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.
@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.