Choice for men? This is the kind of story where you're grateful than the woman lived. One of the assailants had a four-month old kid himself. For guys like this, 'human' is defined as 'people that matter to me', and everybody else is at risk because he views them as impediments---or prey.
You notice how when there's a story like this, it never gets linked up with other stories where other men tried to do the same thing, how it's forbidden to notice that other men have tried the same thing? There's a football player in jail who killed the mother of his child to avoid child support; there's the kid who
claimed his girlfriend asked him to beat her till she miscarried: there's the choice for men group, who want men to have the ability to change their minds at any stage in the pregnancy, even while they whine about having to use condoms. Closely related are the guys who kill their kids to get back at their wives; prior to the killings, those guys whined about how evil their exes were, how they kept the kids to themselves. But you're not allowed to look at a whole bunch of different men doing it in different regions of the country and think that maybe it's a social trend. Nope, that's an infringement on mens' rights to be regarded as individuals.
A funny thing happens when you regard a case on an individual basis. It stops being a social issue and becomes, instead, the story of one 'distraught' man. Men are always distraught, for example, at being served with divorce papers, and they 'never saw it coming'. How many times have you heard that? Frankly, the comment that the guy never saw it coming always irritates the fuck out of me, because I've had a couple boyfriends like that, and the reason they never saw the breakup coming was because they ignored me when I told them to stop doing something or saying something----it was always insults concealed as jokes------because what mattered to them was their own happiness. The myth, of course, is that women are manipulative, but if they are it's because they get called ball busters when they're honest. The other myth is that men are never manipulative, but whenver they call an honest woman a ballbuster, that's exactly what they're doing. Similarly, when they whine, "But honeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeey, it was just a joke," after you've told them to knock it off, they're saying that they value their satisfaction more than your feelings. And so when they say they never see it coming, it's like saying they just don't see the dust, the dirty socks, the toothpaste hardening on the sink; they just don't care about it, except when they do and they whine where are the clean socks?
If you love somebody, can you really make them your servant? I used to wonder about that, as I watched my mom do all the work that went into keeping the house clean, as I watched the fathers of friends sneer at their wives, "Well, what do you DO all day?" And when the boys at school were mean I got told that meant they liked me, which made sense in a way: if your future was picking up after a man, that was the best you could hope for. You'd get presents and sappy sentiments on Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, your birthday, and Xmas, and the rest of the year, you'd get labor and wonder why you weren't convinced.
These guys worked and sneered at their wives if the house was messy, with four or five kids to be cared for, and they expected their dinner on the table and the wife to be presentable and hot to trot after a day of hard work. Meanwhile, book after book counseled women to put aside their cares and be all happy and eager to listen for hubby's sake.
Or he'll leave you for that secretary at the office went the threat. When the wife did the unthinkable--this happened on my block-----and left
him people were shocked. He never saw it coming, just like he never saw the dust, the hard work, or who she really was. It was almost like the men in the neighborhood didn't know the women they'd married, much less care, either. They preferred the myth to the reality, and the woman they married got tired of supplying the myth and struck out for reality, even if it meant working twice as hard.
You can see it online, too, even now, where it doesn't matter how many times you say you're a feminist, people---usually men---act shocked when you put your foot down and actually enforce your own rules. "But you're such a ----feminist!" They sputter, all
shocked, SHOCKED that you're walking the walk after giving them warning after warning. Every time they try and comment after being banned---you should see the trolls on the post from yesterday, about male knowitalls------it's them trying to make you give up and just go back to that polite myth-making woman, the woman who plays the part of the fantasy girl who goes along rather than leads, just because it's so much easier to be passive against the surge of the patriarchy.
The patriarchy is like a flood that you have to swim against, and each man that fights for it is trying to rip you from your bearings and force you into the flood----or drag you down while you swim against it. It's hard enough to strike out on your own against that tide without people trying to drag you back, but that's what the constant drum beat of threats, or insults and stereotypes are supposed to do.
And then they claim they're not doing nothin'-----you're the one that's doing something. You're the one that provoked them by being so unnatural, you have nobody to blame but yourself. All you have to do is go back to being a female impersonator in the patriarchy, because what you are and what the patriarchy wants from you are two different things. If you are what the patriarchy and some men want, the men that supposedly love you might as well profess their love for a Real Doll; it's not you at all. No wonder they don't see it coming. Just for survival's sake you have to be all these things to all sorts of people, and if you're not careful you might find yourself forgetting who you ever were. What you're supposed to be, of course, is perfect. There's no room for humanity in perfection, wihch is why we don't come close to demanding it of men without offering them all the power in the world, and evertying they want---including you. Anything less than the perfect toys is cheating.
So this guy in the original story didn't want to be a father, but evidently not fucking or using birth control never occurred to him, even though those are the biological facts. So used to the perfect life wsa he that he viewed his girlfriend as an object who could be altered to suit his conveniance. In that, he was no different than lots of other guys, who never see it coming, whether it's pregnancy, or a request for divorce from the perfect wife.
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