NationStates

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:

Dakini wrote:If I hadn't seen the OP before, I'd wonder why he's so hung up on poverty among teenage fathers when teenage mothers are much more affected and impoverished by teenage pregnancy

I'll look into your link when I get a chance, but one point I can already address even just from your description of the link is that at no point did I claim teenage mothers weren't in poverty. But they did choose poverty over delaying motherhood,

Except in places where teenagers have to receive parental consent to have an abortion.

Or in places where abortion is inaccessible.

Or in places where abortion is illegal.

Or in places where abortion is so restricted that it's practically illegal.

Or teenagers whose parents and/or partners pressure them into not aborting.

Or teenagers who are lied to about abortion (e.g. there are people who claim that abortion causes cancer and infertility).

And so on and so on.

There are a lot of reasons that women (especially young women) who would otherwise have an abortion do not end up having one.

Dakini wrote:

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:I'll look into your link when I get a chance, but one point I can already address even just from your description of the link is that at no point did I claim teenage mothers weren't in poverty. But they did choose poverty over delaying motherhood,

Except in places where teenagers have to receive parental consent to have an abortion.

Or in places where abortion is inaccessible.

Or in places where abortion is illegal.

Or in places where abortion is so restricted that it's practically illegal.

Or teenagers whose parents and/or partners pressure them into not aborting.

Or teenagers who are lied to about abortion (e.g. there are people who claim that abortion causes cancer and infertility).

And so on and so on.

There are a lot of reasons that women (especially young women) who would otherwise have an abortion do not end up having one.

Right, but if they discuss this matter before having sex and she claims in spite of all of this either that she would abort, that she would give away the baby, or that she wouldn't need his help (financially or otherwise) in raising it, is it really his fault if she changes her mind and/or didn't mean it in the first place?

That making a promise she cannot keep is on her would be accepted in almost any other context. (With the possible exception of politicians, and even then only in the eyes of their most fanatical supporters.) So why is what she said before sex not a factor in this?

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:

Dakini wrote:Except in places where teenagers have to receive parental consent to have an abortion.

Or in places where abortion is inaccessible.

Or in places where abortion is illegal.

Or in places where abortion is so restricted that it's practically illegal.

Or teenagers whose parents and/or partners pressure them into not aborting.

Or teenagers who are lied to about abortion (e.g. there are people who claim that abortion causes cancer and infertility).

And so on and so on.

There are a lot of reasons that women (especially young women) who would otherwise have an abortion do not end up having one.

Right, but if they discuss this matter before having sex and she claims in spite of all of this either that she would abort, that she would give away the baby, or that she wouldn't need his help (financially or otherwise) in raising it, is it really his fault if she changes her mind and/or didn't mean it in the first place?

That making a promise she cannot keep is on her would be accepted in almost any other context. (With the possible exception of politicians, and even then only in the eyes of their most fanatical supporters.) So why is what she said before sex not a factor in this?

First, I don't believe those conversations occur on any kind of regular basis.

Second, whether they do or not is irrelevant. The current status quo is that women are never ever outside of extremely rare and unusual corner cases forced to become legal parents against their will, whether their biological portion is complete or not, and we should treat men the same way we treat women for the sake of equality.

Galloism wrote:

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:Right, but if they discuss this matter before having sex and she claims in spite of all of this either that she would abort, that she would give away the baby, or that she wouldn't need his help (financially or otherwise) in raising it, is it really his fault if she changes her mind and/or didn't mean it in the first place?

That making a promise she cannot keep is on her would be accepted in almost any other context. (With the possible exception of politicians, and even then only in the eyes of their most fanatical supporters.) So why is what she said before sex not a factor in this?

First, I don't believe those conversations occur on any kind of regular basis.

Second, whether they do or not is irrelevant. The current status quo is that women are never ever outside of extremely rare and unusual corner cases forced to become legal parents against their will, whether their biological portion is complete or not, and we should treat men the same way we treat women for the sake of equality.

