DOD90: Unplanned Parenthood

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, it's the podcast that's awed by its shock. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Thomas: See, I would have done the podcast that's been sick for an entire fucking month. God, unbelievable.

0:00:41 Tom: Oh my God. Yeah, you have.

0:00:43 Thomas: Two, maybe three viruses in a row. I'm actually not sure. It's it's unbelievable. Oh.

0:00:49 Eli: Sent I this to Lydia in our secret private, um, meme conversation that I have with her.

0:00:53 Thomas: Cool. You guys have it you know, I feel better. I was a little sad that you only had secret conversations with Tom's wife.

0:00:55 Eli: Yeah. Um,

0:01:03 Tom: Haley. Yeah.

0:01:03 Thomas: Okay. Good. Everyone.

0:01:04 Tom: Right. Yeah now. Yeah we're

0:01:04 Eli: No, no. Everyone's wif - Hey, if you're listening to this and you're married, me and your wife are exchanging hot hot memes.

0:01:10 Tom: Chatting. Just chatting.

0:01:13 Eli: She's breathing out through her nose at my memes, you're in her mentions. I'm, I don't know how popular, I, I lost touch with that particular moat of popular culture.

0:01:21 Thomas: Oh, I know, I love that one. Oh,

0:01:23 Eli: Yeah, there was a great tweet the other day that was like, uh, we're a preschool, give us half your yearly income and we'll give you a new virus every month. What

0:01:28 Thomas: Yeah, okay. This is actually, never mind, this reminds me, uh, a very important question that we have to tackle first because I know we have an important episode but how

0:01:31 Tom: Yeah.

0:01:38 Eli: Do you do if there's an unexpected pregnancy, that's

0:01:40 Thomas: No, no, how are we supposed to do this, are you exposed to react? How do you gentlemen react when your wife shows you a meme you've already seen? Wow.

0:01:44 Tom: Oh, well, I don't have an answer. I that's literally no, I, I

0:01:53 Eli: Yeah, no, to be fair, all memes are new to Tom.

0:01:54 Thomas: To be Tom. Yeah, that

0:01:55 Eli: Right?

0:01:55 Tom: Don't, I'm I know about it online, it's because Haley has shown it to me.

0:02:00 Eli: Yeah, a Tarzan and Jane situation, you

0:02:02 Thomas: Tom, you're doing marriage, marriage on easy mode. Next you're gonna be like, I'm not attracted to any other person in the entire world. Fucking got easy mode over here. Yeah.

0:02:06 Tom: I just don't. I don't don't internet very much. So like, I don't spend 10 minutes a day on the internet. So

0:02:14 Thomas: No, that's true. Okay, sorry, Eli, how do you react when your wife sends you a meme you've already seen? Yeah.

0:02:16 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:21 Eli: It's fake it, you fake it so fucking hard. You

0:02:22 Thomas: I know, I know, I'm supposed to, I know what I'm suppose to, I, I, but, but I only successfully do that like half the time. I don't know why. I can't.

0:02:29 Eli: No, fucking Thomas, I've seen you attempt to lie maybe once while doing a board game and even then you were like, "Here comes a mistruth, um, I am the werewolf." What, it's codenames? Never mind, there's not, there's a codename, there's no fucking gun to your children's heads. It's two of the things you're worst at. Enjoy a thing, you don't think you're funny and lie.

0:02:35 Thomas: Yeah, no, it's impossible.

0:02:46 Thomas: Yeah, no, Well, okay I'm helped a little bit because this is usually a text interaction. So I can usually just be like LOL. That works.

0:03:01 Eli: Yeah, an LOL is good.

0:03:03 Thomas: Yeah, and it is funny. I'm not lying. Like it is fun usually. But it's hard because I, is a joke I think I've made before, but like, it's the funniest thing to me because it just goes to show, I don't, maybe this is just me, but just in case this is other people out there. I know why I'm such an asshole that when my wife shows me a meme or anyone shows me, I mean, I've already seen my reaction is like, I are showing that to me as though I don't already fucking know every joke on the internet. It's like, I just happened to see it. There's nothing good that I did. That just means I'm a bigger loser. I'm spending more time looking at bullshit on the internet. And yet there's this pride feeling like, try to pull one over on me. I know that fucking meme. I was, I was looking at a meme before you were born. You know, it's weird. I don't know what that impulse is.

0:03:42 Eli: Yeah, it's not like you're on the forefront of a technology. Just like, oh, no. In the trenches, the meme trenches, just filtering my way through the new section on the r slash memes memes to make sure I caught this one first.

0:03:56 Thomas: Yeah, such a weird impulse. But now I'm so glad that meme came from you. Cause I was like, ah, I've seen that before.

0:04:01 Eli: Yeah. Now, what do you do when a partner sends you a meme and you don't look at it and then you send them that meme and they're like, I already sent you that?

0:04:11 Thomas: Oh, that's really bad. Yeah.

0:04:12 Eli: That's the real, that's the saying your sister's name during sex of our generation. Let me tell you, when I send my wife a picture of two frogs and with the caption "us," and she has already sent me two frogs with the caption "us." That's that's about as deep a betrayal as you get in the Bosnick household. Let me tell you,

0:04:13 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. God. Oh, god. Oh, no. I love, how we have marital challenges that Tom is like, I don't even know what words you guys are using anymore, like, what

0:04:35 Tom: Though, the closest thing, and Hayley hates it so much, the closest thing that I can relate to is, um, I read the news voraciously all day, so I do that all day, like, check the news, I have checked like, like six, seven, eight different sources, I listen to like four different news podcasts every morning, I'm just, part of my life, it's embedded in my life, but Hayley, she'll like a story and and she's going to think it's a good for the show. She thinks it's good for Cogdiss.

0:04:35 Thomas: Oh, yep, same thing, yeah,

0:04:35 Eli: We

0:04:58 Tom: She'll be like, oh, hey, I sent you the story. And I'm like, Oh, I saw that. She's like, thanks. She's like,

0:05:03 Eli: Oh,

0:04:57 Thomas: Yeah, I know, Tom, that is actually, I also have that problem, it is very similar, but now I also have the Eli version, version of that, slightly different, but the worst is when, uh, will be like, oh, you heard about the, you know, the such and such, the fucking, the governor, that, whatever, and I'm like, yeah, no, heard it, and and then she'll say like, yeah, that fucking car fire, you know, it'll be something slightly different and will have been a second news story about like, a second plane has hit that fucking governor or whatever, like, so I'll have done the dismissive, yeah, I know, I know what you're talking about, but she's talking about like, new development in the story, have you ever had that one where it's like, oh, damn it, I should have listened better and not been an asshole, yeah.

