@dennis1958 It is a simple issue made more complicated than it should.......and for what?

If one is old enough to Tango, one is old enough to learn about self-control and self-respect for oneself or others.

In other words, if one wishes to Tango, one must also know about taken the responsibilities that go with it - that's what make Tango so special!

Just saying ...

#6
I figure there's got to be a way that's fair enough for everyone.

@dennis1958

What would make it equitable?

Here's the thing - until and unless we get to the day when men can get pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term inside their own bodies, and give birth to it, this discussion is moot. Nature is not equitable about this. Sorry.

I agree with the right of all people to choose not to reproduce. If a man knows that he doesn't want to be a father, ever (again), then he should get a vasectomy, end of problem. If he doesn't want to be a father now, but maybe someday in the future, then he should take precautions in any sexual encounter to avoid pregnancy. Or as my husband likes to say whenever anyone is "accidentally" pregnant - they know what causes that nowadays.

My brother's first wife trapped him into marriage at age 18 because she was pregnant. Then they proceeded to have a total of four kids, because she kept lying to him about being on the pill. When the fourth one happened, and he was whining to me about her lying to him, I told him to go get snipped and quit making this all her responsibility, because she clearly either can't or doesn't want to avoid getting pregnant. Duh! He did and thank god. After they divorced she had at least three or four other babies with other fathers. this girl just loved being pregnant and having kids apparently. (***shudder***) but the point is, my brother was trying to play victim, which was bullshit!

Men know that they are potentially creating a pregnancy every time they have sex (with a woman of childbearing age). That is where your choice is. If you choose to take that risk, along with a woman who is or might be also taking those risks, then you both have responsibilities to deal with the consequences.

When an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy occurs, it's a problem, and the one with this problem growing inside her body is stuck with it -- there is no walking away. Men can, and often do, just bolt. At most they might be expected to provide some financial support. And yet even that much is often an ongoing battle that the abandoned single mother can't afford to bother with.

As I mentioned above, I am the product of an unwanted pregnancy, with teenage, irresponsible parents. If abortion had been available and legal in 1958, I might very well have never been born. If my parents had used birth control, I wouldn't be here. Do you think that makes me against abortion or birth control? No, it doesn't. Growing up being an unwanted burden to your mother and family isn't fun. I have childhood memories of both apologizing for being alive, and defiantly reminding them that "I didn't ask to be born!"

People who are too selfish to take care of their children with love and nurturing and respect and concern for their well-being shouldn't be parents. Avoiding unwanted pregnancy is the responsibility of both. Dealing with the consequences should be to. Using kids as pawns in emotional games between irresponsible parents is wrong. If you make a baby, it's time to grow up. (Hence why I had a tubal ligation as soon as I could talk a doctor into doing one, at age 30, and religiously took the pill until I could get the the TL. So I still get to put me first, because I never had a child. Once you do, treating them like they are burdensome or as pawns in your divorce games is no longer an option.

#8 I'd say.
But the essay is about male reproductive rights, men's rights to equally not be a parent and incur all the associated costs and stuff that goes with it.
How do we make it fair and how will we make it work.
thanks for your input.

@dennis1958 1. Don't have sex.

2. Don't have unprotected sex.

And, explain to partners that you don't want to bring children into the world. You are not alone in that. Lots of people feel the same way. If she wants kids, she can find a new boyfriend who would welcome parenthood.

#8 I'd say.
But the essay is about male reproductive rights, men's rights to equally not be a parent and incur all the associated costs and stuff that goes with it.
How do we make it fair and how will we make it work.
thanks for your input.

@mimi This poster has some kind of bee in his bonnet or manly hat about feminism which go beyond the financial legal issues of child support. He seems to feel that women use I want a baby to play Moma so finance me to entrap men either in marriage or as a meal ticket. It's like he wants to piss off women and denigrate feminism. Now me I have trouble with the current feminist's who seem to feel that breaking corporate glass ceilings and being a bad ass killer of women and children is somehow liberating. I know of no woman who on a whim decides that she wants a baby so I'll stick it to the man who got me pregnant.

I have had an abortion and believe me it is was not an easy decision or a whim. If I had of decided to carry my pregnancy with or with out a husband it would not be based on a whim because I wanted a baby. Men and women both have to deal with bringing children into this world. Maybe this asshole should stop blaming feminists and women who do make less money and have to deal with religious nuts and men who think they are victims of feminists.

