What an outrage! The very idea of men going to court to try to save their babies’ lives has the feminists screaming with indignation. Predictably enough, a new men’s group has sprung up to defend the so-called woman’s right to choose and to protest the temerity of Gregory Murphy and Jean-Guy Tremblay who had the nerve to believe that their children should have a chance to be born.
Do the men who recently signed the “Men for women’s right to choose” statement in Toronto truly realize the extent to which they have been cowed and manipulated by the interminable feminist matter on abortion? Or, perhaps, these men are actually smarter than they appear on the pages of Canada’s national newspaper and are themselves manipulating the feminists whom they seem publicly to support.
Feminists (and don’t forget that it is not necessary to be female to be a feminist these days, you merely have to be pro-abortion) have always that it is patriarchal power , or male dominance, that has restricted their perceived right to kill. They view childbearing, at best, as a bit of a nuisance because it interferes with careers. At worst, raising children is a male plot, designed to keep women out of the “truly important” realm of business and politics. The feminist line rejects the idea that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” rejects the idea that there is more than one route to personal achievement.
These new emasculated “men” are obviously a great feminist triumph. These men have completely swallowed the slippery argument that they have no claims to or interest in the children they have co-created. Before birth, that is. After birth, the fathers are expected to share equally in caring for the baby. Should the couple split, the child becomes a weapon firmly controlled by the mother. If the early struggle was to overcome male power and control, it hardly seems an advance to have it replaced with female dominance.
In the end, though, it is in men’s interests to endorse the notion that only the woman has the right to decide the fate of their pre-born child. Which is why I suspect that these new men may be smarter than they sound. While pretending to respect women’s rights, men can continue to evade their responsibilities for the children and be applauded by the feminists for their “enlightened attitudes.” But male evasion of their sexual activity does nothing to help women’s equality.
It means that women will continue to feel pressured into having abortions because their ”lovers” can continue to escape providing them emotional and financial support. It means that women will continue to suffer the emotional and physical harm of this supposedly simple procedure, and be told their pain is a myth. It means that society will continue to punish single women by refusing to support policies to help them raise their children in conditions above the poverty level. Some equality.
It will take men of courage to come forward now, after Gregory Murphy and Jean-Guy Tremblay. They risk being slandered as Machiavellian manipulators and women beaters. Any sordid details of a couple’s private relationship will become public gossip, making it seem impossible for any woman to have a child under such circumstances. (No one dares to suggest that such couples could benefit from counseling to improve their relationships.)
It is about time that men take a public stand against the feminist-inspired new stereotype of equally skilled diaper changers and live up to their responsibilities for their families. Then we can all start discussing equality within a framework of sanity.
