Tag Archives: Feminist Theory

News

Bro-Choice: understanding the motivations of the pro-choice man-child

17 Comments
Ben Sherman: man-child
Ben Sherman: man-child

Ask the Bigot first alerted me to a post by a pro-abortion male (not man, male) in which he explains why males such as himself favor abortion.

Now the context of this post is the Texas bill banning abortions after 20 weeks.

Here’s the point I want to focus on:

How #HB2 Hurts Straight Texas Men

Your sex life is at stake

Can you think of anything that kills the vibe faster than a woman fearing a back-alley abortion? Making abortion essentially inaccessible in Texas will add an anxiety to sex that will drastically undercut its joys. And don’t be surprised if casual sex outside of relationships becomes far more difficult to come by.
It’s clear: if the Legislature basically takes away a Texas woman’s right to choose, having sex becomes a much, much riskier proposition for women and men.

Now let’s see what AtB thinks of this. She writes:

Hey Ben.  BRO!  Sex is not primarily recreational and women’s bodies don’t exist to serve your every-72-hours-discharge needs.  Sex has life-creating properties, and this bill will make it harder for you to separate that reality from your weekend hook-ups.

(An aside. LADIES. You are a fool to chance a lifetime connection with a man-child of this caliber. You and your future children deserve MUCH better.  Free love has done so much damage to women and children. Sex without consequences makes us women exactly what we claim we don’t want to be. Objectified, disrespected and used.)

Unfortunately for you, Bro, the Texas House approved HB2 this morning.  Much to the silent rejoicing of the in-utero babies created in your “relationships with women that may have lasted anywhere from a few minutes to many years,” you might now have to act like a real man by living for someone other than yourself. Or perhaps, at least, stop treating women as sperm depositories.

I know that this legislation puts your Peter Pan lifestyle at risk.  But look at the bright side.  If your sexual expression is limited by this legislation, you could always move to one of the 49 states where unfettered infanticide paves the way for your never-ending, hedonistic sexual “freedom and choice”.

So this post by the man-child explains why pro-abortion men are pro-abortion. They basically think that they should be allowed to have recreational sex with a woman without having to deal with the consequences of their own actions. They think that it is OK to kill an innocent child aged 20 weeks or more in order to keep the flow of consequence-free recreational sex flowing. They think it’s OK to motivate women to give then free recreational sex by using abortion as a form of birth control. Pro-abortion men think that it’s OK to legalize what Kermit Gosnell was doing to women after 20 weeks, so that women continue to give them recreational sex without having to love and serve women in a lifelong commitment. Ben Sherman is the beneficiary of Kermit Gosnell’s practice. Kermit Gosnell is Ben’s enabler.

Before I go any further, let me say that according to the latest Gallup poll, more men are pro-life than not, and more women are pro-abortion than not. Young unmarried women are especially likely to vote for abortion and gay marriage (about 75% voted for Obama). This man-child Ben Sherman is the exception to the way that men normally are, while women on the other hand are more likely to agree with his conclusions about unborn children. Most young, unmarried women vote the way Ben Sherman votes. Let’s get that clear. This man-child is the exception to the way men normally are.

My real concern about the man-child’s point of view is this. How is it even possible that a woman would come within 10 feet of a man who said such a thing? It seems to me that women ought to prefer relationships with good men who have a worldview that grounds responsibility over hedonism. Women ought to prefer men who want to take responsibility for the well-being of others over the long term. Women ought to prefer men who want to protect the innocent and the weak. That sort of moral character used to be highly prized by women. Now they just seem to want “nice” – meaning inoffensive and entertaining.

When a man like Ben Sherman says what he said, it really makes me wonder about what women who choose him for sex are thinking about. When a woman pays attention to a man, she endorses his worldview. And vice versa. If women stopped talking to selfish, immoral men like Ben Sherman, then there would be no abortion. The man thinks that babies should die so that he can have a good time with no strings attached. He doesn’t want to have to deal with the needs of others, he would rather use them for pleasure and then kill them when they stop pleasing him. Is that attractive in a man? Ben Sherman continues in his views because some women are rewarding him with sex.

Abortion plays right into the hands of men who want to use women merely for sex. Legal abortion = more casual sex for men without the inconvenience of a relationship where they might need to think of the woman as a person instead of a means to sexual pleasure. I am concerned by the trend away from formal courtship towards anonymous hook-up sex. Abortion is definitely one of the reasons why that is happening. If the group of women who give men sex without commitment grows, it will put even more pressure on women who want marriage to do things the right way. It gets harder and harder for marriage-minded women to hold out as sex without commitment leads to sex without any meaningful communication. We need to push back against the trend to treat women as objects, and women have a role to play in that: they can refuse pro-abortion men.

