, discussions with judges, reading law review articles and treatises. And the source of your bald assertions?
You can’t, and you never will, get around that it isn’t about what is fair to the father or the mother. The legislatures in every state have made a judgment that when you engage in sexual conduct, you assume the risk that you may father a child, whether you want to or not. If you do, you will be expected to contribute to the financial support of that child. Period. It is what is fair to the child and fair to society, and if you don’t want to risk it, don’t stick it in. I have seen judges shaft BOTH fathers and mothers on the issue of support — it is an issue on which they are remarkably unsympathetic to excuses or complaints of unfairness. They look at what the parents earn and run the formula that applies to their state. If you tell them, “but your honor, I won’t be able to afford my rent,” they’ll probably tell you to look for a smaller apartment. I’ve seen it happen, over and over. You don’t like what I’m telling you? No skin off my back. I’m guessing that if you get married you’ll end up finding out first hand.
“Women have the post-conception choice to abort, or to have the child but give up responsibility (legally abandon, or adopt-away). Sexist laws should change so that men have the post-conception option to give up responsibility as well.”
JA5: You don’t understand the laws. A woman cannot adopt-away without the permission of the father. She cannot legally abandon by her self. Unless the father is “unknown” or dead he has rights. In fact, the father has just as many rights to get $$$ support from the mother.
In other words — she cannot legally put a child up for adoption without the father’s permission. She cannot legally abandon the child by herself — If she did it would becalled “KIDNAPPING.” There is a law against this.
Once the child is born the sexes are equal. Men have support payment rights. In fact, when men contest custody they are more likely to gain custody of the child.
You’re upset about the idea you might have to pay support for a kid that you don’t want to be born into this world. Well, I sympathize with that fact. But is opting out of paying support really going to make this ok and fair? Even if you don’t have to pay the money, the child is still going to be in the world, and that sucks if you aren’t ready to be a father. Even if you could opt out, you would have to choose to abandon your own child, which would be painful for many people.
The state is not sexist — the state is trying to save $$$. When women file for food stamps the state goes after the father for support. It is in the state interest to force somebody to help support the child — or to refund the state the money the state spends on supporting the child. This insistance on support does not occur because the state is “feminist.” This occurs because the state is trying to save money and the state does not want to pay to support somebody else’s child.
There is no way the state is going to allow men to “opt out,” because it’s expensive to support young single mothers. The response to that support situation is NOT to tell women that you think they should get permission from flings before they have an abortion. How does that solve your upset in any way? Would it make you happy if women were forced to have children?
BTW – I do not sympathize with the state. NOT AT ALL. But you do not seem to understand who has power in this situation. Feminists are NOT making the laws here. A radical feminist would advocate the end of all support payments and would instead support custodial parents out of a general state fund.
“”have to” gestate kids? Really? You do realize that between abstention, contraception, emergency contraception, implantation prevention, and abortion, gestation these days is entirely voluntary?”
Turn on your sarcasm meter.
But, yeah, men can’t help with the actual pregnancy, and really, in the final analysis, that kind of sucks.
One of my friends threw up several times a day. She was dehydrated and it was awful.
If the human species is going to continue women have to have the babies. I would be happy if we could figure out an easier way to do this.
@ 397, you’re wasting your time. When JA5 reads your comment, absolutely nothing you’ve said will sink in. He will still be all about “all these rights that women have and men don’t”, no matter how many times we try to explain to him that men and women have exactly the same rights and obligations when it comes to their children.
“Can a man that she refuses to acknowledge as a possible candidate for biological father walk in and demand a paternity test?”
I don’t know if a man can ask this of a single woman. I do know that the state WANTS a legal father so the state can collect support if she goes on welfare.
BUT: I do know that in a legal marriage the husband has rights over the child, even if he is shooting blanks.
In other words, the state will give rights to the husband over the biological father. The husband has to formally give up rights for the biological father to gain rights.
It is really too bad this discussion devolved into a gender war of who ought to pay support for kids.
Some posters are suggesting that flings ought to be able to exert medical force over a pregnant woman’s body, which is really quite offensive.
