Janet "Judgy Bitch" Bloomfield: Make it a felony for a woman to give birth if the father doesn't want a child.

Janet “Judgy Bitch” Bloomfield, A Voice for Men’s pseudonymous PR genius, is definitely an out-of-the-box thinker.

Unfortunately, she seems to be an out-of-the-box thinker in the same way that some cats are out-of-the-box poopers, leaving odorous and disgusting little “gifts” everywhere she goes.

Today I want to take a look at one of her recent gifts: her, well, ingenious attempt to answer the question “How do we make society care about men as much as they care about women?”

I’m going to ignore the fact that even the basic premise of this question is backwards. Because her solution is even more backwards, if it’s even possible to be more backwards than completely backwards.

So what is this solution? Make it a felony for a woman to give birth, if the father doesn’t want a child.

Er, what? I’ll let her explain, because I sure can’t:

I’ve written before about legal parental surrender and allowing men to walk away from children they have contributed genetic material to, just as women may do, but having given the issue more thought, I am convinced that will only lead to increased hatred of men, not less. For a law surrounding reproductive rights to create a society that genuinely cares about men, the law needs more bite. …

Here it comes:

No human child may be born without the on going and affirmative consent of the adults involved.

What? What on earth does this even mean?

Gender neutral and perfectly clear. To give birth to a child without the explicit consent of everyone who contributed genetic material should be a felony and the child should immediately be seized and placed for adoption by the state.

Really? Yes, really:

In the beginning, to be sure, we are going to end up seizing a lot of babies under equal reproductive rights, but it will not take long for reality to sink in: make this choice and you will suffer for it.

I’m pretty sure the kid will suffer, too, but that never seems to be an issue with most MRAs.

So does Bloomfield’s, er, ingenious solution mean that men who don’t want children will be able to force women they’ve impregnated into having abortions? Oh, don’t be silly. They can give birth to all the babies they want, assuming they don’t mind nine months of pregnancy and, oh yeah, having the government seize their babies after they’re born.

[N]o one will be forced into abortions they do not want. If a woman falls pregnant with a child the father does not consent to, she will not be forced to abort that child. She is free to follow her conscience and give birth to that child. She will not be allowed to keep it, but she may give birth to it. Marital status will make no difference. If you do not have the consent of the father, the infant will be seized.

Uh, JB, what about those felony charges? You just said that doing this would be a felony. Is it too much for me to ask that your crackpot solution at least be internally consistent?

Apparently so, since she forgets about the felony bit and moves on to some of the wonderful things she thinks will happen if her proposal were to become law.

The most immediate effect of a law like this is that a market for male reproductive services emerges. A 35-year-old woman that no man on the planet has consented to reproduce with has a choice: she can pay a man to consent to parenthood. His consent means that he is obliged to support the resulting child so his fee will be:

Child support + ongoing expenses over 18 years + premium for looks, intelligence, height, etc.

That could be a very sweet deal, and men will suddenly be rather valued by women who choose to forgo any efforts towards attracting men into a mutually beneficial pair-bond.

The always classy Bloomfield illustrates this last point with a picture of feminist writer Jessica Valenti, a woman whom Bloomfield seems just a teensy bit obsessed with. It’s an odd choice, given that Valenti is married and a mother.

Bloomfield goes on to endorse “the presumption of shared parenting” in the wake of a divorce. This is a bit of an old chestnut with the Men’s Rights crowd, but Bloomfield has some, well, original thoughts about the possible consequences of making this the law.

Wanna break up your relationship? Have at it. But you will not take the children with you.

Really? What if your ex has never shown any interest in raising these children? What if your ex is an abuser? Apparently, in Bloomfield’s world, all accusations of abuse directed at men are false accusations. She skips merrily past this issue and indulges in more fantasizing:

This also creates a market. Let’s say a woman whom no man has consented to have a child with desperately wants children. She will have to prove her worth to the man by parenting his existing children brilliantly. This is gender neutral, of course. A man who wishes to have more children will also have to parent a woman’s existing children very well to prove his worth.

Bloomfield’s repeated attempts to claim that her proposals are “gender neutral” are a bit odd, given that the whole point of both proposals is to punish women. I’m not reading between the lines here: she states it outright.

Women have gotten away with shit from time immemorial because we have the babies. No society can live without us. It is the sole source of our value and always will be.

Wait, what? The only reason women have value is because they can give birth? What about those women who can’t have children?

Actually, wait a minute: if women’s worth is determined solely by popping out babies at regular intervals, why am I even bothering to read a blog post by a woman – a blog post the author evidently thinks is worthless, because it’s not a baby?

A society in which all women are brilliant engineers and not one of them will have children is a dead society.

Huh? A society in which all men are trapeze artists and not one of them will have children is also a dead society. You can’t really have much of a society if half the population works a single job. Or if no one in the society ever has kids.

Reproductive equality is the key to making a society that cares about men as much as women. Equality leads to more equality?

Yep.

Lots of women ain’t gonna like that. Tough shit.

Yeah, I don’t think that “equality” is the reason that no decent or sensible person of any gender is going to like Bloomfield’s “solution” here. Somehow I think the whole baby-seizing business is going to be a bigger sticking point. Hell, even a few of the commenters at AVFM had a problem with that part of her proposal.

So the obvious question is: Does Bloomfield really want the government to go into the baby seizing business? Or is this a sort of “outrage clickbait,” an attempt to garner attention by saying the most outrageous thing she can think of?

I’m guessing the truth lies somewhere between these two poles; it’s reminiscent of Roosh’s “stop rape by legalizing it” post not that long ago. Sure, she’s interested in driving traffic to her blog and to AVFM. But she seems to actually believe at least most of the nonsense she posts. And, for what it’s worth, the commenters at AVFM seem to think she’s sincere.

One thing this clearly isn’t is satire – at least not using any definition of the word that anyone outside of AVFM would agree with.

Indeed, the only way this could be considered “satire” would be if Bloomfield was attempting to satirize the sort of terrible person who would actually propose baby seizing as a way to bring about equality.

But Bloomfield isn’t satirizing that sort of terrible person. She is that sort of terrible person.