h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

" a more apposite reversed scenario would be the man, having become infertile, asking that the embryos be implanted into his new partner. Would you view that as equally unacceptable?"

It doesn't really matter what I think, does it? It's down to the mother of those embryos. If she gives her permission, fine. But is she likely to? Imagine the phone call...

"Hello, Diane? It's Frank."
Click. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
"Diane, we have to talk."
Click. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
"Diane, we MUST talk - it's about the embryos."
"OK, go on."
"Well... I know we said when we signed up for the treatment that we really wanted kids together and loved each other and all that. But, well, now I'm with Tracy, and we want kids."
"So?"
"Well, I want to use those embryos, and I need your permission."
"Let me get this straight - you left me after all those years and all that IVF treatment which never got anywhere, and shacked up with someone younger, thinner and blonder, and now you want her to have MY baby?"
"Yes."



"Of course, darling, you may have my embryos with my blessings, and I hope you and Tracy are very happy looking after my baby."

Does that strike anyone else as a credible scenario?

Does that strike anyone else as a scenario where the guy would have a hope in hell of getting what he wants through the courts?

Nor me.

In fact, in that situation, I can't even imagine any man with any sense even bothering to go to court - he'd know he'd lose. The fact that there were lawyers willing to take those women to court, imagining they had a chance of getting their way and overruling the men's consent, says all that needs to be said about how appallingly the law is tilted in favour of women in such situations.

H.

"It is curious to see how men can feel protective and territorial about cells fertilized by them growing outside a woman's body, yet often they refuse to take any responsibility when this happens to a woman when she becomes pregnant through them and those cells are growing inside her body".

Gotta love them generalisations.

I wouldn't call those women evil. Well I don't like to call anyone good or evil, it sounds too much like us and them, but I think they're just desperate, and if they're infertile then its their right to be desperate.

I just think that in this case there has to be the consent of both partners. I also think that if it was me in that position then I probably wouldn't want it to go ahead. Not wanting someone you don't love to have your children doesn't require animosity.

Hoo,

<>

<>

Good heavens. What has happened to you? Been taken over by aliens or what?

Since the women signed a previous agreement then I guess the law has no option but to uphold this agreement in this case.

How many instances do you personally know of, Hoo, where a man has desperately wanted a child but could not find a woman to bear it for him? Okay, I know this happens, but it probably more often happens the other way around. That women desire to have children and are willing to raise them on their own.

<>

Those laws exist for the benefit of the child. Not for either parent. And you know that.

Yes, the law has *always* 'grotesquely favoured' women over men, hasn't it? How silly of us to forget that.



az

Bouncy,

I used the word 'often' not 'always' because sadly this is often the case. If this makes it a gernalization in your mind, well, things like generalizations and cliches don't sprout from nothing - there is always some element of truth to them. Which is why I said 'often'. If I had said 'always' then you would have been right to accuse me of generalizing.

az

Hallo? Is this Giganta? Giganta Crotchetta?

Oh, grand! It's Bond.

James Bond? O07?

Shaken not stirred? Tuxedo? The trunk-sized jet pack? We had a run in with an Austrian terrorist with the overdeveloped reptilian brain and a predilection for man-eating octopi launching bazookas?

Well, contacting you took quite a bit of doing actually. You see, first I tried Giganta Crotchetta. I must have looked in every phone directory that MI-6 could hack into. Then I figured out that Giganta might be a code name. I mean, who has the name Giganta Crotchetta? Rather silly, when you think about it?

Yes, yes I suppose you do like it. Anyway, I recalled that I kept one of your garments &#8211; your knickers actually. And there it was. "Honey Rider" is a much prettier and commonplace name. You should use that.

Ah, yes. The, uh... point. Well, it seems that... well, there's no delicate way to put this. I have a rather nasty case of syphilis. And, um, I'm calling all my sexual partners to let them know that they should go get tested.

Uh-huh. Right. I know it was ten years ago. But the syphilis is rather unusual.

Well, it has gonorrhea.

Yes, my syphilis has gonorrhea.

