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What puts men on edge is not that there are bad women around who will do bad things. It's the fact that the women who do bad things are aided and abetted by the legal and policy systems in place, and the fact that the harms they perpetrate are often actively enabled and worsened by these systems.
And some of these harms are really egregious. You don't have to be in a long-term relationship with a woman for the state to try to obligate you. You don't even have to be a consenting party to the act that results in conception. In the case of a woman using deceptive and coercive means to trap an unwilling man into fatherhood, the system will vigorously extract money from that man and hand it to that woman for 18 to 26 years.
In one such case (Hermesmann v. Seyer), the father was a minor child who was statutorily raped, and the court found him responsible for the financial support of the resulting child. Other cases of male victims of statutory rape being made to pay child support include Nick Olivas and Nathaniel J. In the latter case, Judge Arthur Gilbert stated that "Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities."
The article "Fatherhood By Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination And The Duty Of Child Support" also has a very good rundown of things (and while I do disagree with some of the moral positions the author takes, the cases cited within shine light on an issue that is rarely focused on). Regarding the question of whether a male victim of statutory rape is liable for child support payments should the rape result in a child: "[T]here are numerous cases in which an adult woman became pregnant as a result of sexual relations she initiated with a minor child. Nonetheless, despite the number of times this question has arisen, every single court has answered it in the affirmative - holding that, yes, the minor father is liable."
Then there are also completely nonconsenting adult male victims of female-perpetrated rape that have been made to pay child support to the mothers. For example, an Alabama man known as S.F. in 1992 attended a party at the home of a female friend, T.M, and was raped by T.M. when he was unconscious. He was held responsible for child support, and on appeal his argument that the court should relieve him of child support duties failed. And in another similar case, Daniel was a Wisconsin father who claimed that the mother, Jennifer, administered a date rape drug to him, and despite the jury concluding that his sexual intercourse with Jennifer was involuntary, he had to pay child support. Then there are cases like Emile Frisard's, where there was no rape, but the mother got pregnant by retrieving the father's semen from oral sex and impregnating herself with it, and in that case the court also upheld his child support obligation.
Meanwhile, here's what happened in the one case in which a court was called upon to decide whether a female victim of sexual assault was liable for child support. "In DCSE/Esther M.C. v. Mary L., a mother refused to provide support for her three minor children on the basis that they were “the result of an incestuous relationship with her brother,” and, as such, “it was not a voluntary decision on her part to have the minor children.” In ruling, the court did what no court has ever done when confronted with the child support obligations of a male victim of sexual assault - the court ruled that the mother may not be liable. According to the court, “[i]f the sexual intercourse which results in the birth of a child is involuntary or without actual consent, a mother may have ‘just cause’ . . . for failing or refusing to support such a child.”"
And the article notes that this is the case despite the fact that women have more options than men after conception - "they can later elect to abort the child or give the child up for adoption, thus terminating her parental rights. In contrast, a father cannot make those choices absent the cooperation of the mother." I'd also add the morning-after pill as another example of a precautionary measure a woman can take (if she is sexually assaulted, or she is afraid her partner has poked holes in the condom, etc). Men also lack this option.
Again, it is not that women can harm men that makes a lot of men wary. It's not even that women can get away with harming men. It's that the system itself, even when acknowledging that the woman committed an intentional and morally inexcusable act on the man, will enforce the continuation of that harm.
You are essentially claiming that if family court and child support etc are biased against men, men have to take that risk into account and if they don't, whatever happens is something they assented to. But I think it is hardly a viable choice when the "choice" in question is between lifelong celibacy and opening yourself up to the possibility of getting completely screwed over by an incredibly broken system. To claim that being unable to tolerate the former situation constitutes a "poor choice" on one's own part is really quite unfair. And the point falls apart even further when you consider the fact that men (and boys) who have been raped or otherwise sexually taken advantage of by women have been forced to pay child support.
Sex is risky in many ways besides the obvious. Yes, if you choose not to be celibate, you choose to take on risk.
If you hook up with a malicious actor, you might get screwed over. This is true for women just as much as men. The nature of the screwing might be different, but for every story of some poor fellow who got drunk at a party and wound up stuck with 18 years of child support, there are plenty of stories of women who got drunk at a party and wound up with a child and a deadbeat dad. Or a stalker, or an abuser.