0:05:37 Tom: No, I don't know that I've had that because like I try to do, because the first few times that I was like, oh yeah, I read that. I like, I just saw her just get like super disappointed because she's trying to be helpful, right? She's like trying like to send me a story that like I can use for the the show. So she's trying to be fucking helpful. And then instead I'm just like, yeah, I fucking read that. And she's like, nah, it's not, I don't like that very much. So like, I've changed it to where I'll just be like, oh, let me take a look. And Then I like read the story again and see if there's anything, or I'll like, try to like have a conversation about this story. Like I'll look through the story.

0:05:48 Thomas: Yeah, exactly, so

0:06:06 Tom: Cause I don'T want to just be

0:06:05 Eli: So you lie to her,

0:06:06 Thomas: You lie to your wife is what you're saying you

0:06:06 Eli: You lie and you treat her like it's a wow,

0:06:09 Tom: Not going going to to like, tell her like, I already read that this morning. Like, that's not useful. Like that's Not helpful. She's trying To connect with me about something.

0:06:10 Thomas: Lie, I

0:06:15 Eli: You might as well, just stick your tongue into the milkman's asshole, Tom. Why don't you just clean out the milkman's rectum while you're at it?

0:06:25 Thomas: Comparisons are, Jesus Christ,

0:06:27 Tom: I mean, Eli, who still has a milkman?

0:06:30 Eli: Guys don't have milkmen? Where are you getting your milk? That's crazy. Do you guys hear yourselves?

0:06:34 Thomas: You don't have a milkman, where's your wife getting fucked.

0:06:38 Eli: Buy the milk, man. Yeah. What do you think the milkman's for? I can go to the grocery store for milk. I want a man in an all white uniform to to fuck my wife, that's hard to come by, Instacart. And you know the only thing worse than, uh, out your milkman's asshole, why, it's the auto ads, yes, the auto adds, they are truly the unknown analingus in a monogamous relationship of podcasting, unexpected, unpleasant, and if you're hygienic, ad for you, but you can wear the dental dam of patreon.com/dearolddads by giving us as little as a dollar, where you'll get an ad -free version of every single episode, including a little parenting story at the end of every show when Tom can be bothered, uh, and, uh, yeah, you can get all that stuff over

0:06:39 Thomas: He missed.

0:06:55 Tom: Jesus, Christ,

0:07:27 Thomas: Like, one, yeah,

0:07:28 Eli: At Patreon, you miss one you get that joke forever, that's how it works, you, you took one photo without your feet in it, Thomas, and look what happened there, you know, it's

0:07:28 Tom: I know, one, that's it, that's it,

0:07:30 Thomas: Forever for the rest of your life. Did I? How many photos do you take that have your feet in them? Is the okay but

0:07:41 Eli: Lot, you should check out my OnlyFans, I can't tell you about normal, hey, if this pot, if this podcast has a post-colonic it's, I can't tell you about normal people.

0:07:43 Thomas: But in normal transactions oh yeah patreon.com/dearolddads don't eat out your milkman or do yeah

0:07:58 Eli: All eat out your milkman

0:07:54 Tom: Hey, if your milkman wants to get eaten out, eat out your milkman, like, there's no stopping all, there's a big cultural hullabaloo kind of going around right now. And it got me to thinking about some tangential issues. So there's a big hullabaloos right now about Britney Spears, writing a book and she's that book, as part of what her revelations through that book, she discloses that Justin Timberlake, when they were about 19 or so, she got pregnant. Justin Timperlake didn't want the baby and she had an abortion, and she would not have had that abortion. Abortion. If, she, um, had not been told by Justin, this is what she says.

If she's not been told by Justin that he didn't want to have that baby and that he was not ready to be a father, I think, is how it was phrased. And it got me to thinking, and Haley and I had like a bunch of conversation about it. So I wanted to kind of bring to you, kind of some tangential issues, around finding out that there is an unexpected pregnancy in a relationship.

And I think there's a bunch of really interesting stuff to, about here, kind of in how it interacts with fatherhood, the desire to be a father or the desire not to be a father, and how those things intersect with our relationships. So the first question comes that to mind is, like, either of you been

0:07:58 Eli: Uh, right, uh,

0:08:00 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah,

0:08:57 Tom: Told?

0:08:56 Thomas: Listen to Britney Spears, oh no Tom's

0:09:00 Tom: Liar.

0:09:00 Thomas: Like, have you heard about this new singer, Britney Spears, years yeah, yeah, she's that kid's got a future, that Britney, I

0:09:00 Eli: None

0:09:03 Tom: Spears, I hear good things. I hear Good Things. The kids are listening. And then, no, but like, so, of the pregnancies in your lives have been planned. Is that right?

0:09:14 Eli: Of the pregnancies in Thomas's lives have been planned. Are you fucking kidding?

0:09:16 Thomas: Mean, I I was actually just trying to think, like, how do you define planned? I mean, they have felt very surprising, we were trying the first time.

0:09:24 Tom: Okay. So the, so the first time, if you're trying, that's clearly not.

0:09:24 Thomas: Uh,

0:09:24 Eli: The most planned Thomas's pregnancies are is that the sex is consensual.

0:09:34 Eli: Did that one make a baby? All right.

0:09:36 Thomas: Arlo is the only one that was a surprise, so Phoebe, but, like they all felt surprising because Phoebe we tried for like a, a year, like parents who, uh, are listening, I'm sure can identify with, like, when of people tried for a very long time, uh, it's that feeling of like, well, this shit is never gonna fucking happen ever, ever, never, and then it happens and you're like, oh my god, that's amazing, you know, like, there's a lot there, um, that was a surprise, but it was, I suppose, planned, quote unquote, Arlo was, uh, one was not, not planned, that was

0:09:38 Tom: Okay. All right.

0:09:39 Eli: Liar. Condoms feel weird.

0:10:03 Tom: Yeah, sure. The timing of the other two was a surprise, but the, the fact that she was going to get pregnant was a hoped for conclusion, right?

0:10:11 Eli: At all. Right. Yeah.

0:10:08 Thomas: Well, No. Remy. Remy. She specifically stopped birth control to try for Remy, but the thing The thing That's Funny about Us is the minute she stopped birth control, she got pregnant as soon as possible, second that you could, so not what we, that was a little surprising, like it was planned, But Oh fuck, are you serious, like already, you know, we thought like, oh, maybe it'll be a few months, maybe you Know,

0:10:13 Tom: Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. OK. So.

0:10:26 Tom: Right, but you've never been in a position where your partner became pregnant and it was like, hey, we're not sure if we're keeping this or not. Right. Like you've ever been in that position.

0:10:32 Thomas: Oh, No. I've Never Been That. No. Know.

0:10:40 Tom: Yeah, right. OK, so that's that's kind of what I was what I was driving at. So,

0:10:42 Eli: That has happened to me twice where two times there have been unexpected pregnancies with partners who decided they did not want to have a baby and we did not have a a baby.