And the gonorrhea has lice. And the lice have some undiscovered disease that's kind of between hemorrhagic fever and the mumps. It&#8217;s a virulent mutant strand developed by Dr. No-Means-Yes during Mission: "The Russian Spy Who Loved To Thunderball Me.&#8221;

Yes, I know I said I had a condom. But you see all the condoms I had were made by Q, and apparently, the condoms weren&#8217;t meant to be condoms -- they were designed to be used as a pocket parachute. Good man. If you need to have your stapler work as a gun, he's your boy. Anyway, you didn&#8217;t notice because while we were passionately embraced, your tongue accidentally trigged my knockout gas tooth and you, um, drifted off to sleep. But trust me, you enjoyed yourself. They all do.

Anyway, with all the rather bizarre ailments my, um, bizarre ailments have, the doctors have advised me to contact everyone in my sexual history about my condition. No small feat, I assure you. If you saw the list, you'd think I'd been having sex with my fellow spies for 50 years!

Well, this is what the doctors suggest. Right now, I am in a remote island facility. Actually there's no facility. Just an island. And me. But they'e building one as soon as they can find enough hazmat suits. Anyway, a helicopter is going to pick you up and bring you to the island where we can be treated in isolation.

Chin up! Look at it this way: it'll give us a chance to get caught up. And maybe once some of the redness goes down, along with some of the greenness and the larvae, we can do some REAL reminiscing.

"Oh, James." What's that supposed to mean?

hi researcher cosmic comic, an ACE has visited your page with some tips about h2g2. It is worth reading and will help you understand the site

"Good heavens. What has happened to you? Been taken over by aliens or what?"

Not at all. I just happen to think that rights and responsibilities should go together.

If you have responsibility for something, you should have rights. If you have rights to something, you should take responsibility for it.

Equally, if you have NO rights over something, then why should you have any responsibility for it? And if you have no responsibility, why should you expect rights?

I was making the point that once a woman has successfully become pregnant, in the eyes of the law the father has NO rights whatsoever in determining whether or not that pregnancy is terminated.

The woman can take to term a baby the father does not want, or can abort a baby the father is desperate to have and is prepared and able to take responsibility for. Neither of those choices, I would suggest, are in the best interests of the "child".

In the first case, the father has responsibility but no rights, and in the second, the mother has rights but no responsibility.

"Since the women signed a previous agreement then I guess the law has no option but to uphold this agreement in this case."

You'd guess wrong. If it was an open and shut case, it would never have made it to court. They, their lawyers, and others, obviously thought they had at least a fighting chance of overruling the fathers. The judge upheld the law, which was right - but those women are, apparently, considering appealing to a higher court.

"How many instances do you personally know of, Hoo, where a man has desperately wanted a child but could not find a woman to bear it for him?"

Personally? Two, maybe three, mostly to do with the men having certain standards required of the putative mothers which may be charitably described as "unrealistic". I wouldn't use the word "desperately", however, in those cases, I suppose, 'cos they're obviously not THAT desperate.

"Okay, I know this happens, but it probably more often happens the other way around. That women desire to have children and are willing to raise them on their own."

A counter question: how much of an industry has built up to meet the needs of men who want children but have no partner? I have personally never even heard of the concept of an "egg bank". There's a massive medical infrastructure in place to support lone women who want children - what is there for men in the same situation? Just a question...

"Those laws exist for the benefit of the child. Not for either parent. And you know that."

No, I don't. The law says a woman can terminate a pregnancy against the wishes of the father - indeed, without even CONSULTING him. How, precisely, does that benefit the "child"?

"Yes, the law has *always* 'grotesquely favoured' women over men, hasn't it? How silly of us to forget that."

No, obviously it has not, as well you know. Indeed, until relatively recently, women were practically property, and indeed in some parts of the world still are.

But that does not excuse taking the law in the opposite direction. You want equality? Great, let's have it.

Let's have 50% of post-divorce custody disputes decided in favour of the fathers.

Let's have legally mandatory paternity leave from work, equal in length to the months of mandatory maternity leave instead of the current insultingly derisory few days.

Let's start financing research into testicular and prostate cancer to even a fraction of the extent we pour money into breast cancer research.

Let's equalise the age at which we're entitled to state pensions, instead of forcing men (who die sooner due to the unresearched killers above, and due to generally working more hazardous jobs) to wait five years longer than women before entitlement.

Let's see abortions available on demand - but ONLY if BOTH parents give permission.

OR: if you don't like that, let's have the other possibility - abortions permitted on demand of EITHER parent, instead of giving rights to only one.

