"I’m polyamorous, which means I believe you can love multiple partners at the same time."

"I’m in a relationship with my husband of nearly 17 years, and my boyfriend, with whom I celebrated my second anniversary in May. (In polyamorous lingo, our relationship is known as a 'V; I’m the 'hinge' of the V and my two partners are the vertices.)" So writes Angi Becker Stevens in Salon, complaining that "the world at large" condemns them.

My boyfriend and I met through our leftist politics...

My daughter, who will be 10 next month, has known that her father and I are non-monogamous for nearly as long as she can remember. She certainly isn’t exposed to sexuality any more than children of monogamous relationships are; she sees child-appropriate displays of affection between me and both of my partners, and she lives in a stable, loving home. I often talk to her about the fact that society frowns on families like ours, and whenever I mention the claims that polyamory is bad for children, she rolls her eyes and says, “Oh no, kids having more people to love them! How horrible!”

Oh, no, kids having more adults showing them how to be sarcastic! How horrible!

When my daughter talks about same-sex marriage or polyamorous relationships, she always looks perplexed and says, “I don’t understand why anyone is angry about people being in love and not hurting anyone.” And I long for a world where everyone is able to see it so simply.

You complicate your own life and then call upon others to be simple as they think about your complications.

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"The pros and cons of sex before marriage."

A article in The Independent Florida Alligator.

The Independent Florida Alligator. The whole idea of an independent Florida alligator tips me toward strong norms of no sex outside of marriage.

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"Where we were. What we were doing."

4 years ago.

Details here and here about the smallest possible wedding, the opposite of spectacle. And, similarly, I'm not saying very much in this blog post, just noting the occasion. As I've said before, I prefer normal days, and this day is a great day mostly because it's another day, in 4 years of days, to be spent with my beautiful husband, Meade.

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Glenn Loury and I don't see what's so bad about Anthony Weiner's sexting.

We question the denouncement of Weiner, speculate about the nature of the "arrangement" or "understanding" between Huma and Anthony (and Bill and Hillary), and compare the wrongness of sexting to pornography, adultery, and prostitution:

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The Queen's WWIII speech.

Revealed, because in Britain, they reveal these things after 30 years. I'm struck by the reliance — imagining utter doom — on family:

"It is this close bond of family life that must be our greatest defence against the unknown.

"If families remain united and resolute, giving shelter to those living alone and unprotected, our country's will to survive cannot be broken."

Nuclear devastation — "the unknown" — is about to descend, and what can the country's parental voice say to the millions who are suddenly hearing that they're almost all about to die? Maybe some can survive, and for all that can hear the message, at least a few moments remain. There is, at this dire point: family. For the poor souls without a family: Anyone with a family should see how terribly unfortunate you are — amid all the misfortune — and take you in.

There was no WWIII, not back then, at least. Is the Queen's speech a weird relic? No. It's a vivid, striking message of something we know that we know even if we mostly live as if we have forgotten: The core of human life is family.

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"The Clintons are upset with the comparisons that the Weiners seem to be encouraging..."

"... that Huma is 'standing by her man' the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did," according to an unnamed "top state Democrat."

“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”

She wasn't any of those things in 1992 when she sat by her man on "60 Minutes" and claimed to be doing something more than whatever it was Tammy Wynette was singing about in "Stand By Your Man." And what Bill had done was worse than what Weiner seems to have done. Bill had sex with other women. Weiner merely sexted. And Bill was sitting there lying about it and Hillary backed him up big time, whereas in the recent Huma-and-Anthony TV stunt, the misdeeds are admitted.

If Hillary is pissed off, I would think it's because she doesn't want people reminded of her old stand-by-your-man routine:

“Hillary didn’t know Huma would do this whole stand-by-your-man routine, and that’s one of the reasons the Clintons are distancing themselves from all this nonsense,’’ the source said.

I put up the old 1992 interview in my post about Weiner yesterday, and we watched the whole 10 minutes and laughed a lot. I scoffed: "This is the first female President of the United States?!"

