I was planning to post a little bit later today and call the post “Time to Start Blogging Again,” because I have been missing it a lot, and I probably will put that post up, but I have been so frustrated by one aspect of the discussion on the Choice for Men (C4M) thread that I’ve decided to turn my comment #291 into a new post. I have edited it slightly so that it makes sense out of the context of the original discussion–which you can read by following the previous link–but the point remains the same. I have a great deal of empathy for how it feels as a man suddenly to realize that a woman with whom you have conceived a child can, without your consent, make you the father of that child, with all the attending obligations (financial and otherwise), “simply” by choosing to give birth to it–and I hope I don’t need to explain why I chose to put the word simply in scare quotes. Nonetheless, it has seemed to me that everyone advocating C4M in the discussion in that other thread has studiously avoided the question of how male heterosexual responsibility–by which I mean heterosexual men taking responsibility for our own sexual boundaries–figures into the question of male reproductive rights, which is another, perhaps more honest, name for what we are talking about.
Mythago and Chingona have already pointed out ways in which the C4M argument does not take into account the specificity of women’s experience in terms of pregnancy and actually attempts to create a parallel between the male and female positions vis-a-vis pregnancy where none is possible, and so I am not going to touch on that question here. Instead, I want to talk about the fact that the people arguing for C4M have consistently sidestepped dealing with the fact that if a man does not under any circumstances want to become a father, there is only one, 100% reliable way to avoid that happening: don’t engage in sexual activity that might result in the conception of a child. Is it hard to follow that principle? Sure. Can it cause difficulties if you make that decision with a woman with whom you are already in a relationship? Sure. But if not becoming a father is that important to you, then it ought to be more important than whether or not you get to fuck the woman you want to fuck and who may very well want with all her heart, soul and body to fuck you. But if you are willing to gamble that conception might take place–and everyone here knows that even double and triple methods of birth control can fail, so even that is a gamble–then trying to figure out a way to get out of paying for the consequences should you lose that gamble seems to me not only profoundly irresponsible, both downright cowardly.
(I am, honestly, a little uncomfortable with the gambling metaphor, because we are after all talking about human lives here, but it just seems to me that the way C4M advocates tend to shy away from the implications of taking the sexual side of the responsibility question as seriously as they should suggests that they understand on some level that this gambling metaphor is not so far off and that what they are trying to do is find a way of not having to pay up when they “lose.”)
We easily forget that the conception of a child is not something that happens because of anyone’s conscious volition. PIV sex between two fertile people creates an environment in which conception is possible. Couples can do things to increase or decrease that possibility based on what they decide at the time, but the moment of conception through PIV sex is something beyond anyone’s immediate control. In other words, no matter what a man and woman agree on before they have sex, no matter what and how many kinds of birth control they use, neither of them can do anything to prevent conception at the moment it happens; more, once it happens, the fact that it has happened is such a profound thing–because we are, after all, talking about a human life–that it seems to me unrealistic to expect either partner to be legally bound by what they thought they would do before conception took place. (A man who thought he didn’t want a child could change his mind and decide he wants one just as “easily” as a woman who thought she would have an abortion could decide she wants to keep the child.)
Regardless of what she felt before the child was conceived, the fact that conception happens in a woman’s body gives her certain rights, obligations and responsibilities towards the fetus growing in her body and the child that fetus will become if she gives birth to it; and while the man involved might not have wanted to conceive a child, once conception happens, he also has rights, obligations and responsibilities towards towards the fetus that is growing in his partner’s body and towards the child it will become. The fact that those rights, obligations and responsibilities don’t always “line up” in a perfectly fair way might indeed suck for the person caught on the wrong side of that line–which could be either the man or the woman, or perhaps even both, but I am thinking here specifically about the man. In that case, I return to my point above about trying to get out of paying when you have “lost” the “gamble” with pregnancy, and if you weren’t really ready to gamble in the first place, if you were 100% sure you did want sex that you engaged in to result in the conception of a child, then I raise again the issue of male heterosexual responsibility that I posed above. There are plenty of ways to have a satisfying sexual relationship without PIV intercourse; and if a woman you are with is unwilling to respect the fact that you are unwilling to gamble with fatherhood, then that is an issue in your relationship with her (and this applies to one night stands as much as to long term relationships) and that issue, to me, ought to raise questions about whether you should be having sex with her in the first place.
