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.
Thanks, tinyorc!
RE: cloudiah
I should really start doing clinic defense again.
Can you talk a little about that? We’ve been thinking of taking up some kind of volunteer thing, and seeing as the one time I was on birth control, it cost more than my month’s rent for a month’s supply AND required an anal exam to get… I’d like to be useful.
Clinic defense? Well, this was back in the early 1990s (I am an old lady) but where I did it it was mostly a response to swarms of Operation Rescue people coming to town, recruiting volunteers, and then trying to shut down particular clinics. We did things like infiltrate their early morning meetings so that we could find out which location(s) were targeted, and then we had people staged all over town so that once we knew where they were going to hit we could try to get there before them and keep a safety zone open. These got to be pretty massive events — the bad news was that just the size of the crowds was enough to make many people turn away, but the good news is that we would call people who had appointments at the affected clinic and tell them which clinics were still open and even offer them rides if they couldn’t get to alternate locations.
There was a ton of verbal abuse and some physical abuse at these things. But we were there in roughly equal numbers to them, so we could usually defend ourselves.
I haven’t done the kind of CD that involves smaller groups of protesters who are just always there harassing women. I hear the verbal abuse at those is pretty terrible too, and they’re always recording because they hope you’ll snap and then they can use the footage to show how we’re so terrible and violent.
As a fellow Chicagoan, I’ll second this. I’ve actually looked into volunteering as an escort (I’ve got the right temper for it, from what I’ve learned by reading), and learned that the clinics that need them because of the more virulent variety of protester are so far Downstate* that I can’t really get to them readily. I’d feel worse about this fact if it didn’t mean my wife is living in a part of the country where such services would be available, on demand, if we ever needed them.
*: Total aside for those not familiar with the local jargon here: Illinois pretty much is divided into three territories: “The City”, which encompasses most of Cook County (and thus, all of Chicago, as well as some close-in suburbs); The Burbs, which covers the rest of Cook County and some portions of the collar counties; and Downstate, which is pretty much the rest of the place. The City is Machine Democrats and Lakefront Liberals; The Burbs are mostly a mix of blue-collar and establishment Republicans; Downstate is a blend of Farm Democrats and Tea Partiers, from what I can see. We’re a ‘purple’ state, as a result, with all sorts of fringe elements (including honest-to-goodness “Why are there still monkeys?” Creationists).
So, yeah, if I lived another 40 minutes west or south, I might be close enough to a clinic where such things occur.
@Cassandra IIRC Planned Parenthood in the states had a stat going around that only 3% of what they provide is abortion services so the vast majority of people getting screamed at are probably just going for pap smears or condoms. Not that people going for abortions deserve it any more but you’re right and its just sickening.
I’ve been to PP for an abortion and you have to go hang out there all day basically to get tests done and all that, then come back for the actual abortion appt. a different day. I did notice that the protesters were out in full force the actual day when they preform most abortions (I think they only have the doctor that does them in one day a week here) and not so much on the other day.
Assholes, the lot of them.
Oh, that article Ally linked to, yipe.
1) The old canard that feminism wants “special treatment” for women. Yeah, you get the discussion of systemic discrimination in adolescence, mister, because funnily enough 5-year-olds developmentally can’t comprehend ideas like “privilege” and “passive structural prejudice”.
2) This guy’s creepy, creepy use of the passive voice and minimising any basis for criticism of himself. He didn’t actually deny having hit his partner, but also trying to claim that DV shouldn’t count unless it’s physical? Doesn’t that fly in the face of all the MRA types claiming men are psychologically abused by women ALL THE TIME? And his complaints that everybody is misrepresenting him as “angry” seems hilarious – if dozens of complete strangers with no collaboration independently come to the conclusion you’re an angry person, you may not want to discount the possibility that they might be right.
3) All together now – feminists don’t hate men, they hate sexism. And this guy’s obviously re-written that article several times to try and scrub the obvious misogyny out of it so he comes across as A Reasonable Guy, but he gives the game away by calling his ex-wife “hysterical” (them ladies with their over the top emotions, amirite? Not like us calm, rational men) and invoking the time honoured “I’m not touching you!” defense against claims of abuse. I’d be intrigued to know what’s actually been presented as evidence when this guy claims there was “no proof” of abuse.
