Telling of what? That I was intentionally trying to construct a counter example to the claim the it's if a women gets pregnant, it is always the man's fault? Yeah, I thought that was obvious.
To say the man is always at fault might be true, but it's not the whole story.
Yes, I recognize what you were trying to do. It was telling that your hypothetical failed in its intended effort. Your hypothetical succeeds only in reifying the patriarchal structure, it is at no point a question of whether the man is actually concerned about the consequences of sex in a meaningful sense. The hypothetical man posited here is a person for whom the question of sex is problematized only insofar as what the woman will
let him do, will
let him get away with. So long as the woman is willing, there is no question as to whether not not he
will have sex. The attempt in the hypothetical was to posit a case in which the onus of theorized responsibility for the consequences of sex were shifted wholesale from the man to the woman, but you have failed in this attempt. You succeeded inasmuch as you shifted the
concern about the onus from the man to the woman, but the onus itself - the agency - still hasn't been shifted. The man has raised concerns about the consequences, yes, and the woman has offered a form of absolution, but ultimately the agency,
the decision to have sex and to accept any consequences therefrom still rests with the man, because it is still ultimately the man's decision whether to have sex or not; whether to insist more strenuously on using a condom or else to forego sex altogether. He
appears not to take up the onus, indeed as an archetypal patriarchal man that onus is not allowed to be considered - she didn't say no and therefore I must pursue - but that onus is nevertheless there, however unacknowledged. That is what is telling about this hypothetical. The
most exaggerated example you can come up with is a man offering a handful of flaccid "are you sure?" 's before being pulled headlong by the constraints of toxic masculinity. There never arises the possibility of "I'm not having sex unless it's with a condom" or "let's not do this, it's too risky," or hell, even a "I'm worried about the consequences, let's do non-penetrative stuff instead."
More to the point, the hypothetical doesn't address any of Mary's points, namely that the consequences are far greater, and the avenues of prevention are far more costly, inaccessible, and potentially damaging for women than they are for men. And, moreover, that the existing structures of power and internalized patriarchal norms make it so the man, ultimately, holds all the power. Preventing unwanted pregnancies for a woman entails buying the pill, which could be very expensive given the woman's healthcare plan, could require a prescription from a doctor, and could cause long-term health problems down the road, and messes with her menstrual cycle in ways that can present side effects, or else it entails the woman getting an IUD, which, again, could be very expensive given the woman's healthcare plan, means she won't be able to have children for five years, is extremely painful for the first 6 months, is still pretty uncomfortable afterwards, and requires a potentially embarrassing, invasive medical procedure. If the woman
does get pregnant and doesn't want the child, she then has to confront the difficult question of whether to abort, which, depending on the state she lives in, can be a costly, embarrassing, lengthy, and potentially threatening to her health, well-being, and economic stability, or to carry the child to term, which is costly (irrespective of health insurance policy), exhausting, and potentially life-threatening. The most taxing aspect of preventing an unwanted pregnancy for a man is: figuring out if he (and she) are allergic to latex, and having a minimally embarrassing 20 seconds at a checkout counter. Until those equations change, I think Mary's position is rather tenable.
