THE PROCREATION PROBLEM : WHO WANTS KIDS AND WHY?

AN ESSAY

Last week, a friend told me an amusing story. He told me that a woman sued a man for battery after he put horseradish sauce in a used condom to determine whether the woman was “using” his sperm without his consent after they had “protected” sex. Sure enough, the couple had sex and the man threw the condom in the bathroom trashcan. Then he put horseradish sauce in it while she was in a different room. He went back into the kitchen. She went into the bathroom, and a few moments later the man heard a bloodcurdling scream. The woman irritated herself with the horseradish sauce; she did not suffer permanent injury. The relationship did.

This all might sound funny. But it raises some interesting issues about men, women and procreation. In vitro fertilization aside, men and women need to have sex with each other to reproduce the species. That, in turn, implicates monumental emotional problems, because men and women view sex in very different ways. In the horseradish story, for example, there was tension between the man and the woman because the woman was in her 30s and said she wanted to start a family. To use a cliché, her “clock was ticking.” The man, by contrast, said he just wanted to have sex. He didn’t want to be a father or alter his lifestyle to care for a child. More cynically, he also did not want to pay child support and compromise his income. This difference in opinion led to mutual mistrust between the two parties, which ultimately culminated in the woman’s duplicity and the man’s mean-spirited trick. Men and women do not see sex in the same way. And amid all this suspicion, children usually are a consequence to be either feared or exploited, not a gift to be treasured.

Several male commentators asserted that the horseradish story proved women are “natural gold-diggers.” That assertion assumes that women only want to procreate because it entitles them to a paternity check. It does not acknowledge the fact that women may have deep spiritual and emotional reasons for wanting to have children. Nonetheless, these commentators marshaled some evidence to support their conclusion that women “just want to make a profit” from “unauthorized procreation.” Specifically, they pointed to recent “legal warnings” issued to NBA stars “to guard their used condoms” and always to “assume that women want to get pregnant for money.” In a less extreme example, they also pointed to the right-wing-proverbial “welfare mother” who just wants to mass produce living children in order to maximize her individual benefit check.

As superficially convincing as this “evidence” may be, I am hesitant to label all women inveterate gold-diggers. I have no doubt that some unscrupulous women are willing to bear the pain of childbirth and the difficulty of motherhood in order to get a check. But there are unscrupulous men, too. Women do not have a monopoly on duplicity and deception. In this sense, these modern “male as victim” arguments are at best self-righteous and at worst hypocritical. Historically speaking, men have always enjoyed superior power over women. As recently as the 19th Century, for instance, women faced “petty treason” conviction (and burning at the stake) for killing their husbands, while men only faced “murder” prosecution (and hanging) for killing their wives. In virtually every way, the common law regarded the woman as the husband’s “property” and, as such, the husband had “exclusive rights to use it.” At common law, a husband could not legally “rape” his wife, even if the sexual intercourse was nonconsensual (“Rape be the carnal knowledge of a woman, not the perpetrator’s wife, against her will”)(common law rule, emphasis added). Women could not vote or serve in official positions (unless they were monarchs). They were barred from traditional employment. They depended on men for income and inheritance. At the same time, men had virtually free rein to “discipline their wives;” husbands’ domestic brutality toward their wives rarely troubled the law or society. In short, women have not been roughly “equal” to men until relatively recent times. And for centuries, men could freely tyrannize women without the slightest consequence. To that extent, I find these modern “male as victim” arguments strangely pathetic.

When it comes to procreation, why do men consider themselves victims? Obviously they do not like the law’s approach to child support. For better or worse, the law throws the financial risk of sexual activity on the male. It does not matter whether the male employed measures intended to prevent pregnancy; if the condom breaks, he is the “father” and he owes child support payments. He might consider this unjust, but society has decided—through legislation—that men must pay to help raise their children, whether they wanted them or not. This indirectly benefits women, since a wealthier father must pay more money to support the child. But in the abstract, child support laws are not intended to provide a windfall to women. Nor are they intended to express moral contempt for irresponsible men, no matter what the talk shows say. Rather, child support laws are intended to promote procreation and to protect children. The fact that they breed mutual suspicion and enmity between men and women does not alter their social purpose.

