Great article on GMP, both yours and Hugo Schwyzer’s. I was disappointed at the vociferous MRAs in the comments though, who excelled in moving goalposts and switching topics when anyone tried to argue with them in good faith, not to mention tons of “prove it to me” and then ignoring any backup that was presented. So depressing.

I always wonder what they mean when they say education has been ‘feminized’. They try to make it sound as if teaching methods have changed to unfairly favour female students, but I doubt they actually know much history of education at all - I think they’d only be satisfied if girls were totally barred from the schoolroom as students or teachers.

Which is why, when male feminists ask what they can do, I have come around to asking them to deal with MRAs and MRA arguments.  Since they’re men, they don’t get concern trolled, scolded on tone, or talked down to nearly as much.  I mean, they do, but it’s muffled to a large degree.

Heh.  On policy, I don’t mention what gender I am when I argue on places that don’t already know.  Yes, there is a difference if they think you’re female rather than male.  More interestingly, I’ve seen wingnuts driven into frothing rants because I refused to specify - I think the cognitive dissonance about not knowing whether to address me as a little lady or a liberal dude was just too much.

I’m sure, Piator. 

Lijakaca, I think “feminized” means, in MRA terms, “doesn’t have sufficient obstacles in place to keep women from competing with men”.

Amanda, thanks for taking on the MRAs, in the piece at the GMP and generally. These guys really are persistent assholes; taking them on can become something of a full-time job. I would agree with the whole feeding-a-stray-cat-with-tuna analogy, except that kitties are fucking awesome and MRAs not so much.

I don’t know if you read Paul Elam’s piece up there, but a lot of it is devoted to a PSA put out by and anti-rape/anti-domestic violence organization. When the MRAs discovered this PSA they sent the guy death threats and Elam was collecting money on his website to HIRE A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR to dig up dirt on the guy. 

My piece for in GMP package will be going up tomorrow.

Lijakaca, I think “feminized” means, in MRA terms, “doesn’t have sufficient obstacles in place to keep women from competing with men”.

Totally! Or, a slight alternative is “women are succeeding in it, dammit!” Like, anything that women are good at has to have something horribly wrong with it. The sciences are softer than they used to be, the college classes are easier, the politics are wussier, the chests less hairy, the beer warmer… girls ruin everything!

except that kitties are fucking <strike>awesome</strike> and MRAs not so much.

Fixed that for ya.

Reading through the comments on the GMP post makes the point that there are fairly few MRA types very clear - it’s several people going ballistic while most poster engage briefly, then give up, because arguing with assholes is a pain..  Eoghan or whatever is a twisted dude.

To be more specific on what the whole beef with education thing is, it’s more that they think that schools should be more “rough and tumble” per se. The idea is that the whole sitting at a deck listening to a teacher thing doesn’t work so well for boys. I’m not sure about the science of it all, but quite frankly, it strikes me as hogwash. I actually think that probably there is an innate difference

Personally, I think the whole problem with young boys and education is the whole concept of if you can’t win, don’t play. But that’s largely a self-inflicted cultural issue, and yes, the answer to that is probably more feminism.

Oof. Forgot that I was editing it. The end of the first paragraph is that I think that probably there is some small innate difference between the sexes that may play a role, although any biological difference is going to be minuscule compared to social and cultural differences.

Oh, poor Amanda. I clicked on the GMP link and saw that she actually was altruistic enough to try to engage constructively with the crazies in the comment thread. Holy crap, I would have to be on some serious meds to manage that without having a stroke. I can understand why she hesitates to write about MRAs.

@5: That suggests to me that perhaps my belief that men get it less from them is wrong.  What is interesting to me—-and I said this in the comments on Henry’s piece—-is that they really use the tactics of stalking and abuse that abusive men use to control women in their personal lives.  Hiring a private investigator is definitely a sort of collective stalking, in this case.  It’s not like real investigative journalism.  What are you going to turn up on a guy who wrote a PSA that’s relevant?  Nothing.

The body-money distinction is not morally relevant.

Suppose “Jane” offers her consent to sex with “Mike”, in exchange for $1000. (Jane lives in a world in which women have equality with men. Prostitution is not her only career option, but it is her choice.) Mike doesn’t want to spend $1000, so he just has sex without her consent. That’s rape, not “theft of $1000”.

But now suppose Mike does give her the $1000—in counterfeit bills. Jane doesn’t immediately realize she’s been taken advantage of, but there’s no moral difference here. She offered her consent on the condition of being paid $1000, and since Mike didn’t provide that, she was raped. Mike’s fraud of $1000 is rape.

How about if Mike does pay her the $1000, in genuine bills? But on the way home, a pickpocket steals her $1000. Jane will either have to prostitute herself again or do without the $1000. You can call it “mere” theft, but Jane is just as taken advantage of this scenario as she was in the second. And if the second scenario counts as rape, then this one does too. So as you can see, violating a person’s money can be morally equivalent to violating a person’s body.

Not all of us work as prostitutes, but all of us put some sort of bodily investment our work. Athletes work put in their muscles, sculptors put in their hands, writers put in their cerebrums. Surrogate mothers even put in their uteri! Take away control of a person’s money, and you take away control of their body.

In a moment of self-abnegation, I clicked through to the Menz magazine one of those MRAs.  It was pretty much as I expected (I think I need a shower), but this really got me laughing (from issue 5):

Feminism has no obstacles left; total control is within its grasp, and by total, I do mean in the sense that it will be totalitarian

I, for one, welcome our new feminist overlords.  Do try to be a benevolent dictator, Amanda.  And congratulations on a job well done!

Thanks, Steve. Yeah, dealing with men who argue that a) men are so oppressed and b) women who want men to do a little housework are screeching narcissistic harpies with mental illnesses out the wazoo isnt’ fun.  What I do think is interesting is they use the tactics of emotional abuse on their online opponents, which naturally doesn’t work as well as it does women in their lives, because they haven’t done the work of establishing trust beforehand.  With abuse, you usually treat a woman well, get her to trust you, and then start to scream like a motherfucker every time she expresses a reasonable need, tell her that she’s mentally ill, and tell her that she’s worthless and no one will ever love her.

With feminists, MRAs go straight for the “you’re crazy and no one will ever love you” gambit before establishing trust.  And then they’re frustrated when it doesn’t work on strangers as well as it does on their girlfriends.

Aaaaaaand we’ve got an MRA comparing writing a check to cover your legal responsibilities with rape. Didn’t take long at all!  I’m sure his landlord and the IRS enjoy that one.

Amanda, the MRAs often say things suggesting that they see feminist men—“traitors”—as worse than feminist women, and certainly MRAs/MGTOWers say some pretty horrible shit about male feminists.

But I think they probably treat feminist women worse; given how many of them are raging misogynists, they sort of have to. A few MRAs have suggested that I must *really* be a woman to write the stuff I do (despite the fact that I write under my real name, which is unmistakably male, and that I’m a real person who can be googled, etc); I think they do this because it’s easier for them to simply dismiss anything written by a woman.

I’m unsympathetic to the “paper abortion” argument since child support is nothing more than a financial obligation, something that both biological parents bear.  If a woman decides she doesn’t want to take care of her child any longer, she can make her child a ward of the state, but she then has to pay child support to the state until someone adopts the child.  No one can really force an unwilling participant to raise and nurture a child they don’t want, and that’s much more painstaking than having x% of one’s salary dedicated to child support.*

And speaking of this issue being purely theoretical for most MRAs, I wonder how many women who get pregnant by douchebags would be happy to forgo child support in order to have those men give up their parental rights.  The problem is that MRA types often use children to manipulate and control the mothers of those children.  You can’t do that if you terminated your parental rights when the kid was in utero.

*This is a little off topic, but this is why I’m also unsympathetic to attempts to shame men into taking “responsibility” for children they didn’t want.  Beyond legal, financial obligations, no one should be forced (or shamed) into taking care of a child.

She hasn’t been raped she’s been robbed you imbecile.

Seriously, that’s an MRA?  I never met one, even online.  Are they all that dumb?

Ugh, I made the mistake of trying to read the comments on the MRA piece. 

I think I need some aspirin.

Reading through Salon today, I noticed that Will Saletan has developed a (“purely academic”) fascination with recent sex studies—especially if they have to do with women having anal sex. They strike me as pearl clutching disguised as his own peculiar “dispassionate” theories as to why women engage in any sort of sex—without, of course, ever consulting women themselves.

There’s probably not much to say, but in your ample free time, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on what sort of bug this guy’s got up his own butt.

I’m sure, Piator. 

I’m sorry - were you agreeing with my observation or expressing sarcasm at the idea that I hide my gender when arguing elsewhere?

I read your MRA article Amanda - that was great, I am still laughing.  And the comments.  All I hear is whiny virgins.  Wah wah wah, where’s my pussy? 

Hysterical.

Not all of us work as prostitutes, but all of us put some sort of bodily investment our work. Athletes work put in their muscles, sculptors put in their hands, writers put in their cerebrums. Surrogate mothers even put in their uteri! Take away control of a person’s money, and you take away control of their body.

Your body belongs to - is - you.  Money is just a social token denoting a claim to wealth.

Violating the body is different from taking money.  An obligation to help bear the costs of a child you helped parent is different from an obligation to give your body as someone else requires (whether that be pregnancy or sex/rape).  The former makes you poorer, the latter violates you.

It is moral to require that a child you helped create has a greater claim to part of your income than you do - that’s called living up to your responsibilities.  It is not moral to require that a child, or a rapist, or a doctor, or anyone has a greater claim to your body than you yourself do.  You are not your money; in a very real sense, you are your body.

“Seriously, that’s an MRA?  I never met one, even online.”

I’ve had the “pleasure” of working with at least a couple different guys, and have been in the vicinity of many others, who were MRAs whether they realized it or not.  They can seem more or less normal — until subject of their ex-wife/girlfriend comes up (say you innocently ask about their kids, for example), and then stand back.  The misogyny and raw hatred comes roaring out.  Very unpleasant…

“Are they all that dumb?”

I’m sure some are, but I’d call it crazy instead of dumb.  In my experience they are more or less average (seeming) and just come unglued when it comes to their experiences with the female half of humanity. 

Which is no defense of their bad behavior and attitudes, just an acknowledgement that, like a lot of other things in life, unless they wear their status as women-haters on their sleeves you might not even be aware of just how crazy they actually are…

Phoenician: Blue collar work can take major toll on the body. Telling a man he has to lift heavy objects for the next 18 years in order to pay for his kid is hardly different than telling a woman she has to hold a child in her uterus for 9 months. The first indirectly exploits a body, the second one directly.

For the record, I also think a reckless driver who damages a pedestrian’s vital organs should have to donate their own organs if necessary. If your free actions cause another person to need your body (either directly or indirectly), than you have a responsibility to provide your body.

Telling a man he has to lift heavy objects for the next 18 years in order to pay for his kid

Wow, yeah, that would be pretty much slavery.

Alas for your counter, no-one is telling anyone they have to lift heavy objects in order to make money.  What they are telling them is that they have to earn money to live up to their responsibilities - which is something my credit card company and landlord are telling me every month as well.

#17,
I love manboobz!!!

#18,
Thats if she even gets permission to give the kid up for adoption. I learned, after this had happened to my mothers friends daughter that if the guy doesnt give permission to give the kid up for adoption she is either forced to keep it or pay child support. Apparently thats what happened to my moms friends daughter after she decided to give birth and give it up for adoption with his initial agreement. He revoked it on the day of the birth and the baby who was staying with the adoptive parents had to be taken away. She tried to get his parental rights revoked but to no success. Apparently she’s really depressed years later (she was 16 when this happened) and smokes alot of weed.

What they are telling them is that they have to earn money to live up to their responsibilities - which is something my credit card company and landlord are telling me every month as well.

Yeah, I want to live in this beautiful MRA world where you never, ever, EVER need to earn money or pay your way for anything, except some bitchez crotch fruit. Because in THIS world, I have generally needed to work even when I haven’t wanted to.

Yes, they’re that dumb.

[Pushes lock of gray hair from wizened brow] I can remember back before Roe. Dealing with an unwanted pregnancy wasn’t exactly a picnic for men then either. Ask the men you know who are baby-boom age and older; they’ll tell you about shotgun marriages, selling cherished possessions for the cash (and cash only) needed for a procedure he hopes will be safe (and no guarantee about that), and endless guilt and worry about the women they cared about.

These MRA dipshits (Hi derren!) are acting like children: “WAAA! Sister got a present and I didn’t! It’s not fair.”

No, sonny: Roe was a present for all of us.

It’s important that these guys don’t get the pussy they think they’re entitled to. You don’t really want that kind of stupid to reproduce.

#26,
That is assinine. No one is forcing the man to do the work, or that would be slavery.

Daisy, yes I’d guess that most of these charmers are stupid, but not necessarily by nature - it’s more of a wilful stupidity so they don’t have to notice their own cognitive dissonance. There was a slacktivist post discussing this kind of thing in the past year or so (of course focusing on evangelical Christians), unfortunately I can’t find it now. Seriously, a lot of those GMP comments could have been Poes, they were so bad - screaming about mandatory equal parenting rights then changing the topic when someone brought up abusive husbands as an argument against them. And someone actually said something about how being a white male is so hard! If it had been their only comment I would be sure it was a Poe.

As to education, don’t these guys want to bring everything back to the old days? But education was even more strict and mostly about being quiet and listening to the teacher back then, which is what they say boys are naturally bad at. I’ll just stop trying to understand what their reasoning is, it gives me a headache.

@31: I did have someone argue quite sincerely that any form of unpleasant work is basically slavery.  It makes no difference whether you are allowed to leave, receive payment, or live as an independent citizen: if you ever have to do something and you’d ruther not, well, you’re a slave.

(the best part of this, and by best i mean, “the part that made me grind my molars into dust and contemplate murder-suicide,” is that it was in the context of removing mentions of slavery from a textbook on the civil war…)

Phoenicia: “Alas for your counter, no-one is telling anyone they have to lift heavy objects in order to make money.”

What if that’s the only job he can find? The recession has not been kind to blue collar workers.

“What they are telling them is that they have to earn money to live up to their responsibilities”

Which requires you to trade the use of your body for cash. The difference between a person who has to lift objects to earn money in order to pay financial obligations, versus a man who is simply obligated to lift objects is the difference between a sharecropper and a slave.

@31: I did have someone argue quite sincerely that any form of unpleasant work is basically slavery.

Possibly - but at present it’s an existential enslavement.  Someone has to clean toilets, no matter what.  What would be nice is if we spread the load and didn’t push the worst of that enslavement on certain groups based on their lack of power.

if you ever have to do something and you’d ruther not, well, you’re a slave.

Wow. This entire MRA thing really is about how their moms made them eat broccoli once, isn’t it? All the whinging about prostitutes and money and lifting heavy objects just because some poor lady tried to insist that they finish their veggies. What a complex!

(Following MRA ...“logic”... I’m totally a slave right now in that, during my commute, I’d rather fly and not walk. But I have to walk! On the ground!! Damn you, laws of nature! I’m gonna start a website about the injustice. It’ll be called “Boycott the Entire Earth: I’d Be Flying Right Now If It Weren’t For That Stupid Bitch Mother Nature” and I’ll trade stories of woe with other oppressed flightless mammals about how we’re all getting held back by that clingy ho “gravity” and all those Newton’s Laws that the physicist totalitarian regime instated just to personally fuck us.)

Derren, you inconsiderate fuck, the lone wistful tear I cried for you got the strings on my tiny violin all soggy!

@Darren: Only your first example would actually be rape. The latter two examples would be counterfeiting and theft, respectively. That you think consent is often withdrawn retroactively says a lot more about you than you think it does.

No one is stopping you from quitting your job. That’s what keeps it from being slavery.

And if the second scenario counts as rape, then this one does too. So as you can see, violating a person’s money can be morally equivalent to violating a person’s body.

Lol Wut? The 2nd scenario doesn’t count as rape. Neither does this one. And I don’t think anyone but an MRA would argue that pickpocketing someone = rape.

The times I loaned people money and didn’t get paid back: They’ve gotta be guilty of at least sexual assault, right?

What if that’s the only job he can find?

Well, gosh, then, Derren, it sucks to be them. Pretty much as it sucked to be me a year back when a back disk decided to go septic, or pretty much as it sucks to be a woman giving birth if your hips are a bit too small.  If I had a magic wand that could solve everyone’s problems and get us to live without work or pain, believe me, I’d be waving it.  And I’d also like a unicorn that farted rainbows too.

The difference between a person who has to lift objects to earn money in order to pay financial obligations, versus a man who is simply obligated to lift objects is the difference between a sharecropper and a slave.

Your problem, Derren, is that your argument is against a manual worker paying anything.  If you have a blue collar job requiring you to lift heavy objects, you are not free to squat in someone’s property free of rent.  You are not free to take stuff on credit and not pay the bank back. 

Why then should you uniquely be free to not accept financial responsibility for your offspring on this basis?

I never said that having to fulfill obligation caused by your free actions is slavery. In fact, if you look at the last sentence of my second paragraph, I specifically said the opposite.

The difference between free people and slaves is not whether their obligations have financial obligations while slaves have bodily obligations. The difference that free people are only obligated to provide the needs they are responsible for, while slaves are obligated to provide for people they aren’t responsible for. Unless she was raped, a pregnant woman is directly responsible for her pregnancy. And if you believe a fetus is a person, then she has an obligation to provide for that person. You have a right to own body, but the moment your free actions cause someone to need that body, you are responsible to provide it.

I’m the ‘guy claiming to be sympathetic to feminism freaking out because men don’t have “reproductive rights” ’ who had a long exchange with Ms Marcotte on Twitter today—- though I’d say ‘freaking out’ is an exaggeration. I do think that there are some twisty questions about men’s control of their parenting destiny that are handled in a unsatisfying way now, and think that we could and should talk about the right way to handle those questions on feminist terms. I certainly reject the answers MRAs propose, which actually puts me in vigorous agreement with most of this post.

I’m vexed to hear that conversation alluded to obliquely here, in a way that implies that I’m in agreement with MRAs, so for the benefit of interested readers, a post on my own blog:

http://miniver.blogspot.com/2011/03/mens-reproductive-rights.html

You have a right to own body, but the moment your free actions cause someone to need that body, you are responsible to provide it.

That’s completely untrue in every possible legal and moral sense. No one is obligated to “provide” their body for another person under any circumstances.

Also note that we already accept bodily coercion in other cases. Jury duty and the draft are the two most obvious examples, but we also minor criminals assigned to community service. If a someone vandalizes a synagogue, is it so outrageous to demand they clean it up?

Again, I am not defending “paper abortion” rights. I think that every person should be responsible to provide for the children to create. Unlike other commenters who think that responsibility shouldn’t apply if it involves your body.

Ugh, this bitching over child support is infuriating.  Look, whatever you’re paying as the non-custodial parent, it’s a pittance compared to what the custodial parent pays monetarily AND through her (or his!) time and labor.  Raising a kid is full time work.  And you forking over a hundred bucks a week (if that) isn’t even HALF of what the custodial parent is shelling out to shelter, feed, and clothe that kid.  And again, we’re not even talking about all of the unpaid labor that goes into caring for a child.

My brother’s wife left him with their two kids.  She pays zero support.  She sees them every other week, if that, and usually leaves them with her parents when she does.  So I’ve seen the genders reversed on this one, and I can tell you that the custodial parent does the lion’s share of the work.  Period.

Derren, do you belive women are stopping any of these men from using condoms? Otherwise, what the hell is your problem with child support? If you don’t want to support kids, use contraception. Get a vasectomy. Women are not the only ones capable of preventing pregnancy, and sure as hell aren’t the only ones responsible.

The difference that free people are only obligated to provide the needs they are responsible for,

You do realise that women don’t have babies by parthenogenesis, right?  Your parents did sit you down and explain about men’s wee-wees and women’s vay-jay-jays?

334,
But carrying a pregnancy was not determined off of economic times.Not to mention but she works too! She would be doing the blue collar work as well.

arguing with derren is a waste of time and energy.  none of his arguments have made any sense whatsoever, and now he’s claiming that women make babies all by themselves and are the only ones responsible.  i dont understand why you would try to reason with someone who thinks women should be forced to give birth when they dont want to, but making a man pay child support is equivalent to rape.

Off-topic, but did you know Vox Day now has a dedicated PUA blog? Dear. God.

lijakaca: I already said that I think child support is just. I just happen to think that support should be bodily as well as financial.

But you raise an interesting point. You say that if men don’t want children, they should just use condoms. Do you think that if a woman has sex without using protection, she forfeits her right to abortion?

46% of women who have abortions did NOT use contraception during the month they got pregnant. Of the 54% who did, how many do you think were using them correctly, every time? (compare the “user” failure rates of contraception to the “method” failure rates) The fact is the majority of women seek abortions because the didn’t use proper birth control.

Does that weaken your support for abortion rights?

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

#44,
Exactly and its only women that either have to have their uterus scraped out, give birth and be a single mom with the kid either always around them or around them 5 days out of the week or give birth and give a kid up for adoption that they’ve had in their body for 9 months.

Again deren, why do you solely focus on the woman? It takes two to create a pregnancy. What about the mens BC?  The guys also must not have been using contraception for that 45%.

Heres the thing derren, if you dont respect biological reality as in pregnancy happens in the womans body and you would be uncomfortable with any choice she made-then dont have sex.

Men: If you do not want to pay child support, here are the steps you must take:

1) Discuss potential “accident” plans before you stick your dick in her. Make sure you’re on the same page. If she says she wouldn’t have an abortion and you would prefer she does, you’re not on the same page.

2) Put a bag on it. Seriously. Just fucking wear a condom. If she says she’s on the pill, maybe she’s not even lying…. maybe she forgot. Maybe she got sick and threw up her last few pills. If you don’t want a kid, put a condom on. If it’s that important to you, then take matters into your own hands, literally. Don’t use one of her condoms if you feel she’s untrustworthy and might put a hole in it, use one of your own.  But understand that if you’re not on the same page in #1, then if accident’s happen, you’re still on the hook.

If you can’t do those things, and you don’t like the idea of paying to support a child (yes, a child, you’re not paying for her to get her nails done, I can guarantee whatever pittance you’re required to fork over will barely cover your offspring’s clothes and food, if that), then don’t fuck her. There are many other ways to have a good time that don’t involve you ejaculating inside of her vagina.

Everyone needs to be in control of their own reproduction. This bullshit that men get to have all the unprotected, free-wheeling sex in the world and women have to pay all the consequences is… well…. bullshit.

Phoenician: “You do realise that women don’t have babies by parthenogenesis, right?  Your parents did sit you down and explain about men’s wee-wees and women’s vay-jay-jays? “

Man and woman make the baby, man and woman have to support the baby. We both agree on that, so bringing it up again is a red herring.

The question is: should this support include bodily support? Amanda argued that it shouldn’t, because for some reason having to fulfill bodily obligations is slavery while fulfilling financial obligations is just fine. My arguments have shown how the financial-bodily distinction is silly, and how the difference between slavery and freedom is not the nature whether your obligations are bodily or financial, but whether your choices are responsible for these obligations.

I would appreciate if you attack these arguments instead of scarecrows.

@Derren

I can only imagine that you’re very tired from the mental gymnastics you’ve performed to try to bend your arguments into a shape that makes sense.  As to your comment at #50, it is seldom women who are encouraging men not to use condoms during sex.  And no one is arguing that abortion shouldn’t be allowed if women don’t use BC, only that if, as a man, the idea of financial responsibility towards your offspring galls you so badly, then you should take thing in to your own hands and use a condom or get a vasectomy.

The stupid, it burns.

In fact, I think the whole abortion debate would shape up a LOT differently if “hey, if you/I had an abortion if we had an… accident?” was a prerequisite conversation topic before initial het intercourse, no matter how casual. If both men and women were forced to lose the potential of getting laid because they had some wishy-washy half-thought-out opinion on the matter, I don’t think we’d have half as many “gosh I think it should be legal but I would -never have one-” hand-wringers out there.

Bean slap: “Again deren, why do you solely focus on the woman? It takes two to create a pregnancy. What about the mens BC?  The guys also must not have been using contraception for that 45%.”

If you don’t like it, don’t have sex. How does it sound back at you?

I have nothing to add to Mighty Ponygirl’s response.

And Derren, your argument was about child support, not abortion. Are you trying to change the subject now that you’re losing? Abortion should be available to anyone pregnant, no questions asked. Sorry you thought you had a ‘gotcha!’ moment, but there’s no contradiction between my opinions on the two issues.

OK then, I think we’re all agreed: nobody should ever have sex with Derren. Finally, a solution all of us can get behind.

derren,
Gawd, you are so predictable. Again you arent on the maturity level to discuss these issues. Not to mention but the woman does face the realities of choice as she has to make one and physically deal with it. If the guy has a problem with a womans choice to the point that it’ll make him be a major asshat like youre being then dont have sex. Grow up first then go at it. Again shes the onle that either has to have her uterus scraped, give borth, be pregnant and/or give the kid up for adoption after its been in her body for 9 months. All the guy has to do is orgasm, sign a paper giving the kid up for adoption or pay support once a month (in comparison to her paying support both economically and time). So what youre arguing for is for guys to have sex, knock her up and then ditch her and any resulting child. This is what you consider equality or fairness?

But you raise an interesting point. You say that if men don’t want children, they should just use condoms. Do you think that if a woman has sex without using protection, she forfeits her right to abortion?

Men and women both have absolutely the same right to get their own personal uteri scraped out when they want to. Seriously. That shit is as equal as it gets. The things you do to your genitals? Your business! It’s as simple a concept as the difference between a paying job and slaver—-er, wait… uh, it’s as simple as 1 + 1 = 2nooo, wait, you were having trouble with that biological reality earlier, too. (Guys, what’s a simple concept for an MRA to grasp? I’m scraping the bottom here!)

Oh, poop…and things with Derren started out so fun! It looked like we were finally going to see the wedding of the MRM and some sort of hyper-Communism when he started with what looked an assault on the capitalist system. “Work that does not satisfy the mind is slavery!” he seemed to scream. “Making wages for that work makes you no better than the lowly sharecropper nibbling the edges of his masters fields!” And I was there with him. There was no distinction between janitor and CEO in this new world I imagined he was creating, and the boss and the builder would in turns wipe clean the latrines of the common man.

But instead it turned out to be some weird logical gymnastics to advocate that women should have to suffer for every single choice they make with their bodies. This was argued under the guise of “bodily” support, which makes no sense as any woman who brings a child to term has spent the last nine months of her life giving it bodily support. But if women have to give “bodily” as well as financial support in order to fulfill their responsibilities does that mean men do, too? Do daddies have to be there long after whatever love or passion may have passed between them and the mother to hold the child when it and the mother are too tired to hold it up? Does he have to forgo his freedom to find some other happiness to ensure his progeny has a partner to play with when mommy can’t make it? Since she literally shared her blood with the child while in utero do the man’s organs end up on the table in case of grievous bodily injury?

Good work with the MRA article, Ms. Marcotte. I find the Good Men Project’s approach questionable in some instances myself, so thank you for providing a clear voice on such a rotten group of assholes.

So Darren takes a hypothetical which exists only in a fantasy of complete gender equality and which involves sex work, a line of work that is criticized by some feminists precisely because of the difficulty in defining bodily autonomy and consent when these things are given only in exchange for money rather than desire, and uses that to make an argument that paying child support is slavery? Unsurprising that he can’t find a comparison that exists in the real world and clearly supports his point.

Additionally, sure, you can call having to work “wage slavery.” But at present wage slavery is the default condition of almost all workers, including women. To assume that women don’t have to work jobs they hate to support their kids is asinine. If you want to rectify this situation of wage slavery, you’re going to have to do a whole lot more than end child support…like participate in a successful revolution against capitalism. Assuming that we’re operating in Darren’s fantasy land where women are completely equal and no one has to do work they don’t want to because we’re in anarcho-communist happy-land, I’d be happy to let individual men opt out of child support as long as they continue to produce value for the social collective which would be taking up the slack of paying for and clothing the child. Hell, I might make that trade in exchange for free daycare and better social programs for single parents and needy children.

But you see where this has gotten us? We’re just hypothesizing about phantom utopias. Perhaps we should return to the real world, where we all have crappy jobs and you have to pay child support because if you don’t, the kid might starve, and even if they don’t the mother is going to have to bear the entire burden without adequate support from society or you or anyone else, even though you helped make that child. P.S. This is the same real world where people are trying to take away women’s right to abort, resulting in direct bodily slavery for women, more unwilling parents of both genders, and a bigger drain on our collective tax base.

lijakaca: The topic I was writing about has always been on the moral irrelevance of the money-body distinction. For Amanda, the distinction was vital in order to defend a woman the right to refuse bodily support to her child, but deny a man the right to refuse financial support to his child. I think that this distinction is morally irrelevant, and hence, a woman has as much obligation to provide bodily support for her child as a man has to provide financial support.

Along the way, people started to claim I was defending “paper abortion,” which I never did. I clarified my position, but people continued to attack the “men should never have to pay child support” scarecrow. It’s becoming clear now that people do not read me before they attack.

And derren dont even get into issues of domestic abuse

#58,
Derren YOU FREAKING ignored the mans implication in it and only focused on the woman. He wasnt using contraception in that instance either. Simply repeating some childish verbage only shows are defecient your argument is. You cant argue it so you put up a self-delusion wall. You are like all mras a coward.

This entire MRA thing really is about how their moms made them eat broccoli once, isn’t it?

Yes, of course.  It’s very similar to beer commercials.  In beer commercials, beer is this difficult-to-get thing that people go out of their way to acquire, not something you spend five bucks on down at the convenience store.  And women are always trying to prevent access in some fashion, those bitchez.

This makes no sense.  Women drink beer too, and most women are perfectly happy to have the men in their life drink responsibly.  The only way these commercials make sense is if they’re aimed at . . . teenaged boys!  For whom beer is difficult to acquire, and women = mom.

MRAs are the target audience for beer commercials: men who are incapable of maturing emotionally beyond mindless rebellion against parental figures.

Darren displays Kid Logic here: the words are irrelevant; the point is that he wants what he wants, and he’s completely indifferent to the needs or suffering of others.  It’s adorable on a five year old, and it is, as Amanda notes, exhausting on a putative adult.

