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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 yet every single state in the US has safe haven laws where a woman can just hand away the kid after birth and is left with zero (0) consequences. The father doesn't even get to choose to keep the child, the mother can just hand it away. Those children become the state's responsibility as well but nobody cares about the hypocrisy.
That's because safe haven laws are there to stop women dumping unwanted babies who will then die. They have different goals. Remember the legal system is not monolithic. It has been built by people with varying goals and ideas, who have assembled a patchwork of interlocking systems at different times, from different parties and different ideologies.
Having said that, do note, that the other parent may be able to petition for custody and in some states the State must specifically check with the other parent before revoking parental rights. It does vary by state. So it is not necessarily true that the father does not get to choose to keep the child.
Then why isn't their a provision to allow fathers to dump unwanted babies who will then die? If you're going to say it's because the mother may want them then the same argument also applies in reverse. And even given that some states allow the other parent to petition for custody, this isn't true in all of them.
Safe haven laws as far as i can tell don't specify which parent can use them. So men can use them its just much less common.
While many of these safe haven laws technically are gender neutral in wording, in many states unwed genetic mothers by default get custody. The unwed father has no such automatic right. He has to establish paternity and petition in court before being able to have rights over any child born out of wedlock. Mind, too, that women control information about and access to the kid and therefore can very easily block such a process.
As an example, Arizona's law states that "If a child is born out of wedlock, the mother is the legal custodian of the child for the purposes of this section until paternity is established and custody or access is determined by a court."
https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01302.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20210506194043/https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01302.htm
This situation allows the mother to abandon the child or alienate him from it early on. On the other hand, if the father wants to avail himself of these safe haven laws which are technically open to him, he'll have to take the child out of the mother's custody - unlawfully - and in doing so he can be charged with custodial interference or kidnapping.
That previous Arizona law I cited also states that custodial interference is committed when someone "Takes, entices or keeps from lawful custody any child, or any person who is incompetent, and who is entrusted by authority of law to the custody of another person or institution." Anyone in violation of that opens themselves up to felony charges.
So while Arizona's safe haven law is on its face gender neutral, subject to the previous Arizona law I cited in my first comment, unwed fathers in Arizona who take the child out of the mother's custody to put it in a safe haven can still be prosecuted for custodial interference, whereas unwed mothers early on can unilaterally put their children in safe havens without anyone's consent and escape any prosecution because they are the default custodian until the father pursues access and custody.
Additionally, here's an adoption lawyer in a forum for legal advice answering a question about whether a father can give up a child to a safe haven without the mother's consent:
https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-man-access-safe-haven-laws-without-the-moms--3458852.html
"Do you want to be arrested? Because if you do, that is a sure fired way. When a woman gives birth and the parents are unmarried, the woman has presumed custody. If you did this you would be facing criminal charges as an unmarried father has no rights unless he pursues then in court."
And this article provides a generalised rundown of the situation:
"Though written in gender-neutral terms, many American states now effectively permit the abandonment of newborns to be undertaken solely by genetic mothers. These acts usually foreclose, without notice or a chance to be heard, any legal parenthood for genetic fathers who are fit and willing to parent and who may even have attained federal constitutional childrearing interests, as through, for example, marital presumptions. Genetic mothers can walk away from parental responsibilities early on in a child's life, whereas comparable desertions are usually forbidden for genetic fathers in cases where the genetic mothers maintain custody, as well as for genetic mothers once their children are a little older."
"While a genetic mother having child custody may employ Safe Haven laws to escape parental responsibilities, genetic fathers without custody typically may not walk away in the same fashion. They cannot escape child support obligations, even if they never attained childrearing rights. They cannot desert their genetic offspring, even if they were fooled into conception and were forgotten (or avoided) during the pregnancy and at the birth."
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80506024.pdf
In other words, men are not able to access safe haven laws the same way women can in practice.
Again you're going up against biological reality. The one person that is definitively the parent is the one who gave birth. Given that means fathers usually have to be registered particularly in the non married situation most common and that safe haven laws are the politicians response to heat when sympathetic often post partum mothers got prosecuted for abandoning new born babies mostly soon after birth then again there is no reason mothers and fathers should be treated the same.
The issues with safe haven laws stem from the biological reality that the first parent acknowledged is going to be the mother. It isn't symmetric.
Point is, people can't pretend (as they often do in these discussions) that the system allows men and women to abandon children equally when in actual practice this is not the case. In practice, the ability to walk away is by and large reserved for the biological mother.
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