Food for Thought

Here's something to think about:

On last night's edition of Politically Incorrect (for 9/9/99), one of the panelists named Melanie Bysouth (IIRC) revealed one of her radical feminists proposals. She said that men who sire children out of wedlock should not be held legally or financially responsible for the children they produced. Her reason was that women have the choice to not participate in acts that would have this result and that they are reponsible for their own bodies and men shouldn't be.

I want to emphasize that this is not my idea and that this was presented by a young woman claiming to be a feminist. I am not offering my opinion because I'm not sure I've actually come to one and I'm curious to what others may think about this (and let's just say that most of the audience and panel didn't take too kindly to this idea).

!!!??! like, the men played no part in the woman's pregnancy! i'm all for women being independant of men, but it's hardly fair to put the burden on women when there was another person equally responsible, especially as a woman raising a child alone may not be able to afford adequate child care.

The date that the world ended.:)

???

You sure it wasn't a guy in drag trying to worm his way out of child support?:)

Ye gods, it sounds like she's been trying to be unlike the "stereotypical female" for so long that she's become a stereotypical male!

This line of logic could be extended to some fascinating conclusions....

Len

Mike Quinn said:

This attitude overlooks the fact that men's bodies are also usually involved when creating a child... So, by her own logic, men should also be responsible for their bodies too, and what they have helped bring into existance with their bodies.

Until such a time when women can spontaneously fertilize their own eggs, then men need to take some part in the responsibility... The only advantage that I can see, from a feminist point-of-view, for this view of hers is that eventually men would be lowered to the status of simply studs and women would have complete control over which men got mate at all, as well as, complete control over the children's upbringing and education. A feminist paradise?

Marie

"What's done to children, they will do to society." -Karl Menninger

MarieRoss wrote in message news:[email]...

eggs, then

Actually a bad idea. I know, the feminists have been pushing for years for the development of asexual reproduction. Sex is nature's way of shuffling the genetic deck. A way for nature to try different ways of doing things.

this view

simply studs

as well

feminist

And this differs from the current arrangement--how?

I wasn't trying to advocate it... I was trying to illustrate how ridiculous I thought the statement that men should not be held responsible for the children they sire... Personally, I think making reproduction asexual would take all the fun out of it... :)

In many ways... The last time I checked, ours was not a Matriarchial society... Women do not control the governments and the county... think about it, if men had no say in their children's lives, what influence would they have over them? The women in charge would raise the children to believe the ideals they espoused and to devalue men... This is a common theme in SF and Fantasy...

Besides, it's not even true in a common sense... fathers are winning more cusody battles and contributing more to their children's upbringing then ever before...

Marie

"If you do not live what you believe, you will believe what you live." -Kanti Gala

MarieRoss wrote:

Rant time....

And IMHO it's an incorrect one. If you change "women" to "feminists", maybe. But women have been the main caregivers and teachers for children for millenia and there's been little change in the "balance of power". For instance: many men are still chavinist pigs, and damn proud of it, too. They enjoy saying and doing the same things to women that other pigs said and did to their mothers, and they don't see anything wrong with that. It's not nice to say, but if mothers cared more for their daughters and granddaughters, they'd teach their sons that women are more than T&A and this hellhole of a planet might become a more tolerable place after a few generations. Until someone takes the first step, nothing's going to change.

Len

Len Pitre said"

I agree with you... and women (and men) are changing things, but changes take time... and therre will always be women who like being treated badly by men, just as there are men who like being treated badly by women... everyone is entitled to their own chosen lifestyle as long as it doesn't injure others... In the context I was using I basically did mean women were feminists... (in that context... not in reality). Someone had commented that men didn't have much influence over their children's lives (or along those lines) and I was trying to point out that that was not true... that the only way I could forsee a reasonable way this could be true on a national scale is if we had a strict Matriarchal society where men were kept uneducated and reduced to the status of studs and/or beasts of burden... And in such a society, it would be in the women's interests to raise the girl children to despise the males and the boy children that the females were supierior... and if you tell a small child something enough, they will believe it... I don't mean to imply that I endorse such a society... one of my novels is about a matriarchal society so I have thought about it a lot... personally, I don't think it would last... If _human_ was meant to mean only "man" or "woman" then we would have evolved as one sex, able to independently reproduce... As Issac Asimov pointed out, there are advantages to being able to recombine dna from two creatures to make a third... Personally, I believe in equality for all... I am not a feminist... many of the views I hold would piss off true feminists... I'm a humanist, I guess...