I encourage you to watch the whole thing. Watch Bill bullshit to avoid telling an outright lie, and watch Hillary nod as her man wriggles through — lip bite at 6:15 — and marvel at her delight in his equivocations — her smug smile at 6:38! At 7:02, Hillary does a little "zone of privacy" riff that should feel irksome to women's rights advocates, since it's the key phrase in the law relating to women's bodily autonomy and Hillary is using it to say don't look at the selfish, women-exploiting things my husband has done.

After that, Bill is very animated and smiley, waving his hands about, theorizing about privacy, and at some point we see his big hand resting on and weighing down Hillary's demurely clasped hands. When did his hand get there? I ask out loud and scroll back to see how he managed to plunk it there. It's just suddenly there at 8:01 after a cut to Steve Kroft's face. CBS made that cut! We weren't allowed to see him segue from expansive explaining gesture to holding the woman down. At 9:03, after another cut, Hillary says they will not say anything more, no matter how much they are pushed.

And Kroft pushes, suggesting that they have reached — to use the classic adultery-tolerating buzzwords — "an understanding" and "an arrangement." Bill's all "Wait a minute, wait a minute" — and his big mitt is back on top of Hillary's hands — "You're looking at 2 people who love each other. This is not 'an arrangement' or 'an understanding.'" And then, in a very sincere, whispery tone: "This is a marriage. That's a very different thing."

Here's where Hillary jumps in (9:38) — with a harsh, Southern-accented twang and waggling her head around — "You know, I'm not sittin' here like some little woman standin' by her man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sittin' here because I love him and I respect him... and if that's not enough for people then, heck, don't vote for him."

The soft gentle man, and the sharp modern-but-not-modern woman. That moment was the triumph of a lifetime for Hillary. It made everything happen. It got her man elected President. That's so much more than anything Huma accomplished in her balky wan press conference with Weiner. Hillary is rightly pissed.

ADDED: Meade — who's sittin' by me right now — reads the post out loud and says "Bring in the comments... I think it will be great." So go ahead. Do comments. I have to moderate them, so there may be a delay and comments must relate to the text of the post to be approved.

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"Why don't men pursue women anymore?"

A question someone Googled, which brought them to this old blog post of mine, which links to a 2006 NYT Magazine article that I remember very well. Coincidentally, I had reread that post a couple days ago and had been wanting to re-blog it.  My post title is a quote from the article: "Men don’t marry because women like myself don't need to rely on them." I'd said:

The article is very much like the kind of article that is often written about women: profiles of wistful, sympathetic individuals who can't quite get what they want in life and make a valiant, poignant effort to say it's not that terrible. Then there is an undercurrent that seems to imply that we need liberal economic policies to boost men so that women will be able to accept them. And there's a big overtone suggesting that for all the loneliness, marriage really isn't all that appealing to people. Now that we don't march lockstep into marriage anymore and now that women don't require men for economic support, the reasons for marrying -- for a lot of people -- are never going to mount up to the point where they justify giving up the status quo of singlehood.

The comments thread there is excellent, including some memorable commenters who were long gone by The Last Days of Commenting — comments ended on July 7, 2013 — and including Meade — whom I did not encounter in person before 2009, the year we married. Someone in that thread asks me to marry him... but it's not Meade. Good old Meade says:

... I can't blame anyone for not marrying. Have you ever sat in on a divorce trial? It should be a requirement, before being issued a marriage license, for every couple to do so -- a blood test, a background check, and three days as captive audience in the misery of someone else's divorce trial. I assure you, most couples drunk on love would sober right up and vow to remain just friends. And the world would be a happier place. Forget men being statistically marginally happier when married. Puh. Except for the lawyers who make an often times lucrative income from it, divorce is a ring of hell unto itself and the only guaranteed way of never experiencing that hell is to never get married in the first place.

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"Self-esteem. This organ is situated at the vertex or top of the head..."

"... a little above the posterior or sagittal angle of the parietal bones."

