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Messing with a partner’s birth control is just one kind of dating abuse.
This Monday is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. We’ll be wearing orange to bring awareness to this important issue.
Will you join us?
(via becauseiamawoman)
I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
"Curious Georgiana (via ummhuraira)
Pretty much crying my eyes out here.
(via gardeningoctopus)
(Source: sexistmorons, via gardeningoctopus)
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tw: abuse, rape, domestic violence
A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.
The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.
Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:
1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.
2. Sabotaging birth control
3. Marital rape
Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.
The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her. She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.
One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.” Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.
WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.
holy fuck im crying.
I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
(Source: feminist-blackboard)
gahmani replied to your post: I recently picked up the book “Unnatural Selection” by Mara Hvistendahl, and was wondering what your opinion was on sex-selective abortions & the subsequent gender imbalance? Some parents have even sought surgerical means to alter a biologically female baby into a male shortly after birth. What is an appropriate pro-choice response to this? As a related issue, do you think pro-choice advocates should be more vocal about things like forced abortions occurring in China due to the One-Child Policy?
“financial force” is most commonly known as “economic coercion” and it is a completely real. completely awful and completely common thing. We see economic coercion in pretty much all abusive situations that exist in the world.
That’s it, thank you! Yes, economic coercion in abusive relationships is extremely common. An abuser might take control of all the credit cards and bank accounts, cause their partner to lose their job or prevent them from getting one, and run up charges on their partners’ card, damaging their credit and making it harder for them to find shelter, transportation, loans, and cell phones. An abuser can also do this to any children in the relationship, and use the information to track the victim after they’ve left.
Economic and reproductive coercion are closely linked. An abuser may fear losing their partner, and try to trap them in the relationship by getting them pregnant. They will sabotage, hide, or prevent access to contraception. Poking holes in condoms or removing them during sex, flushing pills down the toilet, verbally abusing their partner, and and rape are common in abusive relationships. Abuse is all about power, and there are few times a person is more vulnerable than when they are pregnant. A partner who finds themselves pregnant with no means of financial independence will have a much harder time leaving.
Abuse during pregnancy is much more dangerous. Physical abuse is often added to verbal and emotional abuse during pregnancy. Sometimes, the abuse can become deadly. One study found that the risk of homicide in abusive relationships tripled during pregnancy and the CDC puts homicide as the third leading cause of death during pregnancy.
A person in an abusive relationship may not want to bring a baby into the environment. They might get an abortion or try to leave. This is a threat to the abuser’s power, and it is imperative the victim has privacy and safety during their decision. This is one reason waiting periods and parental consent laws are so dangerous. Instead of having to make arrangements for one day, a person in Utah will now have to cover their ass for three days, and somehow explain their absence to their abuser. Teenagers, who are at an extremely high risk for dating violence, lose their privacy to parental consent laws, increasing the chances that their abuser will find out.
A person experiencing economic and reproductive coercion is in desperate need of affordable, accessible contraception and birth control. This is why we need to keep family planning services funded, and why attacks on Planned Parenthood and Title X are so despicable. Planned Parenthood offers confidential services on a sliding scale. There are tamper-proof forms of birth control, such as IUDs, Implanon, Depo-Provera, NuvaRing, and sterilization. These are long-lasting (or permanent) and require few visits to the clinic or doctor’s office, but they are expensive.
If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, there are ways to protect yourself against financial and reproductive coercion, and ways to help yourself afterwards.
National Domestic Violence Hotline
1−800−799−SAFE (7233)
1-800-787-3224 (TTY) (for those who are deaf or hard of hearing)
RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network)
1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
Online hotline
National Runaway Switchboard
1-800-RUNAWAY (786-2929)
Planned Parenthood
1-800-230-PLAN (7526)
How to Stop Domestic Financial Abuse
Thinking About Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Concerned about the cost of Plan B?
Save $5 on Plan B One-Step
Abortion Funds
Pro-Choice Counseling Hotlines
Tags on this blog:
#help
#abuse
#domestic violence
An excerpt from The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. (via daskannnichtsein)
Reeeead this boooook.
(Source: handsomephillip, via stfuprolifers)
talkingvulpesvulpes-deactivated asked: Do you have any posts addressing 'teh poor menz' side of abortion? (By men I do mean cismen who are pissy because their partner didn't get their permission before getting an abortion). Thanks.
Hmm. I can’t think of anything specific, but the #stories, #reproductive coercion, #abuse, or #domestic violence tags may have what you’re looking for.
For partners and loved ones, there are the two hotlines I always recommend, Backline and Exhale, as well as Men and Abortion, which offers information on how to support their partner and work through their own emotions that come with the decision. It’s good for any loved one, not just a cismale partner, although it does use cis- and heteronormative language.
Gilder, 1973
I just read this absolutely hilarious quote in my social work textbook. What a tragedy for men! Us women have to FULLY agree to spawning their little devils.
(via iwishyoubirds)
It’s actually legitimately terrifying that this is being framed as a negative, as if anyone with a uterus is really only a vessel for someone else’s seed, and not an individual person.