I’m pro-choice, but I’m very offended at the suggestion that a person has the right to force a woman to have an abortion.
There’s a legitimate argument to be made about state power and support payments. But some posters are framing pregnant women as your enemies.
In actuality these laws are aimed for the benefit of the state. But you are alienating your possible political allies by claiming that women are these sperm-stealing, unfair b*tches who want to take your money and have too many choices about pregnancy.
You cannot seem to conceptualize that women also pay child support payments to men.
@unfair!
thanks for the info!
good luck helping JA5 he’s not much of a listener
If you don’t want to deal with what the woman does with the kid, don’t sleep with her. If you have sex, you need to assume the consequences–the woman sure does. If you aren’t ready to raise a kid, pay child support, pay for half of an abortion, or any number of the things that she might choose…DON’T HAVE SEX WITH HER. Pregnancy is the INTENDED CONSEQUENCE of sex. Duh.
394 You lose me when you want to worry about the woman in the situation I described.
She decided against the father’s wishes to have the child and keep it.
What I mean by tethered to is that his life is now connected to the child’s. He is going to have to write a check once a month and probably have his means reevaluated at whatever intervals.
In the situation I described, that would make the situation difficult. If his decision to not be in the child’s life was a difficult and honorable decision, that is 18 years of being reminded of one of the hardest, most difficult decisions you ever made.
All this is done to him because the woman decided she wanted to keep the baby and didn’t care how the father felt.
Amos101 @386 I was talking to guys who are paranoid that a woman might impregnate herself, just to come after them for child support. I was suggesting that these guys should stick to women who like oral sex and anal. Yes, there are plenty of them out there, for guys who are enthusiastic about giving oral, and enthusiastic about taking their time to warm up the woman’s ass before penetration.
And, sure, if what you like is tit-fucking, you can find a woman into that too – just ask nicely and listen to what she says about where the spunk should land.
Wow, this discussion has gotten very heated. He’s a cheater, she consented to cheating, and they deserve each other and whatever happens to them. Good thing she is pro-choice, though, because no child deserves parents like that.
@396 I note that you’ve only answered one of my questions, on the basis that your assertions are a personal view from an experienced professional in the field – in other words, informed hearsay with no substantive statistics. You’ve not answered my other questions. I made very few assertions myself – in my jurisdiction, the unfairness of custody provisions and the need to move away from the adversarial position is widely acknowledged, across the politicians, judiciary, men, women, feminists, whatever. There are moves to change the law on that basis. And I note that unfairness to the adults involved rather obviously affects the best interests of the child. Not having costly adversarial lawyers involved would also be a great start.
I can quite believe the judges manage to shaft both parties – that’s because the law is mainly about ensuring the state doesn’t have to shell out too much money on the kids – I don’t think the state really cares too much about the adults or the kids. Whenever my state starts to claim that they want to protect my or my children’s safety or health, I check my wallet and wonder what new heights of bureaucracy they’ve dreamt up to keep an army of public servants employed. It does not contribute to my feeling of safety that’s for sure.
“You can’t, and you never will ” – are you omniscient? I know perfectly well what the law says (in my jurisdiction ).
“I’m guessing that if you get married you’ll end up finding out first hand. ” Yes, you are guessing. I’m happily married with grown kids, have been married for 32 years, and have no skin in this game. I do, however, want a better position for my children – both men and women. I think the law is an ass, and the notion that the law or state knows what is in the best interest of the child would be ludicrous if it weren’t so entrenched. The idea of having costly adversarial battles is not in the best interests of the children, it’s in the best interests of the lawyers and a legion of social workers.
I want there to be far more positive encouragement for a couple to cooperate in their responsibilities, and think the polarising attitudes that people have endanger that – your (factually dodgy) pejorative references to Neanderthals being a good example.
@KateRose/390
>Or that he should be able to force a woman to have an abortion.
Oh god no. Of course a man doesn’t get to tell her to do that.
>Unfortunately, laws to make it the other way around would require so many intricacies, it would take ages to come about if it would be possible at all.
