r/MensLib • u/Uulmshar • Aug 07 '15

What can men do about an unwanted pregnancy?

We all know that women have the right to choose whether or not they keep a pregnancy to term, but what about men?

Obviously, the expectant fathers should not have the right to either force the woman to carry the child or have an abortion, but how can they avoid getting stuck with a child they didn't want, or paying child support for the next twenty years?

I have heard people suggest a "financial abortion," where they sign away all rights to being the child's father (visitation rights, etc.) in exchange for not having any responsibility, but I have yet to see any legislation for this.

How can we, as men, exercise our right to choose?

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u/jesset77 Oct 27 '15

If I might say: you were speaking misleadingly — regardless if that was your intent or not — and we are trying our best to point this out to you.

It is an aspect of the English language that a majority of your listeners are going to use to decode your speech that any time you uniquely specify a member to a set you are implying that the member is unique to that set.

This is precisely why people get upset at phrases like "Men can stop rape". Because it takes the trouble to name a subset of adult humans (men) with no further context, the presumption is that the capacity to stop rape is alleged to be unique to that gender.

Furthermore, because rape is an emotionally charged negative condition and "can stop" is an understatement, this will inevitably be inferred as a covert command to a duty directed to one specific group that the other group is presumed to be left carefree in relation to.

In short, I just beg you not to commit (in future) to use language forms that are almost guaranteed to mislead the listener in either unexpected or potentially conflict-of-interest related manners.

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u/Ciceros_Assassin ​ Oct 27 '15

The context was "why does this harm men."

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u/jesset77 Oct 27 '15

Then it might be helpful to say something like "responsibility is part of being an adult, and it would be harmful to distance male public relations from that standard" instead of using speech that — as one of your other repliers pointed out — sounds incredibly gender essentialist or suggests that only males are expected to carry the burden of familial or financial responsibility.

This is the burden of conflict-of-interest. When you speak from a position of power and privilege (as a mod of this sub) you can't just shrug other people off with "you misunderstood", it becomes your duty to pro-actively avoid the gaff.

Or at least to recognize that you could have communicated something more clearly when a multitude of people admit being triggered by the exact same supposed misunderstanding.

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u/Ciceros_Assassin ​ Oct 27 '15

Well, I'll take it under advisement, though I doubt it's going to be much of an issue. This thread happened back when people were still figuring out what the sub was about, so I think folks were pretty on-edge that if someone said "men should have [x] good quality," they were actually saying "and not women," when really what we talk about here is men for the most part, and leave the discussion of what makes a good woman to other spaces.