Jesus Christ.
(Source: iwishyoubirdss)
dammit, america.
THIS IS NOT OKAY.
Wow. They actually did it. I can’t believe they actually did it.
(via mylifeasafeminista)
Frederica Mathewes-Green’s article, from the National Review, December 31, 1997. Good read for pro-lifers who can’t see any view beyond “It’s a baby!” So important is that last bolded statement. Making an amendment won’t affect the issues that cause women to feel the need for an abortion. How can we help these women?
“Most people feel uncomfortably that abortion is wrong, but simply can’t imagine how pregnant women’s problems could be solved. That is the point pro-lifers must address; instead of cruelly labeling women “frivolous” or charging that they’re motivated by convenience, we must keep mother and child together. Nature put them together in a union that takes some violence to disrupt; when we disrupt it with facile rhetoric, we’re damaging our own cause. Not to mention wounding the very women we should be seeking to help…
Crisis pregnancy services don’t demonstrate anything about injustice or the sanctity of fetal life. They just demonstrate a commitment to help women love their own children to life.
The problem is that women’s sexuality is deeply tied to commitment and emotional stability, and in this bad bargain women lose. Abortion severs two relationships at once, the woman from her lover and from her child. No wonder pro-choice slogans ring with first-person-singulars: my right, my decision, my body, my choice. The flip side of autonomy is loneliness. Abortion promises to make a woman unfettered, empowered and free; instead she finds herself isolated, endangered and sad….
Tomorrow morning, 4100 women will wake up and think, “My abortion is today.” An amendment to the Constitution is not going to suddenly appear and halt them; in fact, if we miraculously padlocked all the abortion clinics tomorrow, without making any changes in our support system, all we’d have is women banging on the locked doors and crying. We wouldn’t have done anything to alleviate the problems that drove them to the clinic in the first place. What can we do to help them?”
You cannot force someone to love, just as you cannot force someone to be happy. Crisis pregnancy centers, by lying to and manipulating vulnerable pregnant people, are fighting a losing battle.
Enough of the biological determinism bullshit. There’s no possible way to understand the complexities of everyone’s sexuality, much less their relationship status. Separating a woman from her lover? What if her lover was a one-night stand? A rapist? An abuser? An ex? If (big if) abortion separates them, is that still a bad thing?
Autonomy is independence. Our happiness and well-being is not determined merely by our dependence on others. For example, I would be deeply unhappy if lack of access to an abortion meant I would be forced to be economically dependent on another person, especially if that person was an abuser. It’s not uncommon for abusers to practice reproductive coercion, in which they force, manipulate, or trick their significant other into pregnancy. This is expressly to tie their victim tighter to them, and isolate them from others. That is true loneliness.
There is just so much ethnocentrism and assumptions of universals in this passage, it’s ridiculous.
Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, America’s largest anti-sexual violence network. Website includes a Sexual Assault phone and online hotline, find a local counseling center, how to help a loved one, information to educate yourself and a list of international resources
1-800-656-HOPE
Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project, provides crisis intervention, support and resources to victims and survivors of domestic abuse. Includes a hotline and a list of events
1-800-832-1901
Help Guide, find any kind of helpful organization including domestic abuse. Includes a help guide, hotlines, and where to find a safe place to stay.
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_help_treatment_prevention.htm
Kids Help, an organization that focuses on helping children and teens in Canada. Includes a phone and online hotline, helps set kids and teens up with a resource in their area.
1800-668-6868
http://org.kidshelpphone.ca/en
Youth Homelessness and Runaway Prevention, to help keep runaway and at risk children off the streets and safe. Provides support and solutions to keep kids safe.
1-800-Runaway
The National Herpes Hotline provides information and referrals to help treat and live with herpes.
(919) 361-8488
http://www.herpesonline.org/articles/herpes_hotline.html
A list of National hotlines for STDS and/or substance abuse
http://www.stopthinkbesafe.org/youngpeople/hotline.asp
Hopeline, run by the Kristin Brooks Hope Center, A hotline that helps you deal with feelings of depression or the thought of suicide. Amazing organization to give you hope.
1-800-442-HOPE
[clipped for brevity]It doesn’t matter what it was about, I addressed what you said about equality, and it was wrong. I don’t see how two people, one with the body parts to bear children, and one without, can be made equal under the law in regards to reproduction, unless both have a complete right to their own bodies. The financial situation is a separate issue. Related, yes, but separate.
I don’t like to assume I know your life situation, but I don’t think you fully understand how abuse works to keep the victim feeling as if they cannot leave. Adding a pregnancy/child to the equation can only trap them further. Adoption can be incredibly difficult, even if one doesn’t want or intend to raise a child, because they’ve borne it for 9 months, given birth to it, and are now subject to a flood of hormones and emotions attaching them to it, and that doesn’t address the difficulties of putting a child up for adoption with an unwilling, manipulative and abusive father.