We have seen that men and women think about procreation in very different ways. But child support laws reveal that society and government see procreation in yet another way—a demographic way. For law and government, procreation is not about emotion, love or even suspicion; it is about numbers. Specifically, the law vigorously promotes procreation. After all, the law would not force unwilling fathers to pay money to support unwanted children if it did not have a policy preference for births. The law could care less about a woman’s comfort; the law merely wants women to give birth. More births mean more citizens. And more citizens mean more workers. More workers mean a bigger economy in the future, and a bigger economy means more taxes and more national power. National strength has everything to do with population. Nations with large populations can produce more than nations with smaller populations. More production means more power and influence. Just look at China. The fact that China has the most people means it has more labor capacity and the best economic potential. These are fundamental government interests—and they depend on procreation. No matter how mechanized a Nation’s economy may be, there is always strength in raw numbers. Nations with flat birthrates will not stay strong forever.

In America, both State and Federal governments employ many subtle methods to further their policy preference for greater procreation. Mandatory child support payments are only one example. More significantly, American governments frown upon abortion and contraception, even though the Federal Constitution technically provides a right to both. Many States, for instance, carefully regulate the circumstances under which citizens may obtain consultation about abortion or birth control. They purposely bias the informational debate to favor procreation over contraception and abortion. They tell women who want abortions that the State will pay for hospital stays and adoption services. They exclude contraception from health plan coverage. And from a historical perspective, American governments criminalized “frauds on procreation,” including homosexual sex and nonprocreative heterosexual practices. From the government’s perspective, every ejaculation should be well spent because it needs more citizens to compete in the global economy. Wasted sexual energy, in other words, represents wasted national potential. This is not a moral question. It is an economic one.

In short, governments in America take a positive stand for “potential life” and “procreation,” even if the woman—or the man—does not want to procreate. After all, America needs more Americans. If America promoted contraception and abortion too much, it would flatten the birthrate and allow China and India to overtake us.

I am not writing satirical scrawl. I am reflecting on genuine geopolitical strategy. Governmental support for procreation has nothing to do with mistrust between men and women, nor does it reflect real compassion for children. Government does not care about children’s emotional lives or spiritual well-being; it simply wants them to be alive and healthy so they can mature into productive citizens. Of course, government takes a risk that every live birth may degenerate into a crack addict, welfare recipient or murderer. But every live birth also represents a chance that the child will become Albert Einstein, Bill Gates or at least a bourgeois with taxable income. Abortion may snuff out future criminals, but it also may snuff out future industrial barons. Government would rather save everyone in order to protect the potential industrial baron. Again, this has nothing to do with caring or compassion. It has merely to do with national strength. Government’s support for procreation over contraception, then, reflects government’s national self-interest, nothing more.

There are two realities at work here. On the micro level, men and women bicker with one another over money and child support. Men want orgasms without financial consequence; women want orgasms, child support payments and the emotional fulfillment of motherhood. On the macro level, government just wants men and women to keep having sex. It does not foist financial obligations on men to morally denounce their ill-advised (or even unlucky) sexual practices. Rather, it foists financial obligations on them so that their offspring can develop into productive citizens. Indeed, government may say it prefers that men and women procreate only when married. But from a geopolitical standpoint, this is an inane requirement. Children are children. They all have the potential to later pay taxes, serve in the army and perhaps invent things. Marriage may provide a stable platform for procreation and a child’s emotional well-being, but government just wants births. A child’s emotional well-being is a peripheral concern.

Governments do not exist without people. Procreation is the only way to generate more people. Bearing that in mind, it should not surprise us that government prefers procreation in every circumstance. As obvious as this sounds, however, it is somehow unnerving to think we are just grist for the governmental mill. After all, we were all children once. Although our family lives may all differ in some respects, we all experienced family dynamics. We experienced love in some form. Some of us were more fortunate than others on that score. When we were children, we did not think about our country’s geopolitical fortunes or the State’s goals. Rather, we just wanted to live and experience life because it was new. We knew our families and little else. Yet little did we know that government had very different ideas about our existence. Our concerns and our emotional connections to our families meant nothing. Rather, we were simply “new citizens” with “future potential.” We not only would pay taxes and contribute to the economy, but our future sexual activity might one day result in more taxpayers and workers. Emotion and compassion have nothing to do with these expectations. No: For the government, procreation is about national survival, not the individual mystery of existence. And no matter what private squabbles men and women wage with regard to procreation, they are mere pawns in a much larger chess game.

