This is their great Achilles heel and they know it.
The last thing they want is the image of a fully humanized fther, on bended knee and with arms wide open, seeking the natural right to save his prenatal baby from dying.
Posted on 08/08/2002 4:58:13 AM PDT by victim soul
John Stachokus, the Pennsylvania would-be father who lost his bid to block his ex-girlfriend's abortion, has found himself in a position familiar to millions of American men: He has a large personal stake in a decision in which he is not allowed to take any part. His wishes are irrelevant.
When it comes to reproduction, in America today women have rights and men merely have responsibilities.
When a woman wants a child and a man does not, the woman can have the child anyway -- and demand 18 years of child support from the father. This remains true even if the father had made it clear that he did not want to have children, and even if the woman had previously agreed to respect his wishes.
For decades, leading feminist organizations such as the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League have argued that women should have reproductive rights because nobody should be able to tell them what to do with their own bodies. Thus the slogan "My Body, My Choice."
But the sacrifices required to pay 18 years of child support should not be discounted, either. The average American father works a 51-hour work week, one of the longest in the industrialized world. It is men, overwhelmingly, who do our society's hazardous jobs.
Nearly 50 American workers are injured every minute of the 40-hour work week. On average, every day 17 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?
NOW and NARAL were legitimately concerned that the Pennsylvania anti-abortion injunction, which was issued on a temporary basis last Wednesday and dissolved the following Monday, could have established a precedent for giving men and the government control over an important aspect of women's lives.
But when a woman forces a man to be responsible for a child only she wants, is she not exercising control over his life? And when the massive government child-support apparatus hounds the reluctant father for financial support, takes a third of his income and jails him if he comes up short, isn't the government exercising control over his life?
Advocates of reproductive choice for men -- the right of an unmarried man to sign away his parenting rights and responsibilities upon learning of an unwanted pregnancy -- have a legitimate claim, based on the same arguments that feminists have used to support their case for choice for women.
When the situation is reversed and the woman does not want to have a child and the man does -- as is the case with Stachokus and his ex-girlfriend, Tanya Meyers -- once again, women have rights and men do not.
A woman who doesn't want her child can terminate the pregnancy against the father's wishes, or put their child up for adoption, sometimes without the father's permission. In some states, she can even return the baby to the hospital within a week of birth. More than 1 million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year.
Perhaps, as some have argued, Stachokus was using his legal maneuvers as a way to exercise control over the ex-girlfriend who broke up with him. More likely he was simply a proud papa-to-be. Maybe he imagined his child to be a little daddy's girl, or a son he would proudly raise to be a man. Or perhaps he is just a stand-up guy who wanted to live up to what he sees as his responsibilities.
Even if Stachokus had persuaded Meyers to have their child, he probably would not have been allowed to be a meaningful part of his child's life. Meyers does not want to marry or stay with him. Legal precedents -- and a stubbornly held but baseless cultural notion that children fare better with their mothers -- suggest that, even though he was willing to take full or partial custody, he would have had little chance of getting it.
Many unwed and divorced fathers face a difficult struggle to remain a part of their children's lives.
Custodial mothers frequently violate fathers' visitation rights, and courts do little to enforce them. Some custodial mothers move hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their children's fathers, and it is frequently difficult for these dads to maintain regular contact with their kids.
Stachokus may have ended up like the hundreds of thousands of American fathers who love children they are not able or allowed to see, and whose suffering is ignored by a society that seems capable only of denigrating fathers.
John, whatever move you made, you never had a chance. Welcome to modern American fatherhood.
(Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male perspective. Diana Thompson is the founder and executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.)
The "apparent presumption" was all yours. You used AARP as your model for a fledgling men's lobby. AARP and NOW are cut from the same collectivist victim-worshipping cloth. I made a detailed and thoughtful case on why victimology doesn't/won't work for men. It's your turn to explain exacty why you think it will, or what principle you would use in its place.
This is their great Achilles heel and they know it.
The last thing they want is the image of a fully humanized fther, on bended knee and with arms wide open, seeking the natural right to save his prenatal baby from dying.