Do you have citations for your statistic? I’m interested in learning more about child support. I’ve said before that it’s very difficult to find a non-misogynistic men’s rights site or forum, so I haven’t delved much into it, and most of my time spent on reproductive rights is spent on the carrying and birthing and caretaking (or not) aspect.
I was specifically discussing rape victim advocacy programs, one of which I’m training for now, and yes, they do serve male victims unhesitatingly. As for the judicial system and society as a whole, they consistently fail rape victims, though I don’t disagree that they probably fail cismen rape victims at a greater rate than ciswomen (as for trans, genderqueer and non-binary…fuck).
Victim-blaming…who? You’re still assuming I’ve taken a position on child support, which I haven’t. Abortion rights are first and foremost about bodily autonomy, and the decisions you make with your body. As for semen, once it’s inside another person’s body, I can’t say. I really can’t, because it’s completely immoral to legally compel someone to either get an abortion or carry a pregnancy to term. That choice, whether or not to reproduce, ends at ejaculation. As for the financial aspect, which is what I hope you were addressing, I don’t know either. I lean towards no, if there was no consent to parenthood. Someone has to financially support the child, and government support is often inadequate, especially for single parents, and I doubt that will get better any time soon. So…everyone’s fucked?
*sigh*
Here we go again….
Actually, you didn’t disprove anything I said. I said that in a pro-life system the law is applied equally to everyone. I did not imply that it leads to equal suffering. Sure, it poses a greater problem for people with uteri, but I never said it didn’t. A law which taxed people based on their height could be applied equally across the population, but clearly the basketball players would suffer more than the horse jockeys. Make sense? (Yeah, it’s a bad example but it adequately illustrates the concept. A law can be applied equally and still hurt some worse than others.)
It’s good that you considered the possibilities regarding my life situation. While it’s not something I’m comfortable discussing in this forum, suffice it to say that I am far more intimately familiar with that type of situation than I would ever like to have been. What isn’t understood by experience can be understood by extrapolation.
I’ve actually spent some time looking for that statistic again. I remember that it was cited when I originally found it, to a study conducted by the US government. I’m rather annoyed that I seem to have lost it. However, in my looking I noticed a GAO (General Accounting Office) study from 1992 which stated that 14% of parents who owed child support were deceased. It’s reasonable to assume that the deceased parents owe considerably more than the still-living parents, as they are no longer paying and are still accumulating debt. (Even assuming the continual payments are terminate, there are still the wonders of compound interest to consider.)
I hope you’re willing to accept a figure of 30% of the overall debt based on the combination of the cited statistic and a little commonsensical conjecture. I’ll keep looking around for it, I know I saw it somewhere and once I find it I won’t lose it again. (Yay bookmarks.) While many men’s rights forums and such may have a somewhat misogynistic (though in my experience it’s much more misfeministic) tone to them they’re very good with statistics. Nobody will believe men claiming injury unless they prove it, they don’t have the luxury the feminists do that way. (Incidentally, estimates of the amount of unpaid child support that actually belongs to “deadbead dads,” those that choose not to pay are at around 10%. The other 90% belongs to fathers who are either dead, in prison or living in poverty to a degree where they couldn’t pay if they wanted to.)
I think part of this is that I’m not really clear on what you mean by a “rape victim advocacy program.” If you’re talking about crisis centers, shelters and the like the overwhelming majority do somewhere between little and nothing to help men, and generally turn them away. I’ve heard a lot of the horror stories. If you’re talking about people who are mostly policy advocates, those tend to be more egalitarian. Keep in mind, I live in Canada so the system here may not be the same as wherever you are. My statistics and such come interchangeably from the US and Canada, occasionally the UK. There has been a slow change to providing greater services for men, particularly after a couple of equal protection clause suits. Part of the reason the justice system appears to fail so often in rape cases is the number of false claims. This number’s a lot lower for men (for reasons that should be obvious) which actually makes the failure for men even worse. (Men get failed far more often than women, and have a higher percentage of true to false claims to begin with.) Rape is very difficult to prove, even with the degree to which we’ve practically abolished presumption of innocence and due process in rape cases.
Victim-blaming?
“If you don’t think your lady-friend is being truthful about being on the pill, or if you don’t trust her not to poke holes in the condoms, use your own, tie them off, and throw them away yourself. There’s no need for castration, but you can also get a vasectomy, which is successfully reversible most of the time. Or, don’t fuck people you don’t trust!”
Right here. “Your husband abuses you? Well, you should have left, or called the police. You should have fought back. There’s no need to be on your own, there are shelters and crisis centers and loads of resources. Anyways, maybe it’s your fault for marrying someone who was abusive.”
(Alternately, “You were raped? Maybe you should have learned self-defense, or been with friends, or not led him on, or not worn such a short skirt. You don’t need to be scared of everyone, just take reasonable precautions. Or, you should have realized what kind of person they were, and stayed far away from them in the first place.”)
See how unconscionable it sounds when I shift it onto another couple common SJ issues? (I’m not trying to say that these three things are equally bad, or even really comparable, but it’s the same arguments, the same points.) “If you don’t take responsibility for your own safety, it’s your own damn fault if you get victimized.” I see this a lot with men’s issues. Apparently victim blaming’s only OK when it’s against “acceptable targets” like men.
