[I’ve decided to start a series of “Sunday reruns,” re-posting older posts that my newer readers may not be familiar with. This post was originally published August 9, 2002.]
An essential point that not everyone has yet absorbed: Sometimes there is no fair solution.
Case in point: This week in Newsday, Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson argue that life is unfair for fathers. Well, I agree; life is unfair for fathers. It’s not as unfair as Sacks and Thompson think it is – for instance when they claim “when a woman wants a child and a man does not, the woman can have the child anyway…” Of course, this isn’t strictly true – a man could insist on using birth control. Or get a vasectomy. Or even refuse to have sex with women. Sacks and Thompson are so eager to show that men are pure victims that they refuse to acknowledge any of the choices men do have.
What bothers Sacks and Thompson is that women have one choice men don’t – women can choose to have an abortion. This is unfair (although Sacks and Thompson don’t acknowledge the many ways in which this unfairness benefits men), but it’s an unfairness inherent in biology, not in law. So the question becomes, what can be done to remedy this unfairness? Well, according to Sacks and Thompson, the solution is giving unmarried men the right to walk away from all their parenting obligations. In other words, unmarried men shouldn’t pay child support unless they want to.
But their logic is shaky. According to Sacks and Thompson, “On average, every day 17 [U.S. workers] die – 16 of them male. Couldn’t men who work long hours or do hazardous jobs – and who suffer the concomitant physical ailments and injuries – argue that their bodies are on the line, too? Where is their choice?”
Well, unless they’re independently wealthy, they have no choice but to work. But although the news doesn’t seem to have reached Sacks and Thompson, nearly everyone in the US has to work. It’s not as if unmarried fathers are forced to work while childless or married men (or women for that matter) spend their days drinking brandy by the fire. Sacks and Thompson say that for unmarried fathers to need to work is a injustice, because it violates “my body, my choice” – but since when is it such a horrible violation of bodily integrity to have a job? And if it is a violation of bodily integrity for unmarried fathers, then why isn’t it a violation for all other workers, as well?
Sacks and Thompson are right that occupational injuries are too frequent – and too sex-biased – but workplace injuries aren’t caused by paying child support. It’s not as if 100% of mine shaft workers are unmarried men with children; nor is a mine worker magically safer on the job if he has no children. No feminist objects to protecting workers – but Sacks and Thompson seem to believe that workplace deaths are caused by inadequate father’s rights. The real problem is inadequate workplace safety – and the real solutions have nothing to do with eliminating child support payments for unmarried fathers.
Finally, although “16 deaths a day” sounds impressive, is this really a figure that tells us about the average working man’s life? Of the approximately 73 million American men who worked in 2000, 5,467 – which is to say, less than one-hundredth of one percent – died on the job. It’s tragic that they died, of course – but we can acknowledge that tragedy without pretending that men typically face such dangers in order to pay child support.
* * *
What all that really indicates, of course, is that Sacks and Thompson bend over backwards to perceive men as victims. So they say that men have absolutely no choice – ignoring that men aren’t being forced to have sex against their will. So when unmarried men get jobs, that’s a violation of “my body, my choice” equivalent to being forced to bear a child against one’s will – even though the rest of us have to get jobs too. So when one out of every 13,433 male workers dies, that becomes an example of typical male experience. Logical consistency takes a back seat as men-as-victims settles in behind the wheel.
But just because Sacks and Thompson are male-victimology junkies, that doesn’t show that they’re wrong about the larger issue – shouldn’t men get a choice equal to women’s? Contrary to Sacks and Thompson’s view of men as victims first and foremost, men have plenty of choices until pregnancy happens. But once a pregnancy has begun, Sacks and Thompson are right – in our legal system, for the first two trimesters of pregnancy, women have a choice and men don’t. And that, they say, is unfair.
Well, I agree. It is unfair. But their solution would actually make things worse, not better.
Any genuine discussion of “fairness” has to consider what’s best for all the parties involved – but Sacks and Thompson never consider anyone’s rights but the father’s. What about the other parties?