Meh. Have some formal way to tell the guy (registered letter? notary?). Give him a short window to formally reply, if he doesn’t, then he’s accepting responsibility, if she chooses to have a baby.
@Backyard Bombardier/391
>You spin paranoid fantasies about women taking your precious bodily fluids against your will
I proposed an outlandish scenario to demonstrate just how extreme your misandry is. Women always get post-conception choice, men get none under any conditions. Also, I think you probably completely misunderstood my reference to fascism, since you ignored anything related to that train of thought.
>Men fuck women, impregnate them, and abandon them all the time.
If they can’t afford to raise a child alone, women should keep their legs closed. Or freeze some eggs and get their tubes tied. It’s your womb, if you can’t handle what might happen in there, don’t have sex. Yes, this is all facetious.
>the kind of men I am talking about – who would walk away from their responsibilities – treat it that way. Women are holes for them to masturbate into, and when it’s done, they treat them no better than a piece of sticky kleenex that gets thrown in the trash.
The kind of women I am talking about – who would abort or give up their responsibilities – are sluts just waiting for the next cock, and when they’re pregnant, they treat the fetuses no better than a piece of sticky kleenex that gets thrown in the trash.
Yes, most of this post is facetiously misogynistic as a counterpoint to BB’s dead-serious misandry. The misogyny is as ridiculous as BB’s misandry.
@Backyard Bombardier/391
>You spin paranoid fantasies about women taking your precious bodily fluids against your will
I proposed an outlandish scenario to demonstrate just how extreme your misandry is. Women always get post-conception choice, men get none under any conditions. Also, I think you probably completely misunderstood my reference to fascism, since you ignored anything related to that train of thought.
The laws and the thinking they sprang from used to make more sense. Historically, unplanned babies were a lot more common, and post-conception choice was non-existent. Women had few rights. Women were at enormous economic disadvantage compared to men. Abortion was illegal or dangerous. Birth control was pretty unreliable. Fewer birth control options existed for either sex. Formal adoption procedures didn’t exist. “Legal abandonment” laws didn’t exist.
It isn’t 1950 anymore, or 1050. Women now have more post-conception options. Men should too.
>Men fuck women, impregnate them, and abandon them all the time.
If they can’t afford to raise a child alone, women should keep their legs closed. Or freeze some eggs and get their tubes tied. Or get regular abortions. It’s your womb, if you can’t handle what might happen in there, don’t have sex.
Yes, I’m being facetiously misogynistic as a counterpoint to BB’s dead-serious misandry. The misogyny is as ridiculous as BB’s misandry.
@JA5: You can call me misandrist all you like, it doesn’t make it true. It’s a tired old mens-rights trope that gets trotted out from time to time, that’s all.
Supporting the rights of women and children does not equal hating, or denying the rights of, men. It’s not a war, we don’t have to pick sides.
“Women always get post-conception choice, men get none under any conditions.”
Argh. Do you realize that it’s biology you’re angry at, not the legal system? Women get post-conception choice because every person in the world, male or female, gets to decide what happens to their body, and it just so happens that conception occurs in female body, not male. Let me try to simplify (or complicate) this: women get post-conception choice and men don’t because bodily integrity is a basic principle of human rights, NOT because the sexist legal system has established that women should have the right to avoid their obligation towards their offspring but men shouldn’t. It’s not about avoiding obligation, it’s about being in charge of what happens to one’s body.
The legal system DOESN’T allow men or women to escape their obligation towards their children.
It DOES allow both men and women to decide whether they will use their body/tissues/internal organs to bring their offspring to this world or keep them in it, even if their choice means that the other parent will be paying child support for a number of years. I have already pointed out a case when men can exercise that right and women don’t have a say in it (boo hoo, how unfair?) – the case when the child needs organ or tissue donation and the only matching donor is its father.
Hence the legal system is NOT SEXIST. You can come up with some other word to describe it if you think that the parent who is not deciding about using their body to keep the child alive should be able to renounce their parental obligation. SEXIST is not that word because men too can find themselves in a situation to make that decision and the child’s mother won’t have a say in it. Both genders are EQUAL in the eyes of the law.
