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Looking for Mr. Good Dad hough the two are easilyconfused, female cynicism about men is not an expression of feminism. The cynic assumes that men will always have power over women and the will to exploit it, that if things change it can only be for the worse. But since few people can live entirely without hope, she tends to displace hers onto the past. For the feminist's Utopian vision, she substitutes aromantic nostalgia for patriarchal paternalism; she imagines that by pursuing freedom we've gained nothing, only sacrificed the "respect" and "protection" and "commitment" that were once our due. This is the familiar stuff of female antifeminism. But it can get complicated, because sometimes the feminist and the cynic are the same person. Such schizophrenia is rampant in these backward-looking times, and while I haven't taken anypolls, I think it's especiallyrampant among younger women. Younger from my 43-year-old standpoint means too young to have experienced the feminist explosion at its peak or to remember what women's lives were like before the libertarian ferment of the 'eos. Juli Loesch, at 33, is that young. Loesch is a writer, peace activist , and "prolife feminist" whose polemics against abortion have appeared in various lefty publications. Recently she wrote me a letter, which she's agreed to let me take issue with in print. "In the past," it reads, "people assumed that byhaving heterosexualrelations ... they acquired parental obligations if pregnancy resulted." But with legal abortion, "obligations now result not from the decision to have sex, but from the decision to have a baby." This means that for a woman the legal obligations of parenthood arise from her choice to bear the child; but for a man they arise from the woman's choice. Does this T Lookingfor Mr. Good Dad 85 not, Loesch inquires with heavy irony, violate his sexual autonomy? The letter goes on: There will alwaysbe men who, at anygiven moment, want sexbut don't want a child; some of these men will get women pregnant. But sexand pregnancy imply—exactly nothing, no responsibility. It's only the woman's subsequent and separate choice that determines everything. That being the case, why should any man feel he's acquired an obligation? Becausehe deposited sperm in some woman's vagina? Don't be medieval. Am I predicting that men are losing whatever tenuous hold they had on parental obligation? That the men are going to take off, and not only that, but fed justified about it? Hell, no ... I'm reporting it. I do women's shelter work. I see it all the time. A couple has a child. Three yearsdown the line he decides he isn't cut out to be a father. "But you can't just walk out. This is your child, too!" "Yeah? But it wasyour choice." . . . Youknow, most male commitment to the long-term responsibilities of child rearing is not obtained through court order. Most of it is obtained voluntarily, through a man's sense, bolstered by society, that this is right and fair, that it's his child as well as the woman's, becausethey both brought the child into being by their knowing act. Concluding, Loesch refers to the paternity suit against Frank Serpico , which caused a small flap a few years ago. He contested his girlfriend 's claim to support for their child on the grounds that having the baby was her choice, not his. "What would you say to him?" Loesch asks. "Perhaps he's right?" Before I can sensibly answer that question, I have to sort out reality from Loesch's blinky-eyed rhetoric. To begin with, in the past people assumed that by having heterosexual relations the woman acquired obligations if pregnancy resulted. For the most part, the man was held responsible only if he was married to the woman, willing to marry her, or forced by family and community pressure to marry her. (Such pressure was of course exerted on behalf of "respectable" women only: if she was the "wrong" class or race or had a "bad reputation" she was on her own.) Nor have idealistic scruples about the connection between sexand procreation everdeterred men from sleeping with women they had no intention of marrying. Loesch can romanticize the past because she never had to live through it as a sexually active adult—she was 21 when Roe v. Wade came down. [3.17.79.60] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 21:17...

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