Either of those situations would be equality - but can you imagine any situation where either would come to pass? Forget it.

The world is run by women.



Think about it: what do men want? I mean, REALLY want? Now look around. Do they GET it?

Men want sex. If the world ran how men would want it, we could get sex any time. We can't. We get sex when women say we can have it. Women, on the other hand, can have it any time they want, regardless of how unattractive they are. Indeed, to judge by the look of some of the women I've seen on the streets of Paris, some men will PAY to have sex with some deeply unattractive women.

Think about "the oldest profession". The world has ALWAYS been set up so that men have to pay to have fun, whereas women GET paid for it, and can get it whenever they want it for free. Does this sound like a world dominated by men, or women?

"Women earn less than men" I hear women bleating. Yes, they do. However, in my experience, women SPEND MORE than men. Generally, I'd rather spend money than earn it. It's just more fun. But look around the shops on a Saturday. Which gender is happily going about, dozens of bags on each arm, keeping the wheels of capitalism ticking by consuming more and more Manolo Blahniks? And which gender is morosely actually PAYING for it with all that extra money they earn?

I have reached the age I have without ever once owning more than six pairs of shoes at once - COUNTING wetsuit shoes and hiking boots. I have never, so far, been with or even known well any woman who owned LESS than six pairs of shoes too impractical to walk a mile in.

Yes, on one level I'm being facetious. But on another - look back at that list above the . That's not even a close-to-complete list of the many, many ways men get it in the neck from the law, and nobody bats an eyelid at them.

And if you even THINK "well it's about time", then you deserve all the oppression you've so recently escaped from.

H.

My uncle was in the fertilized egg business when I was young. He had several hundred young layers, called pullets, and 8 or 10 roosters whose job was to fertilize the eggs.
My uncle kept records and any rooster or pullet that didn't perform well went into the pot and was replaced. Now this took an awful lot of time. So when my uncle saw a set of eight tiny bells that each rang a different tone he promptly bought them.

He glued a piece of foam rubber to each clapper shaft so the bell wouldn't ring except when violently shaken. He hung a bell on each rooster's neck and went and mixed a Mint Julep.

Now he could sit on the porch and sip while filling out an efficiency report on the roosters by listening to the different tones of the bells and marking down each encounter.

My uncle's favorite rooster was old Brewster. A very fine specimen he was and his bell did not ring all morning. Uncle went to investigate. Several roosters were chasing pullets, bells a-ringing. Brewster had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

Uncle was so proud of Brewster he entered him in the county fair. Brewster was an overnight sensation. They not only awarded him the No Bell prize but also the Pullet Surprise.

Hoo,

<<"Yes, the law has *always* 'grotesquely favoured' women over men, hasn't it? How silly of us to forget that.">>

That was sarcasm. I thought you might recognize it.

<>

Bully for you. I have never owned six pairs of shoes. At the moment I own precisely two pairs of shoes. What sort of point are you trying to make?

As for the rest of your posting, I shall have to read it again, and perhaps again, to try and make some sense of it. You really don't sound like yourself - usually you do make a lot more sense.

hasta later . . .

az

Hoo

All things being equal, I would agree with you about the equal rights over embryos / abortion / pregnancys - that either both parents agree or one abstains, so that the future of a possible future child is decided on by both parents.

However, all things are not equal, a man does not carry the pregnancy and suffer the medical consequences of it. It is easier to say yes/no to something when it won't have such an effect as it does on most women. If men could take the embryos and carry them then i would say fair is fair, if the woman doesn't want the embryos then the man should have the right to have them.

No there are no egg banks, which i believe is due to a poor viability rate of frozen eggs as opposed to the good viability rate of frozen sperm.
However - there are donor women that will happily give up their eggs to be fertilised by a man desperate to be a father with an infertile women but a healthy womb. There are not enough of them because it isnt a case of a quick mag and a plastic cup. It involves hormone therapy, and painful collection procedures taking months to get eggs.

As for the embryo women, since i brought it up i opught to comment. I only know a bit about one of the women, who had ovarian cancer. After finding they needed IVF it was the ivf that discovered her ovarian cancer and treatment was started, embryos stored, because they couldn't freeze eggs at that particular clinic and shortly after her treatment (4 months i think) the guy left her. I think there are probably big issues there.

However that doesn't change the reality and morality of the case. I find myself very undecided about this, my heart is for the woman, but in fairness it was a joint decision.