“The laws and the thinking they sprang from used to make more sense. Historically, unplanned babies were a lot more common, and post-conception choice was non-existent. Women had few rights. Women were at enormous economic disadvantage compared to men. Abortion was illegal or dangerous. Birth control was pretty unreliable. Fewer birth control options existed for either sex. Formal adoption procedures didn’t exist. “Legal abandonment” laws didn’t exist.”
JA5:
Historically, you’ve got some historical facts wrong here. A certain amount of pre- and post- conception choice was available. There’s a lot of scholarship out there, but to make a long story short — there’s a reason that colonial Algonquin women bore 4-5 kids and Anglo Virginian women had a lot more live births. And in US 19th century city people left kids at orphanages quite a bit. In fact, it was easier to give up legal rights to your children in the 19th century. (see Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, for example.)
Your argument will be stronger (and less likely to annoy people) if you separate women’s legal right to an abortion from the concept that a man should get a pre-birth opt-out.
I’m fine with a one-time, pre-birth opt out for men. If a man wants to legally reject a child, it’s better for everyone, including and especially the child, if his biological father is not given any legal rights or obligations over that child.
But connecting the right of a man to refuse legal fatherhood pre-birth should not be dependent on a legal right to abortion.
In fact, it’s incoherent to connect it to a legal right to abortion, because as a choice, it’s slippery. (see – degredation of Casey, difficulty of getting abortions in S. Dakota, ect.) And it’s an annoying argument, as you are implicitly threatening the bodily integrity of women by suggesting that a human right should be taken away if the state doesn’t allow men to opt out.
Make no mistake about this– the state is protecting its interests here by looking for a man to support the child. It’s actually a very patriarchal legal attitude. But how you are framing the issue is excessively annoying and insulting.
You make it sound like a power struggle between the genders: “It’s not fair that she gets to choose not to have a baby!! Matriarchy!! Men are being oppressed because women are forcing us to be fathers!! or “Our birth control rocks now, so nah nah I should get to opt out!” All of this begs the question of how she got preggers in the first place if the birth control is so fantabulously wonderful.
“The casino gave Jimmy Vance free drinks, got him drunk, then lent him money so he could keep gambling.”
That’s a different situation, because Jimmy is choosing to drink and gamble, and maybe it ends poorly. It could have ended well. What I’m saying is pretty basic to contract law: when you knowingly make an agreement with someone who has a diminished capacity, it might not be enforceable. Drinking might be one reason, and it might matter whether you encouraged that, which is not what the casino is doing in your example.
He lost the money, and tried to get out of the debt, saying he was too drunk to know what he was doing. No one denied he was drunk; but the judge said it didn’t matter. So you can get someone drunk for the purposes of affecting his judgment, and legally, you can still keep his money. At least sometimes.
“The casino gave Jimmy Vance free drinks, got him drunk, then lent him money so he could keep gambling.”
It’s okay for the casino to give free drinks or lend money; the choice to be involved in that is on Jimmy. However, it’s still against the law for the casino to allow a visibly intoxicated person to gamble or borrow money. Heck, even the bar isn’t supposed to be serving him when he’s visibly intoxicated. I’m not making this up–these are pretty standard laws in most areas.
Badgirl and Hunter 78, it’s not like I’m making this up. Most states have some provision for diminished capacity and/or intoxication in their sexual assault laws. If you don’t like this, maybe talk to your legislator?
I think Badgirl is having a hard time understanding “intoxication”. It doesn’t mean that you’re having a few drinks and, at some point in that process, give your consent to sex. I could not disagree more, when you say that, “it IS a girls responsibility to maintain enough sobriety to say no if thats what she wants.” That’s something I would teach my kids to do, and would do myself, but that’s not her legal responsibility. Not at all. The fact that someone is wasted does not mean it’s okay (or legal) to have sex with them, just because they aren’t sober enough to tell you no. I also can’t understand why this leads you to cry about “the poor men”. They can just, you know, follow the law and not have sex with someone who’s incapable of consenting. Not a big cross to bear, if you ask me.