I still say the optimal solution to the Choice for Men problem is obvious, if you think about it with a really open mind.
One side says that men should not have to pay child support for babies they did not want to conceive. The other side says that all babies must have the resources to be properly taken care of. These are not incompatible positions unless you’re stuck in a silly and sexist frame of mind where a man and only a man MUST provide for his children.
Who else would give mothers money to take care of their babies? There’s a big someone else with a lot of money out there called the government that would be perfectly happy to do it if we really wanted it to. (And hey, it’s not like the standard form of Choice for Men is any more politically feasible.)
Unless I missed something, you left out the possibility of men being raped by women.
There are plenty of ways to have a satisfying sexual relationship without PIV intercourse;
Exactly. The real problem boils down to the design of heterosex relations (the insistence on centering it around sexual intercourse) or “sex” as we insist on calling it. It’s more about fertility worship (amongst other things) than mutual sexual pleasure.
Both men and women get cheated by this indoctrination.
I’m surprised men aren’t more (obviously) fed up with it themselves, seeing as it sets them up for things like “impotence” which strikes me as a lot more about being out of tune with your desire because its supposed to be about an erection-a symbol, rather than feelings.
Too often MRA types just kvetch about feminism as if that’s a direct counter to patriarchal analysis, rather than offer cogent structural analysis of male conditioning, explaining how “masculinity” too often turns men into cyphers performing appropriate maleness, rather than you know, liberated human beings of their own.
Exactly. The real problem boils down to the design of heterosex relations (the insistence on centering it around sexual intercourse) or “sex” as we insist on calling it. It’s more about fertility worship (amongst other things) than mutual sexual pleasure.
Both men and women get cheated by this indoctrination.
I appreciate and substantially agree with Richard’s comment, but I think this statement in response goes way too far. Frankly, it’s patronizing to tell people that the only reason they enjoy the sex they do is that they’ve been indoctrinated by the patriarchy. (And lots of women enjoy PIV sex very much, so when I say people, I mean people.) That many people would view giving up PIV sex as a sacrifice or a loss doesn’t really detract, in my mind, from Richard’s point, but to act like everyone would be just as happy without it if they only woke up and smelled the feminism is both silly and insulting (to men and women).
Richard Jeffrey Newman: “while the man involved might not have wanted to conceive a child, once conception happens, he also has rights, obligations and responsibilities towards towards the fetus that is growing in his partner’s body and towards the child it will become.”
Please tell me what “rights” the man has. He only has rights, obligations and responsibilities if, and only if, the woman chooses to give birth.
He has no rights with respect to the fetus. The woman has 100% of the rights with respect to the fetus. Any rights he may have are contingent on her decision. His rights and responsibilities result from her decision; in other words, he is responsible for her actions.
-Jut
He has no rights with respect to the fetus.
And no responsibilities. Why is this problematic?
The other side says that all babies must have the resources to be properly taken care of.
No. “The other side” says that parents are responsible for their offspring. I’m not sure why you recast “the other side” in this way, because it makes no sense. If this were true, then it would be fine for a man to abandon an unwanted child anytime the mother had sufficient resources to ‘properly take care of’ it. Obviously, this is not what “the other side” believes.
These are not incompatible positions unless you’re stuck in a silly and sexist frame of mind where a man and only a man MUST provide for his children.
They’re definitely incompatible if you’re stuck in a silly and sexist frame of mind where the only relationship we care about is the man’s providing financial support.
Black Humor and Nancy Lebovitz:
If you want to have the conversation(s) that your comments suggest you do, please take them where they will be relevant, over to the broader C4M thread of which this one is an offshoot. I trust you can find it on your own.