Your response actually makes me think it was an honest mistake, though, a case of ignorance rather than malice or dogma. A good rule of thumb as a feminist stepping into this territory is to, before saying anything, switch it into another issue and consider your response. If you’ve had anything resembling the conventional feminist education, you haven’t been sensitized yet to bigotry of this kind. It’s kind of like how many feminists are really insensitive to trans issues not because they’re anti-trans, but just because they don’t see them, haven’t been trained to look for them.
I apologize for snapping at you for what I now think is an honest mistake. I deal with way too many people for whom it would be all too intentional.
I consider being forced into biological parenthood to be an awful thing too. It’s not all about child support, because it forces a man into a uniquely horrible choice even if he is given the option to terminate his legal/financial/present parenthood.
My personal advocate stance would be that in a perfectly egalitarian society a woman would have to make a decision on abortion before pregnancy rather than after, with the default set at “abortion” rather than “full-term.” Thus, men would be clearly informed. I personally would never have sex with a woman who had a declared intent to carry the pregnancy to term. Period. Men deserve that choice.
Basically, I’m not in favor of taking choice away from women in this sense, but rather in forcing her to make that decision in advance of sex and then holding her to it. Again, ideally, I think there would need to be some kind of contract signed by both parents in order to carry a pregnancy to term.
Another way to put it would be quite simple, actually. By choosing to have sex without a signed consent to reproduce, a woman would choose to accept the consequences (abortion) if a pregnancy resulted. That’s her choice, to either consent to abortion, choose partners who will consent to reproduction, or abstain from sex entirely.
I’d personally consider abortion to be a much less serious option than parenthood and supporting a child, so if given the choice between forcing women to choose abortion if they want to have sex and forcing men to choose parenthood if they want to have sex. Even in this case, women still have three distinct choices, which is still a lot more than men have now. (In fact, they have exactly the choices they have now. Term, abortion, abstinence. The only difference is that they can’t flip-flop from abortion to term, and if they want to carry to term they have to either do it before sex or get their partner’s consent. I don’t feel that’s terribly unfair.) This wouldn’t in any way prevent women from choosing abortion even if their partner wanted to bring the pregnancy to term. They always have the option of abortion, so far as it’s medically feasible.
Basically, I believe that the choice to reproduce must end at ejaculation for *everyone*, with two exceptions. One, terminating a pregnancy originally intended to be brought to term. Two, mutual consent and agreement from both partners. I personally feel that this doesn’t encroach on the freedoms of either partner, which reasonably protecting the reproductive rights of both partners.
We need better child-support systems that don’t rely on men to bankroll the decisions of women. We need better systems for dealing with single-parents. Above all, we need people to stop having children when they’re neither ready nor capable of supporting them. My libertarian side is highly opposed to the idea of people having to meet any kind of criteria before having children, unfortunately (though it is in favor of forcing people to pass a civics test before voting), so this has to come purely from education and social measures.
(Sorry, a bit disjointed, kind of up all night and all, try to make sense of it please.)
Yikes, we are misunderstanding each other. I understand now what you mean about the law applying equally, though obviously, since there are different roles in reproduction we’re dealing with, I expect there would have to be some differences in laws. Again, not a legal-type, and I wish someone would answer my freakin’ questions about that (another post, long story).
The advocacy programs I’m talking about are specifically dealing with in-the-moment advocacy, like taking calls and accompanying victims to the hospital or police station, as well as providing counseling, both legal and emotional, for rape, assault, harassment and stalking victims. This is the one I’m volunteering for: RVAP. I’m not surprised non-cis-ladies have trouble with shelters and crisis centers, since one of the things those places try to do is create a safe space for the primarily-cis-female victims, and I think they’re misguided, but also stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to admitting men.
I think you missed the “consensual” bit of the whole “use your own contraception” paragraph. Abusive/coercive situations and rape don’t factor into that at all, and I was really hoping that was clear, but I guess it wasn’t. And again, I’m not sure what this hypothetical person is a victim of, so I’m not sure how I’m victim-blaming. Victim of unwanted reproduction, unwanted parenthood, or nonconsensual financial support? If it’s reproduction, I agree, it is bad, but I am still primarily concerned with bodily autonomy, and you cannot force someone into 9 months of pregnancy or a surgical procedure, especially in such a decision so charged with meaning.
Consent forms about everyone’s intent would be lovely, but people’s minds and lives change, and I can’t at all support a system that would legally compel people to get unwanted medical procedures. I think it would set a dangerous precedent, there are too many variables, and the system could be abused horrifically. Plus, we have a hard enough time teaching people what actual consent is now; how could we get everyone to sign forms before boinking? I know it’s a perfect-world scenario, but it just isn’t realistic (hence the name), at least at this point in time, and for quite some time to come, I imagine.