I think some modicum of distinction between "dragging a guy out of the middle class and into poverty through outright deceit, depriving the world of another scientist or engineer" and "seeking some compensation from a guy who got into her pants through deceit of his own that he would stay and raise the kid with her" might be merited, though I'm a little uncertain on how far society should go with the latter. If we go easy on teenagers who commit literal crimes, I'm not sure how much harsher we need to be on having been a dishonest bastard. I don't think I would've gone THAT far with the lies, but I definitely regret the extent to which I was dishonest in my teen years and I'd hate to be judged by it in my adult ones.

I'm also left wondering; why do people who think boys and girls are equally horny also think boys are more likely to deceive a girl to get into her pants than she is to get him into hers?

Although I also like Page's notion of a collectivized child support to which the rich owe more. But it's still a matter of pure chance which rich people's sex partners happen to keep the baby as well.

By the way, your Daily Mail link wasn't working. Here's the Wayback Machine version.

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:While cutting down on all potential reasons for poverty is the ideal, the reality is that even progressives seem to have a blind spot on this issue, *snip*

'Even progressives don't support me in this fight against the other crab for that tasty scrap'

I hate that ya’ll are having a genuine conversation. This is a joke thread. OP wrote a thread that looks like science fiction. Stop taking ya’ll selves so seriously.

It could certainly stand some improvement.

Their options are pretty much poverty or join the military.

Free vasectomies for everyone!

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:A few years ago on this site, the average NSer's response to a hypothetical about a guy having sex with a girl he met at a party but having to drop out to get a job to pay child support was met with "he should've gotten a vasectomy instead."

That moment gave me the impression that this debate consisted solely of:

Side A: Believes there should be exceptions for guys whose career aspirations would be ruined, and/or who'd be thrown into poverty, by having to pay child support bills, if she said before sex that she wouldn't keep the baby even if she got pregnant...

Side B: Thinks it is reasonable to expect every teenage boy to choose between abstinence that gets them mistaken for having been too undesirable to get laid, a vasectomy that shuts them out from future biological fatherhood, or a risk of live-ruining poverty every time he has sex.

During the last a couple of years I slightly changed my mind on such matter, also because I have a son who is growing.

My idea is that both positions are nonsensical and reality-fled.

Either you give to people - both women and men - the right to parental surrender.
Or you force people to support their babes, and in such case there's no need to worry and discuss: they have an higher duty, either they'll be in compliance or they'll be in jail. And nobody should care if they're "ruined" in the process.

The first choice is for those who hold dear the rights of adults and don't worry about slightly raising taxation (to support the babies whose parents surrendered their rights).

The second choice is for those who hold dear the right of Jeff Bezos to have a starfleet and to go where no clone of Jean-Luc Picard has gone before.

As a feminist I think that we did a big error supporting the right to have a starfleet while trying to compensate through "dads' duties": it was a coward choice and it will backfire.
We should focus where the real money is, who cares about unwillingly poor men? Jeff Bezos should pay if some poor guy don't want to pay for his own baby.
Jeff Bezos should pay for all people who decide to surrend parental rights, Jeff Bezos and all the ultra-riches like him.

All other options make no sense, they're just chit-chat whose goal is to not solve the problem and keep things as they are.

Chessmistress wrote:We should focus where the real money is, who cares about unwillingly poor men? Jeff Bezos should pay if some poor guy don't want to pay for his own baby.
Jeff Bezos should pay for all people who decide to surrend parental rights, Jeff Bezos and all the ultra-riches like him.

Well, a major weakness of that proposition is that it completely goes against personal responsibility for your own outcomes. It won't sit well with a lot of people that people in lower classes will be consequence free because they can assume that any dumb poverty creating thing they do, will just be paid for by the successful, rather than the state actually making them contribute financially to their own children for when or if they have income to garnish. They're the one that got the mother pregnant after all (usually speaking).

