Comments on: Who is Responsible for Travis Henry’s Nine Kids?

By: PhDork

PhDork — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:40:45 +0000

PepsiCoke, I don’t know anything about these women. The article is not about these women. Maybe they did use other methods. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were lying to him. IT DOESN’T MATTER. If Henry (or any dude) doesn’t want kids, can’t (or won’t) support them financially, he needs to be responsible for contraception himself, rather than fobbing that job on the women he sleeps with, only then to slag them off for being “out for blood.”

By: BeckySharper

BeckySharper — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:21:06 +0000

@PepsiCoke: It’s not a question of placing the blame on him. If he didn’t want kids, he should have taken precautions. That’s not blame, it’s responsibility. Yes, the women were stupid for not using birth control, but that doesn’t absolve him of his responsibility.

By: PepsiCoke

PepsiCoke — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:08:49 +0000

@sarah…: Oh yes, I agree. But I’m calling out all of the people (including PhDork) here who are saying Henry was stupid & irresponsible for not wearing a condom and not criticizing the women for the same. The are placing the sole responsibility of birth control on the man. Provided these women were not in a long term serious relationship with him and on other other forms of BC they should’ve took responsibility for their own health and demanded he wear a condom.

By: sarah.of.a.lesser.god

sarah.of.a.lesser.god — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:36:37 +0000

@PepsiCoke: But the women are owning up to the responsibility by raising the children. Henry has an equal obligation. That’s all that’s being said here. Not that the women don’t have said responsibility, but that it must be divided equally and Henry is not pulling his weight.

By: PhDork

PhDork — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:29:04 +0000

Contrarian, I’m not busting out my tiniest violin for Mr. Henry, no ma’am. He’s made his bed, and deserves to lie in it. But those kids? No way. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to the rest of society (women, men, and children) when we make heros out of dudes who run around with a ball but either don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, or are violent assweasels like your Mr. Dukes.

By: contrarian

contrarian — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:09:07 +0000

Why is the NYT picking on Travis Henry! That guy is a rank amateur compared to Calvin Murphy, who had 14 children by 9 women (one of which he was married to) AND was accused of sexually abusing five of the kids. [He was cleared of the abuse, of course, since the five kids were just lying bitches who wanted to get his money.]

Or you could have talked about the future champion, Elijah Dukes, who not only had five kids by four women by age 22, he (a) threatened to murder one of the women (and her kids), and (b) impregnated another one of the women when she was the (underage) foster child of his step-grandmother.

I bring these two up because…well, partially because they pissed me off a lot more than Travis Henry, but mostly because, in response to PhDork’s last question, I don’t think “we as a culture” have any obligation to prevent self-destructive behavior; we only have the obligation to punish when it becomes society-destructive. I have sympathy for many, many people on this planet, but “I have fame, money, and health, woe is me” falls far, far below my threshold for sympathy.

By: Unpossible

Unpossible — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:34:53 +0000

@PepsiCoke: Except the women are not refusing to pay child support (also, I would imagine that the women don’t have 9 children each, but that’s another story). Maybe they got pregnant by accident, maybe not, and if any of them lied to him and pretended to be on BC, that’s not cool, and if they had unprotected sex thinking they were risking nothing, that was foolish. Possibly they were irresponsible, possibly they were unlucky. But they are the ones now taking care of the children. They are shouldering their responsibilities, and Travis Henry should do the same.

By: PepsiCoke

PepsiCoke — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:19:15 +0000

Everyone here is saying this man was out of line for not wearing a condom and he was, but in this day in age why were these women letting a strange man have unprotected sex with them? Sex and responsibility are a two-way street. These women also need to be called out on their actions.

By: rednrowdy

rednrowdy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:05:44 +0000

I’m not going to shake my finger at Henry for sleeping around, or having children out of wedlock. That’s called slut shaming, even if it’s directed at a dude.

i think calling it slut shaming is wrong. i call it plain old fashioned ignorance. male or female, stop being ignorant about birth control. i’m sure the feeling that the guy got from banging those baby mamas without a condom doesn’t really compare to the amount of money he is going to be shelling out for the rest of his life to pay for those kiddos.

Having 8 kids by accident and overspending on yourself so you can’t support them is out of line no matter how you slice it.

nobody has 8 kids by accident unless you’re comatose at the time or abducted by aliens. i think this guy might admit to being slightly comatose, but still…

By: mkp-hearts-nyc

mkp-hearts-nyc — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:32:25 +0000

Well thanks!…and sorry for going Defensotron. The patriarchy made me do it.