How about he work to have sex education implemented in schools for pre-teens and teenagers, male and female, so they have a grasp on their reproductive urges, how nature works, and the consequences of getting pregnant. Me I rushed out of my families house and reproduced at a early age with a right sexist pig and paid dearly for my ignorance. So did my two kids.

It worked out okay in the end as my children somehow managed to take the best and discard the madness from both me and their father. I still feel the pain of guilt for abandoning a intolerable marriage in which this society with it's pig justice decided that my irresponsible hippie life style rendered me unfit as a mother. Not to mention that my father in law was a powerful city chief of police who finagled the law to favor his bully sexist abusive son. My kids god bless them did not turn out like their dad and have a good grasp of what went down. My resistance to sexist pig justice was not in vain. They respect women and do not hold their rights as men above feminist's or women like me. They both married strong women and are not victims of feminists (women) and do not victimize their wives.

Women, now and throughout history, all have had to deal with societal control by men with power to restrict their rights be they reproductive or being able to earn a decent living if they choose not to marry or reproduce 'irresponsibly'. Look at what we as women have had to overcome. So I'm done ranting but this is not what I want to have to read here on caucus 99%.

Difference of opinion is fine but this nastiness is nothing I want to have to even consider as a woman and a human being. Like Shah said walk away if you can't or refuse to handle the fact that you too as a man created life. To call this a slight to men's rights is a mockery of all human rights. sorry to be so vehement about this but as a woman 'feminist' this reeks of something foul that goes beyond the phony victimization of poor abused men whose rights are endangered by pushy conniving women.

How dare women get pregnant and ensnare men in their abusive traps. Freaking insult to injury as women are not the victimizer's but human beings who bear life and are expected to bow down to the holy sperm that men refuse to face the consequences spewing their sperm. Oh right why should men be tasked with troublesome women who they impregnated in or out of marriage. Too hard for men to take control of their sex lives responsibly so blame it on the 'feminist' who more often then not deal with the consequences of male rights.

#8 #8 #8

wow, last time you (the author dennis 1958) posted a longish essay I formulated a longish comment. I didn't finish, it was too difficult to tell the whole story, but now I am so pissed at dennis' second essay, that I post half of my old comment.

so I dare to comment to all of what has been said by various commentators and the author.

I am female, politically oriented as a leftist social democrat since I became an adult with voting rights in Germany back then at age 21 for that country. That was in the late sixties. So, to me equal rights for women were always considered a part of the egualitarian intentions of socialist democrats and I felt it was not necessary to point specifically to women's rights as a "feminist' as long as there were not really different laws written on paper for women vs men. Of course I could see that culturally and socially there were areas in professional lives that were closed to women due to cultural traditions. Because of that I would never argue against women who made it their political mission to 'fight for women's rights'. That is my background from Germany, being now a year and half short of 70 years old.

I happened to get in close contact with women (and men) from cultures that any person of my background (caucasian, German, my age group) would consider as women 'deprived of women's rights'. My mother in law had born 14 children, she never had access to birth contol (she was born probably in the early 1910 time frame (it was not known, but guessed, born in a francophone part of a former French colony in Africa). 7 of her children survived. She was decorated as a mother by the first President of her country after the colony became independent. (Hitler did the same charme offensive to women in the Third Reich. Who knows how many women fell for that as well.) And my mother in law was proud of it. It was also said that her husband, probably born in the 1900, had her as his only wife in a cultural environment where polygamy was the norm (without it being conditioned through Islam), but through local traditions. Both were exposed to American and European missionaries with competing churches in their village they grew up in. Well, unless you can prove the opposite you take that monogamy claim at 'face value' and the rest is speculation (and in my mind also nobody's business).