I didn’t think I would need to say this, so let me say it now: comments that try to reopen here the conversation that happened over at the other thread without focusing in on the question male heterosexual responsibility that I have raised will be deleted.
Thanks for understanding.
JutGory:
It was an awkwardly constructed sentence, but a man does have rights in relation to a child he helped to conceive once that child is born and those were the rights I was pointing to in that sentence. ETA: Also, I would argue that he does have responsibilities and obligations to the fetus, though they may not be legally defined. Seems to me that a man who has helped to conceive a child ought to feel obliged and responsible, to the degree that he is able, for the health and well-being of the fetus and the woman in whose body it is growing–a principle that would also apply, it seems to me, if the woman decides to have an abortion.
More to the point, though, your question absolutely evades the central point of the OP. If you want to keep commenting on this thread, please address that point; please don’t simply transplant the discussion from the other C4M thread over here. Thanks.
But that’s simply untrue.
more accurately, it’s only true if you define “become a father” as “be the genetic parent of a living human being.” But in the context of c4m that’s not what “fatherhood” means. Almost all c4m arguments address the issue of responsibility, not existence.
So: is there a 100% certain way to avoid the responsibilities of fatherhood? Sure, there is–live in a country which legally permits fathers to avoid the responsibilities of fatherhood, and make the decision to act. There are even more ways, of course, though many of them are pretty horrible.
The failing of the posts on the c4m (including this one) is that they rely on a prior arguments. Whether it’s “you can’t avoid fatherhood unless you don’t have sex” or “parents have the obligation to care for and support their genetic offspring,” those assumptions act to obscure the c4m issue. If you treat those goals as impossible, it moots the discussion of how those goals can be obtained. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s deliberate or not.
When you say “you can’t avoid fatherhood” or when Amp says “parents have a responsibility to provide for their kids,” the part you’re leaving out is “…provided that you adhere to my already-existing sense of morality, parental responsibility, personal autonomy, assignment of relative rights between parties, assignment of burdens between individuals and society, and practical effect.” But why would I–or anyone else–adhere to the implicit assumptions in that statement? If I agreed with all your underlying assumptions then I’d probably share your position.
Your statement is a conclusion, not an argument. Stop treating it like an argument.
To Mythago and Richard Jeffrey Newman:
Yes, the father has no rights and no responsibilities for the fetus and, to use a legal phrase, his rights are determined by a “superseding and intervening cause” that will either give him rights and responsibilities or not. Superseding and intervening causes usually cut off liability (though I suppose you could argue about how the woman supersedes and intervenes).
But, Mr. Newman, to your point (and, sorry, block-quotes are not working for me today for some reason), you say:
“I want to talk about the fact that the people arguing for C4M have consistently sidestepped dealing with the fact that if a man does not under any circumstances want to become a father, there is only one, 100% reliable way to avoid that happening: don’t engage in sexual activity that might result in the conception of a child.”
Two points on this:
First, I do not think they sidestep the issue. They consistently say that mothers have 22 (or some number, I forget exactly) ways to avoid parental responsibility. Men have 3: condoms, abstinence, and surgery. Only one, abstinence, is 100% effective, though surgery is pretty good (but not a decision to be taken lightly). In short, men have three BAD options.
Second, the problem with this line of thought, in my view, is that it does not get rid of a sexist double-standard. Those who oppose abortion could say (and used to say) the EXACT SAME THING to a woman. “There is no need for abortion, you just have to keep your knees together.” Now, we just tell men to “keep it in your pants.” Same sort of condescension; just directed at the other party.
In short, I do not see this as being a big issue. It is a double-standard, pure and simple.
For the record, though, I will acknowledge that men and women are on completely different footings on this issue and it is difficult to create good analogies between them. I just think paper abortions are the best way to even out the inherent differences in biology. I doubt that it will happen, but I think the discussion itself is very revealing.
