The demonisation of single mothers.

Is anyone actually reading Billhick's long, irrelevant posts?

Sakura Sun 05-Dec-10 14:46:03

BillHicks, women work in more dangerous jobs than men. The two most dangerous jobs in the world? Nurse and prostitute.

Childbirth is a fairly dangerous occupational hazard too.

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How about Front Line Infantry and Police Officer?

Want to compare the amount of SOLDIERS killed in WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Iraq or Afganistan yearly to the amount nurses killed on the job in any single year of any one of those conflicts?

How about the numbers on say police officers killed compared to nurses? Hmmm... Do I even need to get the figures? Or is it clear men routinely work in more fatally hazardous occupations?

Your job isn't just a paycheck, it's also about options. Flexible hours, pay goes down. Routine shifts, pay goes down. Comfortable conditions (no high voltage electricity, dangerous seas, drug dealers or enemy soldiers to contend with), pay goes down. My dad ticked none of those boxes and his pay reflects it.

He can get called up at 3AM on a Sunday and be driving FIVE hours to a job in the country to attend a site for five minutes to a whole damned night. He can be doing anything from climbing through roofspaces in an Australian summer or working on electrical cables that could electrify an olympic swimming pool. Does he deserve to be paid less than my mother who has flexible hours, a comfortable workplace and routine, predictable shifts?

I've done factory work with dangerous chemicals and office work on nice ergonomic chairs in air-condition buildings. Factory work paid shitloads more alot of the time but it took alot more out of me. Having done office work since my last factory job at age 18, I'd much rather get a few bucks less an hour.

LeninGrad- what do you mean?

Sorry if I'm being dim

PSM, the difference is that you're not in charge of the outcome in pursuing reproduction.

The right to pursue reproduction doesn't mean you'll end up pregnant. It just means that the state (or the church, or the NHs or whoever) hasn't stopped you trying in the first place, by sterilising you or locking you in a harem where the man who owns the harem refuses to have sex with you but won't allow you to ahve sex with anyone else, or will send you to jail if your pursue sex outside a state sanctioned relationship or whatever.

HB yes there's the right to a family life or something like that. Fair enough. It wasn't clear what some of the posters meant though.

What's the difference between the right to have a child and the right to pursue reproduction?

HerBeatitude, I think you've expressed it very well. The right to reasonably pursue reproduction - yes, the right to have a child - no.

Sorry that's all a bit incoherent. What I'm saying, is that the individual has the right to try to find someone with whom to reproduce, or a means to reproduce, without the state interfering in that, unless other rights are downtrodden in the process - so for example, renting a woman's womb would be a method of pursuing pro-creation tht the state would have the right to interfere with, as it infringes on the public right not to have a form of legal slavery.

"how can a man have a child if there isn't a woman willing to be impregnated by him and to carry his baby."

"It's a horrible thought that a man might not be able to find a woman willing to get pregnant by him, isn't it"

And there I think you have the root of mysogyny. Men's dependence on women to procreate.

But tbh it's not more horrible than a woman not being able to find a man who wants to ipregnate her, is it?

I take the right to reproduce, as no state or organisation having the right to unreasonably stop a man or woman pursuing their basic human right to procreate - so a baby per se isn't a human right, but the right to pursue reproduction, is, IYSWIM. Just because you might not be able to find someone who wants to procreate with you, or you might be infertile, that doesn't take away the right to try to procreate, which is all we can ever have - no-one has the right to successfully conceive, of course, that's up to nature (and IVF now).

Of course, that right is suspended at times - eg, when you lock criminals up and they therefore don't have the right to have sex (though in some states, they do and prisons provide "conjugal rooms" to do so.

This isn't about individual's rights to have babies, it's about not allowing the state to pursue a policy of mass sterilisation against certain groups, as the Nazis did adn as Indihra Gandhi did in the seventies (and as the USA, Sweden, Norway, etc. did, in the thirties.)

"It's a horrible thought that a man might not be able to find a woman willing to get pregnant by him, isn't it"

When I was at university a few years ago I volunteered to help adults with aspergers syndrome and high functioning autism. Most of these people did want children and families of their own but a lot of them lacked the social skills to be able to hold down a relationship so there are men who probably won't have familys even though they might want them.

Really interesting thread by the way, I have been lurking.

BillHicks - single mother here. Office drone too and for a while I worked for a construction company.
At one point my job description changed and I spent a large part of my day on site wandering amongst the scaffolding dealing with some fairly irate tenants.
Hard hat, high vis, steel toecap boots.

Wanna guess how much extra I got on my payslip as danger money?

Go on, have stab?

Sounds like this thread's gone off topic a bit. Just wanted to put my oar in and repeat something that a headteacher at a school I worked in said: 'I see a lot of responsible mothers every day, but the irresponsible fathers are noticeable by their absence.' And he was a man.. I was a SAHM on benefits for quite a while. These days there is no one 'type'. It could happen to any of us at any time.. and my life was quite happy. I had a couple of chances to leap on the marriage bandwagon but didn't take the first one that came along (guess I was lucky that my self esteem was strong enough to wait for the right partner). I do think unemployed single mums are vilified by some press, but until coming off benefits is financially safer and childcare is affordable and decent, things will largely stay as they are. (Incidentally, was good at getting job interviews, but continually told I was too bright for the jobs I went for, as they fitted in with DD's school hours. Some want to be enployed but employers don't want the more ambitious ones, it would seem.) I always wanted to go out to work, it looked pretty cushy to me after taking full time care of a baby/toddler.

No of course they can't ISNT. I don't think it's a human right but I do think a lot of men have kept women hanging on throughout their 30s while they were waiting to be ready and the fact is that they never were (often with that particular woman). There's a time limit on women that men don't have.

It's a horrible thought that a man might not be able to find a woman willing to get pregnant by him, isn't it?

It is not a human right to have a child. it just isn't, sorry. There are loads of people who can't have children for one reason or another and their human rights are not being violated

Not all women can conceive, whether they have sperm on tap or not. I don't understand this at all TBH.

ladybiscuit- I think you are only looking at it from a female perspective, how can a man have a child if there isn't a woman willing to be impregnated by him and to carry his baby.
Of course a woman can use sperm donors if no man is willing but human rights have to be universal as far as is possible

If noone will have sex with you, you can buy sperm from the internet nowadays and use a turkey baster. i'm not recommending it, but it is an option.

It's more of a biological imperative imo. Genetics usually takes care of it.

But if you're a man and no-one will have sex with you and you're not eligible to adopt, then you can't have children, can you. Or if you're a woman and you can't conceive and you're not eligible to adopt. I mean, it's not a human right for everybody who wants a child to have a child full stop. I don't understand

I expect to it means that if you can conceive no-one can force you to have an abortion regardless of marital status/mental health etc.

No it isn't huddspur - well unless you consider the donor another person (which he is of course but just not involved).

I felt very much like I was being doubly penalised for not being in a relationship so I wasn't allowed to be a parent either.

I don't see how you can say it is a persons human right to have a child as conception is dependent on another person as well as yourself.

But if you are unable to conceive is it a human right to have a child? Is it a human right to be able to adopt or foster? What if no-one will have sex with you? I don't think it is a human right to have a child is it?

I think people are talking about something else maybe.