All my mother in laws daughters, my sister-in-laws, had been married in nonogame relationsships and had given birth to zero to 12 children, average number of children 6. None of them complained about the number of children they had given birth to. They were poor and didn't have much of a support in their husbands financially. They muddled through the best they could. It was not clear to me in how far they had access to birth control pills and could have managed the number of pregnancies they got into against the will of their husbands. I saw birth control pills in their little houses bedrooms, but that's it. I could not figure out if they ever regretted to have their children. It didn't seem that way. Some of them later immigrated to Europe and the US, with some reducing the number of pregancies to "Western acceptable numbers", like two or three children. The grandchildren (like in-law nieces I guess to me) have produced 10 children in France and raised them. When I asked another niece, how she could manage raising so many kids and if her husband was kind of rich, that niece seemed to be a little 'offended' by the question. There was no way one could have challenged the women's decision to have children and raise them, no matter what. How you deal with the support of the father or not, is nobody's business. That's why I am a proponent, politically, that folks, like Hillary, don't poke into women's right issues in cultures she doesn't belong to. She has no business in it. The women can decide for themselves what kind of rights they want to have at any specific moment and not been manipulated by 'women' foreign to their society and culture.

Comparing their situations to my own, I had clearly unconditional access to birth control (meaning no poverty would have prevented me to get access to birth control pills with our German healthcare system back in the late sixties). When I got pregnant, though it was not specifically intended, I felt that it was my own responsibility to have gotten pregnant, meaning that my then later husband didn't care about his own responsibility for the pregnancy and relied on me to "not have to take the responsibility" for the pregnancy he helped to create. I guess for men getting used to women being capable to manage their pregnancies, it is seducing to them and leads them to not care about their own 'managerial options' of causing a pregnancy or not. Then when it happens and the woman complains, they (the men)feel either cheated or trapped. How the woman decides after realizing she had gotten pregnant without planning it, is a science in itself. An I say, no man will ever understand it. Therefore, leave the women in peace and let 'em' do what they feel is right. If you feel the woman has the right to fight against the father for child support or if you feel 'tricked', it is not you who has decide over it. The child has its own rights for support from both parents, if they parents want it or not. Period.

I could tell the story to the end, but I won't. I need too much space.

The cruical part is that women have access to birth control pills unconditionally. Which American women, I believe, DON'T have. That's the fuck of your health care system an some deranged men, who think they can enforce their own laws on women. But ...

... I have a perfect solutions to all these men and women not being capapble to stop blaming the other for the pregancy that occurred and fighting of who should take what kind of responsibility for how much and what.

Simple. You make the babies together. You take care of the babies together. Oh, you don't like that? I knew it. Darn. I forgot. Therefore ...

...as this seems to be easier said than done, why don't you guys and gals, each time you feel like having sex together, get out paper and pencil and write up an agreement saying: "Yes, if out of the sex to happen in the next minutes a pregnancy results, I declare that I will be responsible to raise and care for the child being send out to the world this way, til they are adults. Don't forget the stamp of the public notary. I guarantee you, no unwanted pregnancies will happen (and no sex, at least not satisfying one, as well). And of story. Problem solved.

Easy peasy, Dennis 1958.

@dennis1958 My own parents divorced when I was very young. He still wanted to be in the picture and so saw him on the weekends. He paid child support.

If a parent wants a role in parenting, including making decisions about said child's future, then that also comes with financial support. To me this makes sense.

If a man or woman doesn't want to be a parent after pregnancy occurs, there should be various options.

If in a hypothetical scenario, a woman doesn't want to be a parent (or simply just doesn't want to carry the fetus to term) she can have an abortion. If she is against the idea of abortion for whatever reason (or cannot get an abortion for XYZ reason), she can then give up her child for adoption (if she is on her own). However, if the father is willing to take the child if she doesn't want said child, then she should also be able to sign away her parental responsibilities to him and be able to walk away (including financial responsibilities). This all makes sense to me, and also should be applicable to men. The only counter arguments I've seen here is the same tired rightwing logic of "don't have sex" and "tough luck get over it".

#10
brought a tear to my eye these last few days.
I am genuinely and deeply grateful that you dared to enter this ... madness.
thank you

@UntimelyRippd Um no.

he doesn't have a choice.

because biology doesn't give a fuck about human concepts of justice, responsibility, and accountability.

there are unfairnesses in life that simply cannot be mitigated. this is one of them. that doesn't mean that the diarists' reviled feminists are correct about every complaint.

my value system is pretty straightforward: if you're going to fuck women, be a man about it. don't go around crying about how feminists are all WATBs and you want to be one too.

