It's been a long time but I had to post this, as a man...
I had to respond to this opinion piece "Women are Facing Sexual McCarthyism" at
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73894.html
quote:
Guys, I’m thinking it’s hard for you to imagine what it’s like to have your most private decisions made for you. By women.
Let’s put it this way: Imagine that you need Viagra. Imagine that a law passed by an 80 percent female Legislature mandates that to obtain a prescription, you have to procure an affidavit from a sexual partner verifying that you are indeed incapable of an erection.
Or maybe, before obtaining a vasectomy, you have to undergo an ultrasound on your testicles — wherein a technician must apply gel and press a hand-held transducer on your private parts.
Let’s put it this way: Imagine that you need Viagra. Imagine that a law passed by an 80 percent female Legislature mandates that to obtain a prescription, you have to procure an affidavit from a sexual partner verifying that you are indeed incapable of an erection.
Or maybe, before obtaining a vasectomy, you have to undergo an ultrasound on your testicles — wherein a technician must apply gel and press a hand-held transducer on your private parts.
That example is utterly laughable in TWO ways:
1) When I had a vasectomy a few years ago, my wife had to sign a form acknowledging she knew what I was doing, what a vasectomy did (sterility), and that it was very likely irreversible. IOW, getting her permission w/o quite calling it 'permission' -- if they didn't have her form they would not do it.
The thing is, I don't really object to it, because the whole thing about being married in the first place is joint efforts & decisions in having/raising children. Basically it is a sort of 'truth in advertising' requirement. (similar to the way the Catholic Church would have no problem in granting an annulment if the bride or groom knowingly hid their infertility from the other before the wedding.
Of course, the de facto vasectomy permission thing grates because, as a husband, I have zero right to be informed (much less give 'consent') if my wife was seeking an abortion. On one hand the woman has power over the man's potential children, while he has no influence on her aborting his *actual* child.
2) The other absurdity is the dreaded ultrasound violation. The horror.
WTF?
If I am having a vasectomy I am asking the doctor to CUT my private parts.
How in hell is a hypothetical ultrasound more invasive?
That is just as ridiculous as a woman who is consenting to be penetrated in abortion with a suction wand, or given a D&C, to scream that a mere ultrasound is a violation tantamount to rape.
There are other grounds to object, but that one is freakin' nuts.
Yet this is supposed to be some big intellectual slam dunk '...sauce for the gander' 'gotcha' counterargument. I am spectacularly unimpressed.
Anyway, absent a marriage, the proper parallel to the vasectomy on the single man side is a tubal ligation on the single woman side. Abortion utterly fails as a foundation of a shoe-on-the-other-foot argument because abortion and the vasectomy (or the tubal) are in fact not symmetric at all -- whereas the single man or woman using surgery to deliberately sterile only involves him/her, the abortion involves the woman AND her [proto-child]. Completely setting aside any arguments about the beginning of 'personhood', that embryo/fetus is a distinct human organism (with its own unique genetic identity... that's *science* ,folks) that is firmly set on the path to become a person -- barring an abortion, whether induced, or spontaneous thru medical bad luck.
The attempt to draw a parallel to mere sperm in a vasectomy is logically inept, and is really just a rhetorical bait-and-switch.