In my opinion the issue of conscription, as it applies to United States, needs some clarification. David, you are indeed correct that *conscription* does not exist in the United States. Indeed, it has never existed. Conscription, however, is but one type of compulsory military service and the United States has, as you know, had compulsory military service in various forms during some periods of its history. Conscription often refers to a requirement to serve in the armed force applied and administered by a national or central government authority uniformly across a given population under its control. Historical examples would include most nineteenth-century European states and some twentieth-century states. A few European countries (e.g. Greece) today still have conscription. A power structure can apply compulsory military service in a more limited and circumscribed way than conscription. That is what has happened at very points in American history; e.g. militia laws in various states through the late nineteenth century required military service from males but only part-time and under certain conditions and with plenty of exemptions. Or one might point to “Selective Service” in World War One and in the period 1940-1973 In American popular culture and political discourse, people tend to use the term “the draft” to refer to all forms and types of compulsory military service but that is not technically nor historically accurate. It remains true, nevertheless that anyone (whether or not they call themselves an MRA) would be correct to point to, for example, the Selective Service Act of 1940 as an example of a law regulating male bodies – at least to a limited extent. (If a man did not obey the state’s order to register and to report for service if selected, he could be imprisoned.) Of course MRA claims about compulsory military service in the United States fail on a more fundamental level which the readers of We Hunted the Mammoth will not find surprising – a consistent theme of feminist movements in the United States has obviously been advocating *against* militarization — a concept which many feminists themselves defined as including compulsory military service. If one was *truly* concerned about the regulation of male bodies by compulsory military service one would likely find feminists more allies than opponents. Moreover, the same constituencies and power structures that effect militarism in the United States regulate and violate women’s bodies and repress women’s agency to greater effect than they regulate male bodies through Selective Service laws. The compulsory military service issue is but one example of how feminist activism often pushes for the very same things that, if effected, would often benefit marginalized men in addition to women. That MRA’s fail to recognize this is the most compelling evidence their motives have nothing to do with actually advancing the rights of men. It also suggests that they do not know nor understand the history of armed forces, warfare and armed conflict. (Funny, isn’t it, how the great manly men of the MRM usually don’t know much about actual soldiering?)
My friend’s ex has refused to pay his half of the pre-school fees, alleging that the money he gives her should cover all of that. However, they have 50/50 shared care which means a reduction in benefits available to her as a part time casual worker, whilst he retains half of the annual bonuses and tax credits available to parents. The CSA have informed my friend that his support payments to her reflect that he is expected to pay for his half preschool fees. He still refuses and says (I couldn’t make this up) that he refuses to give her money just to support her lifestyle. Meanwhile, he is working full-time in a job that he has progressed quite nicely in over the 12yrs she raised the kids. He also sends my friend abusive texts late at night calling her an unfit mother and threatening to take her to court for full custody.
@BigMomma, what an asshat. Willing to make his own kids suffer to get back at his ex.
@Cloudiah.. Yup I know. It’s been 2 years since they separated and both are in new relationships. He still blames her for everything. She did ask him to leave as he’d been caught cheating for the third time so go figure. I’m not saying my friend is perfect, relationships stop working because 2 people are the right fit, it’s the level of vitriol he brings when you think he betrayed her trust, emotionally and physically. The whole ‘going for full custody ‘ thing is an attempt to intimidate her because he actually knows what a devoted mum she is. Luckily she got loads of advice from a lawyer about his lack of leg on which to stand. And she got it for free after he realised who her ex is because the lawyer had run across him professionally and knew what an entitled asshat he was.
Who knew that Pavlov hated paragraph breaks?
clarkgrrl5, your daughter almost made me cry. What wonderful, strong, smart kids.
Another insidious group of people are “Equalists”. There’s nothing controversial about them wanting men and women to be equal, they delude themselves into thinking that all acts of bigotry are equal, and that (in my experience) believe that men and women are oppressed equally. They think they’re superior to MRA and Feminists alike. A truly delusional group.
I spoke with my priest about the “clarity clinic” (pro life pregnancy center) dickwad that spoke at church a few weeks ago. It was depressingly predictable. So so depressing. I was glad he acknowledged it was a “complicated issue” and it was good of him to hear me out and we had a nice moral quandary discussion about human life being sacred and “when does life begin” and all that. But he was so on the uncompromising stance of life beginning at conception that I couldn’t get the conversation past that. I told him I didn’t get the local war on planned parenthood. Like “you are AGAINST abortion, aren’t you? Then what gives? They’ve done more to prevent abortions than all those self righteous picketers!” But, he didn’t get it. I love my church and I don’t want to leave, but I don’t subscribe to any of the pro life crap. Probably because it’s not really pro life at all. They’re pro fetus, but every other life involved in the process can go fuck themselves as far as they’re concerned. I keep thinking I should stay because the church needs me. Change doesn’t happen by walking away. I just wish all those people in the pews that are on birth control and pro choice and ok w gay marriage would fucking speak up more. Why was I the only one who stormed out of church that day? (That I saw, I’m hopeful I wasn’t the only one).