For instance, they propose giving fathers a right to cut and run – but they don’t propose giving mothers the same right. So let’s say I have a one-night stand and learn, eight months later, that the woman is pregnant with our child. Under Sacks and Thompson’s proposal, I – as the man – would have the right to sign away all my obligations to the child. But what if I want to keep the child, which the mother wants to give it up for adoption? Well, under the laws of most states, I’d automatically get custody – and the mother would be obligated to pay me child support (although Sacks and Thompson seemingly think only men ever pay child support, the truth is noncustodial parents of both sexes pay). So men get to cut and run, but women don’t. How is that fair?
My guess is that Sacks and Thompson would concede this point, and be willing to modify their proposal to give women and men equal rights to flee their obligations. But there’s still an important party whose rights haven’t been considered: what’s fair to the child?
There is an undeniable harm to noncustodial parents of forcing them to pay child support – they have to give up money that they’d otherwise spend as they want. But there’s also an undeniable harm of saying parents have no legal obligation to support their children. Child poverty is already a bigger problem in the US than in other wealthy nations; releasing noncustodial parents from the obligation to support their kids would make this worse.
Any honest appraisal of “choice for men” has to weigh both these elements. Which is the worse harm – the harm to noncustodial parents of having to pay child support, or the harm to children if child poverty is increased? “None of the above” isn’t on the menu; as a society, we have to choose one harm or the other to live with.
The moderate loss of financial freedom to noncustodial parents is obviously the lesser harm, and thus the harm we should choose. That is unfair; but increased child poverty is even more unfair. We can only choose which unfairness is easier for our society to live with.
Children have an unambiguous right to the material support of two parents. Under Sacks and Thompson’s theory, parents have the ability to sign away their children’s rights before the child is ever born – but that’s not the way the law works. Once the child is to be born, it has rights, regardless of what it’s parents signed before it was born. A parent can’t sign away a future child’s right to support, for the same reason that a parent can’t sign a contract selling his future child’s liver. The future child’s rights aren’t the parent’s to sign away.
There is no chance that “choice for men” will ever become law. It’s “fairer” only in the most facile analysis – an analysis that has eyes only for the rights of the father, ignoring mother and child entirely.
Is our current system unfair to noncustodial fathers? Yes, of course it is. It’s also unfair to custodial mothers that they have to do virtually all of the work and pay most of the expenses (child support payments typically cover less than half the child’s costs). And it’s terribly unfair that some children grow up without two parents who love each other and want to be together. Life is unfair.
But Sacks and Thompson’s solution doesn’t relieve unfairness, it just transfers it. Rather than all three parties sharing the burden equally, the father is relieved of all unfairness while the costs to mother and child are increased. How is that fair?.
I’m really uneasy with the “men aren’t being forced to have sex against their will” argument. That’s because a corresponding argument can be, and has been, used as an argument against abortion except in cases of rape.
The “if she doesn’t want to care for a baby, she should just not have sex” line has been used to belittle and demean women for decades, wilfully ignoring the role that sex plays in pairbonding relationships. I’m sorry to see the same belittlement practiced on men.
Something similar could be said of the “he can just have a vasectomy” argument. She can just have her tubes tied. Both are decisions that shouldn’t be made without a strong presumption of permanence.
Well, instead of a vasectonomy, how about a condom? That’s easy.
“Well, according to Sacks and Thompson, the solution is giving unmarried men the right to walk away from all their parenting obligations. In other words, unmarried men shouldn’t pay child support unless they want to.”
Hi, Amp. I guess I’m on a roll here. This is a bit long. I’ve written about this topic before.
My problem with their position is that they want all the rights but none of the responsibilities. They assume that unmarried men have parenting obligations, when that is not really the case. Unmarried men also do not have parenting rights, at least until welfare reform came along and mucked things up. I do not think that unmarried men should have either rights or responsibilities. I know that there are unmarried women out there who become pregnant and want the guy to pay child support but otherwise do not want any involvement from him at all. Plus welfare reform will not permit a mother who needs assistance to turn down child support, even if that means tracking down a guy she had her child had not had any contact with in a decade. Those scenarios do not cut it for me.