In phrenology, self-esteem is: "One of the mental faculties with which an ‘organ’ or ‘bump’ in the cranium is associated; the ‘bump’ itself." That's from the (unlinkable) OED, where I was looking up "self-esteem," after blogging about Monica Lewinsky's 40th birthday and cherry-picking the old Barbara Walters prompt "Where was your self-esteem?"

Monica, had she known phrenology, might have said: Where? It's at the top of my head, of course, a little above the posterior or sagittal angle of the parietal bones.



Too bad I don't have comments or you could supply me with the jokes about Clinton's "organ" and the location of his self-esteem. I won't go there, other than to say that I see that one could. I've got lofty plans for the direction of this blog post.
I want to tell you that the phrenology meaning only goes back to the early 19th century, but the familiar meaning — "Favourable appreciation or opinion of oneself" — can be found in the 17th century, in Book 8 of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667):

For what admir'st thou, what transports thee so,
An outside? fair no doubt, and worthy well
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love,
Not thy subjection: weigh with her thy self;
Then value: Oft times nothing profits more
Then self esteem, grounded on just and right
Well manag'd; of that skill the more thou know'st,
The more she will acknowledge thee her Head,
And to realities yield all her shows:
Made so adorn for thy delight the more,
So awful, that with honour thou maist love
Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise.
But if the sense of touch whereby mankind
Is propagated seem such dear delight
Beyond all other, think the same voutsaf't
To Cattel and each Beast; which would not be
To them made common and divulg'd, if aught
Therein enjoy'd were worthy to subdue
The Soule of Man, or passion in him move.

That's the angel Raphael advising Adam about loving Eve. Here are the crib notes for Book 8, to sketch out the context. "The more she will acknowledge thee her Head" is not about getting blow jobs.

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"I have no way of knowing whether Huma, for whom I have great respect, is responding out of new motherhood, the Stockholm syndrome or a mystery."

Said Gloria Steinem, quoted in a NYT piece called "Many New York Women Are Baffled at Loyalty Shown by Weiner’s Wife."

Why puzzle? Go with the simplest solution: They had an understanding. Must I explain the world to Gloria Steinem? I doubt it. I believe she is bullshitting, because what is the basis for having "great respect" for Huma Abedin? None!

And it's perfectly silly to say "Stockholm syndrome."

Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness. 

A wife is not a hostage! She's someone who chose a life mate and voluntarily made vows to stand by him.  Transferring that concept onto marriage is ridiculous (unless there's some actual imprisonment going on).

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"Terrible as it sounds, it was easier than divorcing him," says the 21-year-old woman, hiring a hitman.

"I didn't have to worry about the judgment of my family. I didn't have to worry about breaking his heart... It's going to break my heart when it happens, but it's something that I've been thinking about for a while."

That's all on video which you can see at the link. She amazingly smiling and sweet, as she arranges to pay $50,000 out of her husband's $400,000 life insurance to the "hitman" who, it turns out, is a cop.

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The comments vacation.

We've closed the door to comments... for a while at least, but there is still a backdoor, manned by Meade.

Will the comments section ever reopen, or is this a permanent vacation? I expect to reopen, well refreshed, and with some new ideas about how to make the ongoing experience rewarding for commenters of good faith.

ADDED: A reader emails:

Just a note from the peanut gallery that's been around since at least the Bush/Kerry election and a non participant in the comments section (I think I've commented 3 times in the history of the blog.)

I preferred the no comment policy.

Sometimes it feels more like an attempt to generate a discussion and I'm not looking for a group exercise to reach some conclusion. I read because I'm interested in what Ann actually thinks about something and I like to see her explain her view, and lately it's felt more like she's trying to lead a class discussion and she's gotten fairly frustrated when the class came to the "wrong" conclusion. I also live in Madison and enjoy the local flavor, especially the "how the hell did they think that was going to be a good idea" variety.

I don't know what goes on in the comments, good or bad, I've never really read them. Since most of the comments are by definition going to come from the people who comment... I thought I'd chime in from the side that liked the blog better when there were no comments, and I'm hoping they stay closed.

