Men already have all the options in paternity
by Jennifer Kesler
Edited To Add: Comments have been shut down on this post, because the post no longer belongs on this site – I would have deleted it, if it hadn’t had comments (I hate to delete other people’s writing). The focus of the site is now narrowed to representation of women in the media. Thank you for understanding.
This post is mostly satire, and apparently poor satire, because it didn’t seem to come through to some readers. The point was to turn the “keep your legs shut, slut” mantra of conservatives onto men who find themselves feelings deprived of reproductive options.
I normally try to avoid politics and religion on this site – as elsewhere in life. I honestly believe the influence of entertainment has far more impact on our daily lives, because that’s where far too many people get their ideas about what we should legislate and believe. But this is one instance where the two overlap in such a way I can’t bring myself to avoid it:
Matt Dubay’s been watching too many soaps. And where’s the right wing on this issue? Why aren’t they castigating this sinner? Never mind: I’ll do it for them.
The National Center for Men is helping Matt Dubay, a 25-year-old filthy slut who had sex outside marriage – sue to get out of paying child support on the offspring with which nature has so generously blessed him.
The gist of the argument: If a pregnant woman can choose among abortion, adoption or raising a child, a man involved in an unintended pregnancy should have the choice of declining the financial responsibilities of fatherhood.
“There’s such a spectrum of choice that women have “” it’s her body, her pregnancy and she has the ultimate right to make decisions,” said Mel Feit, director of the men’s center. “I’m trying to find a way for a man also to have some say over decisions that affect his life profoundly.”
Guess what, Mel? There already is a way for a man to have “some say over” unintended pregnancies, and it’s incredibly effective: he can abstain from sex. Keep his pants zipped. Be a good boy instead of a whore. And maybe once women start raping abstinent male virgins, forcing them to climax in all sorts of really demeaning ways, even Bill Napoli will grant you guys some sort of special reprieve on child support, even though he really doesn’t feel rape should be a factor in anyone’s reproductive rights.
Don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, do they? And yet it’s exactly what women have been told: want reproductive control? Keep your legs crossed, tramp. Jesus was a big fan of celibacy for men. If the US is determined to legislate a peculiar fundamentalist brand of pseudo-Christianity into our allegedly secular government, they can damn well follow all the Bible’s teachings instead of just the ones that make it acceptable for men to use women as sextoys, punching bags and baby machines. (And I’m confident genuine Christians will back me up on the fallacy of picking and choosing which bits of the Bible you feel like following.)
Or here’s an even better thought: maybe we could just stick to the material world and legislate according to what’s best for all taxpayers and citizens. Which brings up another question: if these wicked fathers don’t pay for their own bastard offspring, who will? Why, I guess that would be me! At least in many cases. Assuming the US doesn’t manage to cut off what’s left of our social services completely.
But it gets even worse. This wasn’t an issue of failed birth control. This was an issue of a scheming soap opera type vixen tricking him:
He contends that the woman knew he didn’t want to have a child with her and assured him repeatedly that “” because of a physical condition “” she could not get pregnant.
So not only did this whore not abstain like a good boy – he also didn’t use a condom or get himself reversibly sterilized in order to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. And we’re supposed to feel his options have been taken away? Let me inform you guys about something else, too: women get misdiagnosed at their OB-GYNs, and medical knowledge is always changing. If a guy tells a girl, “Don’t worry, I’m sterile” and she believes him and gets pregnant, who would most guys blame?
If you’re too ignorant to know how the human body – of both genders – reproduces, then you’re too ignorant to be having sex.
Let’s face it: men actually already have more options for avoiding pregnancy than women have, because rape can very effectively cancel out a woman’s choice to abstain. The reverse – a man raped by a woman – is so rare as to be negligible in a legal discussion.
As for a woman’s glorious options after the fact of unintended conception – abortion, adoption, or raising the child – again, you guys wouldn’t need any options after the fact if you exercised your most important ones before the fact. Abstain from sex, boys, and this will never happen to you. Until then, if you can’t remain virgins like you’re supposed to, you can just freakin’ well hand over the child support and be thankful every day you’re getting to miss out on all the physical discomfort.
Some other bloggers have done this story more justice than I can: Amanda Marcotte and Twisty Faster, and no doubt others I didn’t see.
Related posts:
- How the pill revolutionized sex… for men
- Dolores Claiborne: a woman’s options in a man’s world
- Scrubs: Thank heaven for men!
