Probably some guy that thinks he’s paying her to clean his house or something…
Good question.
An irrelevant distinction. There is no rational reason whatsoever to distinguish between the following findings of fact:
- Joe Blow’s DNA and the Jane Doe’s child’s DNA do not match.
- Joe Blow never engaged in sexual relations with Jane Doe.
Either is sufficient reason to conclude that Joe Blow is not the father. If Jane Doe is somehow entitled to disregard the former because she dislikes that result, there is no basis for denying her the privilege of similarly disregarding the latter.
(Note that I said that there is no rational reason to distinguish the two. There is, obviously, the irrational reason of desiring to punish Joe for having sex.)
(BTW I do explicitly think that social instituions have to be based on myths, and I think that myths are fictions intended to be understood by many as truths, so I guess the shoe fits. Though I don’t claim social institutions should be based on myths–just that they have to be.)
If the mother is married to one man, but conceives with another, our current child support law does back her right to do just that.
Er, no. The proposition in question is the inverse of the above:
X is not the genetic father, therefore, X should not be obligated to fill the social role “father”.
The truth of a statement’s inverse implies nothing, either way, about the truth of the original statement (e.g. “Cats have fur” does not prove that “Non-cats have no fur”, nor does it exclude some or all non-cats from being furless).
I think what you’re saying is, if we’re not going to limit her choices to those who contributed DNA to her kid, why limit her choices to those who slept with her? Why not just let her pick whoever she wants?
My answer to that would be people in general could easily make sense out of a system that limits her choices to those who slept with her, assuming they take sleeping with a woman to be in some way a way to create obligations toward her. In other words, that’s something he did voluntarily which people can easily be made to see as creating an obligation toward her. Nothing like that is available, as far as I can see, in a system which lets her pick any male she wants, whether she’s slept with him or not.
I can imagine a system in which she’s allowed to pick from amongst all the people who have done something else with her–say, walked through a particular field of daisys. If the society understands that as an act creating potential obligation, then this kind of system could be made to work. Is it the right system to have, or even a good one? That’d be a harder question to answer than we have space for here.
But what we can say is that a system that lets women choose the father from amongst all the men she slept with gives women more power than does a system which requires only the genetic father to be the social father. Something to weigh into the mix when you’re deciding what your society’s rules should be like.
She wrote a similar piece in the London Times, only in that article she never termed paternity testing as “anti-feminist” (though she did wonder why feminists never raised more of a fuss over the technology). She merely recounted the many ways paternity has historically been a bit ambiguous, and how it wasn’t necessarily a mortal sin that a woman had managed to rope in some hapless schmo to help care for her child who wasn’t the biological father; after all, nothing was stopping even real fathers from heading for the hills instead of sticking around.
I’m not sure of the reason for her change in tone, but her earlier article didn’t give me the shrill feminist harpy vibe.
[quote=“Anaamika, post:17, topic:573390”]
This is the one thing we women had going for us? /QUOTE]
It was also the main reason for killing woman (and creating some of the nasty customs of patriarchy like female circumsicion) in the past.
I don’t know what you mean when you say that’s the “proposition in question.” The position I have been arguing for from the beginning is that the inference I formulated is not a valid inference.
There are plenty of counterexamples to your inference, though, as well. If a woman has sex with two men on the same night, saying to each “If I have a baby approximately nine months from today, I reserve the right to name you the father,” and each man agrees, then one of them can legitimately be in the position of not being the genetic father yet being obligated to fill the social role “father.”
If willful disregard for the truth is to be considered OK, that only follows. In for a penny, in for a pound.
As I said, the argument can be supported on the basis of the irrational desire to punish sexual activity.
And one that lets her ignore facts across the board and just pick anybody at all* (thus being at least honest in its dishonesty) would clearly give her more power still, and is thus preferable by this argument.
*I was going to say “any man” – but, heck, if we’re going to ignore the known facts of biology, why not let her finger another woman?
If a man can be legally determined to be the legal father of a child, despite not being the genetic father of the child, why is it relevant whether the man had sexual intercourse with the mother?
Is it important whether he had vaginal intercourse with her? I mean, if his sperm never fertilized one of her eggs, so what? Suppose he had sex with her, but only oral sex? Would that be enough to make him a candidate for social fatherhood? What if he masturbated while she was in the next room?
If it doesn’t matter who the genetic father of the child is, why should we care if the the man ever had any sort of sex with the mother? Why the fuck should that be relevant? Why can’t the state just pick out some random man and declare him to be the legal father, regardless of whether he’s ever in his life been within 100 miles of the mother?
[QUOTE=Melanie McDonagh,]
…Scientific certainty has produced clarity all right, and relieved any number of men of their moral obligations, but at God knows what cost in misery, recrimination and guilt.
[/QUOTE]
How is it possible for a man to have any moral obligations to a child that he did not sire? :dubious: The situtations I can think of involve adoption or when an sterile man consents to the artificial insemination of his wife (or implantation of adopted embryos). Other than that he has none, even if the he’s married to the woman in question.
It’s hard, but not impossible. The easiest way woud be to simply never inform him of the pregnancy in the first place. This could be very difficult if they were in a long-term relationship, move in the same social circle, live in a small town, etc. And of course she’d really run into problems if she ever needed public assistance. Even then she can just lie to her social worker, claim she had sex with mulitple partners that week, and make up information too vauge for anyone to track the nonexistant men down.
You’ve stopped genuinely engaging my posts, so I’ll just leave it with a re-iteration of my main point: All of your posts rely on the notion that genetic fatherhood is identical to being-obligated-to-social-fatherhood. (Hence your comments that to fail to require the genetic father and only the genetic father to be the social father is to “ignore truth,” as though the two were necessarily one and the same.) But that is the very point at issue in the debate, so basically, you’re begging the question against your opponent. (Whether that’s me or the author of the article.)
Actually, I got exactly that vibe, particularly from this section:
The implication (which is if anything strengthened by later references to this charming little anecdote) is that his objection to paying for children born of her infidelity is shocking and deplorable, but her decision to cut him out of the children’s lives (after she chose to take the DNA test and either discovered or confirmed his non-paternity) is nothing to be bothered about.
See post 47.
The author does not argue any such distinction between actual-fact fatherhood and “social” fatherhood. The author argues, instead, in favor of ignorance* of actual-fact fatherhood and using say-so as a substitute for fact. Presumably this is because she realizes that she would be laughed out of the debate (well, more so than she is anyway) if she openly rather than covertly declared that the facts should be set aside in favor of a convenient fiction even when the former are known and established.
Admittedly, this is SOP in politics, where two and two can make five when it is convenient that they do so. However, if one wishes to manage one’s affairs (pardon the pun) in a way that works long-term in the real world, they have to make four. (Apologies to George Orwell.)
*You somehow seem surprised that the denizens of a forum whose slogan is “FIGHTING IGNORANCE SINCE 1973” find this to be objectionable
With particular reference to the smoke pouring out of it from the holes punched in it by post 51.
I’m happy to continue talking to you, but I have no evidence that you understand what I’m saying.
Can you tell me what my argument is, in your own words?
Your argument is that society can just name anybody as the “father” without regard to the actual facts of the matter.
It has been rejected, for the obvious reason that arguments based on deliberate rejection of facts tend not to fly in these parts.