Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, some of the loudest MRAs are celebrating the apparent end of Roe V. Wade with an outburst of mean-spirited gloating. “This is great news,” declares syedalired21.
“Imagine holding women accountable to the same degree men are held accountable in ANY manner?” writes B1G_Fan smugly.
The cheerful mood is not because MRAs have anything against abortion in principle. It’s because they think the right to abortion isn’t a right at all but a privilege that’s been granted only to (cis) women while (cis) men are, in their view, denied any “reproductive rights” of their own.
You might wonder how someone without a uterus could have any “reproductive rights” at all, but the MRAs have it all figured out. If women are allowed to get abortions, then men should be allowed “financial” or “paper” abortions — that is, they should be able to wriggle out of their child support obligations by signing a piece of paper.
“I’m pro-choice,” writes a Men’s Rights Redditor called Professional-Two5216.
But what bothers me if a female does not want the responsibility of pregnancy and of a child she can abort it. Ok. Her body her choice. I take no issue there.
But if a male (AKA The biological father) doesn’t want responsibility of the unborn child he is still forced to financially support said child post birth . If the mother is willing to carry the child to term despite the father’s objection, the father should be able to sign legal documents freeing him of any financial and social obligation
Mextremelymoderate is a bit blunter:
Women are getting a little taste of what it feels like to be a man. How does it feel ladies?
As some see it, feminists have forfeited the right to complain about an abortion ban, because they haven’t stood up for “paper abortions” along with real ones. According to McFeely_Smackup
Feminism dug this hole for themselves. they could have spent 50 years building widespread support across both sexes for reproductive rights, but instead they treated men with scorn and contempt for suggesting men deserve rights too.
Feminists, you did this. You’re on your own. Just like you always told me I was.
Airsailer writes:
Women are complaining about losing reproductive rights that men never had. You can be 100% sure if the situation was reversed you wouldn’t hear celebrities going on any media outlets or social media talking about the injustice. But instead of women saying “hey, we need men’s support” all you hear about is how men are still trying to oppress women every God Damned Day. I’m sorry, after years of being told I’m the cause of all evil in the world I couldn’t really give a shit.
Some MRAs think that the Supreme Court’s (draft) decision will put them in a position of power when dealing with feminists. Explains funnystor:
If men want political leverage for not being forced into parenthood, it’s completely reasonable to say that we support abortion rights only conditional on men having the right to not be forced into parenthood too. If enough men take this position to be the swing vote on abortion, it will force feminists to negotiate with us … .
“It strengthens our argument because it places us in a negotiation position,” argues azazelcrowley.
Instead of demanding they give us something for nothing anymore, we can instead refuse to help them get abortion rights.
Instead, we push for a “Consent to parenthood” ammendment and refuse to back anything else. They can howl about how we’re killing women and we’ll say;
“Nope. You can support the ammendment too.”
and they’ll scream “Just back abortions” and we can simply refuse.
We need to become the key demographic they need to win over.
Yeah, I’m sure that will work great.
A few in the Men’s Rights think their fellow MRAs, too eager to gloat over what they see as a long-overdue crackdown on women’s behavior, are missing an important point: If women lose access to abortion, they will be forced to bear more babies that men will have to pay for, at least in part.
“If abortion is banned,” writes Stars3000, “more men will end up paying child support for accidental pregnancies.”
“[I]magine if you fucked some nasty bitch you don’t want to be tied to forever and get her pregnant,” warns ShitFauxBrains, who manages to get his comment downvoted to negative fourteen by guys who didn’t want to hear this.
A few commenters are pessimistic about the chances that the Supreme Court decision will help the Men’s Rights movement at all. Clockw0rk notes that
The feminists and their mindless drones are already shouting from the rooftops about how men have all the reproductive rights and the SCOTUS is only punishing women because they’re fascists(?).
I don’t think there’s any positive traction MRAs can make on this issue as long as male sexuality is diminished and demonized. We’re not seen as equal parents, whether it’s in the creation or the continued raising of children, and we’re not given basic protections like genital integrity and we have no say in the abortion/legal abandonment of our young.
It’s a fine time to raise awareness within our communities to new members, but don’t expect the average woman to catch wind and not shout “misogyny!”. It’s a topic that’s too sacred to them to be rationally discussed at this point in time.
Boy, I really can’t imagine what might lead women to conclude that the Men’s Rights movement is full of misogynists.
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Wait until this sets a precedent for some of their rights to privacy being violated. It’s very possible. Stupid miggies.
They stay making no sense. Besides holding a man financially accountable is not forcing him into parenthood. It is acknowledging that a child that is here requires financial support and that should come from those that created that child.