Anyways, I think this board can agree that if no one ever has sex with Darren, his concerns will be fully satisfied, and thus we can stop feeding the troll.

Um yeah, sorry Derren, I gave you too much credit, not realizing that you really believe money = self. My bad, I will no longer attempt to reason with you.

Since she literally shared her blood with the child while in utero do the man’s organs end up on the table in case of grievous bodily injury?

Grievous injury? You’re thinking too small! Now that Derren has “shown” us that bodily integrity and money are exactly the same, I think the father’s organs should end up on the table whenever the hell they’re needed—mom can’t make rent? Kid needs to get into that nice daycare? Dad, you don’t need all two of those kidneys! And your liver has the remarkable ability to regrow from just a lobe…

Man and woman make the baby, man and woman have to support the baby.

Yes.

The question is: should this support include bodily support?

Nope.

My arguments have shown how the financial-bodily distinction is silly,

Nope.

and how the difference between slavery and freedom is not the nature whether your obligations are bodily or financial, but whether your choices are responsible for these obligations.

Red herring.

Yeesh, MRAs are the most tiresome, soul-sucking trolls in existence. I can’t read the Man Boobz blog, sympathetic as I am to its aim of mocking these losers, because even glimpsing the sewers full of them is so depressing.

@63 - I’m disappointed too! I turns out that while I was composing my comment about communist utopias, he made it clear that he doesn’t have anything interesting to say, and he’s just trying to make a false equivalent between some men having to carry TV boxes 8 hours a day for money to support their families and women having to carry a pregnancy 24/7 for nine months to nurture a clump of cells into a full-blown baby for no compensation whatsoever. As if they were even remotely the same.

Now that Derren has “shown” us that bodily integrity and money are exactly the same, I think the father’s organs should end up on the table whenever the hell they’re needed—mom can’t make rent? Kid needs to get into that nice daycare? Dad, you don’t need all two of those kidneys!

Nothing Derren has said would argue for the need for the Dad to keep any of his kidneys.  The landlord could demand a pound of flesh, and the IRS, until there were no pounds left.  The father, having incurred a financial responsibility, revokes his right to any bodily autonomy, even to the point of risking or ensuring death (just as a woman has to if there is no option to abort.)

Maybe it’s late and I’m really high, but what the fuck is “bodily support”?

Amanda, I was going to take you up on your offer, and go troll MRA blogs and invoke poststructuralist wu-shu on them, but if Darren is representative of the garbage I’d have to deal with, I think I’ll just go to bed.

It’s funny how Amanda rails against the right / Republicans for their bias, disregard of fact, and outright lying (if it harms women) but has no problem with bias, disregard of fact, and lying (if it harms men).

First off, there are a host of serious men’s rights issues other than reproductive rights, which this article focuses on. I’ll discuss them in a bit.

No one is trying to pass legislation aimed at restricting a man’s right to control his reproductive organs

Men have no reproductive rights.

Men cannot force women to become a parent, but women can. Men go to jail—fucking JAIL—because they cannot (are literally unable) to pay child support. They never wanted to become a parent, and would gladly have forfeited their parental rights, the exact same rights a woman has, but they were not given that choice. No man is given that choice.

If a boy is the victim of statutory rape, he must pay child support.

If a man is the victim of actual rape, he must pay child support.

If a man receives a condom covered blowjob, and the woman takes semen out of the condom, and impregnates herself, he must pay child support.

There are a host of other men’s rights issues as well.

The legal system is heavily biased against men. Men receive longer prison sentences simply for being men, compared to women with equivalent records. The same is true for blacks and other minorities: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v33-issue3/greer.pdf

Men are treated as a danger to kids by society: see the recent airline policies of not allowing adult men sit next to kids. However, women are significantly more likely to abuse their children, are are extremely significantly more likely to murder their children. Men are more likely to sexually abuse children, but when taking into account all harmful actions, women are far in the lead.

Men are marginalized and even laughed at by police when it comes to domestic violence, despite the fact that more women commit DV than men. More women are injured than men in DV incidents, but the fact that men underreport DV at an exponentially higher rate than women goes a long way to evening that out.

There’s lots more, but I’m done for now.

Here’s a story to illustrate this quote:

When a man rapes a woman, it is against the law. When a woman rapes a man, the law is the instrument she uses.

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/7x78v/what_do_modern_men_want_in_women/c07omtc?context=3

So if he didn’t want a kid he should have kept it in his pants (or used a condom).

Funny how feminists feel that argument applies only to men, but not women.

And in the 2% of the time when a condom fails even when used perfectly, tough luck?

Funny how feminists feel that argument applies only to men, but not women.

Nature feels that argument applies only to men.  Or do you think feminists taking over the world because men aren’t being “allowed” to breastfeed?

“Nature feels that argument applies only to men.”

The biological argument is not a valid ethical or legal reason. Biology was the same argument for keeping women out of the workplace and raising kids, because that was “natural.”

I’m not making an ethical argument…most often, men can’t breastfeed or get pregnant based on physical reasons, not ethical ones.

Your body belongs to - is - you.  Money is just a social token denoting a claim to wealth.

You’re hitting your head against a brick wall, PiaToR. Nothing new here, just another Libertarian dweeb for whom money is identity, and for whom sex and relationships are nothing more than a zero-sum economic transaction where the man ought to come up the “winner” as he has historically. PUA or MRA or NiceGuy®, it’s all about entitlement to that strange alien creature’s p*ssy and whingeing when they can’t automatically get their way using money or magic tricks or neurolinguistic programming or, y’know, being real, real Nice without ever indicating attraction and risking rejection.

And golly gee whiz if something doesn’t go according to the Master Plan. Take our pouting commentor Celda, for example:

So if he didn’t want a kid he should have kept it in his pants (or used a condom).

Funny how feminists feel that argument applies only to men, but not women.

I can’t think of one feminist I’ve read or known who wasn’t a vocal advocate for contraception, both for males and females. Can’t say the same about MRAs. The most prominent MRAs (at least in the UK, where they really got going) are more concerned with making sure that they can spawn freely and according to their own terms, and can control their offspring and the “incubator” than they are with preventing the situation.

And in the 2% of the time when a condom fails even when used perfectly, tough luck?

You got it, sonny. And while most everyone else here already knows this, I’ll explain for your benefit that it’s just as likely to be tough luck for the woman, too. Shockingly enough, not all women who sleep with men are gold-digging b*tches looking to get knocked up and cash in.

Of course, assuming failure, there are other options. But FSM forbid that an MRA support things like the morning-after pill, let alone abortion rights. That’s his blastocyst in there, gosh darn it!

I know that you long for that risk-free life where mommy took care of your needs and you didn’t have to think about icky lady parts, but assuming you’re older than 13 that time’s long gone—even if you are still living in her basement.

You’re saying “since men can’t get pregnant, they must/should pay if the woman decides she wants to have the child, regardless of the men’s wishes.”

That’s an ethical argument.

It’s like saying “since women can get pregnant, they must/should stay home and raise kids if the man decides he wants that, regardless of the woman’s wishes.”

If a boy is the victim of statutory rape, he must pay child support.

If a man is the victim of actual rape, he must pay child support.

If a man receives a condom covered blowjob, and the woman takes semen out of the condom, and impregnates herself, he must pay child support.

Citations, please. And by citations, I mean black-letter law in an English-speaking OECD state.

Or do you think feminists taking over the world because men aren’t being “allowed” to breastfeed?

Some of these dopes are actually believe that feminists are taking over the world because they don’t need men (or, more specifically, husbands) to procreate anymore. To be fair, though, Celda seems more worried about husband-hunting women made baby-crazy by the biological clock.

Male victim of statutory rape (a boy) order to pay child support to his victimizer:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer

Man says that he engaged in oral sex and the woman inseminated herself, court says even if that’s true, you’re the father so you pay:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Louisiana_v._Frisard

Woman rapes unconscious man, he must pay child support:

S.F. v. State ex rel. T.M., 695 So. 2d 1186 (Ala. Civ. App. 1996).

http://www.divorcesource.com/research/dl/paternity/99jan1.shtml

You’re saying “since men can’t get pregnant, they must/should pay if the woman decides she wants to have the child, regardless of the men’s wishes.”

I think you’re confusing me for someone else?  I was saying that since pregnancy happens in the woman’s body, then she’s the one who decides what happens with her body.  The fact of a pregnancy possibly resulting if the man doesn’t “keep it in his pants” and a condom fails, and of the pregnancy being in the woman’s body, are not at all moral arguments, just physical facts.

Celda—if a woman has a baby and wants to give up her baby for adoption, she has to get the baby’s father’s permission to do so and pay child support if he is the custodial parent. So if a woman does not want to get an abortion in case of pregnancy and also does not even want the possibility of paying child support, she too should keep it in her pants.

financial support =! surrending bodily autonomy.

Oh, Celda, Celda. What a damn fool you are.

You’re saying “since men can’t get pregnant, they must/should pay if the woman decides she wants to have the child, regardless of the men’s wishes.”

That’s an ethical argument.

It’s like saying “since women can get pregnant, they must/should stay home and raise kids if the man decides he wants that, regardless of the woman’s wishes.”

Yes, it’s exactly like that, in the sense that apples are exactly like next Thursday.

I’ll break it down for you: since men can’t get pregnant, the woman has to decide whether to bear the child or not, because it’s impossible to have it otherwise without violating her bodily integrity. If and when the child is born, both parents have to support it, because the kid has needs, and can’t just be dumped onto society.

There is no such necessity for the mother staying home and raising kids. The kid doesn’t need it, and doing otherwise doesn’t violate the man’s bodily integrity. See how easy it is?

Also, Derren has just announced that he thinks rape is like shoplifting, because the money-body distinction is irrelevant.

Comment #79: Celda

Funny how I keep reading that women who want abortions shouldn’t have had sex, and hear it on national TV too. *Yawn*

he’s just trying to make a false equivalent between some men having to carry TV boxes 8 hours a day for money to support their families and women having to carry a pregnancy 24/7 for nine months to nurture a clump of cells into a full-blown baby for no compensation whatsoever. As if they were even remotely the same.

Sadly, it’s not a false equivalence in his mind. Derren believes that the exchange in the male’s case is manual labour (carrying TV boxes) for cash (that to which all men aspire), while the exchange in the woman’s case is manual labour (carrying a baby to term) for the ecstacy of motherhood (to which all women aspire) ... and to the male’s cash, natch.

The only comfort I can take from clueless clods like Derren and Celda is that they manage the stupendous feat of making a guy like myself (no prize, believe me) look decent to cool women. But that’s a personal benefit, and is far outweighed by the exhausting trials these bitter cranks put women through—not just in blog comments, but in real life.

Thought I refreshed my browser. My reply is behind the curve.

celda at 87—maybe you should spend your time advocating for the rights of male rape/sexual coercion victims instead of railing against a woman’s rights to bodily autonomy. What the women in those examples did was morally bankrupt and criminal and they should spend jail time/be sex offenders. Punishing all women w/removal of bodily autonomy because some women, like some men, are manipulative scum doesn’t help anybody.

Explanation of how literally millions of men who are NOT the father forced to pay for “their” kids:

http://reason.com/archives/2004/02/01/injustice-by-default

Celda—if a woman has a baby and wants to give up her baby for adoption, she has to get the baby’s father’s permission to do so and pay child support if he is the custodial parent.

False. The woman need only not put the father down on the birth certificate, or simply not inform the father. Further, the woman can

Read this, it explains how it works.

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=12512

Custodial fathers are less likely to receive child support than custodial mothers: http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/chldsupp.html

I’ll break it down for you: since men can’t get pregnant, the woman has to decide whether to bear the child or not, because it’s impossible to have it otherwise without violating her bodily integrity.

I agree 100%.

If and when the child is born, both parents have to support it, because the kid has needs, and can’t just be dumped onto society.

Nope. If the mother chooses to have the kid, and chooses to raise it herself, that is her choice, and her responsibility.

Her body, her choice. Her choice, her responsibility. We recognize that a person’s right to swing their fist stops at someone else’s nose. Unfortunately, we do not recognize that fact when it comes to men’s reproductive rights (or lack thereof).

Funny how I keep reading that women who want abortions shouldn’t have had sex, and hear it on national TV too.

Yet, women are allowed to get abortions (barring a Republican victory). In Canada, all abortions are free, on-demand, and legal at any time. But men’s reproductive rights are equivalent to that of Americans, non-existent.

Thanks, Celda. Let’s look at the details…

* Hermesmann v. Seyer

The woman was not convicted of statutory rape, because they were both minors (she 16, he 12). But she pleaded out, so we’ll generously assume that a criminal act was involved none-the-less.

In any case, in the subsequent civil case the court ruled that a mother’s potential culpability under the criminal statutes was of no relevance in determining the father’s child support liability under the civil statutes.

That’s because the civil statutes place the interest of the child (in this case one who resulted from a criminal act) first.

* State of Louisiana v. Frisard

A he-said, she-said case. The court found “found that the mother did establish by a legal burden of proof that he was in fact the father of the child”—in other words, they believed in this case her story that they both engaged in intercourse, rather than his story (the one you recounted).

* S.F. v. State ex rel. T.M., 695 So. 2d 1186 (Ala. Civ. App. 1996)

A combination of the he-said/she-said aspect of Louisiana v. Frisard and the welfare of the child being the primary concern in a civil case, with both parents (not just the poor put-upon male) being financially responsible.

Look, I know that conservatives and right-wingers don’t give a damn about the child once it exits the womb—especially in comparison to all that money you make lugging TV boxes. But do you have to be so obvious about it?

Uh wow. I know what I am about to say will be shortly deleted cause you’re all a bunch of cowards who would rather censor and silence those who disagree with you, rather than actually debate.

I hope your comment is left in place—if nothing else you’ve just provided supporting evidence for my comment at #83.

My goodness Amanda, you were not kidding about the stray cat analogy. Just look at them all!

My opinion on the typical MRA approach is heavily influenced by something my husband once told me. As a boy, he said, he thought it was really *unfair* that women got to do something as mind-boggling as growing babies. It was like a superpower! And men couldn’t do it. And he walked around resenting it for a while, until he got older (like, 12 or so) and realized that this resentment was both petty and asinine.

MRAs are men who never had that lightbulb moment, and are still stamping their feet like 11-year-olds and muttering about girls thinking they’re so special with their uteruses and their ability to choose whether or not to create a new life or not, stupid girls. They’ll show us!

It really is that small, and that petty. All the grandiose thought experiments about money and contracts and manual laborers are really just a gloss on a profoundly immature inability to deal with the fact that women have one thing—one!—they can do that a man cannot, that belongs to them, that is all about them and no one else, really. They don’t see the crap women go through, they don’t see the difficulty pregnancy brings, they just see one little area of a woman’s life they might not be able to put totally, utterly under their control. And it makes them *crazy*. They lie awake at night, grinding their teeth about it, muttering to themselves, then get up and write incoherent internet screeds to try to write this cosmic injustice.

Maybe in a nonsexist world they would still be massively immature narcissists, just about something else. Or maybe they would get the help they clearly need. But in this world, which feeds their desire to never ever be less important than a woman in any way, this is how it expresses itself.

The woman was not convicted of statutory rape, because they were both minors (she 16, he 12). But she pleaded out, so we’ll generously assume that a criminal act was involved none-the-less.