It sort of takes away from the incentive to become rich in the first place, if the state can reverse all of your own success/progress for the benefit of the most irresponsible or unprofitable within society.

Jeff Bezos may not have physically done work, but still created more wealth than most other people in creating a business that people want to pay their money to. He found ways to get other people to make super fast product delivery possible.

Yes, he has more resources, but logistically speaking even he can't pay for everyone else on Earth. To stay rich, most rich people will unleash an army of lawyers to reduce tax liability and if that doesn't work, will relocate to a lower tax location and will change their operations as to be beyond the reach of those they're trying to flee from.

They're not stupid enough as to not protect their own status/fortune. They're on top for a reason.

Esternial wrote:Free vasectomies for everyone!

Damn, beat me to it. Well I was gonna say condoms but still.

Luminesa wrote:I hate that ya’ll are having a genuine conversation.

y'all. it's y'all

Rusozak wrote:

Esternial wrote:Free vasectomies for everyone!

Damn, beat me to it. Well I was gonna say condoms but still.

Condoms can break. And vasectomies can fail in their reversal.

Also, how many doctors even would perform vasectomies on teenagers in the first place, especially without the parents' permission?

Hemakral wrote:

Luminesa wrote:I hate that ya’ll are having a genuine conversation.

y'all. it's y'all

Don't tell me how to correct my improper Southern grammar dagnabit!

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:

Rusozak wrote:
Damn, beat me to it. Well I was gonna say condoms but still.

Condoms can break. And vasectomies can fail in their reversal.

Also, how many doctors even would perform vasectomies on teenagers in the first place, especially without the parents' permission?

I think it was a joke. The vasectomy part at least. But it illustrates prevention as the best solution. There's probably a study linking education about safe sex to fewer teen parents.

Luminesa wrote:

Hemakral wrote:y'all. it's y'all

Don't tell me how to correct my improper Southern grammar dagnabit!

But if I don't tell random people on the internet what they're doing wrong, who will?

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:

Rusozak wrote:
Damn, beat me to it. Well I was gonna say condoms but still.

Condoms can break. And vasectomies can fail in their reversal.

Also, how many doctors even would perform vasectomies on teenagers in the first place, especially without the parents' permission?

Well, there is this:

https://time.com/4661209/male-birth-control-gel/

Two small injections to block the vas deferens

Rusozak wrote:

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:Condoms can break. And vasectomies can fail in their reversal.

Also, how many doctors even would perform vasectomies on teenagers in the first place, especially without the parents' permission?

I think it was a joke. The vasectomy part at least. But it illustrates prevention as the best solution. There's probably a study linking education about safe sex to fewer teen parents.

Key word, "fewer." Not "zero." The law doesn't carve any exception for a guy whose condom broke, whose partner claimed she wouldn't keep the baby if the condom broke, etc... no matter the economic circumstances this would drive him into, let alone whether this would deprive the world of another scientist or engineer.

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:Side B: Thinks it is reasonable to expect every teenage boy to choose between abstinence that gets them mistaken for having been too undesirable to get laid, a vasectomy that shuts them out from future biological fatherhood, or a risk of live-ruining poverty every time he has sex.

Less than 40% of high school seniors have had sex. Clearly "not having sex" is a reasonable expectation of teenaged boys because the majority of them don't.

Rusozak wrote:

Esternial wrote:Free vasectomies for everyone!

Damn, beat me to it. Well I was gonna say condoms but still.

The average American male doesn’t seem to know what a condom is TBH.

Saiwania wrote:

Chessmistress wrote:We should focus where the real money is, who cares about unwillingly poor men? Jeff Bezos should pay if some poor guy don't want to pay for his own baby.
Jeff Bezos should pay for all people who decide to surrend parental rights, Jeff Bezos and all the ultra-riches like him.

Well, a major weakness of that proposition is that it completely goes against personal responsibility for your own outcomes.

Like "too big to fail"?

