Effeminition: Feminist Logic, an editorial piece on reproductive rights and child support

Due to the number of choices possessed by women, the graphic could not be sized to fit this blog. To better read the text, right click on the image below and select "view image" from the menu. Use the magnifier to see the full sized image, or feel free to download by dragging it from the page to your desktop. My only stipulation for use is that it remain unaltered. This image is my work. If you want an altered version, make your own.

For those who do not understand why the male flowchart has no "yes" option for abstinence, click here.

Feminists tell me that the movement and its advocacy are about promoting female autonomy, independence, and strength... our right to make our own choices and live by them...

...until we get pregnant. Then, all bets are off. We're not autonomous. We're not independent. We're not strong, and our choices are meaningless. Instead of living by them, we're to demand that others pay for our decisions. We're to hold others responsible. Cry victim, and let loose the dogs of court!

The mental process behind this apparent change of heart is one of twisted and self-serving rationalization. How else can anyone, after making a broad series of choices, each along the way requiring the confrontation of an unwanted possibility, taking the path of greater risk with no preventative measures, ignoring the opportunity to eliminate the outcome, passing up multiple avenues of escape, then demand restitution from the person she left behind six or seven decisions ago?

Frequently, I'm confronted with the argument that if a man doesn't want to be saddled with a support order, he shouldn't have sex, should have his genitals surgically altered for birth control purposes, or should wear a condom. Feminists make these arguments as if the man somehow miraculously impregnated the woman without her participation. There she was, blithely going about her business, walked past the wrong horny asshole, and BAM! Where the heck did this baby come from?

My objection to the responsible man argument is one which I think should be readily apparent, but recent discussion has demonstrated to me that to many, it is not. In deciding to write about it, I struggled to come up with an artistic representation of how I see this, without graphic depictions which I see as unnecessary to the discussion. Huge thanks to my friend Mitschu for reminding me that flow charts exist and for the link to Lucidchart.com, where the charts in the graphic for this entry were made.

As the graphic shows, the process by which we arrive at the situation used to justify a court-ordered payment from the father to the mother is one which is predominantly controlled by the mother. By no means is the circumstance of being the primary caregiver for a child an involuntary circumstance for her. It is certainly not one which can reasonably be considered to be inflicted by the father, given the series of steps taken between the moments prior to participating in sexual intercourse and the moment when the mother files a support claim. How, then, do those who oppose the idea of a paternal parental surrender equal in effect to maternal "safe-haven" abandonment justify their position?

They resort to the same series of logic fails used to justify other feminist positions.

This begins with the Gatekeeper to Consent argument, which considers the pursuit of sexual gratification to be one directional. Men are assumed to have only the option of pursuit. Women are assumed to have only the option to refuse or relent, with relent being an inflicted condition rather than a voluntary one, as indicated by the perception not that the woman decided she was interested, but that the man talked her into it. This is the basis for beginning the debater's argument, "If a man has sex," rather than "If a couple has sex." The wording is designed to limit responsibility to the man right from the beginning.

It continues with the Appeal to the Helplessness Charge. The Helplessness Charge is the feminist requirement of assumption that during any given experience, the woman has no alternative option to letting events progress unchallenged. If options are acknowledged, feminists accuse the debater of blaming the victim. What they really mean by this accusation is that the debater is threatening the status of victim, as having viable alternatives to suffering a condition or experience moves the individual from the status of victim to the status of participant. No one feels sorry enough for a participant to give her any power or restitution for any suffering she might claim as a result of her participation.
The point at which the debater in this argument appeals to that charge is in only offering the admonition that the male should have used either surgical or prophylactic birth control. This is the use of misdirection to limit the perception of options. It focuses on the few options available to the male participant, while ignoring a wealth of more effective options available to the female.

Further, it ignores the very arguments in the debate over the feasibility and potential value of a male form of ingestible hormonal birth control. The idea of hormonal birth control for men was protested and dismissed under the thin argument that men would lie about being on it or forget to take it, and in doing so trick women into having unprotected sex. The proposal of a male pill has been treated as an attack on female reproductive control. Bloggers and commenters even discussed the topic as if the addition of a male birth control pill to the mix would somehow eliminate women's concurrent use of birth control. In the course of discussions on the topic, the thought that women shouldn't be expected or required to leave birth control up to men has been repeatedly expressed. 