"I have never owned six pairs of shoes. At the moment I own precisely two pairs of shoes. What sort of point are you trying to make?"

That while we all agree that most money which is earned is earned by men, most money which is *spent*, is spent by, or for, or on, women.

Seriously.

Most western countries have catalogue shops. In the UK, it's Argos, or Index. Most of the single guys I know don't even have one of those catalogues in the house. Most of the single women do. If you look in those catalogues, you'll find maybe a couple of dozen pages of stuff men would buy. The other thousand pages are filled with stuff women would buy.

Go into a magazine shop in the UK, and you'll find a glossy called "Stuff For Men". It covers a fairly narrow range of products - the sort of thing men buy - MP3 players, phones, home cinema.

It's instructive to note that there is no corresponding magazine called "Stuff For Women", because no newsstand exists big enough to accomodate that magazine. Basically the "stuff for women" is EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD that isn't in "Stuff For Men" magazine. And it's not like your banned from buying the stuff for men, either...

If an alien came down and looked at the planet, and saw one gender earning most of the money, and the other gender spending most of the money, which one would they think was the "dominant" gender?

(Remembering again that the gender that EARNS more, has to WORK more - five years longer, even though statistically they die five years sooner - thus getting, on the whole, ten years less rest at the end of their lives...)

I am being a bit sarcastic, but there's a tiny serious point. Women get better healthcare than men, they retire sooner, they live longer, and they get preferential treatment under the law in many, many ways, a few of which I mention above. And still they try to bend the law further in their favour. Why?

H.

Hoo,

<>

I agree.

<>

I would say that in the second case it is probably quite rare that a woman ever decides to 'abort a baby' that 'the father is desperate to have' etc etc.

If you think that there is no personal responsibility involved when trying to decide whether to have an abortion or not, then think again, with a bit more compassion.

I also think your use of the words 'mother' and 'father' are a bit out of line when talking about people who have so far only produced a potential human.

<>

Who was talking about taking the law in the opposite direction?


<>


ah, not the last time I looked . . .

Oh dear, I'm sorry but I really can't take the last bit of your posting seriously. I do hope you were being facetious, as you said.


<>


About time for . . . what? For men to be oppressed? For men to own less shoes? Really, I think you can do better than this Hoo. I don't even know what it is you are so angry about.

As for the oppression we have all so recently escaped from . . . I think this depends on where one lives.

az

ps
we have really gone off topic here . . .

<>

I don't agree that this is all true. Two women tried to have their frozen embryos given into their custody. So? Bending the law? They were only trying to get something they really wanted. Like men never ever do this, they never go to court and make a big fuss over something they want.

Honestly.

az

I agree with you. Little Bear, you're exactrly right!

I can't access that, because there are massive on-going server problems - *somewhere* - but if that's the story about the two women whose ex-husbands barred them from using frozen embryos, it made me seethe!
Selfish p*llocks is the very least thing I would say about these men. Spite. "I have run off and have a new bit of crumpet, so I'll rub the salt in, for the old one, and end her last chance of ever having children." Why? What harm does it do them, and their new fancy pieces? It's related to the urge to get custody of children that many men feel, and the phenomenon, that has happened many times in Oz and NZ of disgruntled non-custodial fathers who have *killed* the children (and often themselves) on access visits, on a kind of "if I can't have them, I'll see that she doesn't, the ******" kind of thinking, (if it can be called thought!)
The ex-husbands of these poor women should not have been so shamelessly pandered to!

Why? Is it a kind of "I don't want it, but I don't want anyone else, especially not the woman I have dumped, to have it" kind of thing? It looks to me like nothing but toddler tantrum spite!
Men can be such %$^&&*% towards women they've 'replaced.'

>>I can't really explain this, its just sort of a general feeling of revulsion at the idea of someone that you didn't want to be with having your child.<<
I just don't get it... Is it spite? Is it possessiveness? I've had a couple of bad break ups, (as Hoo chose to get quite vicious about) and I know that some men can get quite irrationally vengeful and exhibit quite illogical loathing whether they were the dumper or the dumpee. But I still don't get it! (No matter how I feel at the time, I'm usually indifferent to the chap before long, especially if he stays out of my way...)

but maybe not here, hey?

but maybe not here, hey?

but maybe not here, hey?