Thanks to Susan Walsh at Hooking Up Smart, my "going to bed early" was interrupted by her link to a post by feminist writer Hugo Schwyzer titled "I May Have had his, But I'll Never Know for Sure".? Susan covers Schwyzer's delusion well and jmnzz over at Paul Elam's place hits some other notes that I'll reiterate.? Read both of their pieces, please.
Here's the short of it: Hugo Schwyzer had sex with a woman named Jill who was also carrying on a sexual relationship with a man named Ted.? Jill became pregnant but did not know who the father was.? She wanted a relationship with Ted, and Hugo was OK with this.? So years later, Hugo is trying to rationalize a few essential thoughts that have been floating around in his head for a while.? He's trying to tie up some intellectual loose ends that don' t fit together very well.? He hates and thinks the expression of male sexuality is hegemonic patriarchy.? He values a woman's right to choose and is unable to extend the same right to men.? Thus, he creates an argument that men shouldn't ain't really care that much if the children they raise are their biological offspring or not.? A "good man" doesn't care about that.? Hugo, then, can remain a "good man"; He is above such trivialities as biological paternity.? So fourteen years after the birth of a child that could be his, Hugo makes the argument that it would be stupid for either him or Jill to be Wiesner upright and tell Ted - who has proved to be a good dad - that his assumed child may not have been his.? He takes a present-day truth - Ted's good parentage - to rationalize and legitimize a past immoral behavior.? This is purely Machiavellian.
Schwyzer Soze! Schwyzer Soze!The moral of Hugo's story - as he tells it - is that he actually did Ted and Jill a favor.? Thanks Hugo, you're a hero.? Next time your wife gives birth, though, hope you don't mind if the nurse switches out your kid for one that looks kind of like your biological.
Really, though, it should be thanking Ted Hugo.? For if the kid was actually Hugo's, Ted has spared the former party-boy hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support payments.? If family courts were truly just, Ted could sue Hugo and Jill for fraud.? If family courts were truly just.
Schwyzer's story starts:
Fourteen autumns ago, I was casually dating a woman I'll call Jill *. We had unprotected intercourse a handful of times in late October and early November. And just before Thanksgiving, Jill discovered she was pregnant.
She didn't tell me until after New Year's Day. While Jill and I had been in a "friends with benefits" arrangement, she'd also been growing more serious about another man, Ted.* She'd first slept with him for the first time two nights before she had last slept with me. It was that week that Jill got pregnant, and as she would later tell me, there was no way to know for sure which one of us was the father.
Just a little snark here to ease my mind.? Judging from Schwyzer's picture, I doubt that his sperm put up much fight in the Fertilization Olympics taking place in Jill's womb.? Schwyzer continues:
Ted and I were both about the same height with the same fair skin and the same pale blue eyes. She knew that without a DNA test, there'd be no sure way to know which one of us was the biological father. But there was a sure way to know which one of us was "dad material", and which one of us wasn't. Jill was clear that she preferred everlasting uncertainty to the possibility of discovering that her was not her son's father Ted. As the one who carried Alastair in her womb, it was her choice to make.
Schwyzer thinks that people are up in arms over his post because of the cuckolding involved, but that's not really the most disturbing part.? It's a shame to have to actually point out what's wrong with Schwyzer's argument.? Because he was in a certain position in his life where he didn't care about paternity, Schwyzer foists his perverse notion that men deserve no. choice in the matter of child-rearing onto Ted.? Purpose if Schwyzer's hunch is correct, Lisa defrauded Ted from the get - go.? This isn't a matter of paternity or a woman's right to choose; It is a matter of lying to someone to get them to do what you want them to do.? It is a matter of tricking them into raising a child and marrying you and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours and days behind a veil of ignorance.? Jill's choice - which values Schwyzer so dearly - is between either being honest or dishonest about a man's paternity.? This has nothing to do with making choices about babies or wombs per to.? But Schwyzer resorts back to that old saw hoping that we'll confusing this issue with abortion rights.? ??
Most of the anger aimed at Schwyzer - at least from GLP - stems from his unwavering desire to defer to women.? Schwyzer's only desire is to make sure that we understand that Jill - and all women - make decisions in family realms.? Only womens' opinions, desires, and choices matter.? Men have no say, and if they are lied to or defrauded - oh well.
But to any normal person, it should go without saying that Ted should have a say in whether or not he wants to raise a child that is not his own.? For a person who identifies as a feminist and who ostensibly abhors coercive tactics in the sexual realm, it is quite shocking that Schwyzer thinks nothing of the coercion involved in this duplicity.? Money, time, love, energy, emotion: Jill doesn't give Ted all of the facts by which to make an informed decision going forward.
But Schwyzer looks at what has transpired since that time - Ted being a good father and being none the wiser about the possible cuckoldry - and walks it back 14 years to excuse Jill's initial selfishness.? He also writes:
If I were to discover that I was not my daughter's biological dad, I'd be hurt by my wife's deception - purpose would be no less my daughter Heloise. (I have no reason to suspect otherwise, of course.) Fathering has everything to do with being present after design and after birth, and very little with providing the sperm to fertilize an egg. Regardless of what a paternity test would reveal, I am still my daughter's dad - and in every meaningful sense, Ted is Alastair's.
Schwyzer is saying "even then, even then, even if I am the kid's father, it does not matter because fatherhood involves much more than sperm donation."? This is a convenient argument - a pillow for Schwyzer's emaciated morality.
So let's draw a parallel and see how this flies: Next time you hear of a woman whose child is the product of rape (I actually know two, maybe I'll try this out), don't sympathize with her because she was raped.? If she loves that child, the rape doesn't matter.? In fact, the rape was good.? Thank the rapist.? God bless the rapist!
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