0:10:51 Tom: So that that's of my kids were unplanned. Right. So I was not intending to have any kids and I have two kids. So my kids were not like part of a conversation about, Hey, let's have kids. It It was like, I don't intend to have kids and just with Finn did not take the proper precautions with Amon thought the precautions were properly taken. And in fact, they've, they failed. And so, you know, we have Amon. I So, want to talk about and ask you guys, Eli, when you found out that other partners that you'd impregnated were pregnant, what was your response to them and how did they bring that knowledge to you?

0:11:24 Eli: Um, talk about one of them. I won't talk about the other for a variety of reasons.

0:11:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:30 Tom: Sure, sure. And if it's too personal, I don't mean that.

0:11:30 Eli: Uh, no, No. The the first partner has explicitly spoken publicly about what we went through and their, um, at, um, decisions we made and the support that she felt for me, um,

0:11:43 Thomas: Think what you're saying is somebody tweeted, oh my fucking God, I'm so glad I don't have a kid with Eli Bosnick.

0:11:43 Eli: Yeah. You know, um, it was weird, they're doing it as a yearbook giveaway now, as like, least likely to have Eli's baby, and she was the first to win it, and so, you know, she really carries that, she passes a crown down to someone every year. It's, um, it's a really beautiful ceremony, but no, so the the first time this happened, I will say, and I actually want to talk about the problematic nature of this. As helpful as it was for me, I grew up with the philosophy passed down from my dad, which was, don't ever have sex with anyone unless you have had the conversation about what will happen if you accidentally get pregnant, right?

And I sort of want to put a pin in that philosophy because I think it's problematic for a lot of reasons. I think deeply, deeply overlooks birth control choices and what abortion actually is and isn't. But that was what I was raised with. And so every partner I've ever had sex that could result in pregnancy in, I have been explicit in no uncertain terms about where I am about kids at that moment. And my partner has as well, that hasn't changed for either of us.

So in both of those scenarios, partner A came to me and was like, hey, I'm pregnant, but I don't want to be. Are we still in accordance? And I was like, yes, we are absolutely still in accordance. I was very, very young the first time it happened, and I was actually no longer in a relationship with that girlfriend.

We had since broken up, and she came to me and was like, hey, you know, they say you leave a little bit of yourself behind in every relationship, well, yours is getting bigger than most. Again, had like very, very religious parents, which was sort of the concern, right, was are we going to talk to your parents about, are we going to tell them, are we not going to tell them? And so really that conversation ended up being about her emotional health, safety, and well-being.

My parents were amazing, of course, about all of it. And so that was, I would say, as smooth a process as it can be. Uh, only sort of weird moment that I remember, um, we, I didn't realize about abortion pills at that point in my life.

0:12:00 Tom: Right.

0:13:52 Thomas: Yeah,

0:13:52 Eli: Like, I, I thought there was Plan B, which was like, whoops, condom broke, but I didn't realize that there was also like a Plan C pill where you take a pill and that is an abortive part of health care, right? So we go and I am like, look, we're not dating anymore, more, but I'm gonna be there for you the whole time, like I'm there for you, and my ex is looking at me like, what the fuck are you talking about? Because of course to her I was like, and I'm going to come to your house and sit outside the bathroom while you have super bad diarrhea, and I just want you to know that if you need a Gatorade through the door, I am the man to call. And of course she was like, great, got him, go fuck yourself, and I was like, alright, go fuck myself, awesome. Yeah, no, let's do it. And absolutely.

0:13:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:33 Thomas: Hey, if you ever want to do that for me when I have have really bad diarrhea, though, I mean, I wouldn't.

0:14:37 Eli: Yeah. No. Know, um, that's another service offered on my ManyVids, uh, check it out, ManyVids.com forward slash Dear Old Dads. Um, of those scenarios, we were in agreement about what was going to happen, so I, I don't think I can speak to what you're about to speak about, Tom, is sort of like, one, what men are trained to do, and two, is there some subtlety, like, is there some nuance to that conversation now that men aren't just like, I guess, guess the word would be like, yes, men, in that scenario, right, it's all well and good to be like, you just ask, what do you want to do, right, which is sort of the like toxic masculinity, like, you have no part in whether or not you have kids conversation, right? It's quite another to be like, hey, the reality is there are lots of people who get put in this situation, what are, are the non-toxic and healthy ways we can have these conversations with young men, with even young men, um, so that people can healthily express themselves. So to hear your thoughts on that, yeah.

0:14:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:39 Tom: Yeah.

0:15:35 Tom: I broadly the way that I was raised, certainly, is that like thing to do when somebody shows up pregnant in your life is to sort of and nobody said this explicitly, but it's just sort of reinforced and reinforced and reinforced. The thing to do is to sort of read the fucking room and figure it out. If Right. She shows up and she's happy, your job is to feign happiness, you and if she shows up and she's serious, your job is to respond with seriousness, and I say that because like there is this like really strong, and I think very like, like, well-meant idea that anything like else is some form of duress, right?

0:15:56 Eli: Yeah. Right.

0:16:11 Tom: Partner comes to you and they are pregnant and you are not happy about that and happy and you are unhappy, that expressing that unhappiness or ambivalence is going to create some kind of duress. It is going create some emotional coercion and vice versa also, right, that if she comes to you and she's like, "Yeah, I fucking really don't want to have this baby." And you're like, "Fuck, I really would love to have this baby, or for you to have this baby, right? So I'm not going to fucking have it, but I really love for you to have." This baby would really love to be a father, very excited. If you were to express that excitement and while she's feeling something else, that is also a problem. And there's this really vicious, fucked up feedback loop also that occurs where is, I know women, this, this has happened to, where they find out they're pregnant and they're somewhat ambivalent and they tell their partner and their partner has been sort of trained to respond with this sort of faux joy, right?

0:16:27 Eli: No.

0:17:02 Eli: No.

0:17:02 Tom: Oh, anything other than than enthusiastic support is going to be seen as the wrong thing to do, so you, oh, that's such great news, you give somebody a big hug, and now they're like, oh fuck, that's great news, and that actually creates a kind of duress too, where there's this like, oh, well, he's really happy, I guess maybe I should be happy too, or maybe this is a good thing. And it really influences in a partnership how we feel. I think there's a real socially reinforced lack of communication and honesty that is pretty fucked up, like that is pretty bad. It's pretty fucked up. And we kind of need to deconstruct and pull that stuff apart and be able to make sure that we have honest conversations where we can say, look, your choice is your choice, right? Obviously, I'm not going to trying to take your choice from you. I'm I support that. But also, this is not some like emotionally neutral space for me either, right, like there's a lot of my skin in this game as well, you know, financially and otherwise.