In hypocritically stark contrast to that is the discussion on pregnancy, support, and parental surrender, where it's only the man who is considered responsible. This ignores the variety and effectiveness of available forms of female birth control in order to support the treatment of pregnancy as a malady inflicted upon hapless, helpless women by heartless, domineering men.

Arguing for male responsibility in the event of birth, but against it in the event of birth control options, is more than slightly hypocritical.

This takes us to the culmination of the sex act, when both sexes have had equal opportunity to prevent pregnancy. Each partner could have abstained. Each partner could have used birth control. Each even had the chance to make the use of more than one method a condition upon which consent was contingent. For the sake of argument, let's say that it doesn't matter what choices were made, because pregnancy can happen in spite of birth control. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that birth control was used and failed. It can reasonably be argued that at the moment of conception, neither partner is any more or any less at fault for the situation. Neither party is exempt from responsibility. If the options stop at this point, with no other chance to alter the situation, then it would be reasonable to expect both parties to bear equal culpability, and equal rights. Neither parent should be considered more or less responsible based on gender. If this was the circumstance being addressed, arguments against paternal parental surrender would have merit.

Since that is not how things are, they do not.

After the moment of conception, the father's options stop. Under the feminist "My Body, My Choice" argument, the father is given no right to decide whether the pregnancy may progress, or must be terminated. To this end, she has immediate options, short-term options, and surgical options. The father has no say in these options. He cannot prevent them, and he cannot enforce them. He may not make even minor decisions related to the impending birth of his offspring. The purpose of stating that fact is not as an indictment of it, but simply the establishment of an important understanding: The statement does not judge or condemn. It only points out that this is how things are.

Any decision made after the conception of a baby, whether that is to continue or not, is made by the mother, and only by the mother. The feminist argument "My Body, My Choice" deserves to be answered with, "Your Choice, Your Responsibility." If the father chooses to be in agreement with the mother in her decision, it's reasonable to expect him to back that up by offering equal support, sharing the expense and effort involved in whatever mutual choice is made, whether it be abortion or birth. If the two parties are in opposition, however, the mother's choice legally trumps that of the father. It is therefore unjust to assign him responsibility for that choice. If the mother chooses to be in disagreement with the father in his wishes regarding the pregnancy, it is reasonable to expect her to back that up by supporting that choice on her own. She should not have the right to demand assistance financing her choice from an individual who is in opposition to the choice she is making.

There are those who argue that not awarding the mother a child support payment would force her to have an abortion if she fears that she will be unable to financially support herself and the baby. This is a false argument, which depends on the person to whom it is presented being distracted by feelings of sympathy.

Having the right to make a choice does not equal having the right to have someone fund that choice. Lack of funds does not equal force. The legal choice is still there. No one is telling the mother that she is required to travel to an abortion clinic, go through the pre-op precess, sign her consent, pay for the procedure, and have it done. No one is telling her that she is not permitted to make a different selection from the available options following birth: claiming full custody, shared custody with or custodial surrender to family, open or closed adoption, or safe-haven abandonment. Feminist arguments in this area can be simplified to the following: But those choices are hard. Making those choices is emotionally challenging and can be emotionally painful. Backing that choice up financially will be hard work. A woman shouldn't have to go through all of that. You only want to punish her for having sex.
The same advocates who argue that men should be saddled with a potentially crippling, often arbitrary financial burden as punishment for their lack of forethought in having insufficiently protected sex with a fertile woman actually argue that women should be exempt from the emotional consequences of our actions despite an equal lack of forethought in having insufficiently protected sex with a fertile man.

Women are not entitled to force anyone to pay for our choices just because we are women.

Choice extends beyond pregnancy, after childbirth, when the mother's choices include four possible ways of not accepting caregiver status. The first possibility hinges on whether the father wants custody. Certainly, if the mother feels burdened by the circumstance of parenthood, and the father wants to step in and take responsibility, he should have that right. In fact, in a truly gender equal legal system, even if there is a custody dispute because both parents want to take responsibility, then from birth, both parents should start out with an equal chance of being awarded custody, and an equal burden of proof in determining which living arrangement would be more beneficial for the baby. In a situation like that, following a situation in which birth control and abortion choices were equal, and in which expectations and enforcement of support would be equal regardless of who had custody, it would be reasonable to expect a father who declines to take custody of his child to back up that choice with support.