Such generosity.

Further, the woman can

That got cut off. It should say, the woman can leave a baby at a safe haven and have no further penalties or any ties whatsoever.

Moreover, no one here has addressed the larger point: namely, that MRAs have valid concerns, rather than Amanda’s self-serving and biased portrayal of them as whining pussies, misogynistic assholes, etc.

maybe you should spend your time advocating for the rights of male rape/sexual coercion victims instead of railing against a woman’s rights to bodily autonomy. What the women in those examples did was morally bankrupt and criminal and they should spend jail time/be sex offenders. Punishing all women w/removal of bodily autonomy because some women, like some men, are manipulative scum doesn’t help anybody.

I don’t object to a woman’s rights to bodily autonomy. I support abortion rights and think they should be as in Canada, free, available on-demand for any reason, without any BS red tape like parental consent, ultrasound viewing, etc.

However, if a woman wants to exercise her right to bodily autonomy by having a child, that is her choice. She should not have the right to force other people (the man) to pay for her choice.

To put things more succinctly, Celda, in civil cases like these the welfare of the child is always put before that of the parents, and both parents are expected to contribute financially to the best of their abilities. That’s the precedent across all child support cases in this country, from the mundane and common ones to the extreme and unusual ones you bring up involving alleged criminal acts.

But thanks for making it clear that, as far as you’re concerned, the welfare of the male parent comes first. I’ll bet that the charming “youwillbestopped” would be right with you on that one.

#77,
First of all the first two were complete lies. A kid cant be given up for adoption without the mans permission so a man can indeed force a woman to keep a kid she doesnt want. This happened to my moms friends daughter after she gave birth and the father told her he’d sign the adoption papers and then didnt after the kid was born. The condom debacle was a joke! That never happens and not to mention but then he should throw away his condoms or put them in a baggy if he really fears for that. Conception from that would be very difficult especially after putting it in her mouth. Likewise a guy can poke a hole in the condom and impregnate her and unlike the guy she will be pregnant meaning she either has to have her uterus scraped out or give birth. Boys who are raped and impregnate do not have to pay child support. The court revoked the verdict of that one kid. Its not a precedent. Regarding domestic abuse,  youre going by conflict tactical scale and not actual stats where abuse is actually measured into it.Check this article out on that:http://amptoons.com/blog/2004/06/26/on-husband-battering-are-men-equal-victims/    Men also dont receive longer prison sentences. For example in regards to drug crimes women actually receive harsher sentences even though they are for less crimes. Regarding the men sitting next to kids issue of pedophiles a majority of them are men and the law was created by men so I think its far from “discriminating.”  Not to mention but men commit the majority of crimes which is why 90% of the prison population is male. I’ve also read Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power and its a sheer joke! He actually says that boys playing football is the equivalent of domestic violence and that when a man is fired from a job its the equivalent of rape!He thought Tammy Faye shouldve gone to prison along with her husband because of the fact that she lived off of his income and therefore he claims she’s a ‘co-conspirator’ in his fraud. In that case, why not put their kids in prison too since they lived off of his money? He called post-partum depression the “baby blues” and thought it wasnt serious.

Such generosity.

Celda needs all the help he can get here.

#79,
No its dont have sex until youre mature and see women as something other than warm socks but as human beings who can make a reproductive choice that you may not agree with. If you dont understand that ahead of time (much like women understand that they can end up pregnant) then dont have sex if it would be too much for you. Or wait until they invent ManUterus and you can be the lucky one to get an accidental pregnancy!

Isnt it sick how Amandas article brought all these MRA’s here!I mean, sheesh, you cant just write a freakin article without these freakos trolling all around buzzing with their sheer stupidity. The creator of manboobz has got to be entertained 24/7 with these chimps!

“In all States, the birth mother and the birth father, if he has properly established paternity1, hold the primary right of consent to adoption of their child. Either one or both parents may have these rights terminated for a variety of possible reasons, including abandonment, failure to support the child, mental incompetence, or a finding of parental unfitness due to abuse or neglect.”

http://laws.adoption.com/statutes/consent-to-adoption.html#one

Celda needs all the help he can get here.

I was referring to your attitude towards the 12 year old victim.

Nope. If the mother chooses to have the kid, and chooses to raise it herself, that is her choice, and her responsibility.

Her body, her choice. Her choice, her responsibility. We recognize that a person’s right to swing their fist stops at someone else’s nose. Unfortunately, we do not recognize that fact when it comes to men’s reproductive rights (or lack thereof).

Reproductive rights means the right to control your reproductive system, which men have. You’re getting into a tizzy because men can’t control women’s reproductive systems.

He chose to ejaculate into the woman, knowing she might choose to bear the child. His choice, his responsibility. And now there’s an actual child who is going to keep existing and needs supporting. So he needs to take responsibility.

You’re upset because biology provides women with a window, wherein there’s a fetus supported entirely by her that she can kill. Whereas male involvement ends at insemination and then picks up again at birth, when there’s a baby that can’t be killed and needs support. You’re upset at biology, which makes men’s involvement and choice end earlier than the woman’s. Oh well.

Explanation of how literally millions of men who are NOT the father forced to pay for “their” kids:

The fail to fill out a form challenging a default judgement within 30 days—the same thing can and happen on non-paternity claims as well. This isn’t an article about injustice aimed at men, it’s about a Kafka-esque and unforgiving legal bureaucracy.

Let’s assume that, regardless of the nature of the claim, the summons procedure was better run, and that, say, 60 or 90 days was given to challenge. Know what? That article wouldn’t have appeared in Reason, because they would have come to the same basic conclusion (minus the complaints about the system) that the fellow who got stuck in this mess did:

I mean, it’s mostly my fault—‘Fill out the form, dumb-ass!

Absent a crappy and overwhelmed and under-funded legal apparatus to blame, the folks at Reason are big on personal responsibility.

I was referring to your attitude towards the 12 year old victim.

My attitude toward the 12-year-old victim was just that: malfeasance was involved, because a kid that age can barely understand the concept of consent. However, as far as the court was concerned, statutory rape was not involved. For purposes of the discussion with Celda, I was being “generous” to Celda and Celda alone by assuming legal criminality where there was in fact a plea bargain—something you have to be careful about when you’re discussing the law.

“...but assuming you’re older than 13 that times long gone-even if you are still living in her basement”

....and wearing your spider-man costume sans underwear so your giant ball can show through

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040915/wd5.jpg

As an asexual, I want to ask the MRA’s a question, being that the root of their problem (other than their rampant misogyny, as if that could be overlooked) deals with the consequences of sex:

Why don’t you just not have sex?

It’s very easy and simple. Just don’t fuck, or at least have sex with women. There are plenty of males you can have a good time with and you’ll never, ever have to deal with your partner getting pregnant, (unless they are a transman, and still have their female sexual organs, and you fail physiology harder than Albert Einstein failing a Summarian spelling bee)

The solution is so obvious and so easy that I’m astounded that you can’t chalk up the equation Fail=(P+V)I’MSOSUCK on your Beckian boards of truth.

Why does a non-sexual understand something so simple and y’all not an iota?

Or is this just a matter of you eating your cake and continuing to preserve it in its cakey form too? (Most likely)

A man who dropped off a 2-day-old boy at a fire station last week did so legally under Nevada’s Safe Haven law, Las Vegas police said Tuesday.

Officer Barbara Morgan, a spokeswoman with the Metropolitan Police Department, said no charges will be pursued against the unidentified man who left the infant under the care of a county firefighter Friday at a station near Lake Mead and Nellis boulevards.

The Safe Haven law, passed in 2001, allows parents to legally leave a child within 30 days of birth with an emergency service provider.

Advocates of the law called what happened a textbook example of how it was meant to work.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/police-say-baby-deposit-legal-91684644.html

The father may drop off the baby under the Safe Haven law as well.

“Simply put, you’re all wrong, and you’re all awful people.
My solution? Outlaw abortion, defund and close all planned parenthoods and other sort of places, and don’t want the responsibility of taking care of children and raising a family? Then keep your legs shut or be smart.”

...

“I mean, we REALLY need to return to a more traditional way, father DOES know best etc, and the women know there place amongst other things. I mean, we’ve gone so far as to the unfairness and double standards followed in this discussion, oh yeah. Time to go back and start all over. The feminazis,fags,freakshows,and corrupted types and useless liberals, have all had there time,there chance, time to kick em out.”

...

“Oh and feminism should be outlawed and it’s followers closely monitored least they fuck it up for everyone.Cunts.All of you.”

Pretty much the very definition of a misogynist, Patriarchy-loving, Right-Wing Authoritarian, very likely an MRA, and probably a religious nut too…

“Oh and no, I’m not some mra type nor religous nut, I even think they’re extreme and disagree with what they say at times, but I think mra types have there good points.”

...and that pretty much proves this one is a MRA + Right-Wing Authoritarian + Religious Nut.  The Patriarchy must be so proud…

Why don’t you just not have sex?

The good news is, identifying as a MRA is a sort of self-correcting mechanism in that regard. Somehow most women don’t go for bitter dudes who think women are either baby-crazy or out for a man’s hard-earned TV-box money.

That leaves the problem of PUAs and NiceGuys® and conflicted sex-negative guys. but they’re really MRAs in training.

My attitude toward the 12-year-old victim was just that: malfeasance was involved, because a kid that age can barely understand the concept of consent. However, as far as the court was concerned, statutory rape was not involved. For purposes of the discussion with Celda, I was being “generous” to Celda and Celda alone by assuming legal criminality where there was in fact a plea bargain—something you have to be careful about when you’re discussing the law.

Do you have any qualms about forcing someone to pay child support for being raped?

The father may drop off the baby under the Safe Haven law as well.

True. But only with the consent of the mother. Since the mother gave birth to the child, the father can only drop a baby off if the mother agrees to it (else it’s a criminal act of kidnapping).

A mother can easily drop a baby off without the consent or even knowledge of the father.

“In all States, the birth mother and the birth father, if he has properly established paternity1

“if he has properly established paternity” is the operative phrase. Please see this link:

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=8955

It explains how the legal system actively hinders men from exercising their parental rights, men who want to become parents.

In other words, everything is up to the mother.

If the mother wants the father to be a parent (i.e. pay) she can force him to do so against his will.

If the mother does not want the father to be a parent (prevent him from getting custody) she can do so against his will.

You’re upset at biology, which makes men’s involvement and choice end earlier than the woman’s. Oh well.

Thank you for saying it, now I don’t have to.  How can anyone be angry that someone else isn’t making an active choice to save the man from his own actions?  Does it really seem reasonable that by not taking any further action after they both decide to have sex, the woman has “decided” to release the man from any parental or financial responsibility?

#87,
The first was statutory in which there was only a 4 year difference between them and it was consensual. Technically she could be convicted of statutory rape if she was only 1 year older.

The second is daft as there is no proof other than his claims that she inseminated herself. The second link is the douchiest thing ever! Seriously I cant believe that someone would be such a douche to try and sue a woman for ‘misuse of his genetic material and for not taking her BC pill!’

The first was statutory in which there was only a 4 year difference between them and it was consensual. Technically she could be convicted of statutory rape if she was only 1 year older.

You keep flirting with calling this kid a rape victim, but you can’t seem to put those two words together.

Why is that?

namely, that MRAs have valid concerns, rather than Amanda’s self-serving and biased portrayal of them as whining pussies, misogynistic assholes, etc.

Er . . . no.  While there are individual human beings who are harmed by the Patriarchy (remember, one of Amanda’s ongoing themes is The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too), MRAs are not motivated by “valid concerns.”  They are motivated by misogyny and emotional neediness, and they latch onto the concerns of others to validate their hate and immaturity.

That is Amanda’s point, and the MRA insistence on using a few border cases (and/or genuine travesties) to support the absurd claim of oppression only serves to support it.

It is of course wildly inappropriate for a preteen child to be responsible for child support.  But nobody sane disagrees with that.  You don’t need an MRA movement for that, you need a legal defense fund and a quick call to a Congressman, because it almost never happens.  Trying to use that poor kid as a football for your personal issues shows something else—MRA hatred is so profound that even men are generally harmed by their actions.  Because, as Amanda points out, The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.  In this case, it’s by emotionally crippling the boys who grow up into MRAs.

I don’t object to a woman’s rights to bodily autonomy. I support abortion rights and think they should be as in Canada, free, available on-demand for any reason, without any BS red tape like parental consent, ultrasound viewing, etc.

Well, now you’ve gone and made an enemy of “youwillbestopped,” you genocidal maniac.

Seriously, you’re an exception to the rule of MRAs in regard to contraception and abortion. I wish I could say that you’re an exception in regard to your prioritisation of a man’s hard-earned cash over the welfare of the children he’s fathered, one way or another.

“if he has properly established paternity” is the operative phrase.

Yes it is: “properly” as in “legally.” All that matters in the civil trial is the DNA match.

As to the article you posted, yes, risk of pregnancy and the woman’s physical control of said preganancy from conception to either termination of birth is an assumption that grown-up males make when they have sex. If that prospect scares you as much as it seems to, you shouldn’t be having sex (which is why we advise minors to wait), or screen your partners very carefully and discuss the “what-ifs” beforehand.

All you’re doing by citing these articles is that, despite your support of abortion rights, you have real issues with the 9-month portion of the matter where the woman really is in control—because it’s about her body during that period.

“Well,this may not be up for long, due to the she nazi that runs this den of evil and all other levels of it…”

I think Amanda would be proud to be called a “She Nazi” and have Pandagon called a “Den of Evil” by that mattress-stain of a <strike>human being</strike> troll.  Seething, unglued, nonsensical anger like that pretty much makes it all worth it, dontcha think?...

See, I always just figured that MRAs hate children, as well as women.  Given that when a fetus is in a woman, it is a fetus and not a baby, and given that MRAs are so all het up about not wanting to have to care for a child…

I long for the future, when implanting embryos in cismen can be done reasonably safely.  Then they can have the child all they want!

@Nimravid: I . . . dunno.  What’s the difference between a woman telling a man she was taking birth control and not, and a man telling a woman he’s had a vasectomy and not?  In both cases, there is sex and fraud, and I’m not thrilled.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure the facts do not support a good-faith interpretation; MRAs lie.  I’m just saying.

If 16 and 12 is not enough of an age difference for you, there’s lots of other cases.

http://www.ageofconsent.com/comments/numberthirtysix.htm

27 year old woman and 14 year old boy, large enough difference for you?

The point is, the courts have ruled that if a boy is the victim of statutory rape, he must pay if the criminal gets pregnant.

That sounds ok to you?

But thanks for making it clear that, as far as you’re concerned, the welfare of the male parent comes first. I’ll bet that the charming “youwillbestopped” would be right with you on that one.

Gracchus, Gracchus. The phrase “best interest of the child” is the mantra to justify anything, anything at all when it comes to harming men.

Man duped into paying for a kid that’s not his by his adulterous partner?

Tough, best interest of the child.

Man wants to adopt his biological child, files for adoption when the kid is a month old, but adoptive parents kidnap (legally sanctioned by the courts) the child and flee? Well, can’t return the child to his father, best interest of the child.

etc.

Do you have any qualms about forcing someone to pay child support for being raped?

