What role, fathers?

Our society has come to accept a dichotomous argument with regards to the rights of potential parents.  Either it is the woman's unilateral and inalienable right to choose to become a parent, or that woman has absolutely no right to choose to become a parent.

The father has no role in that choice after the point of conception.  He is a mere bystander.

Let's just say, for argument's sake, that a couple of kids have some of the sex and the girl gets pregnant (as girls tend to do much more frequently than boys).

Under the current cultural understanding, the girl can decide, unilaterally, to have the child and then compel the boy to support that child for the next 18 years.

So, let's flip the argument.  Let's say, just for argument's sake, that the boy wanted to have the child and be a father, even a single father, but the girl did not.  Does this boy have a unilateral right to compel the girl to bear the child and pay support for the next 18 years?  Why, then is it OK for the girl to do the same to the boy?

Or, to look at the alternative scenario, what if the boy doesn't want to be a father and decides, unilaterally, that this pregnancy will be aborted without the input or consent from the mother?  Under the current cultural (and legal) understanding, this boy can be brought up on charges of murder in many states.

How is this equal protection under the laws?

The answer, of course, is that it isn't equal protection.  It's a clear double standard and a cultural blind spot.  And I suggest that the current dichotomous argument, and generally accepted norm that it is the woman's unilateral right to choose, is morally and logically incorrect.

Of COURSE the father should have input.  That's his child.  It is as much his flesh as it is hers, and assuming the child was conceived in a legal manner (not rape, of course) and not anonymously (as with in vitro), then that father has as much right to the child as the mother.  But if you take away the input, the responsibility for the decision, the right to be a party to the delivery and the birth, then you also take away the responsibility and expectation of fatherhood.  If he is to be relegated to bystander status in the decision to bring the child into the world, then there is no reason to expect him to be anything more than a bystander thereafter.

And that's bad for society.

Nobody cares what you did last night

Much of what you have been taught and told is true, no doubt.  Some of it has been distorted by the lens of history and the particular agenda of the medium delivering the information.  But some of it is outright lies.

And the most often and universally told lie is this:  you’re someone special.

The truth is, and I know this is going to hurt, that you’re not special.  There’s nothing about you, inherently, that makes you someone worth listening to, following, seeing, knowing, or generally interacting with on a regular basis.

Because you’re not special.

And that may be the first time you’ve heard that in your entire life, because people have lied to you since you were a wee lad or lass.

Generally speaking, that’s no big deal.  You feel good about yourself and you go on living.  No harm no foul.

But the problem is that you idiots have taken this lie to heart and gone off and gotten tools to live stupid, shallow, meaningless lives that are all about primping, preening, and ACTING like you’re someone special.  YOU’RE NOT ANYONE SPECIAL.  Especially when you’re living a stupid, shallow, meaningless life that’s all about primping, preening, and acting like someone special.

Sure, there are people who have special talents that make them, in the context of that talent, special.  Like the dancer, or artist, or code guru who can give inanimate objects the ability to seem alive, or the designer who can take a block of plastic and make it into a thing that people will literally line up overnight to pay too much for.  Those people are special.  In those contexts.  And in every context you’ll find someone who is “special”.  But that doesn’t make them a special person.  Let’s face it, it takes a special person in the political context to be President.  But you don’t necessarily want the President to be your babysitter while you go out for a movie and a bite.  He’s not necessarily special like that.

The even greater truth is that you’re unique—not special.  Like a snowflake that, presumably, has no exact copy, you’re unique.  But also like a single snowflake, by yourself you melt and are too pointless to even be considered statistically.  By itself a snowflake is so not special that it might as well not even exist.  However, with several other snowflakes it can collapse the roof of a football stadium.

And look here, douchebag with the stupid had and idiotic facial hair.  By yourself you’re so pointless as to not even be considered.  Sure, you’re stupid douchebaggery is a badge of uniqueness—just like all the other stupid douchebags around you—but your uniqueness isn’t special.  And nobody cares.

And you, the stupid twat that thinks the world owes her a living and thinks she can “demand respect” from people.  You’re wrong.  You’re a stupid, vapid, shallow, pointless waste of atoms and you’re not special.  Nobody cares.

So quit acting special and go live a life of meaning.