So over in the Men’s Rights subreddit, some of the regulars have declared war on the meme above, attempting to “rebut” it by pointing out the many ways in which men’s bodies are regulated by the state.
Trouble is, they don’t seem to quite grasp what it means to have one’s body regulated by the state.
Their examples of laws regulating men’s bodies include conscription (which does not actually exist in the United States), sodomy laws (which, where they still exist, are no longer enforced), men not having their condoms paid for by insurance, and assorted laws that apply to both men and women, including “every time a man is precluded from smoking marijuana, taking ecstasy, or injecting himself with anabolic steroids for bodybuilding purposes.”
My favorite example, cited by numerous commenters, is alimony.
How exactly is alimony a restriction on men’s bodies? Well, according to the Men’s Rightsers, it’s a restriction on
![ghebert001 6 points 18 hours ago (?|?) The body which produces the labor that earns the money. permalink save parent report give gold reply [–]S31556926 4 points 18 hours ago (?|?) "You would've worked anyway." as if that makes forced labor without compensation somehow acceptable. Or that the coercive effects are somehow dismissible. permalink save parent report give gold reply [–]ghebert001 1 point 7 hours ago (?|?) Exactly, maybe the guy wants to work a low effort job because he just wants to earn enough money to live a simple life but now he's forced to work 2 or more grueling, high-stress jobs because apparently Muffin is entitled to "the lifestyle that has become accustomed to".](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/alimony.png?ssl=1)
One commenter spelled out the, er, “logic” in more detail:
Never mind that alimony, which is rarely awarded, can also go to men. And never mind that by this logic, every single law that’s ever been passed, including laws against embezzlement and jaywalking, could be considered a restriction on someone’s body. Hell, by this standard, parking tickets are an assault on your body because you have to earn the money to pay them.
Then there’s one dude who contends that women’s
“reproductive rights…” have never been limited. They can fuck out an endless supply of babies without a single hindrance. Hell, men are obligated to pay for each and every one of them.
Huh. So women “fuck out babies” with no help from anyone else?
I’m thinking that this fellow might need a refresher course in basic human biology
Also, I’m pretty sure that women as well as men are obligated to shell out money to provide for their own children. I don’t see a lot of young mothers getting showered with free food and diapers when they go to the grocery store.
To their credit, the regulars in Men’s Rights didn’t reward this last fellow with any upvotes.
Interestingly, none of the commenters bothered to track down the source of the claim in the meme. It’s not hard to find. It came from a report by the Guttmacher Institute documenting the number of bills regulating “reproductive health and rights” that were introduced in state legislatures in the first quarter of 2013. That’s right: there were 694 — not 624 — bills introduced in the first quarter of 2013 alone; 93 of them passed.
By the end of the year, as the Guttmacher Institute noted in a later report:
39 states enacted 141 provisions related to reproductive health and rights. Half of these new provisions, 70 in 22 states, sought to restrict access to abortion services. …
This makes 2013 second only to 2011 in the number of new abortion restrictions enacted in a single year. To put recent trends in even sharper relief, 205 abortion restrictions were enacted over the past three years (2011–2013), but just 189 were enacted during the entire previous decade (2001–2010).
This legislative onslaught has dramatically changed the landscape for women needing abortion. … In 2000, 13 states had at least four types of major abortion restrictions and so were considered hostile to abortion rights … 27 states fell into this category by 2013. … The proportion of women living in restrictive states went from 31% to 56% … .
While the overwhelming majority of these new laws restricted reproductive health and rights, there were a few states that bucked the trends:
In sharp contrast to this barrage of abortion restrictions, a handful of states adopted measures designed to expand access to reproductive health services. Most notably, California enacted the first new state law in more than seven years designed to expand access to abortion, and five states adopted measures to expand access to comprehensive sex education, facilitate access to emergency contraception for women who have been sexually assaulted and enable patients’ partners to obtain STI treatment.
You can read the details here. Somehow I doubt that any Men’s Rights Redditors ever will.
And my co-worker’s ex has the delayed application of automatic support withdrawals down to a science. He gets a new job and keeps it just long enough for the state to catch up and start garnishing him, then he switches jobs so he ends up never paying anything.