I'll accept that. I wasn't sure that you were so contending, so I included "apparent".
When your (sic) not busy waxing nostalgic about your favorite movies and exposing your still wet navel, do you have any meaningful suggestions or observations at all? About anything?
But here's an illustration of what I'm saying: domestic violence victims who are male might as well buy their own burial plots now, because no one will ever care. I accept that.
But people do empathize with the father who loves his child and wants to save/raise said child...which is why the NOW ho's work so hard to kill any such image and replace it with universally demonized dads.
They try to destroy what they fear.
And if I may quote Rush---yes, that is a band---"The things that they fear are the weapon to be used against them".
But a real men's movement can focus on creation, not destruction; a meritocracy of earned situations rather than government transfer-of-wealth; and of true equal opportunity/responsibility instead of govt. proferred "special rights", particular and exclusive to a given demographically-defined group over another.
Would you deny men their God given rights because of this?
Amen!
The best outcome is also the most unlikely, that America will re-evaluate the cost of the sexual revolution and decide that it is too high.
Shalom.
Of course, the child has no rights, yet it has the most at stake.
Shalom.
The industrial age has only limited most women's child rearing responsibilities when they took on careers outside the home. The legal question does not involve a comparative examination of best interest standards unless the state is awarding a legal right to custody. When a father's natural right is challenged, the burden is on the accuser to show he is unfit to maintain his natural right.
Remember too, when the right has succeeded to the mother, she enjoys the same protection against the state taking charge of her children without showing abandonment or neglect. This is very well established in Minnesota case law. Upholding this natural right protects both parents, and provides security for the family relationship.
What you have discovered is what always happens when you toss immutable moral standards for popular ones. Once we decided as a society that it was reasonable for a woman to abort her child we opened up a lot of ethical problems that had not been opened before. Sooner or later you realize that what you are arguing in favor of is morally repugnant. But so was the initial change that allowed the door to be opened. Abortion is morally repugnant. Simply standing firm on the moral laws that have protected societies for millennia would help a great deal. It may be true that some women would get "back-alley" abortions to their own risk and horror, but there would be no societal statement that it is OK to do so. We would be protected from perverse arguments like, "Shouldn't a father be able to force the mother to have an abortion?"
Shalom.
They are equally important. Both are fully alive human beings with a right to continue living. They are in different developmental stages, but no less human for that.
As to what your husband has done, perhaps he should be in jail. And if he left you for some sweet young thang I have no pity for him and suggest you have no mercy. Have you approached the local enforcement agencies about getting the rest of your money?
Shalom.
Since no protection is 100% foolproof, you should remove the marked out phrase.
Your last statement was right-on.
Shalom.
The "women's movement" paradigm is a false one in that the feminist deconstruction of society has been mostly facilitated by men employing chivalry. They do this to either get laid or get elected. Men of the former type are in the majority, men of the latter type are in power. This is not a defeatist opinion, it's an intelligence report. I would deny no one their "men's movement," but keep in mind it's not a new idea. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. The numbers simply aren't there for a nationally recognized movement. The problem is exacerbated by a significant number of "men's movement" initiatives that are actually male feminists. If the fit ever hits the shan, it will be these men's groups that will get funding and media time - much as the media initiatives promoting fatherhood are actually promoting the negative male sterotypes of deadbeats and disinterested "gangstas."Read my words more carefully. I'm saying that a men's movement will only succeed with sincerity and inclusion. We're men, we have to do our own leg work. But if we think of a men's movement the way we honestly look at parenting, we will have to admit that we won't be able to get the whole job done without women - strong women, conservative women, not the lazy bitter sows fattened and corrupted by the entitlements and bitterness of the last forty years. We won't need to say "it's for the children" - people will know.
Your "fear" thesis is a good one. Promise Keepers is singularly ignored by the media despite the seven figure attendances they regularly attract to their rallies. The reason for this? I quote Particia Ireland, former president of NOW literally standing on a box before the cameras at the first PK march on Washington that attracted milions: "These Promise Keepers are dangerous! They're only succeeding because they positive and popular!" Those were her exact words. Poor Pat was literally in a panic. My take on that quote was that she sincerely believed that PK's "popular and positive" was some kind of ruse. It's what she would have had to think - it's the only thing she knows.