Procreation is valuable because more people mean more power. Our sex is instrumental in creating power because it creates more people. Government does not want us to waste it. If we did, government would eventually have nothing left to rule.

Women want children for their reasons. Men want children for their reasons. Sometimes neither men nor women want children; they fight about it. But government always wants children. And it wants them for very different reasons than any individual man or woman.

GENDER EQUALITY NOW : WOMEN MUST BE EQUALLY LIABLE FOR SEXUAL CRIMES

CONSIDERED OPINION

By : Ms. Geraldine F. Goldman-Marquez, J.D., M.D., Ph.D., M.P.A., D.D.S., C.P.A., D.V.M., Wyoming State Champion Skeet Shooter (1989); Art History Expert; Chairwoman, Fly-Fishing & Big-Game Hunting Association of Northern Montana; President and Chief Spokeswoman, The National Association for Gender Equality Everywhere and Forever.

In Connecticut last week, authorities charged a woman with rape. Newspapers reacted with horror, quoting police officials who claimed that this was an “extraordinary case” because “women do not commit rape.” Reports also quoted shocked acquaintances. They all said: “Mrs. X could not have raped that child. She is a caring, tender woman.” Court officials say that no woman has ever been convicted for rape in Connecticut. That is not surprising; after all, for centuries in every American State, the rape statute defined the offense: “Rape means the carnal knowledge by a man of a woman not his wife against her will (emphasis added).” Grammatically, only men could commit rape. Only brutal men could seize and defile innocent, pliable women. Here, as in almost every other legal field, the law condescended toward women, making assumptions about their merit, their inclinations and their capacities. Although Connecticut rewrote the rape law to encompass male-on-male rape and female rape, we have yet to see prosecutors bring a case against a woman. Today, Connecticut faces a historic challenge in the battle for absolute gender equality.

We demand that women be liable for rape. We refuse to live in a society that assumes that women cannot do all the things men can do. Rape laws reflect misogynistic, outdated prejudices about women’s roles. They assume that women are “objects” who must be protected from dominant male aggression. Even if women sexually abuse other women, men or children, the law stands idly by, calling such behavior an “abomination.” It does not prosecute sexually violent women because it assumes that “women do not do such things.” Yes they do. And we have a right to be just as vicious, sexually perverse, lascivious, cruel, savage and bloodthirsty as the worst male rapist. We take equality seriously. True gender equality does not exist when women only enjoy beneficial opportunities open to men, such as voting, drinking and working in government. Rather, true gender equality exists only when women enjoy both every opportunity open to men, and suffer every potential liability open to men. Rape is a major criminal liability. Although the law technically covers women now, no prosecutor has dared to charge a woman for the offense. We refuse to accept the law’s stereotypically sexist protection from rape liability any longer. We are women. We are equal to men in all things, good or bad. We do not just stay home, sew and cook meals. We can rape, too.

In the Connecticut case, the female suspect allegedly violated a male child by inserting objects into his body cavities. This is not the first time such conduct has taken place in North America. Yet this is the first time prosecutors have initiated formal proceedings against a woman for it. We applaud Connecticut for pressing forward against this woman. We urge prosecutors not to heed the public outcry defending this criminal. She is a woman, but she is just as much a criminal as a male would be in the same circumstances. We defend her right to be legally judged for sexual deviancy, violence and brutality. We reject all reasoning that “women cannot be sexually deviant, violent or brutal” because women are “nicer” or “daintier” than men. This is Victorian balderdash. It is 2009, not 1879. Women have a right to equal treatment under the law, and that means equal liability for rape. Men do not have a monopoly on sexual viciousness. Women, too, can depredate other people’s sexual integrity to satisfy their carnal lusts or assert their power. Men are not the only ones who commit atrocities for pleasure. Women have insatiable passions, too. And they are equally able to turn those passions into violent, shocking and horrific crimes.