A child is a person, not a "personal outcome" like creating a debt.

Saiwania wrote:It won't sit well with a lot of people that people in lower classes will be consequence free because they can assume that any dumb poverty creating thing they do,

Wrong: surrending parental rights should be a right for every person, even for Jeff Bezos.
It's even likely that if such right will be enacted, then the riches will use it even more than the poors, at least proportionally more.

Saiwania wrote:....

"Making slightly harder to have a full starfleet" = "every rich is gonna falling in a state of deep depression and nobody's gonna becoming rich again"
The worry about "by this way nobody's gonna becoming rich" is so hyperbolic that is

Saiwania wrote:Jeff Bezos may not have physically done work, but still created more wealth than most other people in creating a business that people want to pay their money to. He found ways to get other people to make super fast product delivery possible.

Yes, he has more resources, but logistically speaking even he can't pay for everyone else on Earth. To stay rich, most rich people will unleash an army of lawyers to reduce tax liability and if that doesn't work, will relocate to a lower tax location and will change their operations as to be beyond the reach of those they're trying to flee from.

They're not stupid enough as to not protect their own status/fortune. They're on top for a reason.

I tought that they were a little precious weak things to be protected by the evil hordes: you just said then if we threat to take away 1% or 2% of their money then they're gonna falling in depression and then "nobody is gonna becoming rich" again.

You seems confused: either Jeff Bezos is a special precious little weak wallflower who can't stand the State taking away 1% or 2% of his money, or Jeff Bezos is very powerful and also cunning.
He can't be both ways at the same time.

Galloism wrote:Second, whether they do or not is irrelevant. The current status quo is that women are never ever outside of extremely rare and unusual corner cases forced to become legal parents against their will, whether their biological portion is complete or not, and we should treat men the same way we treat women for the sake of equality.

Almost this.
But before giving men the right to surrend their legal duties, we should focus on granting all the necessary to the rejected babies.
I think that Feminism should focus on this, then MRA will do their thing.

There are people who think both sides, Feminism and MRA, are fools, and they're mocking us, both of us.
This have to stop: I'm not so stupid to think that a bunch of deadbeat dads who will hide behind such reform are a major problem compared to a guy who during a poverty-spreading pandemic and just after a very expensive divorce had enough money to launch his own starship.

Diopolis wrote:

GuessTheAltAccount wrote:Side B: Thinks it is reasonable to expect every teenage boy to choose between abstinence that gets them mistaken for having been too undesirable to get laid, a vasectomy that shuts them out from future biological fatherhood, or a risk of live-ruining poverty every time he has sex.

Less than 40% of high school seniors have had sex. Clearly "not having sex" is a reasonable expectation of teenaged boys because the majority of them don't.

It's not by choice. Given the chance to get laid, almost any teenage lad would go for it. Almost, because there are Mormons, asexuals, etc. And of course, gay sex won't produce offspring, so that's always an option that past societies have encouraged (Sparta, Athens, etc.). But since the majority of lads aren't gay, quite a few aren't even bi, that might be a non-starter for many of them.

Chessmistress wrote:

Galloism wrote:Second, whether they do or not is irrelevant. The current status quo is that women are never ever outside of extremely rare and unusual corner cases forced to become legal parents against their will, whether their biological portion is complete or not, and we should treat men the same way we treat women for the sake of equality.

Almost this.
But before giving men the right to surrend their legal duties, we should focus on granting all the necessary to the rejected babies.
I think that Feminism should focus on this, then MRA will do their thing.

There are people who think both sides, Feminism and MRA, are fools, and they're mocking us, both of us.
This have to stop: I'm not so stupid to think that a bunch of deadbeat dads who will hide behind such reform are a major problem compared to a guy who during a poverty-spreading pandemic and just after a very expensive divorce had enough money to launch his own starship.

Wow, this is so not the take that I expected from a radical feminist, but it's welcome. And yes, eat the damn rich!