Thanks. I know there are lots of people who only read the front page, and this vacation is helping me think more about the blog as it feels to them. As for the notion that I'm "trying to lead a class discussion," I love starting and furthering conversation, here and in law school class, but there are many differences about the conversation here, where there is no particular goal, and commenters could do all sorts of amusingly creative things that would be way out of line in class. Wonderful, beloved commenters like rhhardin, Chip Ahoy, and betamax3000 would have no way to do their thing in class, where I must keep the discussion on track for the sake of the entire group, which is sitting there in real time with specific needs that must be met. There is no "right" conclusion that I'm trying to extract from either group — law students or commenters — but in law school there are readings that must be understood and issues that must be explored in ways that relate to the profession the students are there to learn. Commenters have far more leeway, and I love diversity of opinion and all sorts of weird things that aren't opinions at all. I want all manner of interesting material in the comments.

There are a few ways that commenters can go wrong, but it's not that they've reached the "'wrong' conclusion." And I wasn't putting up posts for the purpose of getting people to figure out some right answer that I had in mind and was Socratically trying to get them to say. And I don't feel "frustrated" when they don't come up with what I would say. My commenters pretty systematically disagree with me about same-sex marriage and abortion rights, and that's been going on for the entire life of this blog, and it doesn't bother me. I think it's possible that things got especially ugly after the Supreme Court decided the gay marriage cases, and a few people seemed almost to have a nervous breakdown. Then, when I started talking about the consequences of unmarried heterosexual sex, there was some severe cognitive dissonance for the opponents of gay marriage. Their supposed profound reverence for the union of a man and a woman got subordinated to their enthusiasm for the fornicating man's interest in escaping child support payments. That had to hurt, and I felt fine expressing respect for the marital bonds of love for everyone.

That's when things went to hell around here, and the really destructive commenters showed who they are.

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"I do see the problem that if the sex drive is easily satisfied outside of marriage..."

"... it becomes difficult for any given woman to ask for much in a marriage, but I don't see this as a reason to lower her standards." That's the last sentence to my previous post. Maybe you disagree with me. The Fairness-to-Men Doctrine requires me to give rebuttal time to Jon Lovitz:

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Instapundit says that what he thinks about what he calls my "advice" is "immaterial" but that it's "probably pretty good advice"...

... on what he calls "a prudential level."

So — for all that softening — there's still one strong word: "advice." I stand accused of giving "advice," but I don't see that I gave advice in that statement of mine that he quotes at the link. He introduced my quote with the opinion that I'm speaking "kind of social-connishly." "Kind of" is more softening — but the reader is told to see me as giving socially conservative advice.

Now, I don't think I'm giving any advice other than to say: You are free, you need to think about how you use your freedom, and don't just think about your own perspective as you make arguments that law and society ought to be arranged to facilitate your choices. I'd say I'm being quite libertarian. And as for social connishness, I support abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and — it's right there in my quote — I'm not out to punish those who decline to channel their sexuality into committed relationships with child-rearing. I'm just defending legal and political decisions that center on protecting the interests of children rather than the ability of males to avoid the consequences of procreation, consequences that occur even though the male power over reproduction ends — because he controls only his body and not the woman's — at an earlier point in time than the woman's. This leaves some men aggrieved that a woman didn't abort a baby he didn't want, and I'm just not too sympathetic about this male plight. So maybe I am giving "advice" in the form of saying: Don't expect sympathy.

But Glenn must think I'm advising everyone to form stable, committed, child-rearing couples, because he goes on to say, that my advice is "of course, advice one dare not give to women in today’s society without facing a huge backlash." Of course? Dare not? Oh, come on. How daring do you need to be to tell women they'll be better off in stable relationships? I'll say it now, and I think this advice is given all the time. Huge backlash? I take it he's referring to the "war on women" politics that permeated the 2012 elections, because he goes on to say:

When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control, he was savaged. 

