I'm sick of pro-choice men who are anything but pro-choice

[Samurai_Writer]

There's a thread in GD regarding men and choice. I know, I know, I shouldn't have even looked. But it is really bothering me personally to hear all these men complain about being 'forced' into fatherhood if they don't want it, or if they do want to be fathers, they 'lose their child' if their partner decides on abortion. Both of these types seem to think they have a say in whether a woman remains pregnant or not. It makes me sick.

My own personal history includes abortion, miscarriage, surrendering a child for adoption and raising a child as a single parent. I've had my parents tell me in high school "don't come home with a baby," when I was in my third trimester, basically forcing me to give birth and surrender my child for adoption. I've had a live-in boyfriend tell me "either abort or I'm leaving". I chose the abortion, then ended the relationship, because I was already raising one child by myself and could not afford to raise two. My ex-husband and I had a child together. He was adamant about having a boy and naming it after himself. We had a boy, but the marriage did not last, partly because of his trying to control me. As soon as the divorce was final, my ex-husband decided he didn't want to be a father anymore, and I became a single parent.

I just cannot express how utterly sick I am of these 'pro-choice' men who want to control our bodies just as much as the anti-choicers do. Thank god my tubes are now tied and I'm almost 45. But I fear for the younger women who still have to put up with this archaic, misogynistic, abusiveness from men who claim they are 'pro-choice'.

[bloom]

1. There are some interesting counter-arguments to this issue

gathered over at "Alas ( a blog)"

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/category/anti-feminist-zaniness/choice-for-men/


Including:

La Luba on “Duped into Fatherhood” and “Choice 4 Men”

"As a practical matter, most women are not going to choose either abortion or adoption, even if they know or suspect that they will receive no child support....

The conversations most people have before sex are not usually witnessed by anyone, and frankly most of the men who are inclined to abandon a pregnant woman and/or any child are not going to admit that beforehand. They’d never get laid, and they know that. Many women who really thought they would consider abortion or adoption find that they really can’t after pregnancy.... "


When it comes to reproduction, men and women really ARE different

"...Both men and women should have every reproductive choice biologically possible. For men and women both, that means they should have the choice not to fuck, if they don’t want to. For men and women both, that means they should have access to every kind of birth control. And for women, that should mean access to abortion.

Cutting either men or women off from their biologically possible options is wrong, in my view. But “abortion" just isn’t one of men’s biologically possible options...."


Yet Again, “Choice For Men”

...In Diane's argument, responsibility is like a game of "hot potato"; whoever is the last one to make a decision gets saddled with 100% of the responsibility. But we don't use "hot potato" logic to allocate responsibility in any other area of life, so why should child-rearing be the exception?

For example, imagine that I and my partner purchased a house together. Although we initiated the process together, an inconveniently timed bat-signal called me away and the transaction was all-but-closed in my absence, requiring only my final signature on the papers to be completed. Once the papers are in my hands, a curious situation has been created - the others, having signed the papers, are locked in to their decision. But I could still close the purchase (by signing the papers) or cancel it utterly (by ripping them up). I have 100% of the life and death power over this house purchase. If Diane's logic held true, then once I made the sole decision to sign the papers, my partner would be morally justified in saddling me with 100% of the house payments.

So what makes a house different from a baby? One difference Diane E. might focus on is legalities; the law requires my partner, having signed an agreement to pay half, to actually pay half. But the same thing applies to a baby: the law requires a non-custodial parent to provide support for his (or her) children. It's not as if the possibility of sex leading to childbirth is a secret that men don't know going in.

(There is, of course, one enormous difference - the baby is a person, not a thing, and therefore has some rights.....)


-----

A couple of the people stirrring the pot:

"Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson argue that life is unfair for fathers."


Dianna Thompson is the executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children and is a nationally recognized expert on families, stepfamilies, divorce, and child custody.

Glenn Sacks is the only regularly published male columnist in the US who writes about gender issues from a perspective unapologetically sympathetic to men and fathers.


These people often show up on ifeminist.com which sounds like anti-feminism to me. From the site:

"It is sometimes called libertarian feminism."

"We recognize that the conventional wisdom- that men are the perpetrators while women are the victims- is based on politics rather than on fact."

"By the late 20th century, government cemented gender hostility into society by assuming a paternalistic role that advantaged women at the expense of men (e.g., affirmative action). "

"For example, ifeminism calls for the decriminalization of pr ostitution and po rnography."

"Women's studies programs are a good example of why universities should not be publicly funded."

[ismnotwasm]

2. That thread sucks

I stayed out of it, because those things become monsters where the real issues are lost. But I agree with you. I was listening to that Everlast song, "What it's like" it has that one part where a women has been abandoned after promises and pregancy. She chooses to abort.

The line in the song is ;
" So she goes to the clinic and gets some static walking through the door,
they call her a killer, and they call her a sinner and they call her a whore.
God forbid you ever have to walk a mile in her shoes, 'cause then you might really know what it's like to have to choose"

Men do not walk in our shoes. They never have. Men need to choose sexual responsibility over "rights"
I know a young man who after a sexual encounter that could have resulted in pregnancy, discussed it with his partner and together they went and got a Plan B. He completely understood his part, acknowledged the risks for his partner. Scared the crap out him, actually. He paid for the Plan B, which I thought very nice. We had a very good discussion on male responsiblity. So I know these guys are out there. There are just hard to find sometimes

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Men choose not to be fathers all the time

I can't tell you how many cases I know of where men abandoned their children after a divorce. The father of one of my distant cousins simply failed to show up for his first visitation, even though his son insisted on sitting on the front steps all day waiting, and eh never made contact again.

Another told his wife that he couldn't deal with the fact that their second chilld was born mildly disabled--bye!

Certainly there are cases in which the father is the better parent. I know of a couple of such cases.

But more often, I think the "father's choice" crowd is still in the mindset of seeing children as "property." The whole house buying analogy reinforces that.

[femrap]

4. Men ejaculate irresponsibly...and for some reason that is

women's fault???? I hate that attitude.

They're pro-choice when they get to make all the choices for all concerned.

[geniph]

5. Carry the fucking fetus to term yourself, then, guys

and then it won't be a problem, will it?

Until they can do that, I'm sorry, I have NO sympathy for a guy who doesn't keep his zipper closed and then whines about the outcome.