0:17:53 Thomas: I'm So it's so funny, I, when you first know, said set up what you're talking about, like read the room, I was thinking essentially just, well, you're kind of obviously the the all be all decision is hers, of course, so like you're kinda gonna go with that, but then you said like if she's happy you're, you're supposed to feign happiness. I was like, holy shit, that's dark, I have never thought about that. Don't, like, know if that's like, you know, your silent generation speaking, but like that's fucking, Jesus.

0:18:18 Tom: No, I think I thinkthat's pretty. I I'll tell you that I certainly did that. That's very culturally reinforced.

0:18:22 Eli: That's absolutely right. Yeah.

0:18:23 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I think if you were in my case, like my ex came to me and she told me she was pregnant and she was happy that she was pregnant, and were not intending to be pregnant, like this was not something we had talked about, it's not something that we had wanted to do, but like, is this person, and they're happy, and family is going to be happy, everyone around you is going to be happy, and you're going to be the guy who is shitting on everyone's parade, right?

0:18:24 Eli: And

0:18:30 Thomas: You're right.

0:18:48 Tom: You're going to be the guy who's doing that.

0:18:47 Thomas: Well, that's everyone's parade. It's your

0:18:49 Tom: And I think society.

0:18:49 Thomas: It's your kid. It's you having a baby. I love that, that that's everybody else's parade, that's funny.

0:18:51 Tom: Yeah, but I mean, social forces are real. Right. So we respond.

0:18:56 Thomas: For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:18:58 Tom: We to social pressure, whether we should or shouldn't.

0:18:59 Thomas: Well, Well, Do You think that that comes from the... are just along for the ride anyway, like men are just along for the ride anyway, and so it's like, hey, your job is a man, I know you don't want to have a fucking kid because you want to keep doing man stuff and not be a parent, but she's happy, so like you got to pretend you're happy. Is that kind of what it comes from? Uh,

0:19:17 Eli: Think that's a huge percentage of it. I

0:19:18 Tom: AndI don't know that I understand that.

0:19:20 Thomas: That impulse to feign happiness when, when you're not happy in that moment, come from the cultural, just another example of the, like, man, you isn't expected to be like the, all-star dad in our society. It's like the man is expected. Like he doesn't want to have kids. Cause like he wants to be a man still fucking around. Yeah. So you got to pretend you're happy.

0:19:34 Eli: Men's Don't Want Kids. You know, right? Right.

0:19:38 Tom: No, I never thought of it that that way. Maybe that is. I think there's a really strong sense that good men don't pressure their spouses or partners into making any decision when they're pregnant. And there is a really strong bias against offering any kind of emotional pressure. And if your partner, your girlfriend, whatever, comes to you and they're happy about being pregnant, if you express an unhappiness about that result, I think you're going to be the bad guy.

0:19:51 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:52 Thomas: Interesting.

0:20:10 Tom: Think you're gonna be the bad guy with her. You're gonna be the bad guy with all of her friends, you're going to be the bad guy with her family. You're gonna be the bad guy. Like, there's no way to frame that story where you are not the bad guy. There is a really strong cultural bias against doing that. And that kind of comes back to the Justin Britney opening to this, right? Is that there's a lot of pushback that, like, wrong thing for Justin Timberlake in this case to have done was to to say, I don't want this baby. I'm not ready to be a father, because that created a duress or coercive pressure that Brittany is saying, like, hey, I would have kept that baby. I really felt like I had to get this abortion because my boyfriend at the time didn't want this baby, and that really made me fucking feel sad. And there's a huge hullabaloo, a cultural, like, online hullabaloos,

0:20:09 Eli: And

0:20:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:52 Tom: Where people are like, what an asshole. And I'm saying I'm like I don't think that's an asshole thing to do, but I think that that pressure is super real.

0:20:59 Eli: I think the context that it's really important to understand that pressure, uh, the fact that until very, very, very recently, men decided when their wives had children, right? Decided when your wife had a baby, you decided whenyour wife had an abortion. You are, still states where you need a husband's permission to get a hysterectomy, right? And there were many, many states where you needed a husband's permission to get an abortion, right? Her Body, Her Choice really started to create, and I'm talking like late fucking 70s, right?

Listeners who don't know how recently sort of abortion's wide acceptance is, we're talking like lots and lots of people alive who were born and raised in an environment where Her Body Her Choice wasn't even a practical consideration. So as that, and sort of second wave feminism took over, this her body, her choice idea, again, so often happens, so right, many positive ideas get translated through toxic masculinity into something poisonous and bad, right?

Same way that no means no got translated to convince her to have sex with you, I think her body, her choice in many cases got translated into you are not allowed to have an opinion about

0:22:17 Tom: Yeah.

0:22:17 Eli: Whether or not you have children. Sure.

0:22:19 Tom: And that's exactly how I'm seeing this sort of being framed, and is that's the pressure that I, I, you, that I very much felt, like I felt that pressure personally, that like, if I am unhappy about this, and it is an interesting catch 22. Like if your girlfriend or partner or wife, whatever, comes to you and they tell you that they are pregnant, and you, you know for certain based on them for years, and like how they're reacting, you're like, okay, like they're fucking happy about this, they are definitely not getting an abortion, right? Is the headspace they are in, so what good does expressing your unhappiness even do, right? It's not going to change the result, but it is going to sour the relationship, and there's A really, really shitty calculus there that I don't actually know how to resolve well.

0:22:52 Eli: And Think we even need to add to that, that there is a tremendous amount of pro-life propaganda that Has made it into the minds of otherwise fairly pro-choice people, right? Right. That the notion of like, once you have sex with someone, pregnancy

0:23:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:12 Thomas: You're consenting to being a father of their child forever.

0:23:15 Eli: Exactly. You have consented to be a father forever. I Right. Think there are a lot of like really, really well -intentioned, thoughtful people who, again, are coming through a lens of like feminism and her body, her choice and child support. And the the terrible situations that women have been put in throughout history to D disempower men. Right. And again, I think it's because it gets translated through one pro -life propaganda, on the other hand, and to toxic masculinity on the the other. And so I think the conversation that's really interesting for us to have is like, how do you have a healthy, even knowing those biases exist? And I would say they exist today strongly, right? There's a reason why there's a hullabaloo on the internet happening, right. How do we have healthy conversations with our partners when those issues? How How do we find a place of trust and conversation to have as a partnership in those moments, even when it might be uncomfortable to do so?

0:24:15 Thomas: This is funny, cause I don't feel any of this. And maybe it's the old, good old-fashioned Smith selfishness coming in for a big W here. This is, this is good because I think that it's one thing to say her body or choice, which is absolutely true, um, it's still ultimately her choice to have the baby or not because it's her body, but that body her choice doesn't mean you have to be a father, that's not how that, that works. I mean, for me, it would, no, it doesn't. Me, it's about if have already talked about it or not. I mean, in this scenario, if it's a relationship where it's like, yeah, we're going to have kids someday, but just not yet. And you get pregnant. That's a different, that's, yeah, that is one thing. If it is a scenario where it is like, I am not interested in having kids. We don't plan to to have kids.