When you ask, “where do you people draw the line”, your question is similar to Hunter78’s: “So tell me, at what point does a woman become “intoxicated” so she can no longer agree to have sex with some guy she seemed to be having a great time just previously?” The answer is quite simple: judges, juries, and prosecutors decide where those lines are drawn, and they are indeed being drawn in a gray area. We’d probably all agree that someone can have a few drinks and be “tipsy”, but still understand what’s going on and consent freely to sex. We’d probably all agree that someone who is too drunk to recognize the other person is too drunk to give consent. Somewhere in the middle, a line is drawn, and it’s unfortunate that it can’t be drawn as cleanly as you’d like, but that’s real life. Lots of different kinds of evidence might be used to argue about this, in real cases. Decisions about those cases shape what is likely to happen in future cases.
I might add that many of these laws are gender-neutral, nowadays, so there’s no need to speak only about the one kind of female/male case.
Just wanted to add a hearty “yeah, that” to what btmom is trying to explain. People seem to operate from this misconception that the law needs to satisfy their personal notions of fairness, both in principle and in outcome. Not so.
The law in these cases is designed to solve a simple problem: what needs to be done for this child, to whom the state already has an obligation? The goal here is not at all to produce the fairest or most just or least sexist outcome for the parents. What matters is what the child needs.
It’s unfortunate that some men can be taken advantage of by women who make them unwilling DNA donors. It’s also unfortunate that some women can be taken advantage of by men who agree to have a child but then don’t uphold their commitments. Neither of these things is the court’s problem, though, and that’s just as it should be.
@420: As I said above, there are many different goals. The goal is not just to take care of the child, or the state would pick some random person to take care of the child, or tax and use that money to do so.
And yes, fairness is, and should be, one of the goals of the law.
Can we agree, at least, that a person (male or female) should never have to pay child support if
a) they’re not a biological parent to the kid,
b) they were underage at the time of conception,
or c) they were raped?
The most heartbreaking and unfair cases are where someone is forced to pay child support when he was raped by the kid’s mother, or when he’s not the biological father.
@421, I definitely agree with a and c. Especially in a situation of rape, it’s unfair that someone should become financially responsible for something that they didn’t want any part in to begin with. I do, however, think that they should have the option to raise the child if they want to (as some people see it as the good from a bad situation).
I also agree that it’s entirely unfair that the courts can force a man to pay for a child who’s conception he played no part in, just because he’s what’s best for the child. The stipulation I would place on it is this: If a man chooses to step up and claim fatherhood to a child knowing it may not be his (because he is with the mother), he cannot, years later, decide to re-neg that because they break up. Once you decide to be a parent to a child, genetics are no longer in play.
The last comes from personal experience. I have friends who have a child “together”. There has never been a paternity test, but shortly before she found out she was pregnant, she had a drunken fling with someone else while they were “on a break”. The child looks very much like the fling, and very little like either of the “parents”. The “father” knew at the time they found out she was pregnant that she had the fling and that the child might not be his, but decided to step up and take responsibility. The child is now 3, and, if they were to separate, I think it would be detrimental to not have him continue to be dad, just because he didn’t provide the sperm.
@411 “Argh. Do you realize that it’s biology you’re angry at, not the legal system? “
I actually don’t think that’s the case. I think that JA5 is only guilty of providing extreme examples that make the situation look ridiculous. And he admits that they’re extreme.
To say that the decision to provide an organ to a dying child is similar to the decision to have an abortion (while both being decisions about the persons own body, which leave other affected people out of the decision), is an unfair comparison. Each woman that gets pregnant gets to make the choice between abortion or carrying a child to term. Those are the only 2 options (of course if a child is carried, there are many after that). How many fathers need to decide whether or not to share an organ? While I don’t have exact numbers, I know it is less than the 100% of women who have to decide whether or not to keep their child.
I don’t see a problem with a man stating that he doesn’t want to support/raise his child, and the decision then being on the woman to decide if she is ready and able to do it without his help.