The fact that they really think wallets are comparable to bodies is breathtaking. Also they are not at a disadvantage. If I have a child and decide I don’t want to be a mother to it, instead dumping it on its father, then you better believe I will be hounded for child support too.
They’re missing the point when they frame abortion as being about the right to choose parenthood or not. It’s not primarily about that. It’s about the right to bodily autonomy, which includes access to reproductive care and the right to make decisions about medical treatment. To put it in crude “people as property” terms: when you throw a baseball through a window, you forfeit any control over what subsequently happens to that baseball.
I love how in their hypotheticals, pregnancies are always the accidental result of a one night stand between a man and a woman who hate each other, and have diametrically opposite views of parenthood. And somehow it’s not an option for the man to wear a condom or abstain, even though he’s the one petrified about child support, unless the woman also sacrifices something. There’s a weird sort of scorekeeping going on here.
God Damned Day: that’s a holiday in the MRA calendar. It’s the day they get to hate women, hate life, and celebrate their own death cult. Oh wait. That’s every day for these guys. So it’s more properly termed Every God Damned Day.
I do think parents shouldn’t have to rely on getting grudging child support payments from people who don’t want to be parents. Maybe those people should still owe money to a state child support fund, but children should be funded regardless. It’s cruel to make a child’s welfare dependent on someone who is constantly rejecting them, and cruel to make a parent (usually mother) have to plead and bargain with an uncaring ex for their child’s needs. I’d rather support all children with taxes than have children in poverty because their parents can’t or won’t afford to raise them.
I also support the human right to abortion of course, but only a vicious sadist can both want to ban abortion and limit state child welfare for children growing up in poverty or with absentee parents.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
I think that they don’t consider the bodily autonomy argument because they cannot even conceive of women having such a right.
So obvious that it’s not about reducing the number of abortions, and never was. It has always been about controlling female sexuality.
The illogical thinking and projection of the MRAers amuses the hell out of me. Whaaa, we don’t want to pay child support. We are the repressed victims of feminism, but we just want to pump and dump women since we hate them all, but can’t stop talking about them.
But banning abortions will lead to more pregnancies you will have to support. Whaaa, it is all the woman’s fault. They trapped us by making us think with our dicks. They were irresponsible. They are sluts. (Like they were held at gun point and coerced into sex) The courts are unfair. We should be able to abandon our wives and children just because I want to bang a ten.
Because it is never about being responsible. It is about them having their fun with no consequences and being irresponsible people. It’s a bunch of man babies, who are projecting their irresponsibly onto women.
@jkf
I’d previously assumed that control of female sexuality to be a simple case of making sure every bride is a virgin.
But the opinion also includes a phrase about the “domestic supply of infants,” which chilled me to the bone. Infants being described in language that could also apply to livestock, because adoption is seen as the “solution” to abortion. Never mind that there are plenty of kids – infants, children, adolescents – waiting to be adopted now. No, there’s a market for cute white babies, and the demand must be met by an adequate supply.
@Victorious Parasol:
No, there’s a market for cute white babies, and the demand must be met by an adequate supply.
Let’s add abled and single births to that.
@Full Metal Ox
Abled, certainly, but I’m sure there are those who want to buy – I mean, adopt – a cute pair of twins.
@Mog: I think a sensible system that might also help with sustainability issues would be for the state to subsidize the first two children an afab person has, regardless of whether Dad sticks around or not; and also for the state to subsidize contraception, including procedures to reversibly-or-not sterilize, no questions asked — so, in particular, free pills and condoms at every corner pharmacy (with maybe some reasonable limit per customer per month after which it’s pay-as-you-go); wealthy people might choose to have unsubsidized third-and-later children and pay out-of-pocket for the associated expenses, but people choosing to have no or only one child (and deaths before reproductive age, rare as those are in the developed world) would likely more than offset this and the birth rate would probably be, or remain, below replacement.
Once the population was down to a level considered long-term sustainable, to raise the rate to replacement, subsidizing of a third child would become available by lottery. Any afab person with exactly two children could throw their name in the box once each year; a number of names would be drawn randomly on some annual date, perhaps tax day, said number being sufficient to raise the birth rate to replacement rate based on recent demographic data; the lucky winners would be eligible for subsidies for raising a third child.
Subsidies would apply to the afab person’s obstetrical expenses (if not covered by a general single-payer health care system) and in the event of a successful birth, would then attach to the child — so if the child were adopted or custody otherwise shifted, the subsidy would follow, regardless of the number of preexisting children their new guardians had. The subsidy would perhaps adjust somewhat to the local cost of living (and re-adjust, in the event of a move of the child to a new region), and would cover daycare and public school expenses (meaning, the school expenses of unsubsidized third-and-later children would be transferred to the parents, even where now covered by the state). The public school portion per child would be sufficient to keep the public schools in a decent level of funding. Private schooling would be either pay-as-you-go, or only an initial amount equal to the public school per-child cost would be covered and non-secular private schooling would be fully pay-as-you-go (no vouchers for those!)
Deadbeat amab biological parents would either be ignored by this system entirely, or might be charged a surtax that went into the fund to pay these subsidies, with the tax adjusted to that parent’s income. A tax might also be levied on having third and subsequent children (other than through adoption or other custodial rearrangements), except for the lottery winners’ third children, to further encourage maintaining a sustainable population cap. The subsidies’ costs not covered by these taxes’ revenues would be drawn from the general-purpose state funds.
Evidence that a system like this should work includes the observation that birthrates drop to below replacement in affluent societies where it’s common for every adult, regardless of sex, to join the workforce, and that societies where afab people are not generally employed in the workforce tend to have birthrates way above replacement. The latter have effectively “subsidized” childcare by forcing half the population into the child care sector. So, a lesser (and more egalitarian!) degree of subsidy than that, but greater than what’s currently seen in affluent countries, might bring the birth rate to exactly replacement level, especially if “tuned” on the fly to keep it that way. This would, if sufficiently widely adopted, allow the planet’s population to drop for a while and then to stabilize it at a level that can be sustained in the long term off renewable resources.
@Victorious Parasol:
But not plenty of white kids. Remember, these people are also fantastically, horrifically racist and most of them believe in some version of that “great replacement” nonsense. Women’s sexual autonomy (and, especially, abortion and also contraception) has reduced white birthrates. A non-racist is fine with immigration as a short-term solution to avoid demographic implosion (but a long-term solution is still needed, in the event that women’s autonomy eventually becomes widespread throughout the earth, for which see above), but a racist will see only one option: force white women to have more white babies.
Hi, Surplus,
I also wrote, “No, there’s a market for cute white babies, and the demand must be met by an adequate supply.” Emphasis added to underscore my original point.
How many MRAs actually have children?
I mean, that’d only happen if women let them near their vaginas, right?
MRAs’ best birth control is their personalities.
@Surplus: Under your system, I’d want to be able to auction off or donate my assigned kid slots. (Which I know partially defeats your purpose.) Maybe I could get rebates from the subsidy fund on renewable energy or vegetables or something? That would also help childless older people.
O/T, signal boosting an announcement on The Visionary Activist: Levon, a pit bull in Washington, DC, needs a home. His human died a year ago. Levon gets along great with all others except other dogs. He’s terrific with kids. If Levon is not adopted, he’s scheduled for euthanasia on May 9.
https://www.petfinder.com/dog/levon-55311015/dc/washington/humane-rescue-alliance-foster-homes-dc03/
Follow the link directly above to see pix of Levon.
I’m just waiting for them to come for the hormonal birth control and to charge people like 50 dollars for a box of condoms that will have 2 condoms in them
Surplus,
Your proposal sounds reasonable to most people – me included until a couple of years ago.
Then I did some very crude maths. Look around you at the composition of the current world population. This is as good as any other source for the time being. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_world#Age_structure
Now children, let’s pretend. Step 1. Let’s pretend that 4 generations ago, the whole world managed to get the average age of first time mothers to increase by 5 years.
Step 2. Let’s pretend that the same conditions applied in every succeeding generation. Soooooooo. First time mothers now would be, on average, having their first child 20 years later than they currently do.
Everyone has had the same number of children as they wished, no one’s going around coercing child limitation. But the total world population is at least a billion fewer than now. It’d be nice to be able to simply say that none of the children and teens now under 20 years old would have been born yet, because a lot of those have an oldest sibling 20 or more years old so that doesn’t work wonderfully well. And I’m too old/sick/lazy to do the work to tie all the threads together.
It’d be pretty expensive to pay for pads and tampons to ensure all girls and young women could complete their education. It would also be fairly costly to subsidise or provide free Long Term Reversible Contraception for everyone who needs it for those first 5 years. But the huge costs we’re already bearing dealing with loss of agricultural land and with climate change would be considerably less.
What I find hilarious is that they are so myopically focused on their own sad little talking points that they aren’t celebrating the fact that this is going to mean fewer women in college, fewer women advancing in their careers, more women forced to stay with abusive men . . . the list of ways in which this decision limits the opportunities for women beyond “wife and mother” goes on and on, and you’d think they would be yelling about how awesome that is.
But, no. It’s still “but I don’t wanna wrap it up OR pay child support, waaaahhhhhh.”