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.
Huh? I’ve always thought most MRAs are politically libertarian-leaning, yet ideas like this are overtly totalitarian.
Don’t worry, I don’t think she does either. Poor thing.
@dhag
REALISM IS MISANDRY!
Yes I know I’ve said that twice now. But honest to God I swear that’s what these idiots think.
god i wanna burn something
Zolnier, do you remember the title? That sounds really interesting.
The Declaration, by Gemma Malley.
So let me get this straight, According to Bloomfield, men should have a say over women’s reproductive abilities, to “balance things out” because women trap men by having babies, but women who don’t want to reproduce, (who, by Bloomfield’s logic are not trying to trap men), should not be allowed to make that choice for themselves. So, we’re putting women’s bodies in complete control of men, giving birth is compulsory, but heaven forbid the man involved decide he’s not okay with having a child. But that’s just “leveling the playing field,” never mind the fact that it’s not been level for women from the beginning.
Also, I’ve said it before about Bloomfield and I’ll say it again: She might think that she is the exception, as she panders to the MRA crowd, but all of those awful things they believe about women they believe about her, too, and the minute they disagree with her, or she and a man have different ideas about what she should be doing with her body regarding either sex or reproduction, the fact that she has pandered to them is not going to get them to view her as an autonomous person with rights.
re: artificial wombs: From what I understand about the dynamic nature of the neural development of a fetus, a child born without having been in a uterus in a person would probably end up with some serious issues (think on the scale of “orphaned babies left in cribs with little to no human contact beyond that which is strictly necessary”) even if the other processes, transfers, and interactions could be worked out.
We’re neurologically complex social mammals that need more than strictly quantifiable inputs and outputs in order to develop.
Thanks, M., and you and your cat just made my day. Please give kitty a scritchy for me and thank you both for the much-needed and appreciated laugh.
So…if men don’t want any responsibility, the women can’t have any either, and we’re going to dump it onto the government instead, in a way that maximizes everyone’s unhappiness?
These people are moving farther and farther away from any sort of reality. All they want to do is gleefully hurt people, and that is a very wrong thing.
Why exactly does everything, and I do mean everything, have to be about market value to these guys? Especially when it comes to human rights and human lives?
Re:katz – I apologize if I sounded as if I was “demanding” to know what is wrong with natural childbirth. I was curious about both the options and the reasons for wanting them. I do understand that pregnancy is a) not an option for everyone and b) not always a joyful experience. And I admit that I have very strong feelings about the issue, for a number of reasons. Two come immediately to mind:
The first is that we do not understand how much of being fully human – in both physical and mental/emotional development – depends on growing inside the body of a woman. Until we can be certain that it makes no difference whether the womb is real or artificial, I would not be so quick to “free” women from pregnancy.
The second is that MRA-types are very eager to end the only reason they see for the continued existence of women. After all, if they can produce only male children – and I do not for a moment believe that most of them would want daughters – and keep the “REAL” human race alive, they would jump at the chance. It is my opinion, and only my opinion, that the development and use of artificial wombs would spell the beginning of the end for women worldwide. Why trust nature/women, when you can create the designer boy of your dreams? Or genetically alter some boys to be perfect soldiers? Or some women to be perfect fembots? Why on Earth would any woman trust men with that technology? That power? Do they not already have enough?
I do not buy into the idea that many, both men and women, have that pregnancy and childbirth make us somehow less or enslaved or whatever. That is one area that women have to take back and redefine. Again, just my opinion. Like every other aspect of life, we have to define it all in OUR terms, not the terms that have been handed to us.
Sigh. Sorry for the rant. I will now go and watch a movie or something.
I’m pretty sure this is a world run by MRAs
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/valente_08_12/
Having given birth, I’m a big fan of the idea of artificial wombs, but they’re a long way off. There’s still a huge amount we don’t know about female reproductive systems in general and the mechanics of pregnancy in particular. Even with current technology, it’s very difficult to study up close and personal, as it were.
For just one example, in recent years it’s been found that the human placenta plays a complex, active role in fetal development, commandeering the woman’s body to control the flow of nutrition, turn hormonal signals on and off, and even exchange DNA. (This doesn’t seem to be true of most mammals, but humans and some apes have really aggressive placentas.) I don’t know how you’d begin to replicate those processes artificially, especially since we don’t yet fully understand them.
Meanwhile, JudgyBitch is a funny little woman.
It’s certainly run by men (and to our benefit)
One argument of feminism I don’t buy is that patriarchy also negatively affects men; that’s like saying “those poor white plantation owners; we really must do something about slavery for their sakes”.
@Alan:
Male/female relationships aren’t quite as bad as slavery… so there’s room for things like toxic masculinity. The negative effects are mainly in rigid gender roles, where men are also forced by culture to fill certain roles, act in a certain way, dress in a certain way, and so on, or else be ostracized.
It’s not that complicated, really, as long as your rhetoric doesn’t get away from you. 🙂
Although, you could say that during the “one drop rule” phase of racism, “white” people who were suddenly accused of having non-white ancestors were suddenly treated differently. Same with people who had no problems with marrying people of a different race, and were suddenly thought of as degenerates because they did.
These issues are never big enough in scale to warrent being the primary focus; they’re just a bunch of little ways intense, ingrained cultural bigotry lashes back on the powerful occasionally.
@Alan
Essentially, both patriarchy and slavery make oppressors worse people.
@ kirbywarp & luzbelitx
Admittedly we don’t quite treat you as slaves these days. 🙂 [Although that might just be in the West]
I can see how some non ‘traditional’ men don’t get all the benefits of patriarchy; although they still get a lot of them, but I’m not sure that any sort of ‘diminishes your soul’ argument really counts. Does the guy who gets promoted over a woman because he wont be taking time off to have babies really feel any worse. Isn’t it an aspect of privilege that you don’t realise you have it? How can it affect you negatively in that case? We’ve seen from this site that a number of men think *they’re* the ones getting the hard time; they certainly don’t feel guilty about it.
It’s an interesting topic though.
Sorry I should add to address the rest of your point:
I can see how being an oppressor can make you a ‘worse’ person in an objective sense if it leads to even more of a sense of entitlement and superiority. But does that actually negatively affect the person themselves? It doesn’t matter what outsiders think of them; they’ll surround themselves with similar people, and materially they’ll only feel the benefits.
Alan, I think it’s a good argument. Patriarchy IS bad for men, and some men will only be motivated by self-interest. I read a long time ago ‘the throne room is as much a prison as the dungeon’. Keeping other human beings in bondage is corrosive to the human spirit, whether that bondage is de facto or de jure. It would be great to appeal to people’s better natures, but self-interest gives you more leverage.
I started working on my own racism in college, because I saw other interracialist white gay men behaving badly and didn’t want to be like them.
Zolnier, great story. Thanks for the link.
Regarding pregnancy and childbirth, my mother told me once (in response to a question) that she had never had problems. If she’d had to go through what some of her friends had, though, she would have stopped at two. As number six, this was disquieting. My father had couvade symptoms every single time.
Hi Robert
‘the throne room is as much a prison as the dungeon’.
Hmm, can’t help but think that might have been a King who wanted to head off a peasant’s revolt who said that; or perhaps a peasant who wanted to make himself feel better,
I get what you’re saying, but it perhaps only applies to decent sorts of people who will try not to be unfair in any event. To take your racism example; I was once in a situation at a Tube station where a police sniffer dog got excited. The police pulled the young black lad behind me. Now, as a middle class liberal type I obviously felt a *bit* guilty. But that was the worst of it; and easily outweighed by the practical benefit.
You’re obviously just a nicer person than me.
Yeah. There are a lot of negative effects on men, actually. Feminists generally don’t like to center discussion on them as it reframes the problem back to focusing on men, but toxic masculinity sucks for dudes too.
Men are told they have to be aggressive, violent, hetero, unemotional, sex machines who are always the “leader” in any relationship with any woman. They can’t wear skirts, can’t wear pink, can’t knit, can’t sew, can’t be stay at home parents, can’t be nurturing, can’t express themselves unless it’s anger, can’t be on Pinterest, can’t cook, can’t treat women like people.
It’s genuinely crappy for men too. Overall it’s probably worse for women, but a lot of 16-year-old boys who actually enjoyed home ec, hated shop and preferred choir practice to football could probably tell you it’s not super awesome funtimes for them either.
Hi Jarnsaxa
Yup I can see how not all men benefit (though most do). It’s funny, I’m a pretty blokey bloke. I like stuff like (consensual) fighting, Land Rovers, rummaging around in dirt etc. but I do have some less macho interests (I’m soppy for donkeys for instance). I do get a ‘pass’ on this though. It’s seen as a quirk. Without the traditional masculine aspects of my life I suspect that might not be so. almost like you have to ‘prove’ yourself as a dude before you’re allowed any deviation from that.
Still not sure addressing this falls on feminists though. You’ve got enough on your plate; think this is for us to sort.
How does this work? Apparently, in a normal pregnancy, the man could opt out from fatherhood as long as abortion is feasible. But then you could also make a special breeding contract before conception, where opting out isn’t possible for the man (and probably not for the woman either because gender neutrality, natch)
Who’s paying whom here? If the children live with the father and the mother doesn’t, then it makes sense for her to pay child support, but that’s not a “fee”, and he would presumably also pay some of the child’s expenses.
@Alan
I’m no saying it’s a great argument, or it can be used in any case with anyone. I’m just saying it’s the truth.
I agree it should not, and usually is not, the job of feminism to “sell” its benefits to men.
I do think it is a good argument as long as you’re talking to someone who doesn’t want to be an asshole.
Also, I don’t think it is meant to point a direct damage to the person, or one that is perceived directly by the person.
Violence against women is the #1 obstacle for sustainable development in the world. But then, you need to be interested in a fair, sustainable world in the first place for this argument to work.
MRAs rant on an on about how men created everything, but they fail to notice that even if that was true, it means half of humankind’s creative potential is going to waste.
Alos: I too think this is an interesting subject.
Personally, I met my compañero three years ago, when he was a way more experienced and informed political activist that I was.
But I’m a really fast learner, and when I finally got to the point of “hey, there can’t really be social justice without feminism, you know?” I felt he was the one being left behind.
He’s very kind and loving, and has a very strong sense of justice, but sometimes regarding sexism he just doesn’t see it. Not sexism itself, but how deeply it affects women’s AND men’s lives, as well as society as a whole.
It is frustrating sometimes, but it also gives me food for thought. <Tons of it.