Freedom of billboard rights.

[Andrew D]

Andrew, rational or not, I've explained my position, and I've accepted its flaws. You asked for those of us taking that position to "own up" and so I did, as did others here.

If you'd like to discuss whether an equitable solution can be obtained that balances the rights of both parties (the man and the woman), and still considers the rights of the child, I'm not sure such a solution exists. And nothing you've asserted so far has changed my mind.

It's not a particularly difficult exercise to balance the rights of the man and woman, and find a solution, you did that yourself many posts ago. Can you do the same when you consider the rights of the child?

Assume the parties are responsible, use reliable birth control properly, the birth control fails and a pregnancy results. The woman unilaterally carries the pregnancy to term, and a child is born, without ever informing the man. Does the woman bear all of the responsibility for the support and maintenance of the child and because she refused to involve him in the decision to remain pregnant, has she waived her right to child support? Why should the child live a life less materially enriched because the woman made a unilateral decision?

Were it not for the woman's unilateral decision, there would be no child.

Were it not for the woman's unilateral decision, the question of the child's interests would never arise.

You want to put the burden of gving the child a "materially enriched" life on someone? Put it on the person whose unilateral decision brought that child into the world.

[Scooter]

My answer, as it has been all along whenever this discussion has come up, is that there is no solution that is more equitable than the one to which we have arrived after millennia of getting it wrong, that will not harm the child, who is the only one who bears no responsibility for what has happened, and who is the one who has the most to lose if we get it wrong again in the name of "equity".

Well, just as you have now given a resounding "fuck you" to that child, by saying that it deserves no help from its father if he chooses to walk away, I give a resonding "fuck you" to the notion of equity if the one that is hurt is that innocent child. Because as far as I am concerned any parent that wallks away from his/her own child without some assurance that whoever takes up the responsibility on his/her behalf can do an equal or better job, does not deserve the title "human being", let alone "parent".

You want to reward men for walking away from the responsibilities they owe to the children they helped create? More power to you, have at it. I'm sure you'll have an army of deadbeat "parents" cheering you on.

[@meric@nwom@n]

A hero to cowards, what a legacy.

[Andrew D]

Okay. Don't trouble yourself to address the fact that one person had the entire unilateral say in whether the child whose interests you claim to care about ever even existed. Why bother coming to grips with things when vacuous moralizing is so much easier?

[@meric@nwom@n]

It has been addressed here repeatedly. The fact that the Teflon coating on your head is impenetrable does not alter that fact.

[rubato]

We acquire obligations via a variety of routes. Some, we have no control over. I have an obligation to my family members who I did not choose and whose existence I had no control over. I don't think that my obligation is less or different because I could not choose to avoid it.

This is the same situation with paternity and children.

yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

Yeah, yeah, we've been through that in this thread already, it's a right that is not exclusive to women. And if the other parent objects, then neither can opt out.

They certainly can, but I suspect you know that.

They can simply surrender the child at a hospital or fire station, give a fake name, and walk away. Not a damned thing Dad can do about it.

[Scooter]

And the father could do exactly the same thing. But if the other parent finds out, and claims custody, it's not going to absolve the one who surrendered the kid of his/her support obligations.

[Jarlaxle]

No, actually, he can't, not in the real world. But you know that.

[Scooter]

And in the real world, men aren't exactly jumping over any barricades to act as single parents to their children born of mothers who want to give them up. 99% of men in those cases are thinking nothing but whew, dodged a bullet.

[Andrew D]

It has never been addressed here. The fact that I'm so stupid that even my pimp won't listen to me does not alter that fact.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Childishly altering my post does not alter the facts.

Sorry for your luck.

[Andrew D]

And maybe someday you will address the relevant facts.

But I doubt it.

[@meric@nwom@n]

And perhaps one day you will accept that the facts have been presented repeatedly.

Of course we may anticipate porcine flight too.

[Lord Jim]

It has never been addressed here. The fact that I'm so stupid that even my pimp won't listen to me does not alter that fact.

[@meric@nwom@n]

He has a lot of bile to spill LJ. Let it go.

[Jarlaxle]

Please bear in mind, this is someone who regularly, when cornered, responds by flinging highly-sexualized personal attacks at other posters, their parents, their spouses, and occasionally, their children. This piece of human excrement has, offhand, accused Lord Jim of child molestation.

[@meric@nwom@n]

I hadn't noticed.

[Andrew D]

I publicly apologized to Lord Jim for the inexcusable things that I had said to him. He graciously accepted that apology.

Jarlaxle knows that. I have pointed it out on previous occasions when he has brought the matter up.

None of that changes the substance of what we are talking about. None of that provides an answer to a straightforward question:

Why should men not have the same right as women?

The right to opt out of being parents.

No forcing women to bear children. No forcing women to have abortions. No forcing anyone to do anything.

Just simple equality, as close as nature permits.

Women have the right to opt out, which is exactly as it should be.

Before birth, there is no child. There is no one other than the woman and the man whose interests need to be taken into account.

(Or, if there is, how does a woman's decision to have an abortion advance that child's interests?)

It's all just runaround.

Well, most of it is just runaround. There are some people who have engaged the issues involved. Guinevere, for example, has set forth a position that coherently addresses what lies before us. I think that she is wrong, and I have said why I think so, but she has come to grips with the questions that matter.

And she is not alone.

But most of what has been posted here is just crap.

We've got @meric@n wom@n prattling about women's being forced to have children they don't want and being bent to men's wills. But I have never said that any woman should be forced to have a child she doesn't want; I have said exactly the opposite over and over. And the way things are now, women's wills are the only wills that matter. How would giving men some small say -- they would not, of course, have the ultimate say -- in what happens be bending women to men's wills? We don't know, and she has declined to tell us.

We've got Scooter lecturing us about the innocent children, but he has declined to say anything about the fact that the woman has complete unilateral control over whether any such children ever come into existence in the first place. He's great at giving "a resounding 'fuck you'" to positions he disagrees with, but when it comes to addressing the facts involved in the issues, well, not so much.

We've got [bJarlaxle[/b] doing ...

Doing ...

Doing whatever it is that [bJarlaxle[/b] does. Maybe it makes sense in some sci-fi alternative universe, but the rest of us have been posting in this one.

Where is an answer?

Where is a straight-up, no-evasions, no-clutter, no-dodging, no-resort-to-things-that-are-not-actually-at-issue answer?

I am arguing nothing more than that men should have the same opt-out right as women have, subject to the woman's right either to carry the fetus to term or to have an abortion.

Nothing more.

Why is that so terrifying?

[@meric@nwom@n]

You are the worst possible hypocrite.

You run around the board bemoaning the plight of those in Africa but you would deny an improved lifestyle to the theoretical fruit of your (representing men) own inability to deny yourself sex. You want to play the game and opt out when the ending does not suit you.

Fuck you and all the men like you.

You have lost your selfish, arrogant mind.


Go get your ascites drained you potbellied little troll.