From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Forward to the Past: Quote Choice for Men Unquote
Date: 14 Sep 92 16:46:48 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

Let's contemplate "choice for men" speculatively.  I hope
you will forgive me if I omit to make up a fable with
characters; the disingenuity of the last one has left me
with a bad feeling about fables.  Instead, I will tax you 
with a dreary history of a possible future.

The basic idea of "choice for men" is that males should have
absolutely no obligation to the children of the community.
That is the sum of the right to abjure responsibility for
pregnancy and the elimination of welfare.  (I am not sure if
the proponents of "choice for men" also desire to eliminate
public schools, public health, and so on, but this would be 
consistent with their other ideas, and I will assume public 
education is lumped with welfare.)

Now, the production of new humans is critically necessary to
the health of a community.  This production not only means
giving birth to them but supporting and educating them.  A
community whose constituents do not reproduce successfully
quickly dies, and its death is likely to be rather
unpleasant for its older members, who find there is no one
coming along to keep the economy going and pay their
pensions and social security or, if they are still working,
to buy their goods and services.  

In the "choice for men" world, a bitterly competitive and
individualistic world, anyone who undertakes the care of
children must be either very well-off, or very foolish.  The
smart middle-income types, male or female, will never 
tolerate such a drag on their progress in the rat race; and 
they had better not, for they who fall back are trampled 
underfoot.  There will be, then, only two classes of
reproducing people: rich women, and foolish poor women.

There will probably not be very many of the rich, since a
truly individualistic, competitive system is not as much a
respecter of wealth as people believe, and even the rich
must look out.  And there will probably not be very many of
the poor, because, absent welfare and any obligation from
males to help them, they will either die or turn to the
various desperate strategems of the poor to survive, like
prostitution and drug-dealing.  Those of the young who
stay alive will be well-versed in barbarity and predation.

If you doubt the latter outcome, you can already observe a
subculture within our present society where males seldom
feel they have any reason to support their young, and where
the women are poor and, if not foolish, certainly unhip to
the ways of capitalism.  I suspect I need not even name this
group.

"Choice for men", then, will apparently leave us before long
with a small generation of young who don't know how to work, 
but do know how to steal.  It is a grim future.  I suppose
there are other possible outcomes.  It is said that many
women experience a powerful desire to become mothers, apart
from desires inculcated by natalist propaganda.  If so, they
might subjugate themselves to rich men; if they were 
subservient enough, the rich men might contract to support 
them through pregnancy, childbirth and child rearing.  I 
think we have seen this kind of society before.  That is,
the most important type of work in the society would be
performed under conditions of slavery through the
exploitation of a class of people through their biological
drives.
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )