On opting out

The case sometimes trumpted as "Roe vs. Wade for men" has been on my mind lately, mostly because I find it confusing.

On one hand, my immediate reaction is "Are you kidding? It took you both to make the baby in the first place!" But then, if I were to accidentally become pregnant, I would have various options available to me: I could have a baby and raise it or, with the father's consent, put it up for adoption. Since I don't live in South Dakota, I could have an abortion. In some states, I could take advantage of the "Baby Moses laws" that remove or reduce criminal penalties for babies abandoned at designated locations like hospitals.

The father wouldn't have nearly as many options. He could try to exert pressure on me to make a particular decision, or choose to give or withhold consent to give a baby up for adoption. But if I chose to have the baby and raise him or her myself, even if he chose not to participate, he would have no legal recourse against a demand for child support.

He also doesn't have the same kinds of options I do to prevent pregnancy in the first place. I think it is perfectly appropriate that reliable methods of birth control were developed first for women, but decades later, men's options are still limited to condoms or sterilization. Would a case like this one even be necessary if he had the option of popping a daily pill in return for excellent odds against his partners becoming pregnant?

As much as I emotionally rebel against the idea of a father opting out of the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood, I do think he should get some choices. What I don't like about this case is the bizarre equivalency it draws between a woman's ability to "opt out" via abortion and a man's potential ability to do so via money. The message sounds to me a little like "You have the option to have an abortion, so if you don't, be it on your head!" (Women can, of course, opt out financially by giving a baby up for adoption, but that still seems a far cry from signing on a dotted line.)

At this particular moment, I think this kind of law may be the most palatable of a set of bad options; I certainly consider it far preferable to any change in abortion law that would give men more control. And everyone, including the plantiff, seems to believe that the present case is valuable more as a discussion-opener rather than a serious legal move. In that sense, it seems deserving of our consideration: is it a viable or acceptable option? If dads opt out of financial responsibility, who picks up the slack? If none of our current options are acceptable, what would be a better one, and how do we get from here to there?

Five ways I am sexist

I think of myself as a reasonably liberated woman. I grew up in the era of "Girls Can Do Anything" t-shirts and remembering thinking, even as a little kid, "Of course they can!" Nonetheless, even in a liberal area of the country like the one I live in, gender roles are still strong and cultural norms have left me with deeply ingrained sexist assumptions.

To wit:

I notice men wearing skirts but not women wearing pants.
My default image, when someone says "teacher," "secretary," or "nurse," is of a woman. If someone says "executive," "doctor," or "stockbroker," I automatically think of a man.
If I'm walking home alone at night and I hear someone coming up behind me, I never feel a jolt of panic if I can tell the person is wearing heels.
When men start sentences with "I feel," it catches my attention.
Despite the fact that I am bisexual, if a man I am friendly with tells me I look nice, I wonder what he means by it, and if a woman I am friendly with says the same thing, I am flattered.

I know all of these things are sexist and try to counter habits like these when I notice them. But I list them here anyway because they seem to me to highlight how our culture and surroundings influence us in deep, subtle ways -- sometimes ways so subtle it takes work to even notice them -- and I think that influence is the ultimate cause of an awful lot of discrimination.