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.
@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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