UPDATE: Another reaction here from my pro-life friend Neil Simpson.

Polemics

Stephen Baskerville: five myths about no-fault divorce

6 Comments

From the Catholic News Agency.

Introduction:

Almost four decades after the “no-fault” divorce revolution began in California, misconceptions abound. Even the many books about divorce, including myriad self-help manuals, are full of inaccurate and misleading information. No public debate preceded the introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, and no debate has taken place since.

Yet divorce-on-demand is exacting a devastating toll on our children, our social order, our economy, and even our constitutional rights. A recent study estimates the financial cost of divorce to taxpayers at $112 billion annually. Recent demands to legitimize same-sex marriage almost certainly follow from the divorce revolution, since gay activists readily acknowledge that they only desire to marry under the loosened terms that have resulted from the new divorce laws. Divorce also contributes to a dangerous increase in the power of the state over private life.

Here are the five myths about no-fault divorce:

  • No-fault divorce permitted divorce by mutual consent, thus making divorce less acrimonious
  • We cannot force people to remain married and should not try
  • No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children
  • When couples cannot agree or cooperate about matters like how the children should be raised, a judge must decide according to “the best interest of the child”
  • Divorce must be made easy because of domestic violence

And the details about number three:

Myth 3: No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children.

Fact: This does happen (wives more often than children), but it is greatly exaggerated. The vast majority of no-fault divorces — especially those involving children — are filed by wives. In fact, as Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows, has shown, the no-fault revolution was engineered largely by feminist lawyers, with the cooperation of the bar associations, as part of the sexual revolution. Overwhelmingly, it has served to separate large numbers of children from their fathers. Sometimes the genders are reversed, so that fathers take children from mothers. But either way, the main effect of no-fault is to make children weapons and pawns to gain power through the courts, not the “abandonment” of them by either parent.

Al Mohler wrote about the history of no-fault divorce a while back, and I think it’s worth reviewing why we have this lousy law.

The story behind America’s love affair with no-fault divorce is a sad and instructive tale. As Baskerville documents, no-fault divorce laws emerged in the United States during the 1970s and quickly spread across the nation. Even though only nine states had no-fault divorce laws in 1977, by 1995, every state had legalized no-fault divorce.

Behind all this is an ideological revolution driven by feminism and facilitated by this society’s embrace of autonomous individualism. Baskerville argues that divorce “became the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of feminism, because it creates millions of gender battles on the most personal level.” As far back as 1947, the National Association of Women Lawyers [NAWL] was pushing for what we now know as no-fault divorce. More recently, NAWL claims credit for the divorce revolution, describing it as “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.”

The feminists and NAWL were not working alone, of course. Baskerville explains that the American Bar Association “persuaded the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws [NCCUSL] to produce the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act.” Eventually, this led to a revolution in law and convulsions in society at large. This legal revolution effectively drove a stake into the heart of marriage itself, with inevitable consequences. In effect, no-fault divorce has become the catalyst for one of the most destructive cultural shifts in human history. Now, no-fault divorce is championed by many governments in the name of human rights, and America’s divorce revolution is spreading around the world under the banner of “liberation.”

And note that Democrats oppose any effort to reform laws that make it easy to break up marriages:

A basic dishonesty on the question of divorce pervades our political culture. Baskerville cites Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm as referring to divorce as a couple’s “private decision.” Granholm’s comments came as she vetoed a bill intended to reform divorce law in her state. The danger and dishonesty of referring to divorce as a couple’s “private decision” is evident in the fact that this supposedly private decision imposes a reality, not only on the couple, but also on children and the larger society. Indeed, the “private decision” is really not made by a couple at all–but only by any spouse demanding a divorce.

So, no-fault was pushed by two groups: feminists and trial lawyers. Christians rolled over for it because we thought we fell for the myths that no-fault divorce was “compassionate”. That was a mistake, and one we need to roll back. (By the way, that’s not a bad post by Al Mohler. I pick on him for having his head stuck in the Bible, but it looks like he has a comprehensive view of marriage)

The reason I am writing about this is because of a post by Dr. Jerry Walls (H/T First Things) where he said that people who are opposed to gay marriage tend to say nothing at all against premarital sex and no-fault divorce. Well, I am against gay marriage and I am also personally a virgin and I would repeal premarital sex promotion in the schools and no-fault divorce in the courts if I could. And in fact regular readers know that I am always blogging about the damage caused by divorce and the damage caused by premarital sex, usually with study after study to support my views. I don’t just say “the Bible says” and expect that to transform a culture that is largely indifferent or even hostile to what the Bible says.