I have qualms about the courts forcing someone to pay child support (or indeed forced to carry a pregnancy to term—not that you thought of that scenario) after being raped, whether they’re male or (again outside your concern) female. However, I also understand what how the civil court (as opposed to the criminal court) is prioritising the victims. In the U.S., “the welfare of the child comes before that of the parents” is the starting point—even if the parents themselves are minors.

Once you can make the distinction between civil and criminal courts, you’ll understand that no-one in this country, including in the cases cited by Celda, is forced to pay child support for being raped.

Explanation of how literally millions of men who are NOT the father forced to pay for “their” kids:

http://reason.com/archives/2004/02/01/injustice-by-default

Ha! John Kasich hates men. He sponsored the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which passed the House with an overwhelming Gingrich Contract on America majority. I note Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein tried to save men from this nightmare. But in the GOP reptilian brain, someone must be found to bear the blame.

What’s the difference between a woman telling a man she was taking birth control and not, and a man telling a woman he’s had a vasectomy and not?  In both cases, there is sex and fraud, and I’m not thrilled.

The woman’s not putting the man at risk of the physical and emotional upheavals and risks of pregnancy and childbirth (or a possible C-section).

Her behavior is sleazy. His is a betrayal and violation as bad as rape, in my opinion.

Once you can make the distinction between civil and criminal courts, you’ll understand that no-one in this country, including in the cases cited by Celda, is forced to pay child support for being raped.

You don’t think the kid was raped?

Recall, Gracchus is saying that the child support isn’t “for” being raped. It’s triage—the child’s basic needs come before the parent’s finances.

I think that’s the wrong result, mind you, if the “father” is a minor victim of statutory rape. But in non-rape cases I wholeheartedly agree with it.

@Punditus Maximus:  One of the MRAs here was arguing that if there was an accidental pregnancy, if a woman did nothing at all from that point on, she was absolving the man of any parental/financial responsibility.  And seemed angry that someone else would “force” a man to have a child this way, by…doing nothing at all.  There was a claim that inaction on the woman’s part (by not getting an abortion) was something that was “done” to the man.  No lies about birth control were involved in this scenario on anyone’s part.

Also there are 28 states that if a pregnancy happened as a result of rape the father still has paternity rights. In one case a 35 year old raped a 13 year old and he still retained father hood rights. Of the 22 other states that allow for revokation of parental rights in the case of rape it is only if there is a conviction and rape is one of the most unconvicted crimes out there.

http://www.nptelegraph.com/articles/2009/01/27/news/60001946.txt

Not to mention but you are a huge hypocrite. Apparently a violent rapist should have visitation rights with the kids (fought for by American Coalition for Fathers and Children) but child support from a 4 year differenced consensual affair is wrong?

http://talk.sheknows.com/f874/father-jailed-rape-gets-visitation-children-rape-victim-kidsa-mother-443188/  (the story is originally from http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060430/News01/604300398/-1/NEWS01/CAT=News01 though its in their paid archive but sheknows.com re-printed it)

A mother was put in prison for not wanting her son to have visitation with his rapist father

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20009059-504083.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Wow, Bean Slap. Thanks for those links.

#95,
Wow, biggest piece of sheer dipshit ever!

The point is, the courts have ruled that if a boy is the victim of statutory rape, he must pay if the criminal gets pregnant.

You don’t seem to be following the distinction between civil and criminal courts, either. The civil court doesn’t take the criminal allegations or conviction into account because it has different priorities.

Gracchus, Gracchus. The phrase “best interest of the child” is the mantra to justify anything, anything at all when it comes to harming men.

No, in civil court the phrase “best interest of the child” is the mantra to ensure, y’know, the best interest of the child. A baby can’t provide for himself, and if both parents (or, often in the case of minors who are parents, their parents) can provide equally for the child, that’s how the court will try to rule.

Now practically, the situation isn’t all that ideal. If one parent is engaged in full-time child care, for example, they’re taking an opportunity cost in terms of financial earnings, and the court will take that into account. Similarly, the court looks at the earnings and financial resources of both parents, and apportions support appropriately. As it happens in our patriarchal society, men tend to make more than women in our society, and women are expected to be the primary caregiver. So you get the result you see.

But you keep believing that this is all some anti-male conspiracy. Just bizarre.

Man duped into paying for a kid that’s not his by his adulterous partner?

Tough, best interest of the child.

Duped man can avail himself of a DNA test, which the courts will consider. But if the man is such a dupe that he waited a decade to challenge paternity, or didn’t challenge it at all, then yeah, tough. The civil court prioritises the best interest of the child, who’s considered the most innocent party in the dispute and the most helpless.

Man wants to adopt his biological child, files for adoption when the kid is a month old, but adoptive parents kidnap (legally sanctioned by the courts) the child and flee? Well, can’t return the child to his father, best interest of the child.

If it’s legally sanctioned by the court, “kidnapping” is legally meaningless. If it’s kidnapping (or, more specifically, breach of a court order regarding a pending filing for adoption), then it becomes a criminal matter.

Get back to us when you understand the difference between civil and criminal courts. It’s pretty important in the legal system.

I’m trying to understand the MRA argument here. Basically men should not have to pay child support for the children they sire, because they cannot force women to bear their children. In what way does that even pretend to make sense?

You don’t think the kid was raped?

How does my statement at 109…

My attitude toward the 12-year-old victim was just that: malfeasance was involved, because a kid that age can barely understand the concept of consent.

... lead you to believe that I don’t personally think the kid was de facto raped?

Just as Celda should learn the difference between civil and criminal courts, you might want to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.

I think that’s the wrong result, mind you, if the “father” is a minor victim of statutory rape. But in non-rape cases I wholeheartedly agree with it.

It’s a bad result, but not a legally wrong result. By the time it gets to a case of financial support, the criminal causes, as unfortunate as they are, are beside the point to the civil court. That precedent is listed in all of Celda’s examples.

gracchus: If celda was a 12 year old paying child support, then his cases would be relevant. What do they have to do with two adults hooking up in a bar? They are so striking because they are so rare.

... lead you to believe that I don’t personally think the kid was de facto raped?

What the fuck is “de facto” rape?

#96 celda,
I’m not reading from any of your biased sources. If you cant find something non-partisan then it shouldnt be included. Again I’m well aware that if she doesnt know the father that he cant stop her, however if he does find out he can get the kid back and make her pay child support. Not to mention, but it is very difficult to hide a pregnancy from someone youre intimate with so again that is a minority of cases in which she chooses to not acknowledge the father and in which he has no idea. He can even obtain a court ordered paternity test to be had on the kid. But again why are you mentioning this as it has nothing to do with a guy being forced to pay support? If he doesnt want a kid and she gives the kid up for adoption without him knowing, why does he care? Another issue with your perspective is how easy it would be to cheat the system. How would people arbitrate that in court, ie ” he said he wanted to have babies with me, now he says he doesnt,” ect. I bet as well that the amount of money that fathers would pay into taxes would be the equivalent of what they wouldve paid in child support when they have to fund all these social service programs for the women and their kids when women struggle with single parenthood.  And the reason (if true) women pay less is because they make less. I think you also overlook abortion and access. Many women would choose abortion but dont have access to it. Why is it that she should be punished for something he contributed to with a pregnancy that she isnt even choosing? Or in other words why does he get let off, but not her? In the case of domestic abuse the guy may also sabotage his BC and get her pregnant without her knowing-only to have her not have access to abortion and then he deprives her of support. I mean, how unrealistic can you get? There are many other reasons from a myriad of other social situations. But the fact is being as there is no presumption that she will abort the guy should not presume that there would be any other choice than a pregnancy.

gracchus: If celda was a 12 year old paying child support, then his cases would be relevant. What do they have to do with two adults hooking up in a bar? They are so striking because they are so rare.

Well, Celda believes that “the best interest of the child” is an anti-male conspiracy, and is anxious that what happened to the 12-year-old boy might happen to him. Combine that with his ignorance of basic American jurisprudence, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is a minor himself. If he isn’t, well, let’s just say that MRAs tend to start out having issues with women, which can result in some interesting anxieties.

What the fuck is “de facto” rape?

Rape that hasn’t been recognised as such in a criminal court (i.e de jure rape). Apparently, in addition to your difficulties with reading comprehension, you can’t do a Google search.

Aaaaand with that, I’m done with these two fools for the night. Thank you very much, folks, and don’t forget to tip your waiters.

I’m surprised MRAs aren’t calling for a ban on women’s ability to have multiple orgasms. After all, how is that fair? Women say they are for equality, but they can come a bunch of times when we poor men can only manage once!

I always equate “Men’s Rights” with “White Pride”. Not that they are identical, or have totally overlapping memberships, but they both reek of the privileged whining about the underprivileged being allowed to question (and change) the system.

Still though, out of 125 comments, only a handful of trolls, and only one totally batshit crazy one.

(side note: Firefox’s spellchecker doesn’t think “women’s” is a real word, so it suggests “womenfolk’s”...)

So why do you keep adding bullshit qualifiers like that? Why can’t you just simply say that he was raped?

MRA Celda:

First off, there are a host of serious men’s rights issues other than reproductive rights, which this article focuses on.

Ok!  Where in this post does Amanda say there aren’t?  Now, I’d definitely agree that there aren’t any serious MRA issues (except in the sense that they have serious issues, and cause them in others), and that anybody concerned about men keep MRAs as far away from such issues as possible.  But that’s a different matter. 

Men have no reproductive rights.

We can buy contraception.  We can get a vasectomy, and without doctors refusing to do it b/c we’re too young and haven’t had kids yet!  Plus, any guy who happens to gets pregnant has the exact same legal right to an abortion as any woman.

Men cannot force women to become a parent, but women can.

Nobody can force anybody to become a parent; that you think so raises concerns about your understanding of parenthood.  The law can try to get people who make children to provide money for their upbringing - something that applies to both men and women, although yes, in practice more to men since they’re far less likely to be actually raising the child (in which case the horrible evil woman will already be devoting a huge percentage of her resources towards doing so; see eg Bean Slap’s 10:53 comment).

If a boy is the victim of statutory rape, he must pay child support.
If a man is the victim of actual rape, he must pay child support.

Like Gracchus said, reliable citations please.  A quick googling doesn’t turn up anything concrete. I suspect most/all folks here would support not requiring rape victims to pay child support to a convicted rapist! 

Also: Amanda is not claiming that men don’t get screwed over sometimes too!  Really! [continued]

Why can’t you just simply say that he was raped?

Rape is a legal term, the ultimate conclusion in a criminal court.

[continued]

If a man receives a condom covered blowjob, and the woman takes semen out of the condom, and impregnates herself, he must pay child support.

“I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love…Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake…but I do deny them my essence.”

Ok, ok, I know I shouldn’t dignify this point with any further response, but ...  I’ll take your word on that one.  And you know, I’m sure in a world with billions of people, this *does* actually happen (since women are people, and therefore you can find some who act idiotically amoral too) and that the law is as you say. So - how could one change the law so that it protects men from life essence-snatching ladies *without* creating a loophole big enough to exempt every other man willing to lie to avoid having to provide any monetary support for his offspring? (Also any woman trying to avoid doing so, where applicable)

Men receive longer prison sentences simply for being men, compared to women with equivalent records.

Cite?  Also, again, Amanda is not claiming that the patriarchy doesn’t hurt men too.  So, what does this have to do with the post?

The same is true for blacks and other minorities: [link]

No, a reasonably reliable cite showing that “men receive longer prison sentences simply for being men, compared to women with equivalent records”. Did I just miss it?  I am rushing here, since I do actually take responsibility - happily - for caring for my child. 

Men are treated as a danger to kids by society: see the recent airline policies of not allowing adult men sit next to kids.

“

Brief googling turns up on recent case - British Airways - which went to court; the airline lost and was apparently reconsidering its position.  Some years ago 2 NZ airlines had such a policy; not clear if they
still do. Many people will argue - here, even! - that obsesion with stranger danger has become a full-fledged wildly-overreacting moral panic.  Cool!  But again, what relevance to the post?

However, women are significantly more likely to abuse their children

Cite?  Not saying it’s impossible - women are significantly more likely to spend way more time caring for their children - but: cite?  And again, what relevance to this post?

are are extremely significantly more likely to murder their children.

Cite?  Not saying it’s impossible - women are significantly more likely to spend way more time caring for their children - but: cite?  And again, what relevance to this post?

. Men are more likely to sexually abuse children

Damn.  It’s almost enough to make people freak out about letting men sit next to unaccompanied minors on a plane.  Um ... cite?  Just to keep you in practice ...  Be careful, though - to the extent they’re abusing children not their own, this can be seen as almost kinda justifying society treating men as a danger to kids.  Also, again, what relevance to this post?

Men are marginalized and even laughed at by police when it comes to domestic violence, despite the fact that more women commit DV than men.

Cite?  But hey,  I don’t doubt that many - probably most - men are marginalized and even laughed at by police when it comes to domestic violence.  It’s almost as if patriarchy hurts men too!  If only we could get somebody - some organized movement -  working to get rid of these sort of entrenched notions…. Er, what’s the relevance to this post, though?

More women are injured than men in DV incidents,

Cite?  (I mean, this is, afaik, true, but just go with it; it’s a good habit to get into.)  Still, kind of you to mention this, given it helps explain - even perhaps partly justify - some possible disparity in response.  Still, not all wounds are visible, and as mentioned above, I’m sure there’s a big helping of patriarchy hurting men too.  But what’s the relevance to this post?

but the fact that men underreport DV at an exponentially higher rate than women goes a long way to evening that out

Well, by definition we wouldn’t know that for sure, but cite? So we can see if that makes sense to examine?  Also, what’s the relevance to this post? [continued]

Recall, Gracchus already said, multiple times, that the situation was not GOOD, but was still legal, and that is something I agree with 100%.

You are using a insanely rare occurrence as evidence of widespread abuse, which is ludicrous.

[continued]

Here’s a story to illustrate this quote:

Oh, a story! I love stories!  I was just reading one the other day that involved trolls and dwarves and vampires and golems and so on!  It was a good story.  What’s the relevance to this post ... hey, wait! It is actually relevant to this post!  See post.

(Also, googling seems to indicate that yes, courts do take income into account.  Sure, dealing with the kind of person who would do almost anything rather than help feed his offspring has forced courts to look for evidence that there’s an intentional pattern of voluntary under- or un-employment, but according to http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/health/research/15pregnant.html :

“A court will not impute income if unemployment or underemployment is not voluntary, such as when a parent is laid off and is unable to find suitable employment despite a good faith effort to find it. This can be shown by copies of termination notices, cover letters seeking employment, rejection letters, lists of appointments and interviews, job searches and a calendar of daily efforts made to find suitable employment. A parent may not be able to earn as much as he or she was earlier because of changes in the job market or changes in the person’s health. Courts will take this into consideration as well” 

Which I agree is a crappy PITA for some poor bastard having to genuinely document all that.  Crafting elaborate ways for rather more fortunate folks to justify hiding their income or going semi-Galt in order to screw over kids ... not helping! 

So, let’s see ... You’re arguing that society screws men over as well. (You’re arguing more than that, yes, but since you didn’t bother to support any of your assertions, let’s go with this).  We might argue about specifics, but I - and most people here, I think - would agree to that general statement.  Hint: If that bothers you (and certainly I and many others think it’s crappy), it might help not to wrap it in paranoid rants about gold-digging bitchez stealing your precious bodily fluids in order to hit the jackpot of getting to raise a kid by themselves with limited monetary help from a furious, bitter guy making every possible attempt to cut off that help. 