Rush was savaged because he made a joke that was easily portrayed as ugly (and stupid). He set up the false premise that if insurance covers a woman's birth control expenses, she's being paid to have sex and therefore she's a prostitute. And, on a roll, he went ahead and said that if we — the people paying into the insurance pool — were paying for a prostitute, we ought to get the sex, so she should at least give us video of herself having sex.

Now, I listen to Rush, and I get his humor, which is sometimes over-the-top — being absurd to illustrate the absurd, he likes to say. But that was really too nasty, especially since it named and targeted a specific woman, who wasn't — especially at that point — much of a public figure. Sandra Fluke was a women's health-care advocate — still a student — who had testified about how difficult it is for young women to pay for their birth control expenses. Whatever you think about Obamacare and covering the ordinary health-care expenses that young people have, you've got to concede that Limbaugh was not savaged because he "suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control."

So Glenn begins with a distorted picture of my "advice" and a bizarrely exaggerated claim of how difficult it is to give women advice. He goes on:

But to suggest that a man should pay child support for 18 years because a woman lied about birth control is fine. You can’t say “she should keep her legs closed,” but you can say, “he should keep it in his pants.” That’s fine.

I certainly will say that fathers owe their children support, and I don't want he said/she said legal battles over women who supposedly lied about birth control.  I agree that it's socially acceptable to say that, and I even suspect Glenn would agree with me about most instances of men who failed to take responsibility for their own birth control and have sex with women who might be deceitful.

But I don't agree that you can't advise women to withhold sex. I'd give that advice, although I would not say it in the crude and old-fashioned "keep your legs closed" form. (I would talk about valuing your own body and your own long-term interests.) And as for telling the man to "keep it in his pants," the main "it" that has concerned me in these recent discussions is sperm. Not the penis. Not even the seminal fluid, since I offered the option of freezing sperm and having a vasectomy. But I think it's ineffective to just tell people — males and females — not to have sex. Women will have distinctive feminist answers to any anti-sex pressure. You'll be accused of wanting a return to the archaic subordination of women. Men can only say you're puritanical or anti-freedom. So what? The pro-free-sex arguments are out there for both males and females.

Over the past several decades, women have asserted a right to make all the judgments in matters of gender and sexuality. 

All the judgments? You mean all the judgments about their own bodies. Men can't control women's bodies anymore. Women have won that argument in America (except to the extent there are some limits on abortion). But I don't think too many women are asserting a right to control men's bodies, unless you think the sperm that has escaped from the man's possession and merged with an egg inside the woman's body should be reclaimable by him somehow. It's the woman — under American law — who gets to determine the significance of that growing entity, whether it's a human being deserving the chance to live, because pregnancy happens inside her body, dependent on her bodily organs. The man doesn't have the right to force her to have an abortion. I doubt if Glenn would favor a man's right of that sort.

And, in fact, we do “facilitate” destructive choices, when they’re by women. We subsidize unwed mothers, we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males, we give them all sorts of “choice” that men don’t have and then absolve them, culturally and legally, from judgment over the way they exercise those choices. No similar dispensation is given to men.

Not even if the male has the primary child-care-giving role? I don't think the line is between male and female here. I think it's about children. I think our welfare policies are neutral about passing judgment on sexual behavior. If men want a "similar dispensation," let them take an equivalent role with respect to children. Do they even want that? It looks like they just want out of child support. They are treated differently because they are doing something different. I know many will want to repeat the complaint about the male's loss of decisionmaking power at an earlier point in the reproductive process, but this is a blatant biological difference, and it's why the man needs to watch where he lets his sperm go. That's his big opportunity to control his destiny.

Glenn returns to his idea that I'm prescribing a behavioral norm for everyone:

A society that ran according to Ann Althouse’s views on marriage and commitment might, in fact, be a better one than the one we live in now, but it is most definitely not the one we live in now. 