Child support collection and the movement demanding rights for unwed fathers has created a whole host of problems. If the guys do not want to pay child support, they also should not have the ability to come back a few years later, step on mom’s toes, and demand to assert their parental “rights” to a child they did not raise when they suddenly decide they want to play daddy. In the same vein, if they do decide to pay child support, they have the responsibility to be aware that, being unmarried and possibly dating others, they must recognize that there is a possibility that they and their partners have not been exclusive. When they decide to financially support a child and raise that child, they have voluntarily taken on the role of father — whether or not they are actually the biological father of that child. They cannot decide years later to demand a paternity test, and then demand to vacate their child support and other fatherly responsibilities in the event that they learn that the child is not their biological progeny. The bad thing is that some courts have recently ruled favoring men in these situations, thereby overriding the fact that these men, even though not the bio-dad, are the only fathers these children know. Fatherhood does not equal DNA.
Welfare reform’s penchant to equate DNA with fatherhood and to pretend that child support is for the child (re: welfare, it’s really to reimburse state welfare coffers) has led to fathers’ rights demands to itemize child support going to mom, to demand child support be revised to cover what it “actually” costs to raise a child, punitive child support collection strategies that penalize both men and women, serious screw-ups by CSE such as child support miscalculations, unwed fathers “rights” that override primary caregiving mother’s decisions and the welfare of the children, and paternity “fraud.”
All of the problems for men, women, and children that have come about because of welfare reform’s penchant to equate fatherhood with DNA have lead me to the conclusion that, barring individual cases and circumstances, unwed fathers should have no rights or responsibilities. Sperm does not a father make.
“So let’s say I have a one-night stand and learn, eight months later, that the woman is pregnant with our child. Under Sacks and Thompson’s proposal, I – as the man – would have the right to sign away all my obligations to the child. But what if I want to keep the child, which the mother wants to give it up for adoption? Well, under the laws of most states, I’d automatically get custody – and the mother would be obligated to pay me child support (although Sacks and Thompson seemingly think only men ever pay child support, the truth is noncustodial parents of both sexes pay). So men get to cut and run, but women don’t. How is that fair.”
That’s not quite right. Some states have established putitive father registries, to which men may submit their names in order to be notified should a woman with whom they had been sexually involved give birth to a child she wants to give up for adoption. They have a specific time period during which they may stake their claim. Once that time period lapses, the adoption goes through. They can’t come back months or years later and demand “their” child be turned over to them. These registries were created in the wake of those horrid adoption cases from the 1990s where very young children were taken from their adoptive parents when the biological fathers discovered that their ex-girlfriends gave birth and gave up the children for adoption. The registries exist to protect children.
Ironically, a putitive father registry was rejected by fathers’ rights activists in Florida who thought the registries would violate men’s privacy. (They don’t.) Years later those same fathers’ rights activists had no problem demanding the invasion of women’s privacy with that Scarlet Letter law that demanded pregnant unwed women who could not or would not identify the father place ads in local papers describing themselves and their sexual partners. Thankfully, that law was repealed.
Simon wrote: I’m really uneasy with the “men aren’t being forced to have sex against their will” argument. That’s because a corresponding argument can be, and has been, used as an argument against abortion except in cases of rape.
If anyone claimed that women have absolutely no choice in whether or not a pregnancy occurs, then (except in cases of rape) that would be a legitimate counter-argument to make. Women do have choices (again, apart from cases of rape), and in the long run it’s a bad argument to deny that reality.
Also, I don’t think the pro-life argument you describe is at all logical. “Women have choices” does not logically lead to the conclusion “therefore abortion should be illegal.” They might as well claim that because I have a choice over whether or not to accept a job, quitting that job should be illegal.
The issue of abortion hinges on balancing the rights of the mother to control her own body (if any) against the rights of the zygote or fetus to be born (if any). “Could the mother have refrained from sex” is really just a side issue, not a deciding issue.
The “if she doesn’t want to care for a baby, she should just not have sex”…
But this is an inaccurate statement. In a woman’s case, it would be more accurate to say “if she can’t stand risking pregnancy, and being forced to choose between going through with the pregnancy or getting an abortion, then she shouldn’t have coital hetereosexual sex.” I’m sorry if that seems belittling to you, but I don’t think it is; it’s a statement of fact.
For men, the similar statement is “if you can’t stand the chance of becoming a biological father, then you shouldn’t have coital heterosexual sex.” Again, this isn’t belittlement – it’s just a statement of fact.
For most people, because of “the role that sex plays in pairbonding relationships,” the chance of pregnancy is low enough so it’s still worthwhile to have sex. I have no problem with that, but I think we shouldn’t deny the reality that a choice is being made.
