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Fertility Rights | Custody & Access | Child Abuse | Male Role Models
The nine months that a woman carries a child does not outweigh the eighteen years plus that a man may have to carry not only the child, but its mother as well. The man is a stakeholder in the decision to have or not have the baby, perhaps more so than the woman.
A woman can do as she likes with her body without consulting her partner. He, of course, has the same right. He may have sex with whoever he wants to, whenever he wants to, he can have a vasectomy, or he can have his gender surgically reassigned and become a woman, if he so chooses. However, should he exercise any of those options without taking his partners' wishes into account, she is entitled to feel that he has broken the terms of the relationship. Similarly, should a woman make the decision to have or not have a mans' child, without his input, he may consider whether he still wishes to have a relationship with this woman, or would rather just take the kids and leave her.
Men cannot be expected to share full responsibility for child-rearing until they are allowed to share the full rights surrounding child-rearing, and are fully recognised as parents.
Men currently have access to only two forms of contraception: condoms, and vasectomy. In practice, this means only one form. Vasectomy is only available to men over a certain age, usually in their thirties (past their most sexually active years), who already have children (completely defeating the purpose of contraception). Add to the restrictions the increased risk of prostate cancer, and we can rule out vasectomy as an option for most men. This leaves only condoms, which apart from being unpleasant and notoriously unreliable, are prone to sabotage (eg. if a woman wants a child and her partner doesn't). And yet, men are told that we should take full and equal responsibility for contraception. If as much research effort had been put into reliable, reversible contraception for men as has been done for women, men would be not only able but, I would suggest, eager to take responsibility for their own fertility. There would be less economic exploitation of men by women, who can use the lack of male contraceptive options to fall pregnant and entrap men.
On a similar note, a woman who lies about her contraception, and gets pregnant by a man, has committed a crime comparable to rape, just as a woman who demands child support from a man for children that subsequently prove to be not his, has committed major fraud. Every man would be wise to have all "his" children blood-tested, to confirm his fatherhood.
Women have more control over their fertility, due to more and better options for contraception. A woman who agrees to have sex shares the responsibility for the consequences of her choice, including pregnancy. If a man doesn't want the child, he should be liable to no more than half the costs of the pregnancy and adoption (or abortion, if applicable), even if she chooses to see the pregnancy through and keep the child; otherwise, he is held hostage for the next two decades to a decision in which he had no say. If he wants the child and she doesn't, he bears the responsibility for carrying it (eg. through surrogacy or in vitro methods). Her right to control her own body, covers only her own body, and ceases to apply to the fetus once it is removed.
Donating to a sperm bank should be regarded no less gravely than relinquishing a child for adoption. Describing men as "sperm donors" (along with "SNAG" and "macho") reduces men to a biological function, and can only be intended to devalue men and their contribution to parenthood.
Women have the legal option of relinquishing all responsibility for a child, by giving it up for adoption (or, in some states, terminating the pregnancy). Men have no such option; a father should be allowed first option to adopt a child that the mother doesn't want, and should have a similar option of relinquishment, where he can divest himself of all responsibility (with the same options as relinquishing mothers to seek out their child in later life, or to place a veto on their child finding information about them). Similarly, relinquishing fathers in adoption cases should have the same right to seek out their child as relinquishing mothers, and similar rights should be extended to sperm donors.
Otherwise, a woman has the option of binding a man to indentured labor for the next two decades of his life, on the basis of a decision in which he had no say. She can subject him to this even if she lied about her contraception, sabotaged his, or even raped him (as in a case in the US, where a babysitter raped a thirteen-year-old boy, fell pregnant, then sued her victim for child support). She can also subject her husband to this form of exploitation to support children that aren't even his.
Women can have children without the direct aid of a partner through artificial insemination. For men to have the same right, surrogacy arrangements would have to be made legally enforceable.
Men need access to their children to keep them from being emotionally isolated after a relationship breaks up - and, more importantly, the children need contact with both parents. When women deny access to their ex-partners, usually out of a vindictive desire to hurt them further, they are also hurting their children by putting their own emotional needs first.
Much male frustration with the family court arises because of its secrecy; justice is not seen to be done, and will not be seen to be done, until men and women gain equal custody (on average) in all cases, not just those that the man can afford to contest. If there is a reason for the current discrepancy, the reason is not apparent to the men who get the worst of family court decisions.
The idea that one adult should support another after divorce is an abomination. Although the requirement to pay child support seems reasonable, men often feel that they are actually paying to support their ex-wife; especially if the relationship ended acrimoniously, she knows that by refusing to support herself or her children, she can increase the financial pressure on him. Ideally, parents should share equal custody, and neither should have to pay maintenance to the other. Failing that, making each parent solely responsible for the childs' upkeep while the child is in their custody, would at one stroke remove most of the perceived unfairness from current custody procedures.
The focus on sexual abuse of children to the exclusion of all other forms of child abuse, because it is (apparently) committed more often by men than by women, distracts attention from the fact that most child abuse is committed by women. It obviously benefits the feminist viewpoint to make sexual abuse of children seem like the worst form of child abuse, or even the only form worth considering. Other forms of child abuse that are under-emphasised include:
The best-intentioned, most competent mother in the world can do almost everything that is needed to raise children, but she cannot be a father to them. Men may be removed from the family unit by divorce (especially where they are denied access or custody), by work commitments (due to a man's emotional presence being devalued relative to his financial contribution), or by women consciously choosing to raise children "on their own" (ie. at the taxpayers' or the fathers' expense). Without any clear model for how men behave, a boy growing up must rely on the role-models and stereotypes he sees in the media - men as violent criminals, men as rapists, men as child-molesters, men as wife-beaters, or at best, workaholics or sperm donors.
Similarly, girls who grow up surrounded by negative images of men, rather than the example of real men around them, learn to think that they are under seige, and cannot relate to men as equals. Boys who grow up with the idea that manhood is something to be ashamed of, may resort to self-destruction in all its many forms, or try vainly not to mature into men. Most men in prison come from single-mother families, and most of the rest come from families where the father was not an active presence in the home.