Since that is not the case, as the mother does not have to recognize the father's choice related to birth, that is not a reasonable expectation. Further, the father is given little or no say in who does act as a caregiver. By creating a series of hoops for him to jump through, states limit the rights of fathers to challenge adoption or safe haven abandonment if the mother chooses to exercise either option without his consent. The father's rights are further limited if he and the mother are not married, and the mother chooses not to even tell him about the pregnancy. Under the My Body, My Baby fallacy, some women feel entitled to bypass fathers' rights to choose to take a caregiving role in their children's lives.

Even if the first two (relinquishing custody to the father or to family) are not available due to lack of willing participants, that still leaves two other choices. Given the removal of "relinquish custody to the father" as an option, there should be no challenge from him should she opt for adoption or "safe-haven" abandonment. In fact, even a father who wants custody may find it difficult to prevent adoption. Regardless, the mother is not legally required to claim custody and financial responsibility after birth. There is no outside entity which will make her choice for her. As with the decision to carry and give birth, the decision of the mother to retain or relinquish custody following birth is a unilateral personal choice. The making of such a choice does not entitle one to demand supporting funds from an individual who had no part in the decision.

Under today's system of medicine, law, and policy, a woman's condition of custodial motherhood is a not just a choice, but a step-by-step series of choices, for the majority of which the father does not have anything even close to an equivalent. A woman's reproductive and custody options far outnumber those of a man. In addition, some of her rights are considered greater than his, and some trump or eliminate his. Men have traditionally had little recourse when their reproductive or custody rights have been violated by women. It is therefore inexcusable to assign blame to the man for the results of the woman's decision, and even more so to enforce upon him a financial payment to her for making that decision. This is why, in an unwed parenting situation, there needs to be an option for fathers who truly wish to walk away, have nothing to do with the mother or the child, and not pay any restitution to the mother. If true equality is what feminists seek, they should have no problem with the concept of parental surrender applied to paternity, where from any point prior to conception to the moment he decides whether or not to sign a custody and/or support agreement, the father could sever all paternal ties, rights, and responsibilities the same way a woman can when allowing adoption or using a safe-haven drop-off location.

Effeminition: Consent

One of the most convoluted, fickle, and hypocritical aspects of feminist dogma is the variety of stated positions on sexual ethics and accepted sexual norms. This is an area where feminism just can't seem to make up its collective mind whether to claim authority or affliction. Instead, advocacy and dissertation on various points within the topic wanders all over the grid, depending on which answer to the subtopic best lends itself to achieving the desired rights to responsibility ratio of all to none.    

This is blatantly evidenced by feminism's meandering promulgation of advocated social and legal rules governing consent to sexual contact.

Early on it was argued that women were being held back from experiencing sexual equality by falsely applied moral and social rules. The assertion was that women, as independent adults, are entitled to pursue sexual gratification in the same manner and with the same moral abandon attributed to the behavior of men. The truly liberated woman, it was argued, has every right to casually partake of the smorgasbord of available partners at her leisure, without fear of loss of reputation or status as a result. Society has no right to tie morality to one gender. Therefore, in the name of equal rights, women must be allowed to be equally promiscuous. One tangent to this is condemnation of the allegedly male practice of "slut shaming" (castigation and devaluing of females who engage in casual sex.) The label of slut shaming may be used honestly, as in response to the treatment by either sex of female participation in casual sex as misbehavior, or it may be abused, as in response to the treatment of female cheating on a male partner as mistreatment of the male partner. 

Contrasting the sexually liberated woman position is the gatekeeper-to-pursuit position. This depends on the treatment of women as perpetually reluctant and men as perpetually ambitious toward sexual interaction. For this treatment, the hard-won position of female independence and entitlement to obtain pleasure is abandoned in favor of that of "gatekeeper" to the male's role as purser of sexual gratification. Despite claiming privilege and power under the sexual freedom umbrella, the gatekeeper-to-pursuit position designates gratification as a commodity, women as proprietary owners who must always be persuaded, and men as forever seekers who are required to persuade. It leaves no room for the idea that the female might desire gratification and therefore choose to initiate, or that the male may not desire contact with a specific female or at a given time. Males are assumed to be in a constant state of implied consent, based on that assumption of perpetual sexual ambition, combined with a denial that they may have a standard of attraction. This combination is used to excuse women from ever having to obtain male consent, while simultaneously requiring men to always obtain female consent for sexual interaction.