Personally?  I’ve had some experience with men - fairly affluent, too! - spending years doing everything in their power to avoid having to contribute anything towards the raising of children they’ve helped make, under far less exculpatory situations than the one carefully constructed in that story (not done to me, but to people close to me).  I don’t know anyone who even claims that bitchez stole their sperm. (Do intentional oopsie! pregnancies happen, ever, in this big billions of people world? Ok, sure, people suck.  Of course, a whole lot of them seem to involve abusive men forcing women to get pregnant, from outright, well, force to poking holes in condoms or hiding birth control pills http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/health/research/15pregnant.html and I suspect that is a rather bigger problem.) 

Anyway, I’m guessing that a lot of people have that pattern of experiences.  And speaking for myself, reading this sort of screeching about how horrible!, horrible! it is that guys have to contribute anything towards their offsprings’ care! Because some hypothetical evil slut somewhere stole some hypothetical guy’s sperm-soaked undies! or whatever?  It makes me sick.  It makes me loathe whatever twisted, pathetic man-child is whining and whimpering about it.  It also makes it very, very easy to just dismiss any complaints they have out of hand, fairly or not.  Of course, given institutionalized misogyny and life’s general crappiness, one can rope in some sad, bitter, or just plain hateful guys (amplifying the problem), hence the whole MRA phenomena in the first place.  But again, if you actually care about men’s issues, you’d be best staying as far away from this sort of thing as possible.  And yes, by you I don’t mean you, really, since I doubt you will or even can listen, but hey, when there’s life there’s hope.

Looks like there’s some actual cites in newer comments.  Let’s see ...

Why can’t you just simply say that he was raped?
Rape is a legal term, the ultimate conclusion in a criminal court.

I don’t see why that is preventing you, Gracchus, or anyone else here from calling this kid a rape victim.

Recall, Gracchus already said, multiple times, that the situation was not GOOD, but was still legal, and that is something I agree with 100%.
You are using a insanely rare occurrence as evidence of widespread abuse, which is ludicrous.

I don’t think it’s evidence of widespread abuse. I think you guys are just acting as rape apologists.

#119,
Because they were the same age but for four years. Its not like it was 15 and 30. You have kids getting slapped with statutory rape when there is only 1 years difference. Quite different when its a few years difference and they are both in their mid-teens. And again where did I not term it statutory rape?

#125 celda,
How did it say that the boy was forced to pay child support?

“Harlan County prosecutor Alan Wagers said his office would help a 27 year old woman appeal a trial court’s denial of her lawsuit to get the father of her child to pay support. The father was 14 at the time, essentially making him a victim of statutory rape because he was too young to consent. Rush was never prosecuted”

It also doesnt say that she had sex with him at 27 just that he was 14 at the time. Even your link didnt say that all the cases talked about ended up in the boy having to pay child support. As well they also dont give much details or link to objective sources.

Recall: from that Wikipedia link you put waaay back up there, it says that there was no rape conviction. So I’m personally willing to call him a rape victim because I don’t think a 12-year-old can meaningfully consent, but that really has no impact on the legal proceedings that followed. Legally a rape victim was not sued for child support; maybe a rape conviction would have turned out differently re. child support, I dunno. But as it stands, you’ve still failed to prove your claim that the courts “forc[ed] someone to pay child support for being raped” on multiple levels (the courts didn’t find that he had been raped, and they really didn’t order him to pay child support because of that nonexistent rape conviction.)

I’m sorry, but it’s just absurd to me that people would actually argue that a woman gains by being impregnated, bearing a child, and getting child support from an unwilling father. Sure, there are isolated cases of young, ignorant women poking holes in condoms or lying about taking the pill (and even more cases of men messing with condoms), but to say that this works out for them is the height of stupidity. Do these so-called MRAs have the slightest clue how hard it is to be a single-parent? Do any of them know how incredibly stingy child support payment calculations are in most of the country? I worked at a non-profit that worked with impoverished domestic abuse survivors, divorced women, and soon to be divorced women, and even in an admirably progressive state like New Jersey, women barely receive enough from absent fathers to feed their children.

Maybe instead of focusing on demonizing women and reinforcing the systems that lead to both men and women tricking each other into pregnancies, these so called “Men’s Rights advocates” will fight against the fetishization of teenage parenthood? They should be out in the streets every day protesting outside the offices of anti-choice politicians, and demanding comprehensive sex ed in every school district. They should be holding seminars every day in their communities to teach teenagers that their gender identity doesn’t have to revolve around their ability to make babies. Most importantly, they should learn some history and realize all of the incredible things that feminism has done for men. But of course, they won’t, because fundamentally they’re a band of cowards who would rather pick a fight with the most vulnerable members of society, while the powerful far-right is the root of every problem with an actual solution.

Legally a rape victim was not sued for child support;

In the real world, that’s exactly what happened.

“I think you guys are just acting as rape apologists.”

Yeah, that’s it. “Pandagon.net: The Internet’s #1 Source for Rape Apologia”

Moreover, no one here has addressed the larger point: namely, that MRAs have valid concerns, rather than Amanda’s self-serving and biased portrayal of them as whining pussies, misogynistic assholes, etc.

It’s a both/and blog.  Like Punditus Maximus points out in #120, there are both valid concerns voiced by MRAs (albeit almost always ones that in the vast majority of cases could be used as a club against women and children by folks acting in serious bad faith), and MRAs are misogynistic assholes, etc.  As I said, just one good reason (of many) for anybody concerned about men to freeze out MRAs.

Good to see you attempted to support some of your claims, even if the actual facts seem often less enthusiastic about that ...  For example:

Custodial fathers are less likely to receive child support than custodial mothers: http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/chldsupp.html

Well, that’s census data from 1991/2 ... actually, let me stop there.  Do you have anything more recent?  I mean, I would be surprised if that’s not still true, but it might be more useful to look at the issue with data more recent than “Baby Got Back” and “Achy-Breaky Heart”.

However, if a woman wants to exercise her right to bodily autonomy by having a child, that is her choice. She should not have the right to force other people (the man) to pay for her choice.

Why not?  Look, let’s look at the vast, vast majority of cases that don’t include teens raping pre-teens or women obtaining men’s sperm through the use of fiendishly clever contraptions involving soda straws, string, and a paper clip.  You know, the ones where one or both people were just kinda stupid, or irresponsible, or genuinely shitty, or well, human and fallible, so you end up with a baby that one person doesn’t want to support.  Or where there was a divorce and the non (or joint) custodial parent ends up taking out their anger/grief/general crappiness/whatever on, as it works out, the child.  Or various other common, real world scenarios…

So ...Why not?  (Note that even in your 1991 data, there’s a smaller but substantial block of custodial dads getting child support payments from women.  In these cases, it’s his choice to take care of the child - why should he be able to force the woman to pay for his choice?) (Which I support in any vaguely reasonable situation, and vice versa).

Also: actual imputing income link from prior post: http://family-law.lawyers.com/child-support/Imputed-Income-in-Child-Support-Calculations.html

Regarding the boy and statutory rape it says that it was consensual sex with someone a mere 4 years older. It would be like a 20 year old having sex with a 24 year old. The woman was 19 and he was 15 and originally 16 and 12.

This is what it says about age of consent in Kansas. I dont think there was a significant age gap where the older was exploiting the younger as if it were 34 and 12. I think they were just horny and ignorant about contraception. When I was 13 I had sex with a 16 year old (woman/woman). I wouldnt term it even remotely ‘rape.’

“The age of consent in Kansas is 16. K.S.A. 21-3503, 21-3504, 21-3505 and 21-3522 prohibit sexual activity with minors aged 14 and 15. K.S.A. 21-3522 allows for a lesser penalty if the minor is between 14 or 15 and the offender is under 19 years old.”

Bean Slap, that’s very clearly statutory rape…

Whats statutory rape? What are you referring to? Did I say it wasnt? But so is a 15 year old that has it off with a 16 year old. Would I consider that control, force, exploitation and abuse of power relations; no. Would I consider that as horny teenagers that broke a technicality; yes. The 16 year old didnt even qualify as a pedophile according to the scientific definition which involves a cerain age gap and she did not have it.

http://www.csom.org/faq/index.html

10% of pedophiles are women which leaves 90% as men and I already linked to Dv rates at ampersand.

Sorry Bean Slap, I mean that according to the Kansas law you cited, a 12-year old and a 16 year old is clearly statutory rape.  In my mind, it’s an abuse of power relations because she was his babysitter and was in a position of authority over him.

#156:  I was glad to see that I was not the only one who giggled about that.

If you don’t want to have a child, take your reproduction into your own hand by using condoms, or getting a vasectomy, or even doing the fun sexy things that don’t include ejaculating into a woman’s vagina.

Using the outliers to define the norms is not the way to go.  Since most unwanted pregnancies don’t occur between 12 year olds and 16 years olds, it is silly to keep beating at it.  The horse is dead and is starting to smell.  Just like you are more likely to be murdered by someone you know than a roving serial killer, you become a lot more relevant if you speak to the masses, instead of that one lady who was totally chopped up by Buffalo Bill.

Most unwanted pregnancies are the result of two people who did not control their bodies in a way meant to prevent pregnancy: in the case of the guy, no condom and no vasectomy (or male birth control pill?  is that still happening?), and for the woman, no condom, and no pill or IUD or depo-provera.  Yep, the guy screwed the pooch by not better controlling the uncertainty around the pregnancy while he had the chance.  Bodily autonomy.  Right there.  Sorry you don’t get control once the action is taking place all up in our wombs buddy, but there it is.  The woman still has bodily autonomy in that one, whereas you CHOSE to risk the birth of a child at the point you had control, now face the consequences Billy.

The simple motto is this: if you don’t want to have a kid, control your reproduction - by using condoms or getting a vasectomy or using male BC (well, write and bitch to your congressperson and drug companies to get a male pill out ASAP..).  If you choose to risk it, live with the consequences.  Remember, you made a choice too.

Was just looking at the good men thing, do they not ban trolls? Like jeebus christ, I thought the guy who posts as stick rule was kind of annoying but the good men must have the worst comment threads outside of 4chan and youtube. Like free discussion sure but ban the worst people who make it clear over that they just want to shit on everything and shut down discussion. I won’t sigh and roll my eyes when pandagon nuance threads go belly up in shouting matches ever again.

As a loving father I find the contempt of these MRA assholes for the needs of the children they sire to be deeply offensive. If you don’t want to be responsible for the well-being of YOUR child, stick to masturbation. You’re not grown-up enough to have sex.

#162,
I dont think a 16 year old can have that much power over a 12 year old. Its not like 6 and 16.

#163,
Actually its contraceptive failure

#165,
Agreed.

These guys want to bitch about it….but they like the idea of forcibly impregnating women. It’s women not just escaping from the fetus prison that they hate, but the idea that they might be hoist by their own petard.

@22,  I was agreeing.  I believe you.

Daisy, I don’t know that they’re stupid.  I mean, the movement attracts stupid men, but really it attracts more assholes.  But what they mainly are are men that have bought completely the idea that women are a servant class, and when reality interferes, they get really angry.

Despite the trolling, it’s important to remember that 99.9% of MRAs wanted their children, and are only now revolting against child support after the divorce.

I do find Derren to be pretty standard in MRAs. He starts with the assumption that child support covers 100% of the child, a woman’s living expenses, and drinking money.  MRAs believe women live on $300 a month.  It’s kind of amusing, but yeah, really really really stupid.

A pair of terrific pieces, Amanda, and I’m so glad you were part of our GMP package.  I don’t read the comments on the threads anymore, frankly—eight years of blogging and facing MRA bile/death threats and the rest of it gets old. 

Thanks.

Wow.  I just glanced through the comments and I think that #177 has the right idea - don’t bother with the comments on pieces like this.  It’s enough that Amanda wrote a great article, which she did.

This leaves me feeling incredibly fortunate.  I have never fun into these whiny, engraged, assholes in real life, or if I did, I guess I blew them off really fast - knowing something was wrong before knowing exactly what.  I did see a few guys in a political forum I post on quite frequently, whacking off in a thread about lady’s nights.  I laughed!  I thought it was so funny.  After thinking, wow those guys don’t get even a tiny bit of sex, I moved onto important threads.  I had no idea it was a movement!

Thankfully, their troubles are not mine.  Their troubles are not most women’s.  You know why?  Because their troubles are not most men’s.

Add me to the list of people who were disappointed when our new MRA troll failed to pursue the ‘wage labor is slavery’ to its full, Red Communist/Anarchist, conclusion. So much promise in that one… *pouts*

I am childfree, and if the legislative anti-choice bullshit continues as it currently is doing, and for some reason I become pregnant and cannot get an abortion, do I have the right to give birth, accept no responsibility for the child and offload all responsibility for it onto the sperm donor against his will?

Because basically, that is what MRAs would be happy to see done to me and my hypothetical child.

Alternatively, if the man wanted a child and I didn’t, but say, I live somewhere in which contraception and abortion is a right in name only, do I get to give birth and the sperm donor isn’t allowed to leave until the kid is in his hands? and he has gone through a strict set of intrusive tests to prove his worth like adoptive parents do?

Would MRAs be happy with this version of a ‘paper abortion’ or is it only them that get the special rights to throw someone else under the bus and skip off scot-free? Does this paper abortion idea apply to women, or specifically just men? It would have to be specific to men and have a lot of clauses preventing loopholes to keep it in mens favor, because left the way it was thought of it could be used loads of ways to totally fuck a bro over.

Not really related to the sex conversation so much, but, like many here, I read the comments(and kinda wish I hadn’t)
-First, I kind of get the feeling that “my kids” are often just props in the “activist’s” drama…they seem not be referred to by name or even initial, which makes me feel it’s the “My” part that is more important. I also think that if the fighting with the ex ever stopped and she said “Sure…come by this weekend.” I doubt they would really do that.Although maybe I’m judging all these guys by my dad and I shouldn’t, but my dad hated the thought that my mom could find happiness elsewhere more than he ever really missed us. (To be clear, he did, but he hated breaking up the set more.)
Secondly, I think the “underreported” stupid thing MRAs say is that “housewives” are not accountable.Yeah, they only have to live up to a. their mothers, b. their husband’s mothers.c.the media fantasy of what a really good mother is. And my dad frequently tried to hold Mom “accountable” by second-guessing every dime she spent, especially if it was for us, you know, the same “my kids,” that the great outpouring of crocodile tears resulted from.
When she did have a good job when they were married, he made her give him her paycheck.
She never got a birthday present from him in fifteen years.
He still thinks she left him for another man.
I don’t think they are ever gonna get it, Amanda. But thanks for trying.

it’s the STATE that insists on child support, and THAT only happens if the woman has to recieve any public assistance

Thanks to John Kasich and Bill Clinton, as part of Ending Welfare As We Knew It, as I mention above. Why don’t MRAs willingly take responsibility for the consequences of their own acts? Isn’t this the conservative/libertarian credo? That’s why they all need guns, to repel home invaders, right? Can’t relay on the state to protect you.

Man duped into paying for a kid that’s not his by his adulterous partner?

  Tough, best interest of the child.