Marie

"I reckon there's as much human nature in some folks as there is in others, if not more." -Edward Noyes Westcott

On Sun, 12 Sep 1999 14:37:04 GMT, I_Am_The_Archon@Doom!.com (Len Pitre) wrote:

Maybe more important (because more effective): Mothers should teach their daughters to keep away from those chauvinists. But it's a sad fact that a lot of women are content with the little-unimportant-housewife-role and pass that on to their daughters. If you dig deeper into the matter you will inevitably find the root of all evil: EDUCATION (more precisely the lack of it).

Uneducated people are the unknowing henchmen of the antichrist! MSB

i doubt very much that this is true; i suspect that the reason they stick with it and pass it on to their daughters is because they don't know how to live any other form of life.. their mother was a housewife, her mother was a housewife, etc.

agreed.

On Sat, 11 Sep 1999 16:16:38 -0400, "R. K. Henry" wrote:

So there is only one conclusion. Start a nuclear war against the feminists. If they lose, their plan fails. If they win, the radioactivity will do the gene shuffling. You see, it's a win-win situation. And think of all the other benefits of that war. More jobs (per person), never-before-seen animals and plants to replace those we have driven to extinction, white X-mas all the time (if that nuclear winter is as cool as they say), more love-making (hoping that the 10th kid will finally have a head AND a torso). MSB (who starts saving money to buy some Russian plutonium.)

For years I've been reading these novels by David Robbins called the "Endworld" and "Blade" series... They're just about that (well, not the feminist thing), an apocalyptic US (and the rest of the world too). They're not the type of books that would appeal to discerning readers, though... they are however, full of mutant humans, animals, and insects (giant, intelligent cockroaches... must not remember...) as well as simply crazy humans... all vying for contol of the wasted earth... It's almost all action of course but the main characters are surprisingly wholesome (and manage to remain so while constantly having to fight off some new menace). I was surprised at how well-developed the characters were compared to other similar books... Oh and in almost every book something gets stabbed in the eye... ;) What fun!

Marie

"If you do not live what you believe, you will believe what you live." -Kanti Gala

[email] (MarieRoss) wrote:

Now you're talkin'!

rich.

Jane: You're a twisted little cruller, ain't'cha?

Marie Ross said:

I think they're fun :)

Very character-driven series. Each of the heroes is an elite specialist in a whole mode of fighting and thinking.

Sincerely Yours, Jordan

"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)

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In other words, "Make war so we can make love."

cheryl

On 11 Sep 1999 00:50:43 GMT, [email] (MarieRoss) wrote:

Oh, man.

Kyle, The Manny Alexander of alt.sports.baseball.chicago.cubs

"Kissing is touching your lips to the better end of 66 feet of intestine"

On 11 Sep 1999 00:50:43 GMT, [email] (MarieRoss) wrote:

Maybe human women could learn from rat females. When food is scarce they simply reabsorb the embryo. No contraceptives or abortions necessary. One of the many reasons why rats are so successful. MSB (who likes rats)

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this view

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Um, I had a boss who had "feminist paradise" wrapped up in a nutshell. Her theory was we should keep boys around long enough to harvest their sperm then off them (no pun intended) around the age of 13 or 14. Then the women could run the world and raise the kids (female ones anyway).She was being somewhat facetious, but she gave me the creeps when she would expound on this theory. I could never tell if she wasn't serious underneath it all. (Male bashing in general makes me nervous. There's a lot of bad apples in the female gender, so why be so one sided?) Also it reminded me of a book called Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon which is highly creepy and highly recommended. It features a ritual which involves killing a man as a symbol of fertilization. It just gives me the willies when I think about it.