-Jut
JutGory:
Except that’s not what I said. What I wrote was:
In other words, I am not telling men simply to “keep it in their pants,” unless they are men who are 100% certain they do not want to risk the conception of a child–because that is the only way, in that circumstance, they can be completely responsible for their own sexual boundaries. (And, just for the record, I would say the same thing about women. A woman who is 100% certain she does not want to be confronted with the choice of whether or not to carry to term a child conceived within her body, should indeed refrain from having PIV sex no matter what forms of birth control are used. That is quite different from saying, “If only women would keep their legs closed, there would be no need for abortion.”)
So, JutGory, you’re saying that because women have options that men don’t have (hormonal birth control, internal barriers, abortion), all of which have their own risks and drawbacks, and exist because the of the biological factors that also mean that a woman carries all the physical risks of having a child, men need to have an option that goes *far* beyond *anything* women have, and carries no physical risks?
If you are in favor of a “paper abortion,” are you also in favor of a “paper abortion” for a woman who couldn’t get an abortion? (Let’s say that two people have sex. He doesn’t wear a condom and her birth control fails, and she can’t get an abortion. The reason doesn’t really matter–maybe she lives nowhere near a clinic and doesn’t have transportation, maybe she has some medical issue where an abortion is riskier than pregnancy and no doctor is willing to perform it. Whatever the reason, she tries to get an abortion and isn’t able to. Does she have the right to hand the child over to the father with no obligations?
Yes, it would be absolutely *awesome* if men had better control over their own reproduction. I would be thrilled to see more options for men. However, I’ll also point out that condoms, abstinence, and surgery are not the only things men can do to reduce their chances of fathering a child. A number of the methods women can use are things the man can watch being put in–like a sponge or spermicidal foam.
It is already possible for a woman to do that.
Doug @14: As your link notes, that is not an abortion, paper or otherwise. The father or mother who leaves a child at a ‘safe haven’ is still legally the parent and has not deprived the other parent of his/her rights. All the law does it prevent the parent from being prosecuted for abandonment.
#12 is utterly confusing to me. You seem to avoid the problem only by unnaturally contracting the pro-life argument and by hyper-narrowly construing yours.
The pro-life argument is along the lines of “…a mother has rights, obligations and and responsibilities to her children (both born and unborn). If it is important enough to her to avoid those rights, obligations and responsibilities [meaning you are 100% certain you do not want to be confronted with a child you helped to conceive], then it ought to be more important than whether or not you get to fuck the man you want to fuck and who may very well want with all his heart, soul and body to fuck you.” I.e keep your f!@$#%ing legs closed if you don’t want to worry about a pregnancy.
There are reasons that argument is derided around here, and all of those reasons apply equally to your argument because your argument is exactly the same. You can literally transpose the male/female object of the “if you don’t want to deal with a pregnancy keep your F!@$%@#ing legs closed” and have zero change in the argument.
Now it sounds to me like you accept the argument. Which is completely fine. But you can’t pretend that the argument doesn’t apply with enormous force elsewhere just because you don’t like the outcome of it. The fact is that your entire post could easily have appeared as a pro-life argument with almost zero changes. I’m ok with that. I’m mostly pro-life although to be honest I’ve always thought the keep your legs closed argument was one of the pro-life groups very very weakest arguments. But I’m flabbergasted to see arguments that would be jumped all over in a pro-life context be taken seriously in this context. You haven’t provided any meaningful distinctions in the argument about responsibilities and obligations to the fetus conceived and growing in the mother’s body.
It is really weird to talk about the sweet mysteries of life and the obligations that causes (which of course as you say could be completely avoided by keeping your legs closed) and acting as if of course they should attach to the man for 18 years based on his choice not to avoid penis in vagina sex, when we all know you’re also ok with the idea that the woman can end her obligations and responsibilities for any reason whatsoever (including merely wanting to avoid the obligations and responsibilities) by killing the fetus.
The cognitive dissonance there is immense. Your post is about sexual responsibility. What’s next? Are you going to talk about how pregnancy is the natural outcome of PIV sex, therefore you have to be responsible for the outcomes? Wait you already did that! I agree wholeheartedly. But heaven help me if I ever mentioned that around here.