I agree with you that I wish people had to take a test before parenting. I believe it is everyone’s right to try to parent, but it’s not everyone’s right to parent, if that makes sense. You’re dealing with two people in parenting, not one, and one is being shaped by the other, and cannot be subject to that one person’s rights. That’s why we have CPS (another imperfect system). In any case, parenthood tests are still too close to positive eugenics for me; another reallllly sticky issue.
(Source: just-smith, via permutationofninjasarchive)
Pro-life versus pro-choice is a false dichotomy.
If you’re a man who supports choice, you don’t notice the difference. If you don’t want to be a father under a pro-life system and find the prohibition of safe abortion frustrating, it can seriously hinder your ability to have sex for fun without risking a child. If you forget contraception just once, or if it fails, or if you are tricked, you may as well consign your life away to supporting a child.
If the child is unwanted, if you aren’t socially or emotionally ready to become a parent, if you are unable to support any children financially, you have no choice and your life turns upside down. If the child would be diseased or disabled or doomed to live a life of pain, you wouldn’t be able to spare it. If you had been raped, you wouldn’t be able to terminate the pregnancy.
These are problems that both men and women can face under a restrictive pro-life system, and it’s why many of them fight for access to abortion and birth control, which should be a fundamental right to prevent them being forced into parenthood without their consent.
So what does a ‘pro-choice’ system do? Does it solve a single one of these problems for men? No. It simply gives women sovereign power where their shared children are concerned, and allows them to make all of the decisions - potentially doing causing considerable suffering both to their partner and to an innocent child - single-handedly. There is no difference to a man under either system. All that changes is that the agent suppressing your choice switches from being the government to being the woman who took your semen. She may have done so against your will, she may not like you, but thanks to a neat double standard she now holds your future in her hands.
In an anti-choice system we didn’t have such double standards: men and women were denied choice equally. Under the new system men are still suppressed and at the mercy of those privileged to have power, and so it can hardly be called pro-choice. It is hardly the opposite. All it does is give women complete power over the future of a child they should be rights share with a partner, and even power over that partner themselves. Pro-life women don’t notice the difference either, because they can still use that power to enforce the old system. Pro-choice men don’t, because they are still victims to the same injustices. Meet the new system, same as the old system - just with a little added inequality.
We may as well call it a pro-woman stance and be done with it. The old system had its problems, but those problems are exactly the same under the new one for half of us, and at least the old one wasn’t sexist.
Basically guys: don’t have sex, because in doing so you forfeit control over your life. Don’t get raped either, because the law still won’t give you any rights. Your first son or daughter might get to live with your rapist, who can tell them lies about you and claim your money for support. I just saw pro-lifers criticised for ruling that it is better to hold your dying child in your arms than remove a clump of cells, but ‘pro-choicers’ support the exact same thing - they just don’t want it to happen to women. So men, unless you find a woman who actually cares about you enough to use this ridiculous imbalance of power fairly (which means going against their own decisions if they will cause a net increase in suffering), you may as well castrate yourself right now. I am a feminist after all, so that should be what I’m calling for: let’s castrate all men, and see how far women can go on their choice alone.
A lot of frustration here. An interesting thing is that the feminist movement regularly rejects the “argument to tone” when leveled at them but use it themselves quite often against others. Their justification, generally, is that it’s “right to be angry about your oppression.” Too bad they only recognize their own oppression as valid, despite constantly reminding us that it’s all about “experiences” and thus what they say should be considered valid without evidence.
Regardless of the tone, there are a lot of good points here. When it comes to men, in practice, there is no difference between a pro-life system and a pro-choice system, because the pro-choice system is only pro-choice for women. The only difference to men is the agent preventing them from exercising their own right to choice.
Setting aside the cisentric language, I’m sorry, but no. When the right to abortion is taken away, people with uteruses are undoubtedly more oppressed and more burdened, by the simple fact that they are the ones carrying the unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. They could be forced into pregnancy by their rapist/husband/lover, then forced to give birth by law, which would then tie them to their abuser if they weren’t self-sufficient enough to pay for themselves and their new baby, or simply weren’t able to escape. In contrast, cis-dudes can simply walk away. Seriously. Collecting child support is not as easy as people think it is. I agree that in an anti-choice system, everyone’s rights are taken away, but let’s not pretend they are at all equal.
Guys who get raped do face a different, and in a lot of ways more difficult burden, because many people assume they can’t be raped, and that if they were able to “perform,” it couldn’t have been rape. It’s absolutely sickening, and while most rape victim advocacy programs do address and serve male victims, the general public needs to be made more aware of the issue, just as they need to be made more aware of sexual assault issues in general. There are a lot of incredibly damaging misconceptions out there.
I’m still thinking about how I feel about requiring child support from unwilling fathers, so I can’t say much about that. I can certainly see your point, but a financial burden, while challenging for some, is still nowhere near the bodily, financial, and lifelong burden of caretaking.
