Wow. Comparing terminating the development of a potential human being(that needs to leech off another to survive)to raping actual people.
May you be raped so you can make a fair comparison

I thank you for this discussion.

I would like to assure you that I have never dismissed anything “just” because it comes from a religious standpoint. I believe there is both wisdom and foolishness in most religious traditions, so I would never dimiss any ideas out of hand because of the source.

I have never advocated totally free sex sex. I think that we are constrained by biology and our obligations to others and to ourselves. I believe that people who have sex SHOULD (a) take steps, such as condom use and regular visits to the doctor, to prevent the spread of STDs (and as a society, we should strive to make these resources available to everyone); (b) diligently prevent unwanted pregnancy by use of the most effective available birth control; (c) never coerce or pressure another person, and treat one’s partners with respect; (d) do not ever violate a promise of fidelity to another person whethr in marriage or otherwise, and (e) never do something you are not comfortable with just to please someone else, whether in marriage or otherwise. While I do not mean to suggest that teenagers should all become sexually active as I did, or that there is anything wrong with abstinence before marriage, these simple rules have served me well.

I would also note that STDs, rape, unwanted pregnancy, and adultery existed in spades throughout human history and long before the sexual revolution. And women who follow the ideal of abstinence outside of marriage have never been immune from these problems.

As a minor clarification, I see a difference between saying YOU are misogynist and saying your view on this issue is misogynist. I am not trying to engage in name-calling, but rather trying to engage with you in parsing out whether there is contempt for women inherent in our views.

Fair enough.

I do take advantage of my female body sexually and athletically. I suppose you can define “choosing not to have children” as “unhappy with your female body.” But that means nuns and confirmed spinsters are unhappy with their female bodies too. That also ignores the fact that I have been pleased to have the option to become pregnant if and when and I choose; I do appreciate this option even though I have not taken advantage of it and may not do so.</i.

My ideal does.

Yes, we are going deep, aren’t we?

I don’t have time to respond in depth at the moment but do appreciate the comments. I definitely am an individualist, but that doesn’t mean having no obligations to others.

I think we all have moral obligation to do what we can to make the world a better place, to make moral choices that maximize human happiness, to prevent unnecessary suffering, and to keep commitments we make to others. We simply disagree on how all that works in practice!

I will respond quickly to this:

I don’t think this holds. You don’t own your body. If you doubt it, try selling yourself into slavery. Our Constitution forbids that and our justice system would stop you– or, at least, 20 years ago it would have. Who knows– in today’s world where the magic words “I want” trump every other consideration, maybe you would be allowed to do so!

But that example would mean that I don’t own your body any more; I am not sure ownership of one’s body includes the right to stop owning it. On the other hand, I suppose you are right that there are other escenarios that would test my libertarian principles in this regard. Should people be allowed to amputate their own limbs for plasure (yes, people do this!) or kill themselves? I am tempted to answer yes, especially on the latter, but you are correct that those example give one pause.

Well, I gave you my opinion, and you called me misogynistic, so apparently you too, believe that a woman can be anti woman.

As a minor clarification, I see a difference between saying YOU are misogynist and saying your view on this issue is misogynist. I am not trying to engage in name-calling, but rather trying to engage with you in parsing out whether there is contempt for women inherent in our views.

Of course, I absolutely agree with you that a woman can be anti-woman and can hold anti-female views. I never meant to imply otherwise.

I am a woman. I have an opinion. You seem to be ignoring that. I happen to believe that a womans best interest is to treat her body as something holy, something sacred, not something to be used as a toy. I call that abuse.

But who is being abused exactly? At the risk of TMI, I will use myself as an example: I have chosent to have sex throughout my late teens and adult life while using contraception. I have never used my body sexually in a way that made me uncomfortable or that felt degraded. I have never been pressured or coerced into sleeping with someone I didn’t want to sleep with. For most of my adult life, I have been happily married. You might call this abuse, but my experience is that sex has enhanced my life, and my relationships. Am I just deluding myself and I am secretly unhappy? If I don’t know I am unhappy am I really unhappy?

You don’t sound happy to be in your female body. You sound quite happy ignoring that your body is indeed female, as you attempt tho thwart it’s very definition at every turn… I usually find that people who are happy with things, take advantage of them, not take measures to eliminate them…

I am not sure why this matters but …

I do take advantage of my female body sexually and athletically. I suppose you can define “choosing not to have children” as “unhappy with your female body.” But that means nuns and confirmed spinsters are unhappy with their female bodies too. That also ignores the fact that I have been pleased to have the option to become pregnant if and when and I choose; I do appreciate this option even though I have not taken advantage of it and may not do so.

I am quite happy in my female body, thank you very much. But I own my body. My body doesn’t own me.

I don’t think this holds. You don’t own your body. If you doubt it, try selling yourself into slavery. Our Constitution forbids that and our justice system would stop you– or, at least, 20 years ago it would have. Who knows– in today’s world where the magic words “I want” trump every other consideration, maybe you would be allowed to do so!

I am a woman. I have an opinion. You seem to be ignoring that. I happen to believe that a womans best interest is to treat her body as something holy, something sacred, not something to be used as a toy. I call that abuse.

You don’t sound happy to be in your female body. You sound quite happy ignoring that your body is indeed female, as you attempt tho thwart it’s very definition at every turn… I usually find that people who are happy with things, take advantage of them, not take measures to eliminate them…

We are all human beings but with different roles. You cannot not be a woman nor can you separate yourself from that. Only damage can result from trying to create such a division.

I am surprised that mk hasn’t pointed out that personhood does not exist as a legal category or concept. You would be hard put, as I think she noted above, to define it. I must say that it doesn’t seem useful to me as a category because almost everything we could come up with would apply to others who have already been born, e.g. consciousness. Well, what about a person in a coma? Can we kill him? You can think of other examples.

You wrote: It is the very essence of misogyny, or at least sexism, to believe that the workings of my uterus should take precedence over my heart, my soul, and my brain.

I sympathize with the view you hold in that I once held it myself. However, neither misogyny nor sexism is at the root of what we are saying, I don’t think. I know that others can articulate this better than I but, essentially, we and you are disagreeing over the conception (pun not intended!) of what it means to be human.

You hold a position that entails a view of a radically autonomous individual with no necessary constraints on his/her being that limit individual freedom. The logical outcome of this (whether you personally hold this view or not) is that nobody has any claims on you– not family and certainly not the community.

It is not hard to see where this leads. This ego centered society we have created has wreaked havoc in the lives of children. I am not happily married? Well, we know what to do about that! Yet, by every measure of child well-being ever devised, the children of divorce do poorly compared to children in intact families. The children of single mothers do equally poorly. We have been trained to sneer at “staying together for the sake of the children”, yet the evidence is overwhelming that that is best for children.

However, I have My rights to MY happiness and no one has a right to prevent me from achieving MY goals– not even my child. If it is already born, well, he will just have to adapt to the breakup of his world. If he is unborn, there is a scalpel with his name on it. This just isn’t a healthy state of affairs.

In the end, it comes down to those age old questions– Who am I? What does it mean to be human? What does a life well-lived consist of? Our Constitution guarantees you the right to pursue happiness but … what is happiness? If you guess, wrong and spend your life pursuing that, where does that leave you?

I am quite happy in my female body, thank you very much. But I own my body. My body doesn’t own me.