It is incredibly disconcerting to see arguments which would get me branded as a woman hating asshole around here get treated as wholly serious.
You’re employing the very argument that pro-lifer advocates use when they talk about “adoption not abortion”.
And amazingly you seem to get a pass on it from people like mythago. Where do we hear that choosing to have sex isn’t the same as choosing to have a child? Where do we hear that the choice to have sex isn’t the choice to become a mother? Where do we hear that ‘natural’ isn’t an excuse for depriving people of their choices?
Now maybe it is true that the choice to have sex *ought* to come into the discussion about whether or not you have a responsibility to become a parent under normal circumstances if the birth control fails or chance leaves you with a pregnancy. I think a lot of people see quite a bit of force to that argument.
I suspect the fact that you want to engage in that argument with respect to fathers, but that it is found repugnant when applied to mothers, shows how deeply twisted the abortion debate has become. Maybe it really is true that the mere act of choosing to have sex which leads to a pregnancy ought to create strong responsibilities to the developing baby under normal circumstances (i.e. when not an abnormal danger to anyone’s health). Maybe we really do think that parents have responsibilities to give up some of their own rights in favor of their children. Maybe so.
I don’t see what the big deal is about Richard’s comment at @12. I am a woman, and when I was 100% sure I didn’t want to have a child and also sure I didn’t want an abortion (for the record, I am pro-choice and this was my choice), I just avoided PIV sex in favor of other things. Later on, when my situation changed, I used various forms of birth control because I was willing to accept the consequences if birth control failed. This same outcome (minus the various birth control options, which is unfortunate) is available to men as well, but yet it is rarely discussed.
It saddens me that discussion of male sexual choices is so limited. I look at my toddler son (who loves toe nail polish and sparkly clothing) and I feel so sorry for him that his choices will be so constrained by “acceptable” performances of masculinity. Clothing is a relatively frivolous choice, and I do intend to talk to him about male sexual responsibility when he is older, but I know my daughter will hear the message (about responsible sexual choices) from many more people than my son will.
Sebastian,
I don’t have much time to respond, but I think the difference is basically this: the anti-abortion position does not allow for any choice other than giving birth once a woman becomes pregnant. My position is not about there being only one possible (or moral) outcome if a woman becomes pregnant. So I suppose the fuller statement of my position would be: If you don’t want to deal with the fact that, once you have conceived a child, the choice of whether or not that child is born does not belong to you and/or you are unwilling to assume responsibility for that child if the woman who carries it chooses to give birth to it, then you should not be having PIV sex.
You may not agree with my premise, which is pro-choice, and you may not agree that a man should be held–or should hold himself–responsible for the children he has helped to conceive, which is fine; but I hope this clarifies why I don’t think my position is equivalent to the one taken by people who are anti-abortion.
ETA: Please understand if I don’t respond right away to any replies to this comment. I will be neck deep in paper grading for most of the next two days.
It doesn’t really identify a difference though. You assert that the father has obligations and responsibilities to the child’s health and well being *merely* from the fact of taking the risk of pregnancy by having sex. The pro-life argument is that the mother has obligations and responsibilities to the child’s health and well being merely from the fact of taking the risk of pregnancy by having sex. If she doesn’t want to deal with the fact of a conceived child, and that the choice of whether or not it is born might be taken out of her hands at some point, she shouldn’t have sex. Right?
Before this thread and the C4m thread I had always (and I mean that in a non-hyperbolic unconditionally ‘always’) heard in pro choice discussions that there was no moral consequence of having sex which attaches to pregnancy. That they were two separate issues. I had always heard that the “if you don’t want to deal with the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy don’t have sex” was a horrific and unfair formulation. So I’m frankly shocked to see it so uncontroversially taken up here.
But I suspect we’re getting into a rabbit hole here. So lets come at it from a different angle.