Our Constitution provides that both the Federal government and the States must provide “equal protection” under the law. That means that no law may make distinctions between men and women unless those distinctions are “substantially related to an important governmental purpose supported by an ‘exceedingly persuasive justification.’” See, e.g., United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996). But the constitutional standard says nothing about equal liability under the law. We believe that women have a right not only to equal legal protection, but also equal legal liability. We have won the war for equal employment opportunities, equal pay and equal political rights. But the law continues to treat us like defenseless damsels because it refuses to hold us liable for so-called “male crimes” like rape. We assert that this is unconstitutional. We demand the right to face equal suspicion, equal condemnation and equal moral revulsion for committing the same acts as men. This is the only way to truly equalize our society. As long as the law countenances gender-based stereotypes in any field—no matter how well-meaning or benign—it perpetuates the same injustice that has always plagued our Republic with regard to women’s rights. We demand an end to injustice. We demand equal liability for rape NOW.

Some legal scholars will argue that differential liability for female rape is appropriate because rape implicates a “real gender difference” between men and women. See, e.g., Michael M. v. Superior Court, 450 U.S. 464 (1981). In that case, the Court held that because women could become pregnant and men could not, the “effects of rape” fell upon women more severely than upon men. That “real gender difference” justified holding only men liable for rape. We wholly disagree with this reasoning because it makes unwarranted assumptions about women and rape. It is true that only women can become pregnant. But that biological difference has nothing to do with the reasons why the law condemns rape. Rape may lead to pregnancy, but impregnating the victim is certainly not the actor’s primary purpose. Instead, rape involves the assertion of raw, sexual power over an object, whether the object resists or not. Rape involves sexual integrity and control over the body. The rapist commits a terrible crime because he or she forces the victim to intimately use his or her body in a way he or she does not want to be used. The rapist does this merely to satisfy his or her base lusts, completely disregarding the victim’s bodily and spiritual well-being in the process. Typically, rape involves violence. Sometimes it does not. In either event, however, rape degrades and humiliates the victim solely to placate the rapist’s sexual desire. That is the heart of the crime. The fact that pregnancy may result from male-on-female rape does not change the crime’s essential character. In short, you do not need a penis to commit rape. You must merely be a sexually violent, ruthless, unrepentant person determined to sate your sexual urges against another person’s will. Being sexually violent, ruthless and unrepentant is not a “real gender difference.” Women can be just as sexually violent, ruthless and unrepentant as men. For that reason, there is no justification in either logic or law to accord differential treatment to women for rape.

We are not hypocrites. We believe in absolute equality. We are not “fair-weather crusaders.” The battle for gender equality did not end when women obtained beneficial advantages in society. No, the battle rages on. Now, we must fight the battle for equal liability. As long as the law refuses to hold us liable for despicable sexual offenses, it perpetuates stereotypes about women. When the law says: “Women cannot do such things,” it makes assumptions about our character as women. This is a fundamental injustice. We do not want the law to evaluate our character as women. We want the law to simply evaluate our character. There is no “woman character” or “man character.” There are not things that “only women do” or “only men do.” The law must understand this. Women can be irrepressible sexual deviants just as readily as men, no matter what the Victorian prudes say to the contrary. In fact, we demand that the law evaluate us for our flaws as well as for our merits. We insist that society stop assuming that women can “do no wrong” in certain areas “because we are women.” Yes we can. We can be just as naughty, evil, merciless and cruel as men. People should not assume that a man commits every violent and shocking act that appears in the news. Nor should they gasp when they hear that a woman committed some atrocity. We can be just as atrocious as men. We may not be as physically intimidating as men, but we can stab, shoot and thrash if our muscles prove insufficient to the task. We do not want legal and social solicitude. We do not want to benefit from outmoded, chivalrous assumptions about quaint “women’s ways.” We just want to be regarded the same as men in every way, and that includes liability for rape.

We may not have penises. But we can savagely violate orifices just as effectively as a man. And we should be punished just as severely for it, too. Equality means taking the good with the bad. When the law gives women advantages at the same time it protects them from liability because they are women, we perpetuate injustice. It is a new day; it is time to stop thinking that women cannot be sexually violent and heartless. We are not dainty maidens. We are not always peaceful creatures who wear frilly dresses and cook dinners. We can be tattooed, recalcitrant rapists, thugs, killers and child molesters, too. The next time you look at a woman, do not assume she is a flimsy, meek little kitten. She can be an ogre, just like you.