I'm not an ideologue about how everyone ought to live. I like individualism, autonomy, freedom, and personal responsibility. I'm not yearning for an old-fashioned society where everyone channels their sexuality into marriage and child-rearing. So what I'm saying doesn't require the society to change into something else. I'm talking about the world as we find it and recommend that people face it as it is and figure out how to live. This is an individual's choice. You can be a good person in a completely evil world, which is obviously not a description of America today. Our society has some problems, but that doesn't change the call to the individual to be a good person and to find a way to live a moral and worthy life. (You can decide to be a completely selfish and unproductive person, but there are consequences, and it's not necessarily easy.)

Referencing the imperfections of modern life, Glenn goes on to say:

Observing that, and noting the unfairnesses involved, is not “victimology” — though given how successful women have been in obtaining power via victimology, no one should be surprise [sic] if men start to give it a try.

So, Glenn is both resisting the breadth of the "victimology" label and toying with the notion that it might be a good strategy for men to use that label. That is, he's contemplating the rhetoric and seems ambivalent. Let's think about this more: Should men move in this direction in the political discourse, portraying themselves as victims? The absurd version of this is claiming to be victims of the way women have gotten so much out of claiming to be victims. Maybe Glenn wants to say since women have gained so much out of claiming to be victims, men should rebalance things by showing that they too are victims. There are costs to that strategy. I prefer to call everyone — male and female — to greater clarity in thinking about how he or she can live a good life.

Next, Glenn disagrees with a belief that I don't think anyone has:

But I do not believe that women deserve a monopoly in determining what views on gender and sexuality and parenting are acceptable. Why would they?

A monopoly on what views are acceptable? Many people state a view and act like it's the only acceptable view. That's typical of political argument. That doesn't stop their opponents from doing the same. But I don't hear anyone saying that men aren't even allowed to participate in the discussion.

And yet Glenn says:

What’s funny is that so many women seem genuinely perplexed that men would even dispute that monopoly. 

I'm only perplexed at the claim that there is a monopoly!

Ann is a thoughtful and open-minded and smart woman, but at some level I feel like she doesn’t really get it. 

What, exactly, is the "it"? Is it the original subject: that men who left their sperm somewhere out of their control are expected to support their own children? I certainly get that men would rather hold onto their money and that they feel ripped off. I just understand why the legal and political decisions put a relatively light weight on that particular preference.

But then, that’s what women have been saying to men on gender issues for decades: “You just don’t get it!” Maybe the not-getting goes both ways. 

Okay, then, I've given Glenn some material to get. We'll see how that goes.

The problem is, if society is to accomplish the goals that Ann sets out above...

Again, I did not set goals. I only called individuals to clear, moral thinking about their own lives.

... it needs to be a reasonably attractive proposition for both men and women. 

With my clarification of what I am doing, this clause makes no sense. I know Glenn is, at this point in his post, building in the thesis of his wife Helen Smith's book "Men on Strike." In order to offer up the idea that marriage needs to be a deal that both men and women will accept, he's using me for premise that marriage is the goal. I don't like that.

He then says:

How are we doing with that? At the risk of stepping on my wife’s turf, I’d say not so well.

At that point he links to this video summary of Helen's book. The book is "Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters" — which I have read — and the video is called "Six Reasons Why Men Are Avoiding Marriage":



Does this video show that men are not doing well? Glenn's "I’d say not so well" actually doesn't refer to whether men are doing well, but whether marriage is "a reasonably attractive proposition for both men and women."

In the video, Helen gives 6 reasons why a man today might analyze his personal interests and decide against marriage. So men are doing what suits them. Helen is not saying they're misjudging their situation. She's saying they are behaving rationally in their own self-interest. The implication seems to be that women are losing out on the opportunity to have marriage partners. That would mean women ought to make concessions and, in their self-interest, offer men a better deal.

Are men "on strike"? The labor union analogy implies that these men who are choosing, rationally, not to marry are somehow organized, acting together, and making demands and that women are somehow the management, the boss. But these men are individuals, and — if we're talking about marriage — they only want one woman.

I'm not the social engineer type. I've always only been talking about individual decisionmaking. Decide for yourself what you want. I do see the problem that if the sex drive is easily satisfied outside of marriage, it becomes difficult for any given woman to ask for much in a marriage, but I don't see this as a reason to lower her standards.