You apparently believe that the mere act of having sex is sufficient to establish responsibilities and obligations to the child. So let’s explore what they might be. Do they extend to full support for their entire childhood? Does the father have moral responsibilities which extend further than money? What about danger? We all know that in theory a stranger doesn’t have to take any risks (even small risks) to save another person from danger. Is that true of a parent? If the kid is wandering out in front of a train, does a father have an obligation to snatch him back *even if it subjects the father to say a 1 in 100 chance of dying himself*? What about a 1 in 1,000 chance? What about a 1 in 10,000 chance?
If a father refused to do so in a 1 in 10,000 chance, would it be ok to focus extreme moral disapproval on him? Maybe even make the lack of doing so ‘child abandonment’?
Doug @14: As your link notes, that is not an abortion, paper or otherwise. The father or mother who leaves a child at a ‘safe haven’ is still legally the parent and has not deprived the other parent of his/her rights. All the law does it prevent the parent from being prosecuted for abandonment.
It also does not revoke parental responsibilities from the mother or father–that’s right, they’re gender neutral–giving up the child (which is implied in the “still the legal parent” bit, but I wanted to emphasize it). If the other parent is found and ends up with sole custody, the abandoning parent would still be responsible for child support.
So, referring to safe haven laws as “paper abortions for women” is completely dodging the question of, “If fathers should get to opt out and put all responsibility on the mother, should a woman who’s been unable to obtain an abortion be able to opt out of parenthood and place all the responsibility on the father?”
Sebastian H, I think where you’re comparing apples to oranges is that a right to bodily autonomy is a huge part of the pro-choice position. Because a woman is the one who carries a child, by definition, the man can’t tell her what to do about the pregnancy. It’s a medical decision that belongs to her alone. C4M doesn’t come right out and say, “We want men to be able to make women have abortions,” but no one seems to have any problem with financial coercion.
The pro-life argument hinges on the fetus being a person, with all the rights that entails, from the moment of conception. (It also actually gives the fetus more rights than any other people, since it gets to use the mother’s body, while a born child can’t require blood or a kidney or even breast milk from her.)
It isn’t so much that the act of sex, in and of itself conveys responsibility, it’s that *once the child is born,* its parents are responsible for it, and the father has no right to decide whether or not the child will be born, unless he has a uterus to transfer it to. Because it takes two people to conceive a child, there’s a point when things pass out of the father’s control, but that doesn’t negate his responsibility *if* a child is born.
During the pregnancy, the father doesn’t have a legal responsibility so much as the possibility of a future responsibility. And choices that you make at one point in time can totally create responsibilities or obligations in the future, even if they’re affected by another person’s decisions after your choices are made.
For example, if I lend someone my car, I give up control over how it’s used and what condition it comes back in. If they get parking tickets, those might cause my car to be towed and me to be stranded later. That sucks for me, but no one owes me protection from the unforeseen consequences of my decision.
Any time you interact with other people, you give them the ability to make decisions that will affect you. Some of those decisions may create responsibilities for you. That’s just a fact of life. But the fact that the combination of your decisions and someone else’s can lead to a situation that you don’t want doesn’t automatically lead to a pro-life position.
Also, I’m not saying guys need to “keep it in their pants.” *However* there was discussion not too too long ago about Nick Kiddle’s pregnancy where she and her child’s father basically had the conversation of: “What are you doing about birth control?” “Nothing. I want to get pregnant.” “Okay, great, let’s have sex.” and he then accused her of tricking him into fatherhood and there were plenty of people chiming in on the thread about how she had used and manipulated him. I have plenty of sympathy for people whose birth control fails, but absolutely none for men who try to blame a mutual decision on the woman when they can’t even be bothered to use a condom.
I think it’s interesting, and significant, that some people are still confusing “refrain from PIV intercourse” with total abstinence. There are other ways to share sexually with another person than penetrative intercourse. I wouldn’t blame people who don’t enjoy those methods as much — it’s surely just my temperament that I prefer them — but the way that people simply forget that they exist has to be more than temperament; it also involves the ideology that some people here are dismissing too easily.