Comments On: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby by Dan Savage http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/20/sl-letter-of-the-day-having-his-baby Comments On: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby by Dan Savage en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Tue, 21 May 2013 02:30:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
It's called 'Coercive Reproduction'. Male abusers bully (or more often rape) a partner into pregnancy so that they can control them through the kid. Think of all the abusive men who strike back at ex-wives by murdering their kids.

http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Wom…

http://www.thehotline.org/2011/02/1-in-4…

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/14181


Posted by yucca flower]]> Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:27:58 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by shurenka]]> Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:09:46 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by ankylosaur]]> Thu, 22 Nov 2012 08:12:12 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
Which stats? Care to share them?
Posted by migrationist]]> Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:18:27 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
wank, wank.
Posted by femwanderluster]]> Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:31:32 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by kersy]]> Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:53:40 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by Alanmt]]> Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:14:53 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> For fun, if I had to speculate why she'd not just go fuck someone else, maybe she want's to have 'his' baby. He is an 'angel' after-all. Sure a young woman can almost always get fucked but she may also be picky about the genetics of the father.@57
@55 has it right. As much as I am reluctant to use evobio to explain psychology, the fact might well have been that this guy's genes were the best available to the LW at the time. Perhaps she examined her past and (projected) future relationships, determined that this was the best it was going to get, genetically, and made her decision.

These two commenters have a point. I'd point to the actor Bridget Moynahan who became pregnant as her LTR relationship with the quarterback Tom Brady was bottoming out. Assuming arguendo that she chose to become pregnant it is, from a strictly rational standpoint, difficult to question her reasoning. If you are going to have a child, why not choose a fabulously wealthy, handsome, famous and accomplished man that you're in love with? There's no guarantee -- for anybody -- that you're going to ever find a partner that's anywhere comparable, so why not?

Not every woman will date Tom Brady, but other women may make similar decisions about the men and options in their lives. Last time I checked, humans are often frighteningly rational actors about their self-interest.
Posted by seeker6079]]> Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:06:16 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
@20 22 - I agree. Nowadays, a man "involved with birth control", if he's absolutely certain he doesn't want a child, is a man who puts a condom on everytime, from start to end. There's no other choice.

If a man doesn't put a condom on and ends up with a pregnant partner, he's responsible for the child. No matter what the partner did, no matter what he said she did.

It's damn too easy to impregnate a girl and then complain that "she did it on purpose". And that's not feminist propaganda - in my own family, a near-30 guy ran to his mother and complained that "his artful 20-y-o girlfriend had trapped him" through getting pregnant. And the stupid mother was mad at the girl.
Posted by sissoucat]]> Wed, 21 Nov 2012 02:10:27 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
Posted by Christampa]]> Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:09:36 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
Still incredibly scummy, both to the guy and the (eventual) kid, both of whom deserve better.

Side note, don't men know when their female partners are menstruating? Or when they take their pill every day, or switch out their Nuva Ring, or get a Depo shot? My guy has always been pretty involved/aware of that stuff. When I was on the pill, he always texted me at 4pm to remind me to take it, in case I'd forgotten (a few times, I did forget). When I got an IUD, he held my hand through the painful insertion procedure. He's been paying for half of it since we got together. To me, that is what "involved with birth control" looks like. I would have to work pretty hard to deceive him on this score.
Posted by wxPDX]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:22:16 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by curtisp]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:51:02 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
It does smell fake to me but Dan's run it twice now and often he has more personal info on the writer than he allows in his column so who knows?

I wouldn't want to place bets. Haven't we all seen enough trash reality shows to understand that someone like this could easily exist in America?

For fun, if I had to speculate why she'd not just go fuck someone else, maybe she want's to have 'his' baby. He is an 'angel' after-all. Sure a young woman can almost always get fucked but she may also be picky about the genetics of the father.


Posted by debug]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:38:42 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by catballou]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:38:09 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
While I completely understand your positions, I still think that this LW is a male rights activist for several reasons. As one person mentioned, the language is too breezy (women who reallyreally want kids don't refer to them as "brats" for example). Another angle is that anyone sane (which is most people) will just give up on the guy and go find someone else to fuck them. It's just easier, especially if you're a 25 year old woman. And nearly any man who's had that kind of ultimatum would drop her like a hot rock before she had the chance to get pregnant from him - there's only so much crazy a man will put up with from a woman like this, even if she's totally hot and they're super-compatible.
Posted by gromm]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:52:05 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
You're friends with some fucking horrible dudes. How the hell can you keep these people close?
Posted by that's a series of terrible flaws there]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:39:24 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
Posted by seeker6079]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:36:37 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by samanthaf63]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:25:04 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> One of the first cases I ever handled as a lawyer was exactly such a case: the ex-husband had been providing cash and in-kind child support for years without knowing that the wife was double-dipping on welfare. She, the welfare agency and the child support agency went after him on the basis that he'd never paid a dime, even to the point of the child support agency lying to the judge: they asserted that they'd never told him that it was okay, when in fact they (mistakenly) had. I had to subpoena their records to prove the three-sided lie.

Lesson of the day: both people and bureaucracies will lie their asses off if they think that they can find somebody else to pay their bills.
Posted by seeker6079]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:04:54 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
To be fair, I'd say that divorce lawyers are operating with a pretty heavily skewed population sample. Kind of like how IT people gradually come to the conclusion that 95% of the world thinks you operate a computer by hitting it with a stick.

Not arguing with your point re: the gender balance of monstrous behavior, just trying to keep cynicism from taking over too completely.
Posted by Reverend Tap]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:54:00 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
I doubt the writer would care much but just something the writer didn't think about.

I dated a girl in college who wanted to get pregnant and out of the army so she had an acquaintance knock her up with the promise that she'd never contact him about it. When later she needed government assistance the law mandated that she identify the father and attempt to take him to court for child support.
Posted by debug]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:36:27 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]> Posted by femwanderluster]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:22:00 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
You're right, I am assuming to know my sister-in-law's motivations when in fact I don't. Perhaps she genuinely thought she would form a happy family with a man she'd been fighting with pretty steadily, whose character she didn't really respect, and to whom she gave the boot three weeks after finding out she was pregnant. I don't actually know how it went down, but it sure has a whiff of opportunism about it, speaking of whiffs. So I have serious doubts that his consent was actually informed consent. His fault is for not having warning bells and bailing on the situation.

This is just one story, yes; yes, I'm an anonymous internet poster. And to forestall: no, I never said men can't be manipulative assholes too. Or that all women are this way. Or that the majority of women are this way. I'm saying it's not inconceivable that this letter is real, because I'm acquainted with a real, actual woman with similar drive and desires, whose need for a child trumped everything and produced a train wreck that affected, amongst other people, the very child she wanted so badly.
Posted by LateBloomer]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:06:09 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
So yes, guys randomly not using condoms is very stupid. There are situations in which it's not very stupid. This poor dude thinks/thought he was in one of them but isn't.
Posted by DRF]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:59:15 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: Having His Baby]]>
If I ever have a son, I'm going to teach him that women are to be respected and treated as equals, and that no means no, and all that good stuff. But I'm also going to teach him that some girls are batshit crazy and can fuck up your life.
Posted by GArRo]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:55:56 -0800 The Stranger