- Cringeworthy Hugo Schwyzer
"We treat men with the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Of course, the real price for those low expectations is paid by women, who become responsible for managing and redirecting what we refuse to expect men to manage for themselves."
Hugo Schwyzer
Oh yes, there's been some major managing and redirecting by Hugo and his former FWB gal pal Jill.
This morning longtime reader GudEnuf tipped me off to a piece that feminist apologist Hugo Schwyzer wrote for The Good Men Project, which has been reprinted at Jezebel. Many other bloggers will be taking a crack at this story today, so I may not be able to add insight or originality to this horrific tale, but I feel compelled to stand up and be counted anyway.
I May Have a Son, But I'll Never Know For Sure is a story from Hugo's past - 14 years ago. He collaborated in a scheme to cuckold another man. He notes that he was not sober until 1998.
"That doesn’t mean I can’t be called to account for what I did before July 1, 1998 (my sobriety date), but it does mean that the decisions I made before that time were made with an entirely different moral calculus."
How thoroughly cowardly and predictable that Schwyzer falls back on moral relativism.
With three failed marriages behind him, Schwyzer had a FWB he was seeing on the reg named Jill. On one occasion, apparently, Jill banged Hugo and another guy within a 48 hour period. Shortly thereafter, she learned she was pregnant, and had no idea which man was the father.
She and Hugo decided the other guy should raise the kid, leaving the guy in complete ignorance that the child might not be his.
"A paternity test would be needed, and Jill didn’t want one because she had made the gut decision that Ted was the father. Perhaps that was hope, perhaps that was intuition, perhaps that was practicality. Perhaps it was all three."
Jill made the gut decision that Ted was the father.
"Jill wanted to be a mom. Ted wanted to be a dad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. In her mind, these facts settled it: the baby was Ted’s. Or it needed to be Ted’s."
It needed to be Ted's.
Jill and Ted are still married and have two other children. The 13 year-old boy has the coloring that both men share. As far as we know, Ted is none the wiser.
"Women have it harder, and not only in terms of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. It is Jill, not I, who carries the burden of an unresolved question through her relationship with her husband and her first-born son. Perhaps that weight has become so light that she’s forgotten it altogether. I hope so.
...The solution to the problem isn’t suspicion or frantic demands for paternity tests, Jerry Springer style. The solution isn’t even the rigorous use of contraception (though that’s a very good idea.)
The solution is to remember that it is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad."
What complete and total crap. It's easy for him to say, having contributed nothing but possibly his sperm. He shrugged off a potentially expensive and emotionally demanding responsibility, at the expense of another man. A man who has the right to know whether the child he has loved and supported in every way is genetically his.
"I’ll say it again: Heloise is my daughter and I am her father. That’s a relational statement, not a biological one. And if I were to discover that she and I did not share genetic material, that wouldn’t change a thing. As far as I’m concerned, a man for whom it would make a significant difference doesn’t deserve the title “father.” Sperm doesn’t make love."
Knowingly raising a child whose genes you don't share is a very different thing than being cuckolded. Hugo and Jill made a fool of Ted, and now Hugo writes proudly of this fraud, claiming that any resentment on Ted's part would make him unfit to be a father.
"And people, to call this cuckolding is absurd. Jill never cheated on Ted; the first time she slept with him was 48 hours before she last slept with me, when she and Ted were just starting to date. (And yeah, in the real and imperfect world I lived in once and a lot of people still inhabit, people have sex on the first date and don’t use condoms even though they should.) There was no infidelity, no cheating, no promise broken, no lie spoken. There was information withheld that perhaps shouldn’t have been — but that was NEVER my call to make, and it still isn’t.
I’ve said all I’m gonna say on the matter... I’m at peace with this, my family is at peace with this, and the consensus of the very large number of people I’ve consulted (including people with more expertise in this than you) over more than a dozen years is to leave it be."
As far as I'm concerned, it isn't Hugo's decision to "leave it be" at this point that is so troubling. It's his cavalier parading of his part in this deception that rankles as much as his original culpability potentially passing off the responsibility of his own child to another man.
By the way, Hugo Schwyzer is writing under his real name, and it's by no means out of the question that the poor sucker Ted, or even his son, will learn of this. Anyone who knew Hugo and Jill could easily report it to them, especially anyone who thinks Hugo deserves to go down, hard. Schwyzer's article is pure selfishness and self-aggrandizement.
A commenter at Jezebel had this to say:
"Presumably he's writing under his real name, so he's kind of just outed the fact he might have a lovechild somewhere. If the child ever gets curious or someone lets something slip, bam...instapain. I am kind of saddened this coward even has a voice."
Most of the comments have been deservedly critical, both at Jezebel and GMP, but some people, including men, are offering this feminist BS:
"Either Ted's a good guy and nothing would change, or Ted's an asshole and would abandon his son, who shares his values and morals and traditions, simply because they are insufficiently biologically related. And if the latter is true, he DESERVES to be lied to."
"This is a perfect illustration of the difference between a father and a dad. Any guy can be a father, but a dad? Those are special. If you were a father but couldn't be a dad, and could recognize that distinction, then I think you did the right thing. Now that you're able to be both a father AND a dad, everybody seems much better off."
"I think Hugo did it right. Jill made the best decision for her, Ted made the decision he wanted to make and he might be objectively correct. Hugo should have used protection but so should have Ted. Either man could potentially be paying child support and the one supporting the kid volunteered. Win-win.
Way to go." (by a male)
"Not really much to add, except some variation on “Love to you, Hugo” You might be a socialist git, but you have style. And principle.
(Kiwi) John"
"I would say it’s a more patriarchal view to think that a man should have a “right” to a child based on genetics. The rights of a father are earned, not genetically determined...However, Hugo at the time was not a good feminist, or even a good man... He has not earned the right to participate in that child’s upbringing."
One of the best rebuttals I read was by well-known manosphere commenter Dragnet:
"This article is 110 percent pure unadulterated bullshit.
If biology makes no difference whatsoever, then why do hospitals devote hundreds of hours and millions of dollars to implementing systems and checks to ensure that mothers get their biological children when it’s time to go home? If biology was irrelevant and love was all that mattered then what’s wrong with just giving any child to any new mother and sending them home together? Oh that’s right—biology is only irrelevant when men are concerned!! The whole idea is just so transparently misandric and illogical it makes your head spin.
Articles like this are just more proof that feminism really isn’t an equality movement. It’s really about enhancing women’s rights and alleviating the responsibilities that accompany those rights—at the expense of men.
This is revolting.
And also, a child has a right to know his genetic heritage. So many illnesses and health conditions we now know have a genetic basis, and we will soon have genetic treatments for them. It’s in the child’s best interest to know his or her true genetic heritage. The real question is whether a mother’s wishes trumps her child’s well-being.
Pretty soon, the feminists and their male apologists are going to run out of excuses and rationales for protecting women at the expense of men & children. We men have our own hopes and dreams, our own ideal of fatherhood. We cannot and will not be fathers on someone else terms."