And again, please, let’s not pretend there’s some epidemic of semen-stealing rapists, as I see implied again and again on men’s rights boards. Reproductive coercion can happen to anyone, in which case there need to be better ways of addressing the issue of support, but if the sex is consensual, everyone needs to be responsible for their own contraception. If you don’t think your lady-friend is being truthful about being on the pill, or if you don’t trust her not to poke holes in the condoms, use your own, tie them off, and throw them away yourself. There’s no need for castration, but you can also get a vasectomy, which is successfully reversible most of the time. Or, don’t fuck people you don’t trust!
Oh, and Tokyo scientists just created baby mice in April without any sperm, so…
For starters, this wasn’t about who had it worse, it was about equity under the law. In the case of a pro-life system, the law is applied equally in terms of rights. In our current semi-pro-choice system, the law is applied in a manner that is clearly unequal.
“which would then tie them to their abuser if they weren’t self-sufficient enough to pay for themselves and their new baby, or simply weren’t able to escape.”
Only if by “tied to their abuser” you mean that the “abuser” would be forced by law to pay for the child regardless of whether she sticks around. This assuming she doesn’t give the child up for adoption, or abandon it at the nearest hospital as she could in something like forty states and all of Canada. Child support is a lot easier to collect that you think it is. This is probably because you’re relying on entirely inaccurate assessments of unpaid child support. (Hint: 30% of unpaid support is owed by dead people. This should tip you off that there’s something seriously wrong with the numbers you’re seeing.)
Your assertion that cismen can “simply walk away” is ridiculous. In the US and Canada the government enforcement mechanism is actually quite complex and multifaceted, including ties to government benefits, income taxes, drivers licences, repossession of property and income garnishing. Sure, it’s possible, but it’s a helluva lot more difficult than you’re making it out to be.
“It’s absolutely sickening, and while most rape victim advocacy programs do address and serve male victims, the general public needs to be made more aware of the issue, just as they need to be made more aware of sexual assault issues in general.”
Bullshit. Even now, most support services for rape will outright turn away men, even assuming they don’t feed the poor guy some bullshit about how only women can be victims of rape. If a man attempts to report sexual assault, partner abuse or rape against him he’s liable to find himself in a jail cell nowadays, regardless of the evidence he presents. In many countries it’s not even possible to charge women with rape, or for a man to be raped as far as the legal definition is concerned.
While it might be technically correct that “victim advocacy programs” (assuming we’re thinking about the same thing here) behave in a slightly more egalitarian manner, services meant to help victims (the most important in the short run) certainly don’t.
Would it be appropriate for a woman to who had wished to have an abortion but couldn’t due to medical reasons and after delivery wished to give the baby up for adoption to be forced to give the child to the father, then pay outright extortionate amounts of money to him for the next 18 years for a child she never even wanted in the first place? If you answered “yes,” I’ll concede that your paragraph about child support is valid. If not, you’re a hypocrite, plain and simple.
Your final paragraph devolves into victim-blaming that is frankly disgusting and unworthy of response or consideration.
It doesn’t matter what it was about, I addressed what you said about equality, and it was wrong. I don’t see how two people, one with the body parts to bear children, and one without, can be made equal under the law in regards to reproduction, unless both have a complete right to their own bodies. The financial situation is a separate issue. Related, yes, but separate.
I don’t like to assume I know your life situation, but I don’t think you fully understand how abuse works to keep the victim feeling as if they cannot leave. Adding a pregnancy/child to the equation can only trap them further. Adoption can be incredibly difficult, even if one doesn’t want or intend to raise a child, because they’ve borne it for 9 months, given birth to it, and are now subject to a flood of hormones and emotions attaching them to it, and that doesn’t address the difficulties of putting a child up for adoption with an unwilling, manipulative and abusive father.
Do you have citations for your statistic? I’m interested in learning more about child support. I’ve said before that it’s very difficult to find a non-misogynistic men’s rights site or forum, so I haven’t delved much into it, and most of my time spent on reproductive rights is spent on the carrying and birthing and caretaking (or not) aspect.
I was specifically discussing rape victim advocacy programs, one of which I’m training for now, and yes, they do serve male victims unhesitatingly. As for the judicial system and society as a whole, they consistently fail rape victims, though I don’t disagree that they probably fail cismen rape victims at a greater rate than ciswomen (as for trans, genderqueer and non-binary…fuck).
Victim-blaming…who? You’re still assuming I’ve taken a position on child support, which I haven’t. Abortion rights are first and foremost about bodily autonomy, and the decisions you make with your body. As for semen, once it’s inside another person’s body, I can’t say. I really can’t, because it’s completely immoral to legally compel someone to either get an abortion or carry a pregnancy to term. That choice, whether or not to reproduce, ends at ejaculation. As for the financial aspect, which is what I hope you were addressing, I don’t know either. I lean towards no, if there was no consent to parenthood. Someone has to financially support the child, and government support is often inadequate, especially for single parents, and I doubt that will get better any time soon. So…everyone’s fucked?
Pro-life versus pro-choice is a false dichotomy.
If you’re a man who supports choice, you don’t notice the difference. If you don’t want to be a father under a pro-life system and find the prohibition of safe abortion frustrating, it can seriously hinder your ability to have sex for fun without risking a child. If you forget contraception just once, or if it fails, or if you are tricked, you may as well consign your life away to supporting a child.