On the Planned Parenthood issue, did you ask him what he expected low-income people without insurance to do if your local PP was shut down? Does he plan to have your church pay for the checkups that PP was doing?
To clarify – Christians are supposed to care about poor people, right? Going after PP specifically will always have a disproportionate impact on low-income people. If a PP shuts down, people who have insurance and/or enough money to travel to a clinic further away for their basic gyno needs will be OK, but low-income people will be deprived of not only basic care but cancer screening that might save their lives. So by helping to shut down a PP you’re increasing the likelihood that low-income women will die of cancer, which really doesn’t seem very Christian.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you that the misters know fuckall about alimony or child support. Let’s see–my uncle never paid a dime and faced zero consequences (of course this was the 70s/80s when enforcement was a total joke), and a good friend of mine’s ex died owing her somewhere in the neighborhood of 20k for support and he never spent a day in jail (for that anyway).
Cassandra kitty,
I’m totally with you there. The presence of the picketers is not an official church one (in my area). They’re from some “right to life” group. So I couldn’t challenge him on that because he’s got nothing to do with it and is (somewhat) against those methods, (shaming, moralizing, judging, etc). But yeah, he’s against planned parenthood. I don’t fucking get it. It seems like a non issue. I mean ESPECIALLY if you’re against abortion, and for helping those in need. I’m sick of the obsessive focus on fetal life. There is so much more PP does and so many other actual lives and actual injustices we could be focusing our outrage on. It kills me. It’s so hard for me.
I’d be more OK with their obsessive focus on the fetus if they even pretended to give the barest of fucks after the little miracles are born.
@Nitram:
Depending on the numbers in groups, change may also not happen if one stays. If birth control and pro-choice and being okay with gay marriage are against the tenets of what your church teaches, the issue is with the church hierarchy and not with the local group, who will be following what the hierarchy tells them to do. (I realise I am making an assumption that your church is part of a wider organisation, please let me know if this assumption is incorrect.)
If you know who the others are who are pro birth control, pro choice and pro gay marriage, can you meet with them away from church and discuss what options you have as a group, for example going to speak with the priest? However, your use of the word priest makes me wonder if your church is Catholic, and so you may not have much luck.
The blockquote monster got me, even though I’m using the Firefox addon. The second blockquote is my text.
I think it is the blockquote monster who is the antichrist.
Wasps are the antichrist. So it is written.
Pally girl,
I meant needs me like it needs people who are progressive. Or yes, they will eventually lose people. I could meet with like minded parishioners and see where that goes. And yep catholic, and yep I know this is futile in some regard. But teachings DO change and evolve, so I’m holding onto that and trying to do my part. That was a good suggestion to meet with people. I have found in the past though that prochoice Catholics tend to just be oddly comfortable with the inconsistencies and hypocrisies. They shrug their shoulders and then go to a gay pride parade or get fitted for their iud the day after their baby is baptized. (IUDs are considered abortions agents btw). It’s hard, I can’t even describe the dilemma I’m in. Going to bed now. Thanks for all the feedback folks!
I wonder if walking away is what actually might change things. If the Church is in danger of losing their followers, that might get them to change. There is some precedent for this. They were warming to the heliocentric view of the solar system. Then the reformation started and they took a swing back to the right. They didn’t want to be viewed as not Godly enough and embracing science gave their opponents ammunition.
1 out of 10 Americans (like my dad) are already ex Catholics. I’m not sure how many in other industrialized countries have left the religion. I don’t think the Church wants to lose too many more people. That desire is reflected in their choice of Francis as the new pope.
Of course, I know leaving your religion isn’t an easy choice to make. Nor is it my place to tell someone that they should do it. These are just my own personal opinions.
For people considering becoming a clinic escort, here’s a blog run by some: http://everysaturdaymorning.net
I don’t think I could do it on a regular basis. I’m very grateful that it’s not necessary in Canada.