I think it's 1 million percent valid to express your feelings as the other, you person who would be involved in this forever choice, you say, this isn't something I want. And then it's on her. If she would like to go through with it, I think that's still honestly on her, she, it's her body, obviously, she can go through with it or not.

But there's nothing about that, that, it means you have to have have consented to be a father with someone you never, ever would have done that with. I don't think that's how it works. I think you can express, this isn't something I'm interested in. It were my choice, this is what I do. How I feel.

0:24:39 Tom: But It does though. I mean, in A In a very Practical sense it does, and In your view, if she decides, okay, I if I say, okay, I don't want, I don't want to have that kid, and she says, well, I do, and I'm going to, then you don't think that you have an ethical obligation to the kid? No.

0:25:47 Thomas: That gets a little tricky. I think that there's nothing wrong with expressing that this isn't something you want. And if you are going to do this, it's possible that you are choosing to be a single parent, a choice you can make. People make that choice every day, so that's a valid choice where, how I would actually feel once a child was born, I don't know, but I can't, that I couldn't tell you, like.

0:26:08 Tom: No, yeah, but just the hypothetical is interesting to me, so I'll put my position out there. Like, that once is made that there's going to be another third person involved, and that third person that's involved is the child, and you helped create this child, whether or not you got a say in the creation of that child or not, the obligation now shifts from the dynamic of you and her, and is now a new dynamic, which is more important, and that is you and this child. Since the child has no agency and they're completely innocent to the whole transaction, the obligation is to father them. Your, you don't have an obligation to her, but you have an obligation to this new human, right? That Like, you did help create this person, right? I'm interested in seeing how you feel about it.

0:26:52 Thomas: Sure, no, ethically, I don't, I actually think that's true. Um, it really depends on the context of the relationship. Like, if we're taking the the facts to be, no, this has been a solidly, ever since this relationship started and consistently throughout, I have expressed that I'm not having kids, I'm not interested in having kids, we are using contraception, and that for whatever reason fails, I do not believe you have any obligation to be a father in that.

0:27:15 Tom: Wow.

0:27:15 Thomas: In, I'll separate That from, where how I would actually feel. I'm not sure I would really feel that way.

0:27:16 Tom: Yeah. No, no, no, yeah, no, I mean, we're talking about, we're the ethics of it, not your personal feelings, yeah.

0:27:23 Thomas: I do NOT believe that when you consent to sex under certain conditions as then under certain understanding, the understanding being we're on birth control, we're using a condom, that's meant to work, something goes wrong, I do not believe you're consenting to a lifetime of fatherhood. I just don't think how that's it works. I don't believe it's fair. I don't think that's something that you can inflict on someone, especially if you as the woman, child bearer anyway, operating under those assumptions. That you were essentially lying. Like means you never had consent, really.

0:27:51 Tom: No, not no, no. Hold on, hold on. It doesn't necessarily mean that. Requires you to have a predetermined feeling that you know is unchangeable, right? You have sex on Tuesday, you might believe in your heart of hearts that, yeah, if we end up pregnant, we'll have an abortion. And then four weeks later, five weeks later you find out you're pregnant and now you have a very different feeling. You're not retroactively lying five weeks ago. That's not how lying works. So no, I would say that that's not the case, right? Because people can just change their minds. It doesn't mean that they were lying five weeks ago because they felt differently when it was hypothetical than they do when it's actual. I don't think that's sensical.

0:27:52 Thomas: Oh, Yeah, lying perhaps is not the word in that specific circumstance. Yeah. I could imagine an exception to that. Sure, but if you were having sex under an understanding and then you are going back on that, I don't think that's something that is super cool. And I also, at the very least, I do not at all think that's something that the man has an obligation to go along with. If I were in that position, and again, this is not me exactly because I so much, I don't know. I'm trying to imagine a hypothetical that this would even be. I don't know. But say a different life, you know, I was 20 or something and was like with somebody that I definitely was like, I'm not, this isn't, I don't want to have kids.

I would go so far as to say I I this would extremely disagree with the decision not to have an abortion to the point where I would do everything I can to try to convince the person to have an abortion because I don't think it's appropriate to go back on you agreement, like that was the sex was being had under a certain version of consent and now you've changed that. And I don't actually think that's a cool thing to do.

0:29:02 Tom: No, no. Know, yeah. And That intersect with you in uncomfortable ways with like coercion or duress around choice, but

0:29:42 Thomas: Not at all. Cause the, this person had the opportunity to do hypothetically was say, well, no, I'm not having, like, they could have said, my feeling is that if we get pregnant, I don't believe in abortion. And then I would have been the one to make the decision. Like, do I want to risk that or not? Um, think that part of maybe the pro-life movement possibly, or, or just not, maybe not that, maybe just like the atmosphere of our very religious and conservative society is that there's something magical about now there's a clump of cells in you. And I just don't think there's anything magical about that. I think that that's a decision like anything else. And an abortion is not a big deal, actually.

0:30:11 Tom: No, obviously not. Yeah.

0:30:16 Eli: And a really important point to bring up, Thomas, because I think the emotional haziness that Tom is describing, and I feel it, absolutely, is that moment where it's like, well, you can't tell someone to get an abortion because we have placed abortion in a different, uh, in our mind than contraception as a society right now, to be clear.

And look, I don't think anyone listening to this podcast is listening in bad enough faith that they're gonna, you know, jump on Facebook or Twitter and be like, oh, they think you should force someone to forget an abortion, right, you know, tie him down to the prison chair. And we're not talking about forcing anyone through a medical procedure, obviously. But when you transform your mindset to understand that abortion is also contraception, right, Is a vastly different ethical mindset, right? So one of the things that really helps people to get into what I think is a healthier headspace is not to think about an which again, we have so many taboos around and there's so much history around, but to think of sort of an accepted method of birth control, right?

So for instance, when we talk phenomenologically someone who pokes holes in condoms or someone who says they're on the pill when they're not on the pill, we as a society sort of understand, ooh, well, that was an agreement to birth control that one person consented to that the other person secretly did not or changed their mind at the last minute and then did not. And we understand the consent and the consent around parenthood to be, I think, much healthier in those scenarios.

So I think a lot of the time when we're in the hinky place that you're describing, it is because we are not properly thinking of abortion as contraception, which

0:31:02 Thomas: Yeah, I agree.

0:32:00 Eli: It is.

0:32:01 Thomas: Yeah. I agree with that.