In the dating arena, this has led to an environment of expectation wherein men must ask permission for each and every step along the path between introduction and orgasm, handling their partners' supposedly cripplingly fragile emotional and mental states as if they are courting soap bubbles which might burst and expire upon the slightest deviation from The Rules.

Complicating this environment is the treatment of the female as helpless. It is never to be expected that the woman might voice her feelings in the event that a male's advances are unwanted. The treatment of women as capable of self-assertion would rob the female participant of her freedom from responsibility for her own sexual behavior. Therefore, it must be assumed that the otherwise strong and liberated woman's disabling psychological weakness may prevent her from verbally refusing sex. This leads to the capability among women to use withholding information to transfer the responsibility for their own sexual decisions to their partners. Simply by not speaking up, a woman may imply consent through physical reciprocity, while reserving the right to later claim defilement and injury due to lack of stated consent.

This is taken to the extreme in the choice by mainstream feminists to treat even slight intoxication as an incapacitating condition when determining female ability to consent. While it is accepted that society, and in particular, the legal system, will hold any individual responsible for his or her intoxicated actions in any other area of behavior from drunk dialing to operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, feminist advocacy expresses the expectation that women who have consumed any alcohol will be exempt from responsibility for choices they make related to sexual interaction.

The gatekeeper-to-pursuit argument also uses the assignment of sexual roles to impose the status of consent upon males without offering them a choice. In fact, domestic abuse victim advocacy returns entitlement to women by treating a man's refusal to consent to sex as an act of abuse against his female partner. This advocacy applies the label "withholding sex" to rob men of consent agency, effectively requiring them to perform upon demand.

The contrast among these assertions appears senseless as it ranges from treating women as proactive and empowered to treating women as withering and powerless. Until one looks at the larger goal which is achieved by doing this dance, it is difficult to understand why a political faction would handicap itself in this manner. After all, the contradicting arguments are easily pointed out and played against each other. Why, then, are they used this way?

The answer is in how this combination may support the use of abuse and rape labeling to control every nuance of male-female relationships. Under feminist doctrine, women have the right of indiscretion with impunity coupled with proprietary ownership of consent agency and an implied entitlement to male consent. Be it "No" or be it "Now," feminism demands immediate obedience by males without question. The combination denies male choice under the guise of female empowerment, while simultaneously placing every responsibility related to interaction squarely upon the shoulders of the man and enabling the woman to criminalize his part in the experience at any time, including after the fact. The ability to retroactively apply the abuse label or the rape label is a powerful weapon, with applications ranging from excusing oneself from relationship rules to vengeance following a break-up to leverage in custody and property disputes.

Feminist activism has made the terms rape and abuse into sacred and untouchable concepts, the wielding of which may be used to constrict the options of an opponent. To varying degrees, it has become socially and even legally unacceptable to question the veracity of any such allegation no matter how wild it is or how sparse the evidence. In this context, having license to apply those terms to circumstances which are devoid of genuine injury, exploitation, or assault provides women with an incredibly destructive legal force; the power to assert, and not be contradicted; to demand, and not be denied. These rules of engagement which feminism applies to sex and relationships are not about protecting women from victimization at the hands of men. They are designed to provide women with a trump card for use in the pursuit of female power over men.


Also see the response post to the "fan" who copied the text of this post in its entirety, (but not the cartoon) then re-posted it in his own blog intertwined with straw man arguments and denial.

Effeminition: Equal Work

One of the more oft heard complaints of the radfem brigade is the touting of the wage gap myth in support of the "equal pay for equal work" battle cry. This continues despite the fact that said myth has been debunked. This is the highlighted by questions introduced by the Consad report, which indicates that much of the difference in average earnings can be attributed to the worker's life choices and willingness to sacrifice other perks in life for the benefit of higher earnings.