- Two and a Half Men, Men, Men, Men, Manly Men
- Crappy All Saints Storyline PtI
Posted in News on March 10, 2006 
Subscribe to RSS feed
Submit Article: Stumble it! | Del.icio.us |
Reddit | Digg
Subscribe to Hathor's 
March 10th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Oh come ON! He’s stupid enough to have an affair, stupid enough to not use a condom (or should I assume his dick’s too tiny and it wouldn’t fit?), stupid enough to blame it all on the woman and stupid enough to think he can weasel his way out of paying but he has scraped enough braincells together to convince a lawyer that his case would not get laughed out of court?
What the hell kind of argument is this? Because I didn’t get to decide I am not responsible and don’t have to pay. I assure you, stupid fellow, the moment you get preggers you get to decide whether to abort or not.
Honestly, this thing sort of thing really gets me riled up, bunch of hypocrites all of ‘em! Thank you for writing about this, I’ll have to go now and rant to someone about this!
March 10th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
I had to laugh over the “My girlfriend said she couldn’t have kids!” line. Sucker.
Even if the girl was being straight up that she thought she couldn’t have kids, unless you know for an absolute fact the uterus and/or ovaries are gone, wear a condom.
Which is a lesson I wish one of my cousins had known before his girlfriend announced they were having a “miracle child.” Of course she’d already had one to marry her previous husband, and is now pregnant with the third for her third sucker husband.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
I edited out a paragraph that was almost what you said here. I used to have a condition (very common) that was considered to make women infertile. Fortunately, I had a doctor who told me, “But unless the ovaries are gone, there’s always a chance, so use birth control”. I’ve known a number of people who got pregnant when they didn’t intend to – frequently married couples – because of bad doctor advice about which method of BC to use, and how to use it.
People really need to do their own research. But if you’re telling me a 25 year old computer program can’t Google this shit, if he’s so concerned, I’ll eat my mouse.
Nah, clearly this was a case of a guy developing concerns after the fact.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
But it’s not a man’s job to be concerned about birth control! Women have to deal with that stuff, including raising any child that should result, because they were naughty girls who had sex outside of wedlock.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about Prince William. The gist of it was that he’d been told, given how lucrative bearing the child, illegitimate or not, of the future king could be, the onus of protection should always be on him – use a condom. I thought it was a fairly refreshing change of a man taking responsibility for the consequences of his sexuality and hopefully an indictation of men in general.
Apparantly not. I myself have been in situation where I’ve had to insist on using a condom when I’d taken a pill too late, because the guy in question just didn’t understand while it was a small risk, it was a risk I wasn’t prepared to take – maybe he was prepared to take it on my behalf. It’s a worry how much more resposnsible I’ve been in those situations. I guess it was his intention to ditch me and weasel out of paying chjild support if worst came to worst.
As far as abortion goes, I know that’s a touchy subject. In Australia there’s a squabble over legislating a new abortion pill and a lot of male parliamentarians have related how shut-out they felt when their girlfriend’s chose to have abortions over their wishes. I don’t know how to resolve that – is the alternative to handcuff women to a bed and force them to bear the child, against THEIR wishes? – but I don’t believe that just because WOMEN have the choice to abort, adopt out or raise the child, doesn’t mean MEN have the hoice to support the child financially or not.
Keep us posted on this case, I hope he gets laughed out of court.
March 11th, 2006 at 8:38 am
That’s what I was saying, that I realise abortion is a touchy subject and I imagine there would be a lot of men out there who are devastated by the woman’s choice to have an abortion over their wishes. But what’s the alternative, to make a woman go through with the pregnancy against HER wishes? If two people’s wishes are at odds, I think the one who’s body it is wins.
I think (and this is opinion and common sense as opposed to stats) that the number of women who deliberately deceive a man into having a child are far, far, FAR outweighed by the number of women who fall pregnant by way of being misdiagnosed with infertility conditions, their contraception fails, or they’re raped. Are men meant to plead ’she lied to me’ for all of those cases just to get out of paying child support.
Yeah, there are a few men who are deceived by women looking to have a child with them, either for financial or emotional reasons. I have sympathy for them. But I think the far greater number of unwanted pregnancies are caused by the things listed above, and if a man feels THAT strongly about not having children, he should make it his responsibility.
I personally do not want children at this point in time, so I take precautions and am a little over-zealous in my back-up. I consider the effort to be well worth the peace of mind. If men are too lazy or chevenistic to take the same effort then they can reap the consequenses of their actions.