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9 things Freeman Hunt said...

... in the comments at "If men did this to women..." (##1-5) and at "A somewhat dismissive response" (##6-9):

1. "When I was growing up, the prevailing sex ed was that you, male or female, were wholly responsible for your own birth control and that you should never assume or believe that the other person was taking care of it. That's not the prevailing wisdom anymore?"

2. "Maybe all those traditionally religious people don't hate sex--maybe they have all those prohibitions on sex outside marriage for some other reason... It's like there was a plan for all of this or something."

3. "Odd. This thread is odd. Are some people furious because (1) Althouse suggests men don't go depositing sperm around women they don't love and would despise having children with or because (2) Althouse/the law being in favor of/upholding abortion rights?"

4. In sarcastic imitation of other commenters: "I don't wanna have babies with the skanks I like to hose down with my sperm. Those disposable tramps I bed should be drawn and quartered if they try to pull a fast one on a fine, upstanding guy like me. Just where do these no-good, dishonest women I make love to get off?"

5. About my supposedly "nasty" taunting of males who claim victimhood over their loss of control over the sperm they've released into the wild: "Heh. Oddly enough, I think that was intended to be encouraging. It's encouraging this idea that a person can be more than an animal who ruts around with whoever, even those he doesn't like or know, more than a careless, appetite feeding beast. I think it was an invitation to the recognition of the divine spark in man."

6. "I'd imagine that Althouse, Instapundit, and Dr. Helen are perfectly capable of arguing intensely about an issue and not taking it personally. Surely anyone who comments here, of all places, does the same on a regular basis!"

7. "How many of us have had it out, ripped each other apart rhetorically and gotten on perfectly well afterward? That's one of the best things about this place."

8. "As for my opinion on this small controversy: This is good. This victim man stuff was hitting a tipping point of absurdity, so the push back is well timed.  I write that as someone who adores men and was raised mostly by her father. And I'm proud to say that my dearly departed father would never have advocated such a base vision for manhood, this vision that sees man as a pathetic beast who throws his sperm about with abandon and needs protecting from the women he beds."

9. "@Freeman: It's actually a venerable academic tradition. I learned about it firsthand from an oldtimer and wrote about it here. I thought about bringing up the fact that it's a hallmark of healthy academia. Whenever you see it slide in academia, the result is less rigorous work and meagerness of mind."

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"A somewhat dismissive response."

Instapundit says, somewhat dismissively. 

I suspect he wouldn't want to hear my truly dismissive response, but if you search the comments at my somewhat dismissive response... and over here... you can extrapolate what it would be. I'll cherry-pick some clues as to what I would say if I chose to go hard-core on this subject.

Quoting a commenter who said — about my proposal that health insurance pay for vasectomies and men freeze their sperm in order to provide males with reproductive autonomy — "Point of order, the woman has a right to seek an abortion. There's nothing about anyone having to provide it to her or having Other People pay for it," I said:

That's true, and that is something that makes the proposal in my post not neatly about equality.

But there really can never be equality about pregnancy and childbirth. It is the woman's special burden, and the policies have to be arranged to make sense around that basic inequity. I'm not trying to punish men by imposing a corresponding inequity, I'm just not impressed by the whinings of males who were profligate with their sperm. They are not the backbone of society.

The backbone of society is the married, committed couple who channel their sexuality into making and growing the next generation. Those who do other things are free to make choices, but we as a society have no reason to facilitate their choices, especially their destructive choices.

I know people like their free sex, but the expectation that the rest of us will save them from consequences is pathetic. I heartlessly laugh in their face. 

Quoting a commenter who said, "Your logic is correct for our pathetic society, but that doesn't rob from how pathetic it is," I said:

Yeah, but that's my point. My real prescription isn't [the vasectomy/frozen sperm proposal]. This is a fall-back now that we've become pathetic.

Really, men need to keep track of their genetic material. One way or another.

Don't be a splooge stooge.