“Welfare reform’s penchant to equate DNA with fatherhood and to pretend that child support is for the child”
-What is your definition of child support? I’ve always had the impression that the payments I make every 2 weeks are for the care and feeding of my daughter.
“fathers’ rights demands to itemize child support going to mom”
-Do you have any reasonable argument against holding mothers accountable for how child support money is spent?
“to demand child support be revised to cover what it “actually” costs to raise a child”
-I would argue that any money above and beyond the amount it takes to properly raise and care for a child is akin to alimony. Why should a custodial mother be given any more than it costs to raise the child?
“punitive child support collection strategies that penalize both men and women”
-Can you give an example, please.
(Above questions are for Trish)
Amp,
Putting these two sentences side by side:
“if she doesn’t want to care for a baby, she should just not have sex”…
(and)
“if she can’t stand risking pregnancy, and being forced to choose between going through with the pregnancy or getting an abortion, then she shouldn’t have coital hetereosexual sex.”
You called the first statement innacurate. What’s different about yours? (Other than the 5 dollar wordiness you chose to add)(and the reality of a caregiving choice you chose to subtract)
“if she doesn’t want to care for a baby, she should just not have sex”…
(not to say this is not completely ignorant)
SickOFitall, there were lots of differences between the two statements, but let’s look at the most important one.
You say that childcare is a “reality.” It is, of course; but it’s not an inevitable result of having sex. There are other choices besides caring for a child, such as abortion and adoption. A statement like “if she doesn’t want to care for a baby, she should just not have sex”… is inaccurate because it pretends that abstaining from sex and caring for a baby are the only two options, when other options exist.
It’s as if I gave you a menu with four options (soup, hamburger, rice, and ice cream) and then said “if you don’t want soup or rice, you shouldn’t order from this menu.” It’s dishonest because it ignores the fact that the menu contains other options.
In contrast the choice in my version – having an abortion or going through with childbirth – doesn’t leave anything out. Those are the literal choices pregnant women have. (There are other possibilities, such as a miscarriage, but not other choices.)
There are other differences between the two statements, but frankly I found your dismissive comment about “five-dollar words” offensive. Since you’re not willing to give a fair reading to what I write (someone who dismisses “five dollar words,” as if those words didn’t have meanings, isn’t giving a fair reading), why should I bother answering your questions?
Edited by Amp a few minutes after posting.
You called the first statement innacurate. What’s different about yours?
Uh, sickO, where exactly are you getting that second sentence from? I don’t see it anywhere in Amp’s post.
Oh, I see. It’s on the comments page. Never mind.
Dch, the second statement isn’t in my post, but it is in a comment I wrote in this comments thread. :-)
Whoopse, cross-posted. Never mind. :-P
Amp: Right, women have choices, before they become pregnant. And the anti-abortionists say that’s the time for them to excercise those choices. After they become pregnant, they’ve made their choice, they have to live with it.
The job-quitting analogy is fallacious, because 1) quitting a job doesn’t end a life (as anti-abortionists see it), 2) the pregnant woman in their view can quit, but only after the baby is born, by giving it up for adoption; 3) there ARE such things as jobs you can’t quit (at least for a period of time). Try quitting the Army. Job contracts in fields with high trade-secret levels often say that you can quit, but if you do you can’t take another job in the field with a different employer for a specified period, usually years.
“if she can’t stand risking pregnancy, and being forced to choose between going through with the pregnancy or getting an abortion, then she shouldn’t have coital hetereosexual sex.”
Are you actually going to say that to pregnant women trying to decide whether to abort? That is not what I’d call a pro-choice statement, and I thought you were pro-choice. ENCOURAGING people (of both sexes) to use sexual practices less likely to result in pregnancy, yes; cancelling their abortion rights if they don’t, no.
ddd wrote, “Well, instead of a vasectonomy, how about a condom? That’s easy.”
You can say the same thing to women, and many people do.
Additional thoughts:
Amp is right that it’s a bad argument to deny the reality that women have choices. But a pro-choicer has to have a response to the anti-abortion argument that the time to exercise that choice is before pregnancy, not during. And in 20 years of pro-choicehood, the only good argument I’ve heard is that pregnancy is not necessarily entirely voluntary. The best birth-control measures can fail. And many people are ignorant of how to use birth-control; they should not be punished for that ignorance.