March 11th, 2006 at 9:12 am
A long time ago on “Politically Incorrect”, Dennis Miller was bitching about some court case where a woman claimed she didn’t realize she was pregnant and thought she was just putting on weight (can’t remember what the case was about). He scoffed and said, “Oh, come on, women always know they’re pregnant. They’ve got these tubes and stuff…”
Everyone looked at him like he was a moron, which he is, and he backed off. But Simon leBon (love that guy) leaned forward, zeroed in and said, “No, no… I want to hear about the tubes. What tubes? Dennis, what tubes?” Miller just blushed and choked and wouldn’t respond, and leBon explained how women don’t always know they’re pregnant, and more to the point, why they don’t have bullshit cases like this in England.
March 11th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
(Admin note: this comment responds to a post I have later deleted, when I realized the comment trolls were not in line with later commenting policies we developed for this site. Just assume she’s responding to a whiny, jerkoff “what about the menz” troll, and it will all make sense.)
Hmmmm, and once there is a pregnancy, what would those options be?
Apparently:
1) Take at least some responsibility in the matter.
2) Become a deadbeat.
3) Blame the girl.
4) Whine and complain about not having rights.
Of the four that I can think of off the top of my head, the only one that isn’t ludicrous is #1.
And I believe the options are proactive rather than reactive, which was made clear. If a man doesn’t want to risk impregnating a woman, he should either, practice safe sex (and be sure it’s legit – this is a joint responsibility) or just don’t have sex with her. Since the celibacy thing isn’t really likely, then a guy should show responsibility and caution beforehand so he’s not rendered ‘without rights, waaaahhhh’ AFTERward.
I have absolutely no sympathy for someone claiming such preposterous things when he did nothing at all to prevent this woman from becoming pregnant.
March 13th, 2006 at 8:55 am
I don’t mean to split hairs here, but I think it’s really important that it’s noted that even with perfect use, using a condom is not 100% effective. It’s 97% effective with perfect use. There is ALWAYS a chance of pregnancy, no matter how careful you are.
Abstinence is the only 100% effective means of preventing pregnancy.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:06 am
You’re right – sorry about that. I read one site that claimed 100% with perfect use, but the rest do claim 97%.
March 13th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I assume that a vescectomy/hysterectomy would be 100% too?
March 13th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Note: Before you read this, I should point out that I actually do not believe that men should be able to get out of paying child support in cases of consensual sex. However, I also am not pro-choice on abortion. So what I am writing is not advocacy for “choice for men” as much as it is pointing out why I fell that the “pro-choice, pro-mandated child support” position is hypocritical.
But what’s the alternative, to make a woman go through with the pregnancy against HER wishes? If two people’s wishes are at odds, I think the one who’s body it is wins.
And in terms of child support, the wishes of the one with the paycheck should win, shouldn’t they? If you truly believed in equality, the man should be responsible for one-half of the least expensive way of dealing with the pregnancy (which, when considering that putting it up for adoption probably requires a lot of funds for medical care, etc., would probbly be abortion) unless he chooses to have greater responsibility (the flip-side is that he would have to lose all paternal rights).
There already is a way for a man to have “some say over†unintended pregnancies, and it’s incredibly effective: he can abstain from sex. Keep his pants zipped. Be a good boy instead of a whore.
But apparently that option isn’t good enough for women. They need the right to an abortion, and according to a lot of pseudo-pro-choicers, also need the right to make the taxpayer pay for the abortion. So why should that option be good enough for men?
Don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, do they? And yet it’s exactly what women have been told: want reproductive control? Keep your legs crossed, tramp. Jesus was a big fan of celibacy for men. If the US is determined to legislate a peculiar fundamentalist brand of pseudo-Christianity into our allegedly secular government, they can damn well follow all the Bible’s teachings instead of just the ones that make it acceptable for men to use women as sextoys, punching bags and baby machines. (And I’m confident genuine Christians will back me up on the fallacy of picking and choosing which bits of the Bible you feel like following.)
Please. Abortion is currently legal (except maybe in South Dakota, and htat law won’t likely stand up in court), and getting out of child support isn’t. So to claim that women are getting the short end of the stick here is rather topsy-turvy.
March 13th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Oh, and by the way, I am a 27-year-old virgin male who intends to wait for marriage to have sex. I mention this to dispel any notion that I have a personal stake in this.
March 13th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Good for you. I hope you don’t mind me saying, you’re proving my point. Whether for religious or practical reasons, I think one of the prime reasons for waiting until marriage has been to prevent children from being born into unstable environments. Clearly, this wasn’t Matt Dubay’s concern until he saw the support order dollar signs.