Quoting a commenter who said "Women are just as responsible themselves..." I said:

I never said they weren't.

Both are fully responsible.

And, on the earlier post, quoting a commenter who said "Let's try applying your logic the other way. Women are free to freeze their eggs and then have their tubes tied. That way they have perfect choice not to get pregnant. So that does away with the case for abortion, right?" I said:

The fact is, once a woman is pregnant, she has a right to use abortion to get out of the physical process that has begun, but it is too late for the man to exercise a right, because his rights relate to his body, not hers.

The man must take responsibility for himself, not seek to control the woman.

I know you men would like to have your fun and freedom and not be troubled by risks, but your body is yours and her body is hers.

Reacting to all the many, many comments from men who have taken Instapundit's invitation to victimology seriously, I said (punctuation corrected):

There are some really sad beta posturings in this thread.

Where is the self-respect?

Where is the awe over procreation?

Lame little men, whining about their meager money.

No one cares about you, because no one should!

Where is your aspiration? Where is your altruism?

Why do you leave the house?

You have your porn and your masturbation.

The alternative is true manhood, but is that something you are capable of? Apparently not!

I laugh in your scrunched up crying little face.

Another commenter said "You are also forgetting that even if a condom is used and the woman fishes the condom out of the trash and uses a turkey baster to impregnate herself, the man is still held responsible. If a woman takes a used condom from a man having sex *with a different woman* and impregnates herself, the man is held responsible. If a man and woman only engage in oral sex and the woman saves the sperm for later use with a turkey baster, the man is held responsible. None of that means that the man has any actual *rights* in regards to the child." Which made me say:

I am absolutely not forgetting about that.

Men need to value and guard their genetic material.

The lameness of men who throw this stuff around is mindboggling. Don't be [a] splooge stooge.

Now, I think women shouldn't want to invest their reproductive effort in such idiots, but that's the other side of the story.

And (emphasis added):

The men who are saying: I want something because women have something.

You guys...

If you don't have the wherewithal to realize what you are... you are no longer men, and women should be rejecting you. I can't account for all these women, but at least, if they become pregnant, they take on an immense burden. They feel that.

You guys... I wonder if you feel anything at all.

You are unworthy. The reason something ought to save you from becoming fathers is that you are unworthy, but unfortunately, it seems that some women do still choose to have sex with you and even to bear your children.

And that -- THAT! -- is what you complain is your misfortune.

Amazing blindness. Your misfortune is so much worse than that.

And somebody said: "Then there are cases like the one (likely more than one...), where a woman who performed (only) oral sex with a man, using a condom, retrieved the condom and inseminated herself, and successfully sued for child support. IMO if a man does something that physiologically cannot produce conception without the woman's deliberate and willfully deceptive action, he is not responsible in any way for the conception." And I said:

I don't know why a woman would invest her reproductive effort in carrying forward the genes of such a man, but I have no sympathy with him at all.

Your phrase "physiologically cannot produce conception" is obviously wrong, since it did.

I fear for the future of humankind, with such stupidity in our inheritance.

The man is an idiot, and the woman is an idiot. Maybe the child can rise above it.

But sympathy for this man who has no love and no self-respect? Why don't you save your compassion for someone who deserves it?

This men's rights stuff was old-hat in the 1980s. Recycling it now is the lamest thing I've seen in a long, long time.

If you really cared about men, you'd try to do something to elevate them, as I am trying right now. Instead you are inviting them into a downward spiral. This is worse than The Life of Julia.

The whining and crying about what victims men are these days continued way into the night. In the morning I saw a comment that began with the burnt-out old internet expression "sigh": "Sigh. And yet a wife can make the choice to abort her kid without even telling her husband. Shoudnt they be consulting their husband?" I had to take another shot:

Yes, and that's exactly the reason Planned Parenthood v. Casey gave for striking down a statutory requirement that a woman consult her husband.

Think about it.

And stop your sighing.

Picture me singing that last line like this:



UPDATE: Glenn responds to this here, and I respond to that here.

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