If the child is unwanted, if you aren’t socially or emotionally ready to become a parent, if you are unable to support any children financially, you have no choice and your life turns upside down. If the child would be diseased or disabled or doomed to live a life of pain, you wouldn’t be able to spare it. If you had been raped, you wouldn’t be able to terminate the pregnancy.
These are problems that both men and women can face under a restrictive pro-life system, and it’s why many of them fight for access to abortion and birth control, which should be a fundamental right to prevent them being forced into parenthood without their consent.
So what does a ‘pro-choice’ system do? Does it solve a single one of these problems for men? No. It simply gives women sovereign power where their shared children are concerned, and allows them to make all of the decisions - potentially doing causing considerable suffering both to their partner and to an innocent child - single-handedly. There is no difference to a man under either system. All that changes is that the agent suppressing your choice switches from being the government to being the woman who took your semen. She may have done so against your will, she may not like you, but thanks to a neat double standard she now holds your future in her hands.
In an anti-choice system we didn’t have such double standards: men and women were denied choice equally. Under the new system men are still suppressed and at the mercy of those privileged to have power, and so it can hardly be called pro-choice. It is hardly the opposite. All it does is give women complete power over the future of a child they should be rights share with a partner, and even power over that partner themselves. Pro-life women don’t notice the difference either, because they can still use that power to enforce the old system. Pro-choice men don’t, because they are still victims to the same injustices. Meet the new system, same as the old system - just with a little added inequality.
We may as well call it a pro-woman stance and be done with it. The old system had its problems, but those problems are exactly the same under the new one for half of us, and at least the old one wasn’t sexist.
Basically guys: don’t have sex, because in doing so you forfeit control over your life. Don’t get raped either, because the law still won’t give you any rights. Your first son or daughter might get to live with your rapist, who can tell them lies about you and claim your money for support. I just saw pro-lifers criticised for ruling that it is better to hold your dying child in your arms than remove a clump of cells, but ‘pro-choicers’ support the exact same thing - they just don’t want it to happen to women. So men, unless you find a woman who actually cares about you enough to use this ridiculous imbalance of power fairly (which means going against their own decisions if they will cause a net increase in suffering), you may as well castrate yourself right now. I am a feminist after all, so that should be what I’m calling for: let’s castrate all men, and see how far women can go on their choice alone.
A lot of frustration here. An interesting thing is that the feminist movement regularly rejects the “argument to tone” when leveled at them but use it themselves quite often against others. Their justification, generally, is that it’s “right to be angry about your oppression.” Too bad they only recognize their own oppression as valid, despite constantly reminding us that it’s all about “experiences” and thus what they say should be considered valid without evidence.
Regardless of the tone, there are a lot of good points here. When it comes to men, in practice, there is no difference between a pro-life system and a pro-choice system, because the pro-choice system is only pro-choice for women. The only difference to men is the agent preventing them from exercising their own right to choice.
Setting aside the cisentric language, I’m sorry, but no. When the right to abortion is taken away, people with uteruses are undoubtedly more oppressed and more burdened, by the simple fact that they are the ones carrying the unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. They could be forced into pregnancy by their rapist/husband/lover, then forced to give birth by law, which would then tie them to their abuser if they weren’t self-sufficient enough to pay for themselves and their new baby, or simply weren’t able to escape. In contrast, cis-dudes can simply walk away. Seriously. Collecting child support is not as easy as people think it is. I agree that in an anti-choice system, everyone’s rights are taken away, but let’s not pretend they are at all equal.
Guys who get raped do face a different, and in a lot of ways more difficult burden, because many people assume they can’t be raped, and that if they were able to “perform,” it couldn’t have been rape. It’s absolutely sickening, and while most rape victim advocacy programs do address and serve male victims, the general public needs to be made more aware of the issue, just as they need to be made more aware of sexual assault issues in general. There are a lot of incredibly damaging misconceptions out there.
I’m still thinking about how I feel about requiring child support from unwilling fathers, so I can’t say much about that. I can certainly see your point, but a financial burden, while challenging for some, is still nowhere near the bodily, financial, and lifelong burden of caretaking.
And again, please, let’s not pretend there’s some epidemic of semen-stealing rapists, as I see implied again and again on men’s rights boards. Reproductive coercion can happen to anyone, in which case there need to be better ways of addressing the issue of support, but if the sex is consensual, everyone needs to be responsible for their own contraception. If you don’t think your lady-friend is being truthful about being on the pill, or if you don’t trust her not to poke holes in the condoms, use your own, tie them off, and throw them away yourself. There’s no need for castration, but you can also get a vasectomy, which is successfully reversible most of the time. Or, don’t fuck people you don’t trust!
Oh, and Tokyo scientists just created baby mice in April without any sperm, so…
It is believed at least 150,000 Australian women had their babies taken against their will by some churches and adoption agencies between the 1950s and 1970s.