Has anyone seen this shit yet? Apparently AVFM thinks that disclosing one’s identification with the MRM is just like outing oneself as queer: http://www.donotlink.com/o1j
@Clarkgrrl
I don’t know your circumstances but from my own experiences of being an older child and watching the aftermath his parent’s divorce, it probably has more to do with punishing you and trying to manipulate into taking him back than it is not wanting to provide for children. He probably does love his children but being vindictive to you is more important to him. That’s exactly how my father was when my mother kicked him out when I was 14, for refusing to quit drinking and being a verbally abusive asshole when. I hated Friday afternoons because every Friday my father would come to the door and either start a fight with my mom or throw a wad of bills in her face and storm off to the car. My father then expected me and my brother to dutifully visit him for the weekend. My younger brother would always be happy to go but I always fought tooth and nail not to go, because all he ever did was leave my mother in tears and I refused to leave her alone like that. I would argue with him, saying that he had no right to treat her that and what he was giving her financially was nowhere near enough to feed me and brother throughout the week. His response was often that if i wanted to eat full time, I should live with him full time. If my mother wanted to be provided for, she should have to take him back. As time rolled on, he simply stopped paying. When I was sixteen, I was working in addition to going to high school, because my mother was on disability (she was agoraphobic and experienced panic attacks when she went out in public) and simply did not have enough money to support all of us. My brother lived with my father but I absolutely refused to do so. My father’s position was always that if i wanted to concentrate on school my choices were to live with him or convince her to take him back. My father today wonders why i am so “mean” to him, i.e. avoid him as much as humanly possible.
Goodness, AVFM sure does have zero trouble appropriating legitimate struggles to try and make their bullshit grumbles seem legitimate.
Paying alimony is the same thing as legislating against reproductive freedom!
Telling people you are a misogynist is the same thing as coming out!
What idiots.
I’m not saying this is equivalent at all, and this is generally a historical relic, but the image macro is wrong – since the dawn of time there have been laws regulating men’s bodies, most obviously sodomy laws, and men have been hanged for breaking them.
But yeah. Again, not something the MRA s actually care about, cos you can’t blame it on women.
A friend of mine is going through a divorce, with a five year old son. Her ex is refusing to look for permanent accommodation, rather than living in a youth hostel, so he never has to take his kid overnight. URGH.
Wow. Charming as always.
@ Ally’s article
The dude sounds exactly like my father when ever I bring up the topic my parent’s divorce or just my mother in general. The vilification of the evil ex-wife, the utter conviction that he did not or could not do no wrong, and being victimized by the evil state. Persucution complex BS. I simply just can’t take these claims at face value because of my own experiences. I always wonder what the kids say about all this, if they are even old enough to understand at all.
Sorry, it’s my daughter’s b-day soon and I am just dreading having to deal with father in person. Just gets me right antsy.
Also, from the article:
Is that the cradle of Western feminism?
@ Jack Remiel
Yeah, that’s not about men’s bodies specifically, though.
Most sodomy laws then and now include acts that different sex couples and same sex couples could theoretically do, and in the rare cases where they get specific about men having sex, it’s obviously targeting them because they’re gay, not because they’re men.
So even sodomy laws are either gender non-specific or LGBT discrimination specifically, not specifically against men.
So it’s very rare that the misters actually make me mad, as opposed to just making me chuckle and roll my eyes, but this rubbish has hit several nerves with me.
Firstly, my line of work requires me to have a good working knowledge of the facts and figures about actual forced labour worldwide, so FUCK YOU MISTERS for thinking your petty bile-filed little lives are in anyway comparable to those of the 20 million people (that we know of) that are trapped, abused and exploited in forced labour right now, this second. (Over half of whom are women, btw, before you try to appropriate that as another fucking “men’s issue”.)
Secondly, I come from a country where abortion is legal in exactly one situation: when the life of the mother is in danger and the life of the unborn is beyond saving. That’s the life of the mother, not to be confused with the health of the mother. Serious health risks are fine as long as you pop out at a baby at the end of it all. No provisions for fatal fetal abnormalities (you just carry that dead fetus to term, young lady!). Nothing covering rape or incest.
Recently, we were dragged up in front of the UN Committee of Human Rights to explain why we have been steadfastly ignoring our obligation under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which we have ratified, and therefore are bound by) to offer the most basic of basic reproductive rights to the women of our country. This, in a country that is still coming to terms with the atrocities of the Magdalene laundries and symphysiotomies being carried out on unconsenting women in state hospitals. This shit is not ancient history. This shit was going on well into to the 1980-90s. And the utter lack of access to abortion? That’s not even history. It’s happening right now. I may not live there right now, but I am a citizen of a country that does not recognize my right to an abortion unless I am literally dying.
And then there’s these assholes, twisting themselves into knots trying to find ways that men bodily autonomy is consistently legislated against?
No. Just no. Go fuck yourselves.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/colette-browne/forget-brooks-abortion-laws-make-us-a-global-laughing-stock-30434894.html
Well put, tinyorc!
Do you have any links to those figures on forced labor? I’d like to bookmark some of that info — particularly showing that it affects women and men.
By forced labor, above, I’m not actually talking about childbirth, although it does seem to apply in both cases… Sigh.