0:32:02 Tom: I totally disagree. I think that is burden shifting to pre-meditation versus the reality of sometimes people feel differently later. So like it's not a good analogy, it's a genuinely bad analogy. Like if you poke a hole in condoms or something, right? There's a premeditative act that is based in deception. And so none of those factors are in play if somebody becomes pregnant and then turns out that their hypothetical understanding of how they would react to that doesn't match their actual feelings about how they would reaction. And whether or not you have a sense that or shouldn't feel this way, they're this hypothetical, they do feel this way, they have changed their mind. So trying to like equate that to some premeditative deception doesn't track. Yikes.

0:32:52 Eli: Because it's not about a deception, right? What I'm talking about is the choice to use birth control or not use birth control. Right. In the moment. Take, right, the deception out of it. Right? Choice or not to use birth control in the moment, right? It's not deceptive, right, the real question here. And so when someone says, hey, I don't want to be a father, I think you should use this method of birth control.

Aside from the cultural factors, right, that we attribute to abortion, what we really need to do, and the point that I was trying to make, is we need to shift our mindset to understand that abortion is birth control in the same way that the pill and the condom and the diaphragm are, right? So the decision not to use that birth control in the moment, that is the decision that's being made and the decision to have sex.

That's what I'm trying to clarify is I think pro-life propaganda has convinced us for many, many years that the moment where people consent to having a child is when they start to have Sex that Could result in a child. And I think a much healthier mindset to move forward to out the moment you choose not to use all the birth control options, and I include abortion, is that, is when you make the choice to have a child. And I think, well, obviously, again, I don't believe in enforcing anything on anyone's physical body.

0:33:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah? Yeah.

0:34:16 Eli: I do think that it is a very different conversation about, hey, I'm not consenting to have a child. I would like you to make this choice of birth control versus, well you shouldn't, you know, I hate to use it because there's so many ugly and sort of deeply sexist terms around it. But it's like, you know, don't stick your dick in it if you don't want a kid, right? And so, like, I think that shift in mindset takes us to a much healthier place about parental consent. You But make a really, really good point, and I'm glad you clarified it, about the deception versus not deception, because I think a lot of people would have heard what I just said and not the same confusion you had, but taken the same issue with what I said.

0:34:49 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Actually want to ask Tom, maybe this will clarify, would you look at it differently if it was, plan you B, like you're of kind talking about, let's like uh say you have sex and you both uh that the condom broke or whatever you find that out and then there's the decision the next morning whenever it is to like okay gotta go to the pharmacy get plan B and then she says, you know, now that we're here actually I don't want to do that, uh, I just feel differently now. Do you look at that as different? I'm just trying to tease out like where the change comes, you cause like, obviously if you're about to, I guess the assumption that I should have said actually too, is I'm sure you would agree that if you were, were you having sex under the, you the consent of we're, we're using, uh, and someone decides to change their mind about that last minute, that's not valid. Like in the way that, that was saying, like when, when does that start?

0:35:39 Tom: Me let me make sure that my my position is really clear, so I'll use your your hypothetical. If if you have sex with somebody, the condom breaks, and you're like, oh well, let's go get some Plan B. And then she says, well, I'm just not going to use Plan B. I'm just going to roll the dice and see what happens. You're like, oh, fuck, that sucks, because I really thought that we weren't going to do that, right? She becomes pregnant, right. Don't have any obligation to her at all, but I do have an obligation to this new innocent human being that was created.

0:36:04 Thomas: Why?

0:36:05 Tom: There's a big distinct difference. What do you mean why? Because there is a new person in the world that needs to be cared for and I helped to create that person, and so the the burden now shifts about what's fair and what's right, away from me as whether what I want as a fully grown person. I don't want to be a dad, I do want to be a dead, like those are important distinctions, but like they all fall out the window as soon as there's a child involved. The child needs care, like the child has to be cared for, and there's no one else to care, like this state doesn't get involved to help

0:36:39 Thomas: Am I, I don't know what you're talking about.

0:36:40 Tom: The State Very rarely, we have virtually no meaningful social safety nets. I think we all agree that the social safety nets are crap, yeah.

0:36:45 Eli: So This is my follow-up question, and I get to do a funny metaphor, which you know I always love

0:36:49 Thomas: Yeah, I think I have the same question, actually.

0:36:50 Eli: Yeah So, Tom, tonight you're skronking it, right? It exclusively to pictures of Hayley, of course, um, and I steal the tissue and I put it in my butt and now I have a butt baby, do you have an obligation to that butt baby?

0:36:55 Thomas: Yep. Yeah. This is exactly what I was going to ask, although not as funny.

0:36:58 Tom: No.

0:37:10 Tom: No.

0:37:10 Eli: Tell

0:37:11 Thomas: See, that's the same thing. That's actually the same things. That's the thing that's happening.

0:37:13 Tom: It's not the same thing at all, no.

0:37:14 Thomas: Yeah, it is.

0:37:15 Tom: No, no, it's not. Because I know it's not at all.

0:37:17 Eli: Us the difference I'm I'm interested.

0:37:18 Tom: Because you and I didn't have sex, man. Didn't even have sex. How is that not? Not a How really important distinction? You and I in this scenario where you steal my semen and impregnate yourself with it.

0:37:17 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:37:22 Eli: Is you're saying is that, and put it in my butt.

0:37:31 Tom: Right. And no point interacted with you in a way that could possibly result in pregnancy to my knowledge. And you acted exclusively from a position of deception.

0:37:31 Thomas: May happen.

0:37:42 Thomas: Doesn't all the same reasoning apply? There's a new life. Takes precedence over anything else. All that stuff? How does that reasoning change?

0:37:49 Tom: Mean, I think, I law might still require that I pay for that kid. And if it did, I'd pay for the kid. I don't know what the law would require. I would certainly pay for the kit if I had to.

0:37:55 Thomas: I doubt it.

0:37:57 Eli: So doesn't.

0:37:58 Tom: So, I mean, you know, I'm not I don't know, man. Like the law, the law squeezes money out of people pretty good, but yeah, it's consent to roll the dice. Yeah, of course it is. There's no method of birth control. It's a hundred percent.

0:38:03 Eli: Is your position that consent to sex is consent to have a child? Interesting. Yeah.

0:38:14 Tom: Well, yeah. But I don't like, like, that's not my choice.

0:38:17 Thomas: So But lots of birth control that wouldn't be your choice. They'd be your partner's choice, but you still would be under the understanding that they were doing it. Yeah.

0:38:23 Tom: So, I guess guess my when, feeling is when, I have sex with somebody and I choose the method of birth control or I allow somebody else to choose the methods of birth, the method, the method or birth control, I'm operating under the assumption that yeah, like is no guarantee that this is not going to result in sex because that's true or not, or not result in a baby. That's true. Right.