Psychiatrist Geoff Rickarby has treated scores of affected women, and says it is a stain on Australia’s history.
“It sounds like some totalitarian country somewhere hundreds of years ago, but in fact it’s Australia only 35, 40 years ago,” Dr Rickarby said.
The chief executive of Catholic Health Australia, Martin Laverty, says he is sorry for what happened.
…
Juliette Clough is one of the women who says she was forced to give up her baby at a Catholic-run hospital in Newcastle in 1970.
She was 16 at the time and says she was alone, afraid and desperate.
“My ankles were strapped to the bed, they were in stirrups and I was gassed, I had plenty of gas and they just snatched away the baby,” Ms Clough said.
“You weren’t allowed to see him or touch him, anything like that, or hold him and it was just like a piece of my soul had died. And it’s still dead”
Margaret had a similar experience when her son was taken against her will in 1975, when she was 17.
“Straight away he was taken out of the labour ward. By the records it only took 13 minutes to transfer him from the labour ward to the nursery, so he was gone,” she said
The women claim they were not told about single parent benefits or their rights to revoke consent for adoption.
…
“Women have told stories about going into hospital not realising that they were going to have to give up their babies, but that pillows were put over their faces, that curtains were put up so they couldn’t see the baby,” Senator Siewert said.
Women have also told the ABC they were given milk suppressing drugs that have now been linked to cancer, as well as barbiturates that caused sedation and in some cases delirium.
Mr Laverty says it is not a period to be proud of.
When are people going to wake up and see that the Catholic Church is ran by absolutely despicable people?
Somehow I doubt saying, “Whoops. Sorry!” is going to make-up for the bullshit these women were put through.
I started thinking about a pretty controversial subject today: abortion. For the most part, I’m pro-life.
I personally think that there’s only two reasons why a woman should get an abortion. The first case is that the pregnancy is a result of rape. Okay, you didn’t consent to the sex. You shouldn’t have to have the kid if you don’t want to.The second case is if the pregnancy causes health complications for the mother. In this case, it’s pretty much a case of choosing the lesser evil. Would you rather risk one life or two (or more)?
It annoys me when I hear about women having unexpected pregnancies and getting the kids aborted. Yes, I do consider it to be a bit like murder. The baby is technically alive and you’re killing it. If the baby wasn’t a living being, there’d be no need for the abortion, now would there?It saddens me that a life is killed off before even being allowed to actually live. That’s cruel in my eyes.
If you didn’t want the baby, why didn’t you do something to prevent it? There’s plenty of forms of to do so. Ever heard of a condom or birth control or even spermicide? A lot of this stuff is relatively cheap, too. Granted, other forms of birth control are more expensive (ex. IUDs), but they last longer. Even if you do nothing to prevent it beforehand, there’s the morning after pill as well.
Most of the things that you can take or use before and after sex are relatively cheaper than the $300 or more that you can pay for an abortion. (Yeah, I’m bringing monetary thought into this argument. Deal with it.)
That’s my thought on the subject.
You are Level 5 Pro-Choice! :)
All kidding aside, I can tell you why some people don’t use birth control, and why it doesn’t always work.
Some people live too far away from a pharmacy or anywhere they can get condoms. If the nearest place to buy condoms or other contraceptives is an hour away, and you don’t have a car, it’s going to be really hard to get there.
Some people aren’t educated on contraception (hurray, abstinence-only education!). They may not know how to use and store condoms effectively, or may believe some of the trillions of myths about sex (you can’t get pregnant your first time; if the girl’s on top she won’t get pregnant; the pull-out method is foolproof, etc). They don’t know to use Plan B, or have been taught it’s an early abortion and so are morally opposed to taking it.
Some people are wary or mistrustful of contraception in general. This could be because they’ve swallowed the lies from abstinence-only educators about the effectiveness of condoms.
Some people can’t take birth control pills because they fuck with their body too much. I had to stop taking mine because they were making me irritable and depressed all the time. Some people are allergic to latex, and can’t find condoms made of other materials.
Some people can’t afford some methods of birth control. An IUD can cost up to $400 alone, not including the doctor’s visit and insertion fee. My coworker right now has $2 to her name, working two jobs and going to school full-time. She can’t afford any of that.
Some people suffer reproductive coercion. This is when a partner sabotages their birth control by, for example, poking holes in condoms, or refusing to use them altogether. This is not uncommon in abusive relationships.
Some people are unfortunate enough to live in an area where the only physician chooses to invoke conscience clauses. They don’t have to dispense medicine they are morally opposed to, such as Plan B or other birth control. Living in a rural area, with only one jerk physician and no car? S.O.L.
So that’s a list of some of the reasons people might not use birth control. It’s estimated that almost a third of American women will have an abortion by age 45. We can’t know everyone else’s life down to the T. It doesn’t do us or them any good to tell them what they should have done. It doesn’t make them less pregnant, less poor, less abused, and more educated on birth control. We can start from the front end by eliminating some of the reasons I listed, or we can start from the back end and continue the stigmatizing, shame, and unplanned pregnancies.