Dunno why you think it’s unfair, it doesn’t matter how many men find themselves in that situation, what matters is that 100% of men who do find themselves in that situation get to choose what to do with their bodies. Just like it doesn’t matter how many women get pregnant, what matters is that 100% of women who do get pregnant get to choose what they’ll do with their bodies.
It sounds like you want to say that just because someone is less likely than someone else to exercise a certain right, they should be given some extra rights to make up for it. It would be like saying that just because a certain class of people are less likely to end up on welfare than another class of people they should be paying less in taxes. Oh wait. Snap.
Not extra rights, no. But why shouldn’t a man be able to legally abandon his child the same as a woman can? Basically, what I’m saying is that either parent should be able to give the child to the other parent and relinquish custodial rights in order to not be required to pay child support. This could just as easily work in the opposite direction. I could decide, “Look, I’m willing to pop this kid out, if we have a contract that says I don’t have to pay a dime and you’re going to care for it on your own.” This isn’t a gender issue, I just felt that your comparison was a bit ridiculous in that they are two VERY different circumstances.
It’s nice to see another Rose on here 🙂
@422: If he adopts the kid, that’s one thing. If he dates a girl who’s pregnant, and helps out sometimes, I don’t think parental obligations should attach. I’m very reluctant to make someone pay for a kid who isn’t his: and if agreeing to help parent means you’re tied down, fewer people would help in the first place.
More to the point, a lot of people might have suspicions at the time of birth, but it doesn’t come up till a divorce. A lot of states have a very short window in which you can contest paternity, and if you missed that window you’re SOL (pun intended).
Ideally, every kid should be given a mandatory paternity test at the hospital to solve this problem. If it doesn’t match the father, I’d only hold him to child support if he signs saying he knows the kid is not his and he agrees to irrevocably pay child support for 18-25 years. Even then that seems problematic.
If you date someone with a kid for a few years, I don’t think it’s fair to make that short relationship oblige you to pay child support if you split up, if it’s not your kid.
@423: The organ example comes from the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson, who wrote an article arguing abortion was ethical. She compared abortion to being connected to a famous violinist who needed to use your body organs for nine months to live, and argued that you had the right to pull the plug at any point.
The cool thing about this argument is that it avoids the irrelevant, but frequently debated, questions of when life beings and whether a fetus is a person.
Philosophers frequently use thought experiments about things that are unlikely to happen in real life as a way of clarifying positions.
But if you’re saying it’s not fair that men only get to deny organs in rare cases, but women get to have an abortion in almost all cases (where it’s available), and so the rights aren’t equal, the I’d agree.
I was wondering if you two were spouses! 😉
@ 425, yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue against child support as a concept – the reason why it’s unlikely to have effect is because, as many have stated, the society doesn’t want to bear the burden of co-paying to raise the child. I was just saying that laws are not sexist, if you feel it’s unfair that non-custodial parents (of both genders) can’t get off the hook you need to find another word to describe the system.
Btw, legal abandonment is not something a parent can do if the other parent doesn’t agree – the fact that the father may not be aware of the child’s existence, but the mother always is, just makes it easier for women to exercise this right, but it doesn’t mean that men don’t have that right as well.
@ 426, you say “But if you’re saying it’s not fair that men only get to deny organs in rare cases, but women get to have an abortion in almost all cases (where it’s available), and so the rights aren’t equal, the I’d agree. “
That would be like saying that because men only get to use parental leave in rare cases, but women get to use it in almost all cases, their rights are not equal and the legislation is sexist. No it’s not. I’m profoundly sorry men can’t gestate children – seriously, I would love nothing more – but that’s not the legal system’s fault.
@427: This reminds me of the debate about whether or not affirmative action is racist: looked at one way, it is, because it gives an advantage based on race. Looked at another way, it isn’t, because it’s trying to level the playing field.
Similarly, there are different ways of compensating for biology. The biological fact is that women get pregnant and men don’t. How a society deals with this biological fact is the legal system’s responsibility, however.
Requiring child support is one way to deal with this, but there is an asymmetry in that women can abort, but men can’t do anything after conception. Another possibility discussed here is that men have the option of renouncing their parental rights and responsibilities. This would correct that asymmetry, but possibly introduce others.
