What "choice for men" comes down to for me is who bears the cost instead. I'm a lot more comfortable with the idea of a father being able to legally opt out if there's a sufficient support system in place so that the child's mother can raise the child without assistance from the father - even if she chooses not to. But right now we don't have that. Instead, we have conservative think tanks complaining that what little aid we do give costs too much.
I think the bringing up of "pregnancy is so dangerous" may simply have been a context failure. I typically see that argument used in the context of pro-choice or childfree advocacy, and he may have just internalized that as "the feminist position." But it's not particularly relevant here unless one takes the attitude that child support is supposed to be either compensation for, or an equivalent "punishment" to, pregnancy, and I don't see how one can reconcile that attitude with feminism.
And as for calling folks on things, it depends on the situation. Sometimes the arguments are so devoid of intelligence, or I've heard them so many times before, that there's no reward in refuting them, but if the other side is willing to engage, then having to explain myself and not getting any free passes means that the argument gets a good workout.
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Re: Nobody likes a paladin.
Date: 2008-04-16 07:06 pm (UTC)I think the bringing up of "pregnancy is so dangerous" may simply have been a context failure. I typically see that argument used in the context of pro-choice or childfree advocacy, and he may have just internalized that as "the feminist position." But it's not particularly relevant here unless one takes the attitude that child support is supposed to be either compensation for, or an equivalent "punishment" to, pregnancy, and I don't see how one can reconcile that attitude with feminism.
And as for calling folks on things, it depends on the situation. Sometimes the arguments are so devoid of intelligence, or I've heard them so many times before, that there's no reward in refuting them, but if the other side is willing to engage, then having to explain myself and not getting any free passes means that the argument gets a good workout.