0:38:40 Eli: I was gonna say, yeah,

0:38:38 Thomas: Well, The hypothetical, we are operating under the assumption that, yeah, we're getting an abortion if this happens, and the person is changing their mind in the moment But

0:38:47 Tom: Yeah, but I live in reality where I know people change their minds. And I know that going into having sex with somebody like, I'm not living, I'm not living in a world where it's like, I know that, like, a significant amount of people feel differently when things move from the hypothetical to the real. So before I decide to have sex with somebody, I've got to acknowledge at least somewhere in my mind that, like, this, this isn't my choice. I am not fully in control of what is going to happen as a result of this activity, right? Mean, that's just true.

0:38:53 Thomas: That, uh, would agree that you're not fully in control, but that does not, uh, obligate you to anything, yeah.

0:39:20 Tom: I totally disagree. I think built into the consent that I'm giving in this activity is like, yeah, I'm consenting to a certain amount of risk here. There is no pregnancy risk sex. I mean, like,

0:39:22 Thomas: Yeah, There's, because there's abortion, so you can, well,

0:39:34 Eli: So this is

0:39:35 Tom: Thomas, not you're acknowledging the reality that people change their minds so that risk is not zero.

0:39:35 Eli: Right.

0:39:38 Thomas: But That applies To Any Birth control, any birth patrol, you can Say they changed their mind And they decided they're, they're actually gonna poke a Hole in the Condom

0:39:41 Tom: Exactly. So we're on the same page. There is no there is no zero percent risk.

0:39:44 Thomas: No No No That We're not On the same page No There

0:39:48 Tom: There's no zero percent risk.

0:39:48 Thomas: Is a zero Percent Risk, there's A risk That someone will change their mind, but you're not morally obligated to care for a child for their entire life because someone changed their mind and went back on an agreement. That's not really how morality or the law ever works.

0:39:50 Tom: No, I disagree with that.

0:40:04 Eli: Think where Thomas and I are on the same page that, like, this birth control thing, right, obviously we don't want the government to force anybody to do same as we wouldn't wantthe government to come and take my butt baby away. Right. I stole your scrunk and towel. I put it up my butt.

0:40:14 Thomas: Do not take Eli's butt,

0:40:16 Eli: But like, seriously, we we wouldn't want the government to force me to have a butt abortion.

0:40:16 Thomas: Baby. Yeah. Or anyone.

0:40:20 Eli: That would be

0:40:20 Thomas: Can I just seconds two clarify when I'm saying in my hypothetical, I would strongly like, know, pressure, you like, you should get an abortion, I would never, ever physically force someone to go, like that's still ultimately, yeah, that's still the person, the child bears decision entirely.

0:40:20 Eli: Right.

0:40:32 Eli: Or advocate for laws like that. All that kind of stuff. Right,

0:40:38 Thomas: I but I also get to have an opinion on that.

0:40:38 Eli: Right. Where think me and Thomas are trying to get you to, Tom, is that Thomas and I look at the choice not to employ the birth control that is abortion after the fact as the same level of betrayal of consent as stealing the tissue for the butt baby is. Right? Is About taking someone's consent and going against it can.

0:41:01 Tom: And it's not. I but just I fundamentally disagree that that's the same in any meaningful way. I I think again, the the butt baby thing, the poking holes in condoms, first of all, that parse away the moral difference between premeditation and just feeling different when it's real. Can't parse that away. Like trying to parse that away is just dishonest.

0:41:25 Thomas: I No, I think it is different in how I would feel about the person. It's not any different functionally. It's choices no more obligate you to be a father than one another, but I do agree that I would feel less like hateful toward the person or something, like I would feel they were less culpable, uh.

0:41:40 Tom: The fact that you would feel less culpable means that you acknowledge that there is a moral difference or

0:41:44 Thomas: Yeah, but the moral difference has no bearing on whether or not you're obligated to be father. Sure. Sure. Go.

0:41:48 Tom: But hold on, hold on. So

0:41:49 Thomas: Ahead. Well,

0:41:50 Tom: A moral difference. So the analogy doesn't work because you're saying this is a a moral analogy. And then we're saying, but there's an important moral difference and it would make you feel differently. So like, let's set that aside as a moral analogy that is a one-to-one comparative.

0:41:52 Thomas: No, I don't really think that's True. Let Let Let me gave you another analogy, Tom. If I, um, I know, any any analogy when you're dealing with these high stakes things is going to seem dismissive, but I don't, you know, fuck people know that.

0:42:05 Tom: Okay. Yeah, no, no. We're trying to get to this.

0:42:12 Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

0:42:13 Eli: Please. We're talking about but babies here. Take it serious, yeah.

0:42:13 Tom: Yeah.

0:42:14 Thomas: We're talking about babies. Yeah. No, Tom, if I smash your car because I'm drunk and I just drive into it, I owe you money for your car. If I smash her car because I spilled coffee on my lap and was like, oh, fuck. And I you smash a car. Going to feel way differently about me, but I still owe you Money for the car. That's just how it works. There can be differences in degree of, like, judgment, degree of kind of culpability in a broad sense. There still is the bottom line difference that I owe you money for your car. Not a black and white, like if I can find a single difference, then the outcome is different. I don't think that's appropriate.

0:42:47 Eli: And And I think we're, Thomas, and I want to not necessarily get you, Tom, to but like to to generally try to shift the mindset to, I think what we think is a healthier place, is like, hey, this next step of birth control is just that, right? So we'd like to see a society where someone reads that in a book And again assuming there's no physical or you legal coercion going on which is obviously horrible and historical you know context aside right all that stuff aside that when someone says hey I don't want to have a baby let's employ this post -facto form of birth patrol it is is considered to be the same level of consent And taken as seriously as, hey, I don't want to have a baby, let's use a condom tonight and let's make sure you're on the pill.

0:43:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:34 Tom: Just, I think there's too many important differences that make that not, first of all, it's living in a world we don't live in in order to right. So it's living in a world of should rather than the pragmatic actual world that we live in where people do feel differently. And we know that, and we're still choosing to engage in behavior with them, knowing that some people are going to feel different. So it's like it's living in a world of shoulds in order to have a moral judgment rather than engaging in the practical world that we're actually in. And I think that that's just necessarily, I don't know, unimportant, honestly, because we don't live in that world. So living in the world of shouldns doesn't actually matter in terms of our practical moral decision making. Let a hypothetical to you guys, though, that I'm curious about.

0:44:17 Tom: Out, so Thomas, if you and Lydia had a conversation that you did not want any more babies, and you got a vasectomy, and then she got pregnant, You

0:44:17 Thomas: Oh, I didn't go do the cum test. Yeah.

0:44:28 Tom: Didn't do the cum test, whatever, or you did The cum tests, But It just It Just didn't work, You Know,

0:44:30 Thomas: I did the cum tests. Yeah,

0:44:32 Eli: There was a button to push to do the cum test.