Men and women can be extraordinarily shitty to each other. Without being a conservative myself, I think there is much to be said for the traditional concept of, you know, being careful and selective about who you hook up with. This does not, of course, guarantee that one doesn't wind up with a bad partner who screws you over in the end, but it greatly reduces the likelihood.
I have little sympathy for anyone of either sex who wants to go sow their wild oats and not be held accountable for the reaping.
@KulakRevolt's screed is as usual as entertaining as it is devoid of rigor or probity. It's just another fist shaken at society, another reason why we should burn everything down. And all the people with deep grievances against women coming out, as they always do in threads like these, are missing the point of child support, as they always do in threads like these. The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. You want to get your dick wet, you know there is a possibility of producing a child, and if it's not your responsibility (jointly) to provide for that child, then whose is it? I see no reason why anyone else who wasn't involved in the bumping of uglies should have to pay for it.
Sure, I see your edge case of one woman in one case who was held not responsible for children she was forcibly impregnated with by incest, and I'll agree that there's a certain inequity there when compared with your other edge case of one guy who got drunk at a party and woke up a father nine months later. The law isn't an algorithm, this is like comparing that one man who shot someone in Kansas and got a suspended sentence and that other woman who shot someone in Florida and got life. Even if we agree that the cases are roughly comparable, this does not mean the law treats women murderers more harshly than men and thus laws against murder are sexist and terrible.
None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.
And if and when she did, the system won't hold her accountable. It offers her plenty of outs, such as 1: abortion, 2: safe haven abandonment, and 3: adoption, all of which she has a unique ability to access because she carries the child, and additionally any child born out of wedlock is in her sole custody by default and thus she won't be guilty of custodial interference by taking advantage of safe haven laws. Pray tell, why has your hypothetical woman not taken advantage of any of these options available to her, if she does not want to care for a child and the father is out of the picture? And which analogous "ways out" are fathers allowed?
Yet safe haven abandonment is explicitly allowed, and these laws absolutely create unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. I suppose that by the same token, you oppose safe haven abandonment as a method of surrendering parental responsibility for women, correct? If you have decided not only to perform the act that resulted in conception but also have carried the pregnancy to term and have eschewed every option to terminate up until that point, then you absolutely have the responsibility to care for it. Under this worldview, that is.
I'm not going to lie, this entire "personal responsibility" screed you've produced here sounds like an awfully convenient way to avoid the clear double standards that exist surrounding this entire thing.
If you look at it in isolation, perhaps. Looking at the entire picture, it forms part of a much larger pattern wherein women are treated with far more leniency and are granted far more options when it comes to abrogating parental responsibilities.
Sure. They're claiming it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities because women can.
The law does hold women accountable for providing for the care of their children. Women have options men do not have for terminating pregnancy because men do not get pregnant.
Only a handful of infants are surrendered every year under safe haven laws. I doubt many of those were produced by fathers who otherwise would have been willing participants in the child's upbringing.
The double standard is one enforced by biology.
But they don't actually care about this, they just want to be able to have consequence-free sex and leave the woman stuck with the responsibility of deciding what to do if she becomes pregnant. I believe exactly zero arguments based on "unfairness."
The point you carefully elide is that in those cases where a woman can sever her responsibilities, she's also terminating any responsibility the father has as well. You also speak of adoption and safe haven abandonment as if this is a common and casual option, like Plan B.
It's really strange how when this subject comes up so many people transform into BASED proponents of natural law.
Rape should be legal. Why would men be stronger than women if it wasn't to physically dominate them?
That's a weird take and I don't think it's an ingenuous one.
Recognizing that biology has a material impact does not mean being a proponent of "based natural law" and fantasies about reverting to Hobbesian savagery.
It's perfectly ingenuous.
I don't see anyone throwing their hands up and saying "well men are just stronger than women are so there's really no point in trying to resist that fact with law we just have to recognize biological reality" but people like yourself seem perfectly happy insisting that biology wrote our laws regarding paternity established family courts and decided their policy and there's just nothing we can do about it.
I do not think "biology wrote our laws regarding paternity established family courts" (sic).
I do not think there is "nothing we can do about" inequities that may result from biological differences.
I think laws need to reflect facts like, for example, that women can get pregnant and men can't.
If you really are sincere about "Laws against rape, or laws recognizing only women get pregnant: choose one," well, that is certainly a take.
And I think that they should also reflect facts like, for example, women are the sole authority over the reproductive process from start to finish, where such facts are applicable.
Get bent.
Get bent.
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