First off, please note that "the law" is not equal in all countries, and you should specify which legal system you are talking about. I am going to assume you are mostly concerned with the US legal system, which I am somewhat, but not intricately, familiar with.CFriis87 said:I'd say your view is the oversimplified one.
If I have sex with someone, I do indeed run the risk of contraceptives being ineffective for any reason. But I also run the risk of HER choice to carry the pregnancy through, despite my wishes to not become a father, making any precautions I take irrelevant. Women have the pill, barrier contraceptives, IUDs, morning after pills and a vide host of other types of contraceptives.
Men have the condom, which is always recommended, but never recommended as your sole form of security and easily compromised.
After this, women have the choice to have an abortion (her body, her choice). Whatever HER choice is at this point, the man is forced to go with it. So why should a father be responsible for a child he did not choose to have?
Furthermore, current co-habitation laws mean that you do not have to be married to the mother to be held legally responsible for her child. If she can show the court a receipt for you buying something that fully, or in part would go to the child (i.e. food, diapers, clothes), the court will hold you legally responsible as a "father figure", the same goes for if you co-habitate with her for a certain amount of time, after that time, the law will treat you as married.
Adressing your first point: You run the risk that your partner is lying to you. Therefore, you need to be able to trust your partner. If you have sex with someone you cannot trust, well, that was your risk to take.
Should the father be responsible for a child he did not choose to have? Yes. Because otherwise, there is no-one responsible, and there are certain compromises we must make. But here we venture deep into moral territory, and that is somewhat dependant on what core philosophy you are following.
I was not aware of that legal rule, since the system is different where I live (which, in case you wonder, is also part of western culture). That rule seems overly strict to me. But again, the law needs to assign responsibility to someone, so the debate becomes who do we properly assign responsibility? You need to always consider the emotional impact of an abortion on both biological parents. It is hardly a decision that should be governed by financial concerns.
Anyways, I feel this in-depth discussion about Men's reproductive rights is getting slightly off-topic. The topic being "disposability" of men as a theme of current western culture, if I am not mistaken?
Isn't the right to put the child up for adoption tied to child custody, and not gender? At least, that would seem to make more sense.CFriis87 said:Actually no... even after birth, the woman holds the right to give her child away to a center for adoption, the "father" has no right to walk away and not be held responsible (no longer her body, still her choice, still his responsibility)
That is nice of you, but I am not discussing these issues. I certainly don't argue that there is no inequality with regard to gender in our society, though we may disagree on the extent.CFriis87 said:No, I was making the point that women are not held as accountable for their actions as men are, but I guess that is also a point about equality, since I'd say accountability for one's actions is a big inequality in our society.
What I am discussing, and have tried to discuss for this entire discussion, is your allegation that western society is largely characterized by the "disposability of men", and that videogames are an example of this culture. If you do no longer want to discuss this point, I think we can part ways here.
That depends on the level of drunkenness, of course. Few people are drunk enough to be absolved of legal responsibility, but the standard is the same for both genders, at least in the legal system I am familiar with. You have a point about the sexual assault laws, in that it is very hard to determine who is at fault in cases were both parties are too drunk for informed consent, but not drunk enough to be out of legal responsibility. I can see how the assumption would be that the man was the one initiating the contact, and thereby the rapist. Certainly an issue that is worth to be discussed, with the proper legal background.CFriis87 said:Last I checked, a drunk driver was still legally accountable for drunk driving and a drunken rapist(man) was still a rapist. And since women, in the eyes of the law, can't rape men, or at least have to jump through a lot of hoops to do so, drunken men by default give more consent, even if they don't.
If both parties are drunk, in the eyes of the law, the man is the rapist by default.
I'd love to hear about a case where a woman was convicted of rape, because the man she had non-consensual sex with was drunk, but I won't hold my breath.
Yeah, I was talking about something else. I am sorry if I did not make that clear: I was talking about different standards of responsibility based on gender, which I cannot imagine any western country would actually pass.CFriis87 said:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_rights
Scroll down to the Men's Rights bit of that article, apparently is not exactly unconstitutional according to the US Court of Appeals.
If you are not arguing with logic, you are not arguing at all. Or rather you may be arguing, as in "fighting with words", but you are not conducting a rational discussion. I am uninterested in irrational discussions, I am sorry. I agree that there is a cognitive dissoance between the two of us, in that I am arguing purely what is referenced above, the thesis that there is a major trait of western culture that can be labeled "male disposability". You seem to want to discuss gender equality in a broader sense, which I feel is off-topic. But you have now made a clear statement of your logic:CFriis87 said:The reason my logic on this is flawed is because I'm not arguing based on logic. I'm arguing based on experience of an illogical system, and your counter-arguments are based on the assumption that the system IS indeed logical.
This is a sort of cognitive dissonance between the two of us and results in both of us arguing different things as though they were the same.
My argument is that the baseline worth of a man of male child is less than the baseline worth of a woman or female child and that this is a mentality that determines the differences in treatments of men and women respectively.
"My argument is that the baseline worth of a man of male child is less than the baseline worth of a woman or female child"
I agree with that premise, as I have stated before.
"and that this is a mentality that determines the differences in treatments of men and women respectively."
I disagree with this conclusion, since it ignores any other biological, psychological, and cultural factor that determines the relations between men and women. That too, i have tried to make clear over several posts.
Yeah, but if I am not mistaken about human biology, more men are born than women, so eventually, there should be more men in total. Which is why I agree with your premise, by the way.CFriis87 said:In some parts of the world there are more men:
Like in China where male children are socially bound to care for their parents when they get old, but female children are not.
In other parts of the world there are more women... like in the US, Canada and most of Europe.
I don't ask you to re-post everything, I am questioning what it actually indicates, and whether your conclusions are sensible.CFriis87 said:I was not aware that I was required to re-post all the evidence of female safety and rights being valued being valued higher than male ones EVERY time I alluded to this being the case.
Because people felt that domestic violence was no properly adressed by the legal system, and at the time the act was passed into law, people believed that men, being the pyhsically stronger sex, would be less likely to be the target of domestic violence.CFriis87 said:Why is there a Violence Against Women Act, when men are: 76% of all homicides, at least half of all domestic violence victims, and by far most victims of aggravated assault?
Because apparently, those statistics have not yet overcome societal prejudice that a.) Men are more likely to be aggressive in intimate relationships and b.) Men who can't defend themselves against a woman are pansies, anyway.CFriis87 said:When at least half of all domestic violence victims are men, why then are there Predominant Aggressor Policies set in place with police training in the Duluth model to justify arresting the man in almost every single case of domestic disturbances?
I would say same as above, with the addition of potential lobbying from certain misguided persons.CFriis87 said:Why does Title IX turn innocent young men into acceptable losses, by removing their right to counsel, their right to know their accuser and lowering the standard of evidence from "reasonable doubt" to "preponderance of the evidence"?
You are right, it does not mean that. But I don't feel its pervasive or a major problem, either. I think the issues that you pointed out are more easily explained by the common stereotype that Men are active, strong and self-sufficient, whereas women are passive, mild-mannered and in need of guidance and, admittedly, protection.CFriis87 said:Even if this is not a major theme of current society (which is always a subjective judgment, and I believe it IS a major theme), does not mean it isn't a pervasive theme, or indeed a major problem.