Last wednesday evening, during my Dutch class, I nearly got lynched by the 5 girls who compose the rest of my group.

My biggest mistake was to start describing my pet peeve without starting with the obvious. The obvious being:

• yes, there is a terrifyingly large number of women who are routinely and impunely abused, killed, used, exploited or otherwise mishandled by men worldwide;
• yes, many men and society as a whole psychologically pressure women and give them little freedom over their life, and male/female inequalities are far from resolution everywhere;
• yes, it is a fact that worldwide many men abandon the mother of their children, leaving them with a bleak future;

that said, I want to express my targeted disgust against a very specific category of women: the narrow-minded selfish mother-to-be hunting for male money and sperm.

This species came to my attention a few years ago when I witnessed a very sad happening. The story is as follows: an acquaintance of mine, fellow student with handsome features and a clever mind, was planning a bright future involving a period of self-discovery and enjoyment of life and opportunities, possibly followed a few years later by establishing himself at a place of his choosing and the founding of a family. Being young, clever and handsome, he was (expectedly) seeing someone — a girl met earlier than my knowing him. He would spend a weekend with her every now in a while, and his standing on high moral grounds would make him very involved in his relationship. During the end of his studies, as he was planning to move on with his career and possibly travel abroad, “it happened” that his significant other became pregnant. According to them, she one day “accidentally forgot her pill” and decided that now as well as later was a good time to start a family. His moral grounds standing, as well as a significant family pressure, supported a decision to accept this situation and make the best out of it. They were both under 25 of age when this happened. They are now living in a small city, not far from the grandparents’ place, and he wouldn’t find any work within 2 hours commute per day.

As I see it now, they both are very happy with their situation and are making the best out of it. That is undeniable in good faith.

However, as I see it, the girl used him to achieve her plans and he had little choice into the matter. She was not so successful with her studies, not so ambitious, and the work opportunities around her would not allow her to climb the social scale. On his side, he was planning to exercise his freedom, possibly moving and living abroad. For her, it was a very serious opportunity to try and secure her own future and create a high standing and highly recognized moral legitimacy for her existence as a woman by securing both serious revenue generation abilities (preferably from the IT industry) and a father for her children. Whether it was accidental or adequately prepared, getting pregnant at that time was rationnally an excellent outcome to her life concerns as well as a very good lifetime investment.

Now, I will not outline too precisely my opinion on this specific case in writing, but suffice to say that I was very sad to hear from her that “then was a good time to have children” and from him that “later would have been nicer, but then was ok as well.”

Since that time, I have come to meet other similar couples. A pattern became clear: the female is usually between 18 and 27, feels insecure with regard to her social situation, does not consider a career path, speaks fondly of having children, and engages only in commited relationships with men older than she is, with good revenue generation potential. The guy is usually young as well (albeit older than the female), is planning a career path but is currently considering his options, entertains a high morale valuing respect and commitment, and has a limited social circle to support him. What happens is that the female and the male engage into a relationship; the relationship becomes exclusive; the woman pressures the man to have children and “becomes” pregnant as soon as the man shows signs that he would be responsible and not abandon her immediately; then she tries to make the situation look better and he gradually accepts his new life path (decided by her), although he did not really expect children… that early.

So, I presented my conclusions to my language class. They (all females) charged me with anger and despise. They would accuse me of ignoring all those cases where the opposite situation holds (man using the woman), which are much more common — not even realizing that (some) men abusing (some) women is no rational justification for (some) women to abuse (some) men. They would not acknowledge that the indivudal freedom of the father-to-be as a single and childless man is extremely valuable and deserves as much respect as the urge to pin him down and steal his fatherhood. A serious case of denial at hand — I felt relatively powerless and I eventually dropped the conversation.

What I did not explain to them is that a female friend of mine and I have been talking extensively over the subject. She is now about 30 and she recalls an earlier period of her life when she was ready to do exactly that : find the “right” man and use him to provide her with a social situation — as a mother, accomplished woman through having children. She knows several other females in a similar situation, and she supports the idea that the female body is in its 20s subject to a large quantity of hormones which are subtly telling to the brain that now and not later is the right time to carry offprings. As time passes, the urge recedes and an intuitive respect for the man as an individual — rather than sperm carrier and revenue generator — starts to reappear. Relationships built after this period, as they say, are much more mature, honest and fulfilling — in other words, way more “loving.”

That said, in my opinion, the idea that the responsibility of the woman in the destruction of the originally-planned future of the man is somewhat lowered by the impulse of her hormones only provides a very superficial excuse to her behavior. This sort of woman deserves to be kept cloistered safely from 14 until their age of reason, at least later than 35.