We know the issues.
The list is partial, but any initiatives that come under the above headings in the name of men, boys, and the family can be considered the "men's movement." Don't take my word for it that any generic initiative falling under the heading "men's movement" are doomed to be marginalized or be co-opted by liberals. Look around. It's what's been happening all along. We gotta be smarter than that.
- Fatherlessness
- Divorce
- Custody
- Abortion
- Abandonment
- Addiction
- etc.
- The criminalization of boyhood
- THE FEMINIST EDUCATION CARTEL!
- Prostate Cancer
- Workplace deaths
- Suicide
- Violent crime
- Prison rape
See post 156.
To define one's state on extrinsic rather than intrinsic factors is self-defeating at best and dangerous at worst. Infants are not able to live on their own biologically, neither are toddlers. Neither are the very old, or those suffering with Alzheimers, or ALS, or any number of other diseases. What about lung machines? What about dialysis?
If you decide to claim those machines (or parental help) allow the human to be human, then does a zygote become human when an artificial womb is invented along with the necessary means to safely transfer the zygote to the artificial womb?
Do you see the danger yet? If you allow the definition to change with science or social whim, then you allow it to change to your detriment. Today we can call the elderly human because people are willing to take care of them. What will happen when you are elderly? Will people still be willing to take care of them? Will you then be named "non-human" so they can dispose of you?
Shalom.
The men's movement will be co-opted by immoral losers, "male feminists", unless men of principle stop them. That bolded caveat is my main point. Nothing is hopeless unless morally liberal men are stronger and more dedicated than morally principled men.
And I say that they are not, and so those of moral principle can foster a real men/fathers movement.
It will take work, and vigilance, because I agree with you completely that morally liberal men will try to co-opt constructive movements.
But heck, we were born to fight.
And to win.
And yes, it does mean including fair-minded women. The Independent Women's Forum with Christina Hoff Sommers have done a tremendous amount to fight the "all men are rapists" propaganda of feminists, and I respect them hugely for it.
Thank you for putting forth what I was hoping you would; a constructive, prescriptive action plan that paints a hard-working road ahead.
However, "Shouldn't a father be able to force the mother to have an abortion?" is an excellent illogic-buster.
The feminstas and their fellow-travellers have swallowed a Big Lie. Once swallowed, "The Lie" becomes the baseline from which all truth is judged -- and (obviously), truth will always be found to be flawed, when measured by a fraudulent standard!
Worse yet, their bogus "foundational truth" will never be revisited or reevaluated.
Unless...
...unless we resort to "dirty (logical) tricks" to snap people out of their hypnosis. (And that's precisely what it is.)
We present them with a scenario that they must reject -- if they are to maintain their perverted version of "truth" -- or, must accept, and in so doing, discard their bogo-truth.
The catch is, the scenario we present is one that -- rather than be challenged by their "truth" -- is bolstered by it.
In other words, the more they cling to The Big Lie, the stronger our demand becomes!
Can you say "MAJOR foundational conflict"?
I knew you could. :)
If they want to argue for "fairness", and "rights", and insist that "choice is good, choice is American", and assert that a "fetus" is a mere "lump of tissue", and (the icing on yonder cake), that no one should be forced to bear a burden they don't want to bear because someone else wants them to bear it, then they are prevented from taking a stand against "choice for men".
However, if they do decide to endorse it (don't worry, they won't, because they can't), they will be laying the axe to their own foundational "truths".
It's a double bind for the pro-abort feminstas. There is no way they can bark their way out of it. The only escape mechanism -- other than rejecting the "right" to kill one's child -- is to insist that, "no, we don't really want 'fairness' or 'equality' -- we want privilege and supremecy!"
Of course, we all know that privilege and supremecy is precisely what they really want. But we also know that the instant they let that cat out of the bag it's all over except for auctioning off the real estate under the bankrupt abortuaries. :)
It's the closing shot in the debate. (As is generally the case when one takes a falsehood to its logical conclusion.)
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