As for the argument that couples who don’t wish to become pregnant should simply refrain from coitus, that is either so brilliantly simple that it should be used as an excuse to deny all non-rape abortions, or else so utterly stupid that it should be laughed out of court.
Simon wrote: ENCOURAGING people (of both sexes) to use sexual practices less likely to result in pregnancy, yes; cancelling their abortion rights if they don’t, no.
Simon, here’s what I wrote: “If a woman can’t stand risking pregnancy, and being forced to choose between going through with the pregnancy or getting an abortion, then she shouldn’t have coital hetereosexual sex.”
As you would have known if you’d read my statement, I’m including abortion as an option. Claiming that I ever argued for cancelling anyone’s abortion rights is a very bad misunderstanding on your part. Please read more carefully before responding, in the future.
* * *
Here’s the point: to claim that either women or men have no choices – as if there were never ANY kind of sex but rape – is untrue. Basing a pro-choice argument on something that isn’t true is both intellectually dishonest and unwise debating strategy.
The truth is, most people (at least, most heterosexual grown-ups) choose to have coital sex knowing that – no matter how careful they are with birth control – there’s always a slight chance of pregnancy. If someone can’t bear even the slightest risk of pregnancy, then they’d be well advised not to have coital sex.
Most people (me included) are willing to take that risk, of course. That’s totally cool. But let’s not pretend they don’t have any choice.
Amp: Right, women have choices, before they become pregnant. And the anti-abortionists say that’s the time for them to excercise those choices. After they become pregnant, they’ve made their choice, they have to live with it.
Well, the anti-abortionists are mistaken. First of all, they’re mistaken factually. We live in a (mostly) free country, in which it’s both possible and legal for a woman to exercise choice after becoming pregnant. To claim that this option doesn’t exist is ignoring reality.
Second of all, they’re mistaken logically. It’s illogical to say “you’ve made your choice, now you have to live with it” to someone who still has options (such as abortion) to consider. As long as options remain, the final choice hasn’t yet been made and doesn’t yet have to be lived with. It’s only logical to claim that someone has “made their choice” after the final choice has been made.
I know that you probably agree with all this. My point is, it’s possible to make a logical pro-choice argument without lying and claiming no choices exist at all.
The job-quitting analogy is fallacious, because 1) quitting a job doesn’t end a life (as anti-abortionists see it)
Eating a cow ends a life. Swatting a mosquito ends a life. Removing life support from a baby born without a brain ends a life. It’s wrong to argue that “ending a life” proves something is wrong, because we end lives all the time.
The real question is, does an abortion kill a thinking, sentient person? As pro-choicers see it, neither a typical abortion, nor quitting a job, kills a person. Therefore the analogy holds up.
2) the pregnant woman in their view can quit, but only after the baby is born, by giving it up for adoption;
Yes, that’s their view. I understand that. What’s your point?
You seem to beleive that I’m obliged to take on pro-life views, and make everything I say about birth and pregnancy be consistant in the pro-life context. Why should I do that? If I wanted to be fully consistant with pro-life views, I’d have to believe that there’s no moral difference between the death of my year-old nephew and the death of a one-week zygote. I’d also have to agree with pro-lifers that teh state should force unwilling pregnant women into giving birth.
I find pro-life views profoundly immoral, and refuse to take them on. Therefore, your implication that I’m somehow mistaken to not make my every statement consistant with pro-life views doesn’t make sense to me.
3) there ARE such things as jobs you can’t quit (at least for a period of time). Try quitting the Army.
You sign legal forms giving up your rights in your army example (and in the other examples you discuss). There’s no analogous form signed by women who have sex. (Nor would such a form be enforcable, I suspect).
(Simon quoting Amp): “if she can’t stand risking pregnancy, and being forced to choose between going through with the pregnancy or getting an abortion, then she shouldn’t have coital hetereosexual sex.”
(Simon: )Are you actually going to say that to pregnant women trying to decide whether to abort?
Simon, this is a political blog. You seem to have mistaken this for me giving personal advice to a pregnant friend. The two situations are actually very different; try to keep them separate in your mind.