It is also especially important to note the collective effect of anything that can be considered hazard pay on the numbers used to support the wage gap myth. The hazard pay effect is attributable to the difference in job choices between the sexes. Among the higher paying items in the job market are The Most Dangerous Jobs. These are not jobs which women are being kept out of due to discrimination. These are jobs women are not actively seeking to take. On top of the prohibitive risk factors, this is in part due to the time demands. Seasonal jobs often mean daily work for weeks or months, with long hours, hard labor, and no days off in between. Further, the labor demands for these jobs require physical strength, labor endurance, fatigue endurance, and a brand of emotional toughness which is beyond what most women possess or seek to test within ourselves.

Among the results of the discrepancy in representation between the sexes in the most dangerous of jobs is what I would refer to as The Risk Gap and The Death Gap. The first thing that stands out in these statistics is the huge difference in the number of male workplace fatalities, versus female fatalities. While this accounts for only a segment of the whole workforce, it skews the numbers on both sides of the argument, creating an apparently higher average pay rate for men, and an apparently lower average injury and fatality rate for women overall.

In addition, this effect spills over into the regular workforce, including professions more evenly populated by both sexes. Higher injury and fatality rates in first responder professions can be attributed to greater risk-taking by male first responders. Higher rates in the private sector can be attributed to heavier workload requirements given to men, including higher weight assignments and riskier positions in manufacturing and construction, and even in hourly, bottom-rung positions such as retail sales and health care aide positions. Right or wrong, employers and coworkers in general do have higher performance and labor expectations for men.

Taking into account the various factors affecting women's earnings, can we honestly continue to use the phrase "equal work" to describe women's contributions in the workplace? In light of the body of work which women will not do, whether that discrepancy is caused by life choices or unwillingness to risk, or inability to perform, are we really justified in demanding legislation to artificially boost our pay? Is the feminist concept of fairness in this case not incredibly biased? How does the assertion that pay should be artificially evened out via legislation not add up to ungrateful beneficiaries of risk-takers and hard-laborers demanding to be handed undeserved recognition and rewards on the basis of sex?

Addendum: Speaking of the body of work that women will not do, I just ran across the following related article. I want to tell you a story

Effeminitions

Lately I've been thinking about the way feminism has used the act of redefining terms to favor women in order to manipulate perception of events, people, and concepts with bias in favor of female privilege and power. There are simple examples, such as the barely noticeable, but concept-changing differences between many dictionaries' definitions for the two sexual sides of the hate coin. Misogyny often gets a more complicated or detailed description which connects distrust or dislike of women to hatred of women, as if to draw the reader through to the idea that distrust and dislike are hatred. In several of these dictionaries, Misandry's definition is much simpler, often including no elaboration, just the simple definition "hatred of men."

The suggestion is so subtle, so easy to miss... that distrust and dislike are bigotry, but only when directed at women... that it is perhaps natural and acceptable to distrust and dislike men.

There are deeper examples as well, such as the act of redefining rape so that it only refers to penetration of a woman by a man. The definition excludes victims who are not women, and victims who are raped by women, thereby marking the violation of those victims as a lesser crime. Of similar depth and importance is the use of labels in the application of double standards, such as referring to women lashing out in response to emotional-only intimidation as an act of self-defense, while labeling men under the same circumstances as aggressive. This is seen in the social tolerance of women slapping in response to offense at verbal communication or in anger at non-aggressive behavior, while men who do this are condemned and penalized. The female aggression response is considered justified, while the male aggression response is considered abuse.

To my mind, this is an incredibly subversive and dishonest tactic, based in the inability to face, evaluate, and address social issues from an altruistic standpoint. When the goal is not equality in treatment of human rights, but instead, privilege and power, advocacy cannot be approached with candor. No one would follow a movement with "Give us the upper hand just because we want it!" as a battle cry.

This line of thinking moved right into my habit of analogous and pictorial consideration. It's a frequent thing for me to use comparisons, hypothesis, and imagery to cement an understanding on any given topic. This time, doing so led to the creation of political cartoons to highlight my observation of the phenomenon of deliberate term feminization and the effort in which it is done. The title, Effeminitions, suggested by my friend and fellow redditor, Mitschu, after I described to him the concept, is in reference to that phenomenon. Below are the first 3 in the planned series.

Effeminitions: Dialogue mug by BreakingTheGlasses
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