There are no easy answers to the issue of responsibility for children, ever. Even a child born into a happy marriage can become an orphan, and the question of society’s responsibility to such children has always been an issue, throughout history.
March 14th, 2006 at 12:11 am
I assume in this day and age, BOTH parties have a paycheck? Maybe it’s not fair that a an who has no say in weather or not his child is born or not, but I think it’s even less fair that financial responsibility for the child he conceived should be palmed off onto society.
I crashed my car recently. It was my fault, I was distracted and had too greater faith in my own ability to drive, so I have to pay for all damaged incurred. I don’t see any difference (in theory at least – I know people will call me on it) between that and paying to support a child conceived through lack of caution.
Incidentally, what was men’s argument for not paycing child support before abortion?
March 14th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Sorry for the delay; I didn’t receive an email that you commented, so I didn’t notice until today that you asked this.
A vasectomy, theoretically, is 99.9% effective. User effectiveness (what is actually reported) is 99.8%.
A tubal ligation is 99.9% effective.
A hysterectomy is 100% effective, but it is not a form of birth control. It’s a procedure used as a treatment for certain medical conditions.
March 14th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Hrm, for some reason my comment was put at the bottom of the comment list instead of as a comment to your comment. Hopefully, that won’t happen with this comment to let you know I did answer your question!
March 20th, 2006 at 8:25 am
(Admin note: the controversial debate Scarlett refers to was simply a couple of whining “what about the menz?” trolls and me mistaking them, in my innocence, for genuine debaters. Site policy now dictates we just delete such posts, and so they are gone. Scarlett’s comment is still pretty self-explanatory, though.)
Hmmm, I go away for a few days and come back to find a controversial debate that I missed out on! So here’s me wading into the thick of things and trying not to upset too many people. (Oh, what am I saying. Be offended all you like. I don’t care.)
Someone made a point at some point that Dubay was a really bad case to make a point over the unfairness of men having no choice in paying for children they don’t want when the woman has the choice of having an abortion, because he comes across as a responsibility-evading whinger – even if he might have some moral right, its difficulty to have sympathy for him. (Anyone seen The People Vs Larry Flynt? You agree with the principle of free expression but it’s all you can do not to take to the streets protesting his kind of free expression. Same principle.) I agree with that; if the men’s movement wanted to get any kind of public sympathy they should have chosen someone more, well, sympathetic. I would have far more sympathy for a man who was deliberately deceived or a man who took reasonable precautions and was unlucky enough to be part of that .1%. Dubay is neither; he’s someone who was irresponsible and as such a lot of people won’t be able to see that. Incidentally, I believe in Roe Vs Wade their pregnant woman had a pretty sympathetic reason for wanting an abortion, like she’d been raped or the pregnancy was endangering her health or something like that.
As far as the greater picture of men who absolutely didn’t want children and took reasonable precautions having no choice in paying child support when the woman had the choice of abortion, I agree that in some cases that’s an issue. For sure, there are women who deliberately deceive men into getting pregnant; I’m aware of tricks like poking holes in condoms, pretending to take the pill, pretending to be on birth control etc. But I think they are very much in the minority. I’d say most women have the common sense to realise that falling pregnant against the father’s wishes is not going to do anyone good in the long run and the percentage of such women is negligable enough that it’s ridiculous to have a defence like ’she did it deliberately against my wishes.’
As far as accidental pregnancies , beyond reasonable protective measures, I think that’s a risk you take. I agree that if you have a verbal agreement as to what happens (I really don’t want children and if you fall pregnant that’s your responsibility – hey, at least she knows what she’s in for)then you have some moral grounds to get out of paying child support. But how many men go into a relationship with such conditions and how many plead that defense afterwards?
I’m open to the possibility that men and women can create written agreements in the case of pregnancy – for example, they share the cost of abortion or the woman shoulders the financial responsibility of raising the child on her own IF SHE WANTS THE CHILD THAT BADLY. Or they agree to pay a set amount and share custody. Or the father pays the mother to be a quasi-incubator and gets custody. Whatever, so long as both partners know what they’re getting into. The problem then becomes that I can see a lot of women being blinded by love signing away their rights to child support, but I’m open to the concept that two people can create a legally binding agreement regarding the possibility of pregnancy and enter a sexual relationship knowing what would happen in that eventuality.
Which brings me back to Dubay. As far as I know, there was no agreement, written or verbal. He was irresponsible and now he’s whinging about the consequences. I’m sure I would have sympathey for different men in different circumstances but for Dubay I have none.