Of course, I’m not going to say that to a pregnant friend; for one thing, she’s already pregnant, so discussing under what circumstances one should risk pregnancy would be moot. But if I were talking to a non-pregnant friend (male or female) who told me they absolutely, positively couldn’t stand the thought of risking pregnancy, then yes, I’d advise them to consider living without coital sex. What’s wrong with that?
You’re ignoring that there’s a big difference between someone who “can’t stand risking pregnancy,” and how most people feel. Most people are willing to stand that risk, and are willing to deal with the consequences – which may include choosing to have an abortion.
That is not what I’d call a pro-choice statement, and I thought you were pro-choice.
I am pro-choice; if you think otherwise, you’ve misread me.
Amp is right that it’s a bad argument to deny the reality that women have choices. But a pro-choicer has to have a response to the anti-abortion argument that the time to exercise that choice is before pregnancy, not during.
That’s not an argument, it’s a statement of opinion. An “argument” would have to include some reasons why the only time to exercise choice is pre-pregnancy. I’d respond to your hypothetical pro-lifer by questioning those “reasons why”; in many years of following abortion arguments, I’ve never seen a valid, logical reason to believe that it’s only acceptable to make choices before pregnancy, never after pregnancy.
And in 20 years of pro-choicehood, the only good argument I’ve heard is that pregnancy is not necessarily entirely voluntary. The best birth-control measures can fail. And many people are ignorant of how to use birth-control; they should not be punished for that ignorance.
I agree. That’s why we need legal, safe abortion.
However, I’d add that even someone who is voluntarily pregnant, or who wasn’t ignorant, shouldn’t be punished either. Every pregnant woman has a moral and legal right to control her own body, including the right to have an abortion. It’s wrong to take that away from a woman due to irrelevant factors like “she wasn’t ignorant” or “she didn’t use birth control.” The right to abortion isn’t limited to the ignorant and the unlucky; it’s for all women.
As for the argument that couples who don’t wish to become pregnant should simply refrain from coitus…
That’s not the argument I made, Simon. I said that a man who can’t stand the risk of becoming a father, or a woman who can’t stand the risk of having to choose between pregnancy and abortion, should refrain from heterosexual coital sex. There’s a big difference between “can’t stand” and “don’t wish.”
Surely, every couple who uses birth control wishes to avoid pregnancy (otherwise, why use birth control?). However, most couples are aware that there’s a chance (however small) that birth control will fail. So although they don’t wish to become pregnant, they’re nonetheless willing to take the risk. And if pregnancy does happen, they’ll deal with it (perhaps by getting an abortion).
Now imagine instead someone who isn’t pregnant, and who can’t stand the idea of having an abortion (perhaps she’s a devout Catholic), and also can’t stand the idea of giving birth while she’s still in college. It’s not just a case of “not wishing” – she feels like her entire life will end if she either gives birth or has an abortion.
What would you advise her? Would you seriously tell her she should go ahead and have coital sex anyway, under that circumstance?
I do see one reason to consider the pro-life point of view, actually. If I were actually in a direct argument with a pro-lifer, obviously I’d be seeking ways to express my views that a pro-lifer might understand.
But that’s not the circumstance here.
It’s fascinating to see the misreadings here. I suspect that it’s quite difficult to read things carefully when you care passionately about a subject, and reproduction tends to be something people care passionately about.
Off the abortion topic, I was interested to see if you wanted to go further with your comment that “life is unfair for fathers”. Is this just in the way that life is inherently not interested in fairness? Or is there some particular unfairness, other than Sacks&Thompson’s argument?
I’m a father myself (happily married to the child’s mother, thank the Lord, so many legal asymmetries don’t apply to me at present) and have been made aware of lots of ways it’s unfair. It’s not fair to have to stay up at night and soothe a crying child. It’s not fair to have to feed a messy child. It’s not fair to have to change diapers. I mean, what has my little one ever done for me?
Perhaps, perhaps, life isn’t entirely about fairness.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
Simon – I answer the choice timing question this way:
Anytime someone else wants to use my body, or any part of it, for any reason, I have to consent to that. Just as a person can’t take my organs without my consent, or have sex with me without my consent, so too a fetus can’t inhabit my uterus and take nutrients from my body without my consent.