Government systems have legal bodies meant to deal exactly with "unfairnesses" as you put it. That's such an odd and almost silly thing to say. We as humans go against our biology and genetic make up all the time. Women taking hormonal birth control to regulate ovulation. Woman can also have an abortion after becoming pregnant, a legal right. The Supreme Court, a legal body, determined abortion as a right. If a child gets cancer, various countries have determined healthcare a right and administer treatment due to that human concept, regardless of the genetic predisposition.

Stating that certain things can't be mitigated "just because" is just absurd. A simple law could be passed stating that men and women can sign a document forfeiting their parental rights to make varying decisions on their child and completely removing them from the picture, including financial responsibilities.

After reading some of your posts, you also seem to fixate on archaic, sexist roles. Men should man up and other garbage nonsense.

#10
he doesn't have a choice.

because biology doesn't give a fuck about human concepts of justice, responsibility, and accountability.

there are unfairnesses in life that simply cannot be mitigated. this is one of them. that doesn't mean that the diarists' reviled feminists are correct about every complaint.

my value system is pretty straightforward: if you're going to fuck women, be a man about it. don't go around crying about how feminists are all WATBs and you want to be one too.

@ghotiphaze Your argument is almost per par with anti-abortion advocates. That people have to take responsibility for their accidents. And if they don't want to risk that responsibility, they shouldn't have sex.

#10 When the car slips off the jack while changing a tire, crushing your foot, do you lay there beating the car with the tire iron or do you replace the jack more carefully to extract your foot? When the dog knocks the ladder out from under you while changing the light bulb, do you throw the bulbs across the floor cussing, or do you pick yourself up? Of course there're going to be accidents or they'd be called on purposes. Responsible people take care of accidents. Adults clean up the knocked over glass, not scream at the two year old they allowed to crawl through the bloody shards.
Since Dennis is only concerned with self gratification he can alleviate his problem with Rosy Redpalm. If that's too calloused, he can opt for a Pocket Polly. Won't even have spring for a dinner and movie. Hell, just go with the full grown silicon model with vibrating every orifice. Get two; one as your girlfriend the other your hooker,'cuz there are some things you won't ask your girlfriend to do.

@Strife Delivery

…Party looks like. Cats sleep with dogs and other strange phenomena.

#13 #13 Again the folks here are sounding like rightwing republicans.

"Don't want to get pregnant? Don't fuck men."

Many folks are using the same arguments that anti-abortion folks use.

Edit* Added quotations to above line to show it is not my own quote but the similar logic that rightwing individuals use that people in this topic are using. Just to clear up potential confusion

@dennis1958
This is not hating men. I most certainly do not hate men. I hate it when someone tries to subjugate someone else's rights. How would forcing someone to have an abortion not be subjugating their rights?
Is this all about child support? Because no one can actually force you to be involved in raising the child. Do you think there are flocks of women out there who want to trick you into fatherhood so they can get their hands on 17% of 50% of the child's support?

#15
Nobody told me we couldn't talk about men's rights here.
It sure does look like it though don't it.
I've rarely seen so much blatant man hatred gathered in one place.
I too am stunned, and disgusted.
So many of the replies are soo illogical it's pointless to reply.
So few replies talk about the issue of the essay.
I feel a bit ashamed to say I'm on the left.

@dennis1958 mansplaining sounds so much like whitesplaining and richsplaining?

#15
Nobody told me we couldn't talk about men's rights here.
It sure does look like it though don't it.
I've rarely seen so much blatant man hatred gathered in one place.
I too am stunned, and disgusted.
So many of the replies are soo illogical it's pointless to reply.
So few replies talk about the issue of the essay.
I feel a bit ashamed to say I'm on the left.

@TheOtherMaven @TheOtherMaven @TheOtherMaven

Probably all he wanted, as you say.

Think c99 could have responded a little better to his provocations.

Good to have it out,anyway. Did not get completely out of order.

Guess women's rights issues are DONE for most here. But not for all.

Reason is the way, imo.

thx.

c99
at the blue water pool
truth is the rule
fools go to be schooled
all are kept cool
and everyone plays in the water.

#19
Essayist is not interested in a fair, even-handed discussion. Essayist wants us all arguing with each other and with him (and, in a sense, with the unfairness of the universe).

Mission accomplished.