Sodomy laws are not about controlling men’s bodies. In nineteenth century Canada, a woman could only petition for divorce (to the Canadian Parliament) if the man committed adultery and if he had been cruel, abandoned her, was not supporting her, or committed sodomy against her person. Conversely, a man could petition divorce a wife for just committing adultery. A husband had to be be even a more of a d-bag for woman to be justified in petitioning for divorce.
So yah, old sodomy laws really aren’t specifically about policing men’s bodies.
Wow, I’m finding that person’s sob story incredibly hard to believe.
Firstly, the cradle of western feminism is the Upper West Side? Citation needed.
Secondly, “The state’s mobilization to remove me was the result of the Radical Feminist Legal Complex.” Uh… wut?
Apparently, not only is the Feminist HIvemind in charge, but it’s a Radical Feminist Hivemind. And that’s real.
lol, ninja’d by Viscaria.
Plus, women tended to be the ones punished for adultery.
I noticed that the guy in the link Ally posted never actually mentioned what the nature of the abuse his ex accused him of was. All he said was that he didn’t beat her. I somehow doubt she just went to court shrugged and said “Jon scares me” and that was that. The judge took away any custody rights. There are a whole lot of ways to terrorize someone without using physical violence.
@cloudiah:
Global estimates on forced labour and the methodology: http://www.ilo.org/washington/areas/elimination-of-forced-labor/WCMS_182004/lang–en/index.htm
The International Labour Organization have also just released a new study on the profits from forced labour:
http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/publications/WCMS_243391/lang–en/index.htm
I think that’s because he probably doesn’t believe anything that isn’t physical counts as abuse.
@Save The Queen
Yes, there are many similarities, but yours does seem to have been more hateful and difficult for you and your mother. I have a girl, 14, and a boy, 12. It is much more about punishing me than it is about supporting our children. He brought nothing to our home but anger, emotional and verbal abuse, and serious control issues. He is also using food as some sort of control. He shames our daughter’s weight, but will not spend the money to have fruits and vegetables available when he has the kids. She has gotten sick off the processed food he buys at the discount stores. When they came back after a week at his place, they both were hungry and just wanted good food. We don’t have much contact at all- mostly via text and email. So thankful for technology!! I have huge respect for the way the kids navigate the situation. I was apologising once for what they had to go through and my daughter responded, “But Mom, if we didn’t have any difficulties in our lives when we are young and have you to help us through them, then something would happen when we are older and we wouldn’t know how to handle it.” Wise beyond years, that one.
There have been a lot of sodomy laws then and now that applied to men but not women. Jamaica is one prominent current example and Germany’s Paragraph 175 is a prominent historical example. And there are a lot of others that theoretically applied to both genders but were mostly or only applied to men in practical use. So I do think that there’s a male-specific aspect there, although obviously it’s aimed at people who are both male and gay.
I remember reading an article once about how often Thai men are tricked into slavery. They’re offered jobs deep sea fishing, taken out to the sea and then forced into unpaid labor. Apparently, a lot of the trash fish that fish sauce is made from comes from slave labor. Whenever you order from a Chinese restaurant you might be supporting slavery 🙁
Yes, I saw that AVFM article. It’s like a template: guy was all feminist until his wife kicked him out for being abusive and now the entire gynocratic legal system and even the media won’t give him the time of day. Like all abusers, he can’t own up to his abuse. That’s the closet he needs to emerge from but it’s easier to hate women than take responsibility.
@Save the Queen
I know, right? They also have universal health care, unlike their American brethren. I point out to them that our shitty PM has defunded some women’s groups but does that cut any ice? Noooooo.
An MRA was complaining about there being zero emergency shelters for men so I gave him a link to one in Canada. He said it doesn’t have a shelter so I linked to the exact page since he was too lazy to look at the menu. Then he claimed he’d spoken to someone there who said it was for gay and homeless men down on their luck and was too scummy to bring kids to. I gave him yet more links to a newspaper article about a man who fled there with his child due to his wife’s violence plus a video interview with an employee. His next tactic was to claim he had a letter from the centre saying otherwise. Gah!! The denial of reality is so frustrating.
@ WatermelonSugar
That’s another thing about the antis, they don’t seem to realize that most clinics/offices that provide abortion also provide a bunch of other women’s healthcare services, so a certain percentage of the women they’re screaming “filthy murdering whore!” or “don’t you love your baby?” at aren’t even there for anything abortion-related. Though I guess a good percentage of the women there are probably sexually active, which, let’s be honest, is that most of the antis are really upset about.
@WWTH: I remember when that report came out. Horrific stuff. Maritime sector is apparently one of the worst offenders when it comes to forced labour.