And the thing about consent is, that it’s not a one-time thing. My consent can be withdrawn. So even if, when I have sex, I consent to a pregnancy, I also have the power to change my mind and withdraw that consent. This is also the reason why there are laws against marital rape. It used to be considered that when you got married, you gave your consent to sex with your spouse from that point onward – there could be no such thing as nonconsensual sex between spouses. But if you believe that consent can be withdrawn at any point, marital rape makes sense, as a point of logic.
I also especially like this argument because it frames abortion in a gender-neutral context of ALL bodily rights.
Interestingly, in Australia in the last few weeks the report of the House of Representatives Inquiry into Child custody arrangements following divorce has been released. Unlike the States, abortion is not an issue in Australia – instead the greatest angst is expended on the Family Law Court and the sometimes unfortunate results of rulings regarding custody and child care payments.
A bit of background for non-aussi readers. Divorce law in Australia is a federal matter and was revolutionized by the Family Law Act of 1975. This introduced no-fault divorce and 50-50 split of financial matters. Child custody was determined by the prinicple that children would be better off with one parent rather than oscillating between two. It’s this last point that has caused much disension.
Kay Hull, the Member of Parliament chairing the recent inquiry stated on the radio recently that 30-40% of her electoral office appointments had to do with Family Law matters and that this was the common experience of many MP’s.
The current report has overturned the custody principle outlined above in favour of a “rebuttable presumption of equal shared parental responsibility” and facilitating shared parenting arrangements. This was a consensus conclusion of the 11 parliamentarian members of the committee. It is unlikely that this will be made law before the next federal election but hopefully it will pass into law in the next year or so.
A readable summary of the report is available here
Not even begiing to address the memes raised in the comments, i wated to point out that i’m sceptical of the “16 of 17 work-related deaths are male.”
was there a source for the stat? I’m guessing that doesn’t include housewives killed by their husbands, and may be off in other aspects.
Arbitraryaardvark, Glenn doesn’t typically give sources in his writings, but he’s pretty good at explaining where stats come from if you email and ask (making sure to say which column you’re referring to).
Anyhow, here’s the data for 2002 (pdf link): 5,083 men and 441 women died of on-the-job injuries. If we divide by 365, the result is that 14 men and 1 women die each day of workplace injuries. If we include only workdays (262 a year), then it’s 19 men dying each day, versus almost 2 women. Neither stat quite fits Glenn’s claim.
Of course, the number of workplace deaths – and in particular male workplace deaths – has been dropping over the years. Let’s try data for 2000 (pdf link): 5,471 male and 449 female workplace deaths. That’s sixteen a day (every day, not just workdays), 15 of whom are male. So we’re now pretty close.
My guess is that Glenn used some data source that averaged out the deaths over multiple years. Since the workplace fatality rate has been dropping over the years, considering a long-term average instead of current data has the effect of exaggerating the number of deaths in a year.
As for including housewives, that’s an interesting idea. I’ve put my comments on that into a new post.
Hope this isn’t too late. Ampersand, I loved your original blog piece from August 9th. What the C4M’s keep arguing, in not so many words, is that a man’s right not to use birth control – or not to campaign for better BC – is more sacred than his kid’s right to be fed and clothed. Or that bodily autonomy is no more sacred than a wallet. (Isn’t that pretty much the same argument used by those governments that cut off the hands of convicted thieves?)
See Katha Pollitt’s piece below:
http://tinyurl.com/6k2ue
I can’t help but wonder whether the C4M’s WOULD bother to take advantage of better male birth control if they had it. If all men took full advantage, they could practically turn the U.S. into a patriarchy again – sort of a male version of “Lysistrata,” if you will! Not to mention why there’s little loud demand for it in the first place. Even Cathy Young – whom I respect quite a bit – has yet to comment on the male lack of interest in male birth control!
I also want to hear what Wendy Kaminer would say…
Comments?
The “opt-out” proposals would really give unmarried fathers greater rights, not equal rights.
In your post you said : –
“So they say that men have absolutely no choice – ignoring that men aren’t being forced to have sex against their will.”
While I agree in principal, it is not that simple. Men can and have been raped and then taken to court with the result that they then have to pay paternity. Given the current simplification of DNA=father=support of child. Difficulties in proving male rape by a women+ the fact it makes little difference in the eyes of the court can end up in men getting wronged twice – once physically, and then again paying to support a child they did not want, or consent to make.