What’s “sexist” is hard to determine and in some ways a matter of opinion, and it’s really besides the point. We should be asking what’s just and what’s best for society.
As far as legal abandonment, check out safe surrender laws. Some states, like California, allow either parent to surrender individually, without the other parent’s agreement. I believe the other parent can then claim the kid afterwards.
The inequality (whether we see it as a good thing or a bad thing) created by affirmative action is man-made, while inequality created by only women being able to gestate children is biological.
In the first case, humans decided that Caucasians won’t have access to *some rights*, therefore you can call the system racist, technically, in the second case you can’t call it sexist because the laws give men access to all the rights that women have, but because of biology it’s rare that they get to exercise these rights. Does it need to be corrected? Just because one group of people is less likely to exercise a certain right (say, parental leave), should they be given some extra rights en masse to compensate for it? Should men be given higher pay for the same work, or more opportunities for promotion? Oh wait. Snap.
The law doesn’t pamper women by allowing them more rights than men have because they have been oppressed or because they have some cruel biological defects etc. Not at all, women don’t have more rights legally, so it’s nothing like affirmative action.
If we’re dragging race into play, it would be more correct to ask whether the NBA is racist because of the overwhelming majority of black players – no it’s not, white players have the right to play in NBA, just because they rarely get to exercise that right due to biology* doesn’t make the NBA racist.
*let’s assume biology is a factor for the sake of the argument, frankly I have no data on that
@426 “If you date someone with a kid for a few years, I don’t think it’s fair to make that short relationship oblige you to pay child support if you split up, if it’s not your kid.”
I ABSOLUTELY agree. The particular circumstance I mentioned was not like that exactly. They had been together for 7 years when she got pregnant. She told him the baby might not be his, and he decided it would be whether it was genetically or not. They never had a paternity test, because he didn’t care, and he was named on the birth certificate as the father. At this point, I think it would be detrimental to their child to lose the only “daddy” he knows. Luckily he’s an awesome guy and I doubt he would ever decide to pull the “that’s not my kid” card.
But I definitely get it. I’m dating a guy who has a 2 year old. I’ve been around since the kid was born (I was friends with mom and dad), but he is most definitely their child, not mine. I love being his “aunt” and while I’m slowly becoming more involved in his care, the decisions (and ultimately financial responsibility) fall on mom and dad. I can’t lay claim, and don’t have financial responsibility. So it can be somewhat dependent on circumstances.
@ 429 “Just because one group of people is less likely to exercise a certain right (say, parental leave), should they be given some extra rights en masse to compensate for it?”
Again, I’m not asking for extra rights. Not at all. I’m saying that, where the same rights are possible, allow for them. Upon learning of conception, either parent could look at the other and say, “I am completely unwilling to support, financially or emotionally, a child. If you would like to do so, this is fine, as long as you accept you will have no help from me. “
Why would this be unfair? Yes, because of biology, women would still be “more privileged” in this because, even if the man felt that he would be willing to care for a child without the mother’s help, if she is unwilling to carry the child to term, he has no say (and shouldn’t since it is, as you’ve pointed out, her body). She absolutely has the final say in whether or not a child is aborted. However, if she doesn’t want a child, but is willing to carry it to term for adoption purposes, why not make the consideration that the child’s biological father could assume responsibility without her involvement? In essence, he’d be adopting a child that is already biologically his. By the same token, a man could decide he doesn’t want to be a father, and tell a woman, “I won’t ask you to get an abortion, but I will let you know, while you still have options, that I will not help you raise a child.” and let her make a decision from there. This has NOTHING to do with biology, and everything to do with being able to sign over rights at the time of conception. Yes, men would still be less able to exercise these rights because of biology, but at least it would be as close to fair as you could get.
@429: The origin of the inequality doesn’t matter… the point is that correcting an inequality might be done by unequal procedures, and it’s debatable whether those procedures promote equality or not.
However, the child support system is in fact man-made. Without a child support system and a government, no one would have any obligations to support kids. There’s nothing biological about any sort of legal child support obligations. They’re created by society. And the way that they’re created by society gives women the right to give up their obligations after conception, whereas men don’t have that legal right.