I think that Christians need to become experts on everything from the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant to no-fault divorce to the Laffer curve to undesigned coincidences in the New Testament sources to WMD development and proliferation in rogue nations like North Korea and Iran. The more people regard Christians as intelligent, informed and circumspect, the more people will be curious about the gospel. We have to know everything about everything and we have to be concerned about every conflict between Christian convictions and what’s happening in the world. Studying the way the world works is one way of serving God and defending his honor with people who want to dismiss him, and dismiss their obligations to him.

News

New book by Dr. Helen Reynolds explains men’s changing motivations

Leave a comment

Captain Capitalism reviews a new book.

Excerpt:

Dr. Helen of PJ Media fame is in a very small, but elite league.  She is one of the few professionals (PhD in psychology) to address and bring to light the sexual-sociological backlash men and women are having to feminism.  The only other person I’ve known to do this is Dr. Roy Baumeister with his book “Is There Anything Good About Men.”  However, while Dr. Baumeister’s book focuses on society’s current view or opinion of men, Dr. Helen’s new book “Men on Strike” addresses the consequences of having a myopic and solipsistic societal view of the sexes.  And the consequences aren’t good.

As the title would suggest, men are going on strike.  They are striking from their traditional roles as breadwinners, innovators, hard workers, protectors, etc.  But worse they are abandoning their roles as husbands and fathers.  Not out of a lack of desire, but worse – they are being forced out of these roles as society has made both roles too risky to forfeit their precious and finite lives for.

Naturally there is a backlash.

Women want men to “man up” and marry them.  Women want men give them children.  But, particularly ironic, while women SAY they want men to be effeminate, sensitive, caring, listeners, their behaviors show their preferences for strong, thuggish bad boys have never changed.  This confusion (and risk) to men has sent them fleeing, and blinded by feminism, modern day women can’t figure out why.  They are stumped as to why they’re 42, single, with some other man’s child, a masters degree in creative writing and NOT getting approached every day.  They simply cannot connect the dots.

Dr. Helen explores this reaction of men and tries to connect the dots for women.  Her language is polite, diplomatic and correct. but this is a herculean task to ask of her because she is trying to undo the brainwashing women (and men) have received for 40 years.  It is a harsh pill to swallow, too harsh for the progressively deteriorating and childish men and women who populate America today, and her blog receives more criticism than inquiry and acceptance.  Regardless she tries and has a professional psychological background to back it up lending the book authority.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this “man-child” phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?

As Men on Strike demonstrates, men aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers. In addition, men are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be injured by the myriad of laws, attitudes and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century. Men are starting to fight back against the backlash. Men on Strike explains their battle cry.

I took a quick look at the book, because I was concerned that it might not be good coming from a libertarian perspective. But it’s been endorsed by fusionist conservatives like myself.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News:

This review is from: Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters (Hardcover)

I can’t say enough good things about Helen Smith’s extraordinary new book. In our over-feminized society where at times, it can seem like traditional, heterosexual men are under attack from all sides, Dr. Helen’s book presents a very different perspective. In fact, it reminds me a bit of Warren Farrell’s “Why Men Are the Way They Are,” but it’s more aggressively pro-male while Farrell’s book is more a straight-up antidote to male bashing feminism. Whether you’re a man looking for a book that covers men’s rights or a woman who wants to get a better idea of how most men react to the angry, left-wing feminist view of the world, this book comes highly recommended.

The paperback is available now, the Kindle book will be out later in June. I usually buy the Kindle book for books like this, but I’ll be getting the other book that the Captain linked in hardcover, because it is Oxford University Press and will be a good conversation starter in my office.

I think that one of the most troubling things about the contemporary church is that pastors don’t dare to read books like this to really find out what men are thinking. When you look at what pastors say about men – conservative pastors who claim to be pro-marriage – you will find there views that are hastening the demise of marriage and encouraging the sorts of conditions in which unborn children will be killed and born children will be raised fatherless. It is almost a guarantee that if you meet a pastor, then you are meeting someone who is working against social conservatism even as they praise it, because they have completely discounted how feminism and socialism have impacted men in every area. What is needed is an appraisal of the incentives facing men, and that’s exactly what pastors are unwilling to do. But this book sounds like it would be the antidote to that.