0:44:34 Thomas: It was too hard.

0:44:32 Tom: Yeah, You guys decided, and Thomas, your mind has shifted, you don't want anymore babies, just a hundred percent sold, you don't wanting more babies, and she gets pregnant, she decides, I'm keeping it, would, would be the okay thing for you to do to parent three and not four of them, right?

0:44:47 Thomas: Interesting. I think that there, obviously creates a whole bunch of different issues, like the, you already have and maintaining, you, their well-being and all that. I think it would be extremely morally wrong of Lydia to do that against my consent to have another kid that I didn't want to have with it, would Would be Even More So, well,

0:45:04 Tom: But I'm Sort Of shifting That away from my position is that my moral culpability with the person who's having the kid is not what I find interesting or important, what's interesting or important is my obligation to this child, so this seems like a good Analogy. I...

0:45:17 Thomas: You Agreed, it's Important when Eli was stealing your cum and having a butt baby, right? It was important there, yeah.

0:45:23 Tom: Well, Eli, well, Eli and I didn't have a relationship. We didn't have sex.

0:45:25 Thomas: Because, okay, what if Eli had given you a blow job, he spits out your cum, puts in his butt, it's a butt babe, does That change it, does that change it, you did engage in a sex act, no, no, I have an answer, the answer is it's like it be such a betrayal, um, real Me, there's a difference that what I would do, what I würde do is I would probably, because I love kids too much, would, I don't know that I would still be married to Lydia after that, I think that that would, if it was truly a world in which I did not want another kid, and she, against my consent, decided we're having another kid because something went wrong, I'm would probably not be married, but I would probably father the kid, but that's because it's me, I believe it would be morally acceptable to say we're, it would, the same as if my wife had a kid with somebody else, I

0:45:31 Eli: Love this.

0:45:42 Tom: Just feels differently.

0:46:15 Eli: With a couple of memes.

0:46:16 Tom: Wow.

0:46:17 Thomas: Exactly, I think that's ethically acceptable, it's not, I don't think that's the choice I would make, but I think that's Understandable,

0:46:21 Tom: No, I'm not saying it would. I'm saying it would. That's what that's

0:46:23 Thomas: Understandable,

0:46:23 Eli: We all know it's not the choice. Are you kidding, Thomas? You'd You'd be so psyched.

0:46:26 Tom: Nobody's, nobody suggesting that that's you. Yeah,

0:46:25 Thomas: Yeah, I Would Be Like Can We have twins, yeah, I'm over here poking holes in my own, what it, vast deference or whatever, does That help if I poke it, does that

0:46:34 Eli: Yeah, exactly, is Is that A Prince Albert in your vast deference, you

0:46:38 Tom: So, you go. I mean, difference where we'll never bridge, can see a world where somebody could have two kids with somebody, decide they didn't want the third. And then the third, they say, okay, well, I'll parent the first two, but I'm not going to help in the parenting of the third because I didn't consent to it. And so who gets punished in this scenario? The kid.

0:46:42 Thomas: Yeah, I Think we have a, a just a, a fundamental difference that we can't, yeah, yeah, yeah, Mm-hmm, yeah. Right, if your it partner had an affair and had a kid and said, I'm keeping the kid, the person they had an affair with was just gone, like it was a mystery, they don't know who it was. How do you feel there? Yeah, right,

0:47:12 Tom: Yeah,

0:47:11 Eli: Killed him because it all started with a means relationship and

0:47:14 Tom: That's there is no attachment to that kid in me, I

0:47:17 Thomas: But that's of the kid suffers is still exactly the same.

0:47:20 Eli: True of the butt baby.

0:47:21 Thomas: I don't see some magical, nah, add

0:47:21 Eli: Interesting.

0:47:21 Tom: Yeah, But don't but but the difference is you fathered one and I didn't fathered the other one, right? So for me there's a distinction there that I think is like is more meaningful than you guys. I think you guys are saying, you know, I, I am saying for sure that I don't think that there is any sex that you can have with somebody that has a zero risk chance, right? Because people do change their minds, and that is the environment we are having sex in. We are not having sex in an environment where people don't change their minds, where that is not a true reality. So that's as real as gravity. You have sex with somebody, there's a non-zero chance that like might end up pregnant, and I - that the moral responsibility is not to shit on some kid because you didn't want it. You, you help make it. It's 50% your DNA. Like, weird to me to just be like, "Yeah, well, I don't know your call, you, kid." Like, seems really selfish to me. That seems like really selfish thing to do personally to me, that's morally. I can't get behind that.

0:47:25 Thomas: Yeah exactly exactly

0:48:14 Eli: I have so much more we could talk about on this, but we are running out of time because I have such a lot of time, so many questions, so many hypotheticals about a butt baby I want to get to but uh perhaps another other day speaking of which, gentlemen, when I got my vasectomy, uh, before my surgery, the anesthesiologist offered to knock me out with either gas or a boat pedal. Yeah, he told me it was an ether or situation, they're

0:48:18 Thomas: You have your first sonogram for the butt baby, don't, don't forget, yeah I gotta stick this sonogram up your ass that's a good one. Hey Eli, how are your balls, by the way? How's your ball, did we ever

0:48:51 Eli: Good, there's two of them, I have two of 'em now they're all good, I had a urologist checkup thing because that's the age I met where occasionally the medical system is was like you should get your dick looked at, and we have a tense relationship, me and Dick Seaman, um, he knows he gave me three balls for a little bit and I know he gave me three balls for a bit, so he's like, you know, you know, keep salt out of your diet, and I'm like, should I, Dick should I, I don't really know Dick Seeman, no

0:48:52 Thomas: Get final final ball update, good wait what what was this actual name? Oh, that, oh, okay I thought that was because I told you that was my ex's uh name. And I thought I mixed that up and I thought that that was like I had replaced your the guy's actual name That's awesome That's the best.

0:49:22 Tom: Oh, that's the best.

0:49:27 Eli: Well no no no actual name, Dick Seman, so it's weird, he's He's the doctor I don't trust. I'm like, I donno, maybe I'll have some salt, Dick. You gave me three balls for a second there.

0:49:36 Thomas: Yeah, and I didn't consent to three balls. I'm not raising this ball

0:49:46 Eli: That's right. I'm not raising this ball. Meanwhile, Tom's got it in a little, like, chest papoose. A man of my word.

0:49:58 Eli: I don't know why you were Alex Jones just then. I apologize. I've been working on my Alex Jones.

0:50:01 Tom: That's all right. It's not too far off. It's okay. It's too far. It's far off to far off,

0:50:02 Eli: Yeah.

0:50:03 Thomas: Yeah, oh

0:50:07 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.