Granted, society introduced these differences because of biological facts, but the society-introduced differences themselves are one way of dealing with biology. Other ways of dealing with biological differences might, or might not, be more fair.
@422/431: That scenario really disturbs me and squicks me for some reason, much like a lot of cuckold stories, especially the part about the kid looking like the fling. (I realize this isn’t necessarily a cuckold fantasy but it resembles one and bothers me for similar reasons.)
It’s like they’re saying he’s not good enough to pass his genes on but he’s good enough to provide financial/emotional support. Sounds like abuse/degradation. I don’t think that should be irreversible — what if he changes his mind and feels used and taken advantage of?
But then, I don’t even understand why someone would raise their own kid, let alone someone else’s.
Well the origin of inequality matters if you want to complain about the sexist legal system… or the racist professional sports leagues, etc. Which is what I think I was debating here – I don’t really care whether child support laws exist or not, but if they do exist then I want them to treat both genders equally (as they do).
Yes, men do have that legal right – the right to use their bodily autonomy to give up their obligation to the child post-conception. It bothers you that they don’t get to exercise that right as often as women. And I am sure many white basketball players are bothered that they don’t get to exercise their right to play in NBA as often as black players. Life sucks sometimes. Can’t always blame it on racism or sexism.
@435: How do men have the legal right to give up their obligation post-conception? I don’t think they do.
How often they get to exercise that right is entirely a question of policy, created by statute. That policy is what I’m discussing here.
This isn’t about life sucking or sexism. This is about fair child support laws.
You say that the current laws treat genders “equally”: I’m not understanding that, but if you’d prefer, I can use different words: I would like child support laws that allow both men and women to renounce their rights and responsibilities post-conception in all cases. Whether or not that’s “equal” is semantics. Regardless, I think that would be more fair.
@434 Believe me, I understand, it is a bit squicky. I think the why of it stemmed from a lot of places. One, the reason they were on a break and she had a fling was because she found out he’d cheated through their whole relationship. So I do think part of him felt he deserved it. Also, she had previously been pregnant with his child and it was stillborn. I do think, knowing his past, that,while he doesn’t necessarily have a cuckold fantasy,he does allow himself to be cuckolded. Plus he was going with the angle of “I love you, so I love everything that comes from you.” He’s definitely a better dad than the fling would be.
And while part of me does get the idea of being able to re-neg on it since it’s not his kid. But I’ve always felt there was a huge difference between a dad and a father. He might not be the kids father, but he is most definitely his dad. And I think, once you’ve let a child bond with you, just up and leaving is exceptionally detrimental. So, even if he removed financial responsibility, love doesn’t erase that easily.
I wish I could break up with my ex. After four years of living AND working together he cheated big time – several times. We’re still WAY too involved (nothing sexual but work-related) and I could not fire him because he’s an excellent employee so I quit. I’m now contemplating relocating to get away from him. Part of this is me, I admit. He was, for me, the best thing that ever happened to me and I was and, to some degree, still hurting. If I try to stay away from him he pushes himself towards me. I, on the other hand, see him on Gayromeo, etc and feel very hurt and wonder what he’s doing/who’s he seeing etc. And I go back to see when he was on line last! I even have a hard time dating because I strangely feel I’m cheating. It’s not healthy, I know but how to deal with it? To me, it’s to move far away. When I went to explore a city he called constantly asking how my vacation was going and asking about work-related stuff even though I’m no longer there. I was honest and told him I’m thinking of moving and he said he wants to move too! WTF! How do I escape and move on?
Sounds like FOFS is being held emotionally hostage by her ex who is making crazy claims that he was sexually abused by her. FOFS needs to know that if she cuts off contact with the ex and doesn’t get sucked back into communicating with him again, he’ll eventually get bored and move on to the next girl to try drive bat shit crazy.
For what it’s worth I totally agree “that sex acts may be legal and yet unethical.” I haven’t spoken up just because you handle yourself so well and because I really don’t know what to make of anyone resisting that statement.
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