OK, I’m just gonna say it. If you believe a living, existing child in your household deserves not to be supported because it doesn’t carry the correct DNA, you are a waste of air and a sack of shit. CHILDREN ARE NOT POSSESSIONS. CHILDREN ARE PEOPLE.

Want a kid to be yours? RAISE IT. That makes it yours. Get off your whiny, hateful, selfish, sperm-obsessed ass, human the fuck up, be a parent. Actively raising a child means more than all the DNA in the world, and if you can’t see the value in actively raising a child unless they were provably sired from your line on a properly cloistered brood bitch, you are an inhuman fuck.

Despite the trolling, it’s important to remember that 99.9% of MRAs wanted their children, and are only now revolting against child support after the divorce.

Exactly this. CHILDREN ARE NOT POSSESSIONS. CHILDREN ARE PEOPLE. You can’t decide you don’t want them anymore once they’re not chattel accruing to your personal estate. They are individuals with rights and hopes and dreams and potential, they don’t exist to prop up your status. Yet so much of what MRAs bleat and whimper about is not being allowed to treat them like status-propping chattel. It’s fucking disgusting. Be a goddamn adult and recognize it’s not all about you.

If you don’t want to have a child, take your reproduction into your own hand by using condoms, or getting a vasectomy, or even doing the fun sexy things that don’t include ejaculating into a woman’s vagina.

Point of caution: women have become pregnant after anal sex.  Any fun sexy thing that involves spilling seed should consider issues of, um, leakage.

Despite the trolling, it’s important to remember that 99.9% of MRAs wanted their children, and are only now revolting against child support after the divorce.

It’s important to remember that Amanda Marcotte uses strawman arguments and moves the goalpost to “win” arguments.

All along we have been talking about cases where the man does not want to become a parent, but the woman has the kid anyway and sues for child support.

Now here comes Amanda saying that 99.9% of MRA’s wanted the kids in the first place.

Then we have people arguing that because cases of raped boys having to pay child support is not the norm, it’s ok that the courts have consistently ruled that they should have to.

In other words, because these cases of injustices are not the norm, it’s ok for this injustice to be legally upheld.

Then we have people denying facts, for example that men get harsher sentences simply for being men: http://www.terry.uga.edu/~mustard/sentencing.pdf

Then you have a woman talking about how a friend’s husband imprisoned her in the house to keep her from getting an abortion. This criminal act somehow means that forcing men to pay for kids they do not want is ok.

We can agree it’s wrong for a man to force a woman to give birth against her will, even if it was her choice to have sex. Yet, it’s ok for a woman to force a man to pay for a child he never wanted, since it was choice to have sex.

And throughout, we have the ad hominem, blatant lies, and marginalization such as “MRA’s want to forcibly impregnate women”.

Pandagon is incapable of honest discussion when it comes to anything that is against their feminist-biased agenda.

Again, Celda I hope you may answer:

Why don’t you just not have sex?

No sex=no problem

If you don’t have sex, you’ll be free from all the “feminist fascism” you and your MRA buddies are tying yourself in knots over when it comes to the legalities of children.

And if you must have sex, there are plenty of male people, I think 49% of the population are male so you’ll be spoiled for choice over finding a partner who you can get along with, with likely zero risk of them ever, ever getting pregnant and entrapping you into paying child support and whatever else you hate.

Yeah, Celda, I’m pretty sure your best course of action will be to go ghost on us.  We’ll soldier on without you in the dating pool.

MRA should stand for “My Right to Abuse” from reading the comments.

The only MRA person I ever met actually tried to sexually assault me, because he resented that he couldn’t get into my pants.  Then when I told him to never contact me again, freaked out at me calling me crazy and psycho, then telling me we should just start over.  When that didn’t work, he sulked to our mutual friends that I hated him for no reason.  Needless to say, there are now people I will never hang out with again because I just have this feeling if ever given the chance, he would reappear and try again.

It’s about control.  It’s a lot of people having temper tantrums from the paralyzing fear that they can’t control everything, and so they get into echo chambers and just repeat things over and over again, hoping maybe THIS TIME, their ice cream won’t fall out of the cone onto the sidewalk.

We can agree it’s wrong for a man to force a woman to give birth against her will, even if it was her choice to have sex. Yet, it’s ok for a woman to force a man to pay for a child he never wanted, since it was choice to have sex.

Which would you rather do? Have your veins and arteries hooked up to a bunny rabbit for nine months, and then shit out a bocce ball? Or write a series of checks?

In the case of the 13 year old boy, the State of Kansas forced the man to pay for the support of his child. Republicans simply do not want to pay to raise other people’s children—how was this the fault of the child’s mother? As the court case detailed, being required to pay to support one’s children has a long history in both the statute and common law.

Now, before Roe v. Wade, states forced women to give birth against their will.

#186

But what about what Denelian said about the system forcing women to sue for child support in some cases when they attempt to get aid for their families without him? Also, the cases you avoided mentioning were cases that illustrate that the mother doesn’t have unilateral control and can’t give up an unwanted child for adoption herself without the consent of the father, and in essence, he can force her to care for a child that she doesn’t want either… because once it’s a living, physically independent entity, *someone* has to take care of him/her, and society expects the parents to do this by default. Also… people aren’t exactly clear or consistent throughout what is often a very turbulent 9 months. There are many, many cases where a guy says that he wants the child at first and then decides he doesn’t halfway through, when it’s too late to abort. Serious things like this do take time to consider, but nature provides a slim window. Since he can say that he did make that decision before the child was born, he can honestly say that he “didn’t want it.” Is he ineligible for this “emancipation” from support, or do only cases where the man immediately and consistently says “I don’t want it” count?

Even men who eventually consistently say “I don’t want it.” often have a “Well, it’s not mine.” period or a “gone ghost” period (these often occur in tandem) that may also stretch into several months, past the point where an abortion is possible. (this all depends on the date of discovery… if she’s further along when she finds out she’s pregnant, there may be mere weeks) Then, it’s left to her to make the decision alone, as the only confirmed and/or present parent.

But virtually every article is about her/our “feminist-biased agenda”... you know you could’ve just said that you believe that “Pandagon is virtually incapable of honest discussion” instead of adding faux qualifiers. Also, can you name a feminist site that you firmly believe is capable of doing so?

I’m beginning to think that not reading comments on anything that could attract the MRA brigade might be a good policy. Seriously, why even bother replying to Celda’s bullshit?  This is what MRAs do - they dig up the outliers. The one-two really strange cases that will cause everyone to debate whether a 16 year old raped a 12 year old or whether some woman really engaged in oral sex with a man wearing a condom and then scooped out the sperm and “implanted” it into herself. Oh, and yeah, a quick googling will usually show that they distort the facts even on those few cases that they think support their argument. They do this, because, unfortunately for them, facts don’t support their position. See, you can easily google “child support US” and find all kinds of info from the census, like for instance that average amount of child support is about $280/month and that only a little over 60% of custodial parents (no statistical difference between men and women) receive full support their children are entitled to and that only about 57% of custodial mothers and 40% of custodial fathers go to court to establish child support agreements. But by all means, discuss the lying self-impregnating child-raping bitches who all run to court and receive thousands of dollars every month to support their drug habits.

Celda—you have perfectly illustrated Amanda’s point! The reason that men get on average higher sentences when you control for plea bargaining, severity of crime, etc is traditional sexist assumptions about silly women being too simple-minded to control their actions and only duped into crimes by other people. (Off topic, but the SD abortion bans made it illegal to hold a woman accountable for seeking an illegal abortions). The solution to this problem is more feminism!

“The findings regarding gender in the case of serious offenses are quite striking: the greater the proportion of female judges in a district, the lower the gender disparity for that district. I interpret this as evidence of a paternalistic bias among male judges that favors women. “

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/do-women-receive-lighter-prison-sentences-tha

The biggest problem with MRAs is that they seem to have no interest in making life better for men; they only use examples of “the patriarchy hurting men too” as a bludgeon to try to deny women rights. I actually DO think that existing prejudices about gender and want to find ways to keep young men out of prison, allow for more men in occupations that work with children to act as role models, etc. But it is really difficult when the conversation around those issues always seems to go “more women than men go to college now” and instead of the next question being “how can we get more boys to go to school” it is usually “has feminism overreached !?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? does literacy make you gay!?!?!? well jokes on all those uppity nerd bitches because now nobody will want to MARRY them!!!!”

the parenthetical statement should say “...for seeking an illegal abortion based on the same assumptions about women”

Just ran across this: Derren decided to take his argument to the more friendly confines of Reddits’ Men’s Rights subreddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/g0m5w/pandagons_groupies_are_pathological_liars/

Well #194 I wouldnt be so sure about that. First the study was not put into perspective and alot of details were left out. I imagine because it also comes from an MRA the facts arent exactly what they claim. It may also have to do with the fact that women over all are not as violent as men and usually pose less of a risk.

“While women are actually slightly less likely than men to be sentenced on conspiracy charges, when they are, it is often because they are not involved in a major way (or at all) in the drug trade.”

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2000/07/20/conspirators

/pandagons_groupies_are_pathological_liars/

Ooh, he misspelled “perfectly_logical” there. Though it is kinda adorable—like a puppy that just puked up your homework, the fluffy little fuck—that he’s decided to go the pout-‘n-flounce route. His reply to me was basically a “nuh UH” and then he went to have a cry about it with his bros (he’ll cry real loudly, and slam his door, and turn his music up, and fantasize about how sorry <strike>his mom</strike> Pandagon will be once he’s dead and gone.)

Really liked this one:

“When she mentions “boyfriend” she almost always mentions the great likelihood that if you have a boyfriend he will rape you.If she mentions “husband” she will also throw in that husbands frequently beat their wives.I have been meaning to write a perl script that would go through her pandagon posts and get some hard numbers on how often she does/does not mention boyfriend or husband without mentioning getting raped/beaten, but I have a job and a family and it’s not worth the time.
Just be aware mentioning rape/physical abuse when mentioning male romantic partners is feminist code (that men are evil)”

Or the guy that thinks feminists are bad because they have “barren wombs.”

When she mentions “boyfriend” she almost always mentions the great likelihood that if you have a boyfriend he will rape you.

Damn, Amanda - pillow talk between you and wasshisname must be really depressing.

I see Celda put in an appearance there too. It really is hysterical how they got their asses kicked and ran away to snivel about the mean feminists. Awww.

It’s also hysterical how, just like always, it comes down to projection. “Lie, lie, lie; palpable lie; easily fact-checkable lie; ridiculous lie. ALSO AMANDA MARCOTTE AND HER FEMINIST LACKEYS ARE SUCHHHHHHHHHH LIARS YOU GUISE.”

Hey there, long time reader first time commenter.

I’m a noncustodial parent who pays child support every month and always have. It’s not a couple hundred bucks, either. Until recently it was almost exactly half of my take-home pay. I don’t begrudge it and I believe it’s my duty to pay it. I love my kids and I chose to play my part in bringing them into the world. Also, I am remarried to a wonderful woman who is pregnant with our first, and I’m doing my best to be supportive. Probably not doing well enough, but doing my best. I don’t consider myself an MRA, and I don’t think men should be able to force women to either have or not have abortions.

That said, I think it’s unkind to dismiss this entire issue the way Amanda and many of the commentators have. Not because MRAs are right, but because child support causes some pretty strong emotions that are, when you step back and think about it, pretty understandable. When a family splits up, both the custodial and the noncustodial parents are left with a burden. If things are apportioned fairly, it’s a pretty big burden in both cases. I think it’s understandable if the custodial parent resents the noncustodial for leaving him or her with the burden of raising children alone. I don’t see why it can’t also be understandable that the noncustodial parent might have some resentment about being stuck with the bill without the benefit of actually getting to raise the child. It’s a situation that sucks. Should society give the noncustodial parent special rights because it sucks? No. But a little compassion wouldn’t be misplaced. Divorce sucks for everyone when kids are involved, and not every noncustodial male is a lothario that’s out for consequence-free sex.

(Now, here’s where I really depart from Amanda and maybe (?) enter MRA territory.)

Speaking of consequence free sex… no sex is guaranteed consequence-free, right? Yet we’re sex-positive on this website, and I know plenty of sex-positive people that don’t want children. If you’re sex-positive and don’t want children, whether you’re male or female, you run a small but real risk of one day having that “oh shit” moment where you realize your sex-positive actions have just resulted in a very different kind of “positive result.” What are your options? If you’re female, you have 9 months of bodily invasion and discomfort of the most horrible kind, plus 18 years of responsibility. If you’re male, you have 9 months of relative ease, plus those same 18 years of responsibility. If you’re female, you get to choose: the aforementioned 9 month / 18 year deal, or an abortion. If you’re a man, you don’t get that choice. See the difference?

I feel like a lot of the commentators on this site just assume that, well, if you’re a man you can totally blow off the whole thing. You can skip out on the woman during her pregnancy, blow off delivery, and maybe dash off a couple of checks now and then to keep the “bitch” from garnishing your wages. But if you think that’s a real choice, you’re forgetting one thing: people who blow off their pregnant partners and fail to pay child support are TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS. So the real male options are:
  1. Nine months of relative ease, 18 years commitment
  2. Partner has abortion (not the man’s choice)
  3. BE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DOUCHEBAG, and live with that for the rest of your life.
Men who don’t want to take option 3 are stuck with options 1 & 2. I don’t want option 3. (And no, that doesn’t make me a Nice Guy and I don’t deserve sex because of it. I’m not a fucking nice guy, actually. What I am is a member of the human race.) And options 1&2;are not actually options for the guy. They’re the two ways this thing could end, and the guy doesn’t get to say boo about it.

I don’t know, that’s probably the way it has to be. But to claim that men have total “reproductive freedom” because they control who they stick their dick into is to believe one of two things: either men should be 100% committed to having a child any time they ejaculate (which would, I think, make men a lot less sex-positive and a lot more like Ross Douthat), or that the only hard part of childrearing is the first nine months.

SingleMalt:

But if you think that’s a real choice, you’re forgetting one thing: people who blow off their pregnant partners and fail to pay child support are TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS.

Being a terrible human being is a choice.  Saying “this would make one a terrible human being; therefore, it’s not a real choice” is kind of useless.

either men should be 100% committed to having a child any time they ejaculate (which would, I think, make men a lot less sex-positive and a lot more like Ross Douthat)

People should be 100% committed to the idea that no method of sexual intercourse between a sperm-bearer and an eggs-bearer is entirely safe, and should take steps accordingly—use prophylactics, get sterilised (if desired), and perhaps talk about this topic with their sex partner before sex.  It’s what I did with my current partner: we sat down and had a frank conversation about sex, and STDs/safety, and what would happen if I got pregnant.  He was okay with that potentiality, so we didn’t break it off.

If you’re not okay with the possibility that your sex partner may keep the child, or if you don’t think your sex partner has even thought about the topic much at all (see also me when I was in my early 20s), don’t sleep with them.  You will neither turn into Douthat nor have your dick fall off if you don’t have sex that day.

That’s part of what being sex-positive is: risk assessment, and frank and honest communication.  Alls I see from “Men should be able to write off the child!” is an avoidance of communication—“I’d rather just have sex, and if she gets pregnant, meh, I’ll sign off my parental rights.  Why talk about it first?”

Celda, you’re annoyed b/c Amanda’s arguing that 99.9% of MRAs “wanted their children, and are only now revolting against child support after the divorce,” and b/c after many detailed comments about bizarre stat rape cases, people have basically rejected them as irrelevant.  You see it as strawman-building and goalpost-moving… but these have everything to do with what we’re talking about!  In part, it has to do with (mis)representations of reality.

After all, you yourself have argued that this is about who/what MRAs are.  Now, I’m taking “99.9%” as rhetorical rather than literal - eg, ‘the vast majority’, and to be fair I doubt there’s much in the way of reliable studies!  But in the absence of data, we can at least consider anecdata.  Personally, I’ve heard about a lot of hypothetical ‘never wanted the kid/even tricked into pregnancy guys ... and they do exist! ...  but the actual MRAs talking about them, whenever that info’s available, almost always turn out to be bitter guys angry about having to pay child support after divorce (which along with custody is a major MRA concern). And indeed, this experience seems to be very widely shared!  You’ve been focusing on “cases where the man does not want to become a parent, but the woman has the kid anyway and sues for child support.”, and people have responded to that, but to the extent that this isn’t actually as common as implied, and much less of a motivator in the MRA movement, that’s kinda important.

Surely you’d agree that knowing where so many MRAs are coming fromand this odd slippage between never wanted kid/supported kid until divorce - is relevant to understanding who they, and what their goals might be? 

(I’d also note that while you showed up insisting that MRAs have other issues than ‘reproductive rights’ - something Amanda has in no way denied - and briefly listed a few (including some I feel are quite genuine, if difficult issues), that seem to have almost completely fallen by the wayside while you push the ‘paper abortion’ argument).

As for the literal handful, at most, of cases of raped boys’ parents having to pay child support to somewhat older teens who pled out - well, even with all these left-out caveats, this does still seem like a genuine injustice, one that nobody’s happy with, even as Gracchus has given a convincing explanation as to why it’s legal and in a bizarre way even logical, and Antigone has pointed out possible risks in trying to fix it.  But the fact remains that it is a astonishingly unrepresentative and incredibly rare occurrence without any obvious lessons for the wider issue. 

That doesn’t make it any less unjust, of course.  And if you were just saying, look at this, this is an injustice, you’d have lots of support; indeed, I’d happily vote for any sane law ensuring, say, that the state is responsible for child support in that sort of statutory rape case - I think the US can afford small payments for a tiny handful of children!  (Although even as I say this I pause, wondering how MRAs would try to exploit and pervert it).  But that isn’t, afaict, what you’re arguing.  Especially in ideological context, you’d seem to be pushing for major changes on the basis of one or two wildly unrepresentative cases, and on a movement that seems to be largely involved in telling stories, seemingly to justify rather unsympathetic goals. That’s a problem. [continued]

[continued] Something interesting ... the examples you briefly give of other MRA issues mostly have a very similar pattern: ‘oh, you think men are bad, but ha, look, women are much worse!’ (cf rightwingers: “liberals are the real racists/sexists/etc).  In fact, you end up leaving out some seemingly inconvenient facts - for example, that in many - it sounds like very much the majority? - cases of men getting raped, the perpetrator is another man.  Male victims of domestic violence, as you point out, may be marginalized and even laughed at by police, but male victims of prison rape - a huge and for that population extremely common - are often a punchline; where it’s viewed more seriously, it’s often considered, grotesquely, a kind of justice.  That you’d miss this is a bit worrying.

Given this pattern, I’m not sure what you can make of alysia’s comment #194 - perhaps you see it as some kind of gotcha - but really, it’s quite a good example of how feminism can inform men’s concerns, and suggests how folks focused on mens’ issues could work together with feminists towards a more equal - and equally responsible - world.  The issue of men getting raped - by women or other men - is another example.  But MRAs screeching about semen-stealing slutz are contributing nothing, except to befoul the whole discussion. 

Indeed, MRA rhetoric depicts a truly foul and disturbing world, one filled with, as Elena puts it in #193, “lying self-impregnating child-raping bitches who all run to court and receive thousands of dollars every month to support their drug habits.”  Feminists have often been caricatured as obsessive man-haters (I mean, just look at the stuff Bean Slap quotes in #199), but this is an even more bitter and hostile view than any such portrayal, one recognizable - even given that you can find horrible women, too - as deeply, deeply misogynistic.  I mean, seriously, a movement
a) voicing an almost ludicrously misogynistic view of women,
b) pushing for extensive legal changeslikely to put countless women (and some men) and children (some boys!) at risk,
c)all on the basis of a literal handful of compulsively repeated and ridiculously unrepresentative examples,
d) largely composed of people willing to tell you how horrible it is that after getting divorced they’re being forced to pay some sum of money covering a small and unequal - lesser portion of the raising of their child or
e)whining that damn bitchez can get an abortion, so how come they also get to force men to pay for a child that they never wanted (as if the women were sitting on their butts eating bon bons, rather than doing the incredibly hard work of raising a child), and
f) all seemingly unable to realize that they’re doing the equivalent of digging in their ass for half-dried fecal bits and then thrusting them in the disgusted onlookers’ faces.

Do you see how there could be some difficulty here?

We can agree it’s wrong for a man to force a woman to give birth against her will, even if it was her choice to have sex. Yet, it’s ok for a woman to force a man to pay for a child he never wanted, since it was choice to have sex.

People have been trying and trying to explain this to you.  Look: it’s wrong for a man to force a woman to give birth against her will, or to terminate a pregnancy against her will, for reasons that I hope are viscerally felt, for starters, but more abstractly (and within increasingly restricted limits, and a panoply of roadblocks)  because of issues of bodily automony and the non-personhood of the fetus, even if it was her choice to have sex.  And yes, it’s ok for the state to try to get a man (or woman!) to pay for a child that he or she never wanted, or got pissy about later.  Not because it was his choice to have sex - that’s just a way to avoid the problem; rather, there aren’t issues of bodily autonomy, and there are issues of child-personhood. There isn’t any possible equivalence here.  Somebody has to help pitch in, and as a society we’ve decided that the other person who helped make the child is a prime candidate.  Remember, for every man -or woman! - making child support payments, there’s a woman - or man - working their ass off to actually raise a kid.  If one wanted to improve things, working with feminists to improve women’s workplace earning potential, and increase the acceptability of men doing more childcare, and general contraception knowledge and availability, and ... if.  If.

So if men could choose to not be responsible for a pregnancy, how would that change things, besides them not having to pay support?

Maybe some women would choose abortion who would otherwise have the child because they’d have to give up on the idea of getting any financial support at all to help raise the child.

But women who don’t want to have an abortion, or who take a chance and think they may be able to change his mind but find out they can’t, would now have a harder time raising their child, unless of course we share that financial responsibility through taxes.  They may hope that being more “friendly” to the man will get them more support, trading away their labor and sexuality for the child’s benefit. 

The kids grow up knowing that their fathers made a deliberate choice to separate from them—not their mothers, *them*.  Their fathers made a legal, considered statement that their children are literally not wanted. 

Some will learn that their mothers have to basically prostitute themselves to support them.

Way to go to make men look good!  That won’t give kids the idea that men are shitheads, will it?

shorter youwillbestopped:  “FART! FAART!  FAAAAAAAAAAART! hahahahahah you didn’t throw me out yet FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTTTTTT!!!!”

And the feminazi she devil who runs this shithole is one of the most loathsome,hypocritical,contemptous people out there,

You need to work on your sentence structure or cut back on the coke and meth, douchbagwillbestopped, you sick, twisted perverted idiot.

YOuwillbestopped has never seen a naked woman in his life.  George Sodini in training?

Dan S,Amanda evil she cunt nazi marcotte,denelian,Single Malt,Gracchus,Mike Ess, and a few others who’s names elude me, but you know who you are, are the biggest pieces of shit on here and out there. If it were up to me, you’d all be thrown in jail for life.

*sniff* Forgotten again.

Hey, YWBS - you seem to have a fundamental confusion between “shit” and “cunt”.  Having heterosexual relations with a woman usually clears up such a confusion; have you considered trying it at least once in your life?  You may have to pay - a lot - but it’ll probably be worth it, if only to prevent nasty feminazis laughing at you so hard…

@224 “feminazi cunt,” “fag’” and “get back in the kitchen”

Yup, you have totally earned the right to call people out for unoriginal insults there, truth-sayer.

Phoenician, don’t pawn that turd off on the poor prostitutes! They go through enough.

Oh, and all this talk about when you bitches get knocked up, and as to kill or keep the baby, you know where I stand on it, and you seem to defend if she does keep and not kill the baby, and not get married or be with the guy, that now the guy has to be involved and pay up etc. No.

FFS, please average out your sentence lengths! The first sentence had about a million clauses and the second had a whole two letters. Did you switch typing hands between sentences?

(Oh, and PiaToR, don’t be sad! I’m sure he didn’t forget! All the “you know who you are yadda yadda prison worst piece of shit” musta been about you! He’s just being coy ‘cause he loves you best; I’m sure his notebooks are covered in hearts and “Mr. Youwillbestopped InatimeofRomans” and “Mr. Phoenician B. Stopped” and the like. Dreamy. ;p)

And the feminazi she devil who runs this shithole is one of the most loathsome,hypocritical,contemptous people out there,

You need to work on your sentence structure or cut back on the coke and meth, douchbagwillbestopped, you sick, twisted perverted idiot.

Lol, meth indeed. “Babbling angrily at imaginary feminazi she devils isn’t normal. But on MRA it is.”

Denelian—

You make a fair point; of course you should discuss this sort of thing before you have sex. I’d argue that it’s still a scary proposition for a man if a pregnancy does occur: will she still feel the same way once the test comes back positive? Am I sure that we talked this out enough? Was she lying to me or to herself?

A couple of people replied to my post saying “that’s what prophylactics are for.” I thought if I spelled things correctly and used proper grammar that people would think I had at least average intelligence. Obviously I was wrong. Of course you should use a condom or other methods of birth control, and I didn’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t. But these things are never 100% effective.

My argument is not that people should be uncareful about sex. My argument is that when a pregnancy occurs, a decent woman has options that are legal, moral, and ethical. A decent man has nearly* none. (I stand by my position that dropping out of the human race and becoming a total fucking douche is not a reasonable option, although I concede that plenty of men do take that option. Fuck those guys.)

* Thanks to the commenter who took the time to explain adoption law, that was enlightening. I’m not sure that it changes my central thesis, though. It sounds as if a man can prevent an adoption, which is actually pretty reprehensible when you think about it; but it’s still the woman’s choice to initiate an adoption.

If you think about it, the power of the man to prevent an adoption is a little like the power of the woman to prevent an abortion (yes, even as I write that I realize it sounds pretty fucked up; stay with me for a second): it’s the ability to make a decision that will affect someone’s life for the next 18 years. (Or more; I’m in the 15th year of my first child’s life and there is talk of college…)

Dan S—
Let me be really clear about what I’m calling for here: I’m not asking for more “rights” or saying that we should change the system (except that adoption thing, that’s pretty screwed up). You’re quite right that *someone* has to pay a child’s way in the world, and it may as well be the sperm and egg donors. I’m just saying that decent people as well as douchebags can find themselves in a situation where they must accept responsibility for a child they didn’t want. Show a little compassion.

I’m a little different—my children were never unwanted. I do admit that after my wife had an affair and left me , I was a lot less happy that I’d chosen to have children with her. (Pre-emptive admission: I wasn’t a super-great husband. But she also had an affair and left the spouse after me, so I’m not going to take all of the blame here.) You seem to think very poorly of people who, after divorce, regret their decision to have children. I think it’s a fairly natural response to what is, after all, a very jarring life change. Perhaps you’ve never been through a divorce with children. You can’t stop loving the children, but you definitely wish you hadn’t had those wonderful kids with your ex. Again, show some compassion. It’s a hard row to hoe, and if you haven’t been there you really don’t know.

oldfeminist—

I like your style. You’re right, a child that is brought up knowing her father rejected her wouldn’t exactly think the best of men!

But I think you’re attacking a strawman, at least if you were replying to me. My point wasn’t to argue that MRAs were right, or that men should ever have the power to reject responsibility. My point was just this: during the few months when an unwanted pregnancy can still be ended, the decision, and the power over at least one man’s earnings for the next two decades, rests in the hands of the pregnant woman.

I suppose you’ll argue that this is as it should be, that it’s vanishingly small recompense for centuries of patriarchal oppression. Eh, you’re probably right.

Phoenician, don’t pawn that turd off on the poor prostitutes! They go through enough.

Well I’m not volunteering.

(Oh, and PiaToR, don’t be sad! I’m sure he didn’t forget! All the “you know who you are yadda yadda prison worst piece of shit” musta been about you! He’s just being coy ‘cause he loves you best; I’m sure his notebooks are covered in hearts and “Mr. Youwillbestopped InatimeofRomans” and “Mr. Phoenician B. Stopped” and the like. Dreamy. ;p)

I hate you so much right now.

I don’t know why I even bothered posting on here since none of you can clearly see the truth and won’t admit what’s wrong and choose to so pettily attack me

Don’t have anyone to have sex with and force to have your child?

you will be stopped in due time.

Ohhhhhhhhhh, I like the supervillian vibe you give off there, but it’s more likely that Amanda will clean you up and stop you in due time.

Thanks for playing, fool.

@youwillbestopped

I’m asexual. I never have sex. Not fucking is the bee’s knees.

Try eatting a daily regimen of SSRIs and SNRIs to simulate asexuality and just go with it for five years. You may discover that you’ll like the new you as compared to the you that wanted to get inside of others, or be gotten inside of by others. You’ll likely find yourself a hobby that completes you, something worth far more to you than what you get out of a wet hole, heck at least you won’t be risking the ultimate horrors that can come out of wet holes, santorum and baby-shackles and you bitten off member.

And Aids, Syphilis, Warts, Herpes, and Trichomonas vaginalis.

Sex to me is like, you know… like gag me with a spoon.

I mean, c’mon. Y’all so grody.

My argument is that when a pregnancy occurs, a decent woman has options that are legal, moral, and ethical. A decent man has nearly* none.

Men have the same options they have always had—except moving out of state no longer helps them escape their obligations.

youwillbestopped: When you wake up in the morning, how do you tell your face from your rectum? Or have they just sort of merged together into one gaping black hole of insecurity, self-delusion, and ignorance? Maybe you can’t remember which is which anymore, so you just alternate each day?

When you walk into a room, do women cringe? Do you enjoy having that effect on women? You probably do, but I’m guessing that at some point, most of the women you knew stopped being afraid of you. After a while, they just started to laugh at you instead of cringe. Then you switched to progressively more socially vulnerable and easily demonized women. But eventually, even they started to see right through you and they started noticing how weak, absurd, and cowardly you are. So now you have to use the Internet to try and hurt women, but it’s just not the same, is it? That probably makes you even more frustrated. Here’s some advice: bears are really vulnerable and easy to bully. Try picking a fight with one.

I hate you so much right now.
Comment #232: Phoenician in a time of Romans

Hee. If the lovely picture I painted you isn’t evidence that I’m evil, I don’t know what is.

Here’s some advice: bears are really vulnerable and easy to bully. Try picking a fight with one.

Especially mama bears with cubs. YWBS, you should share your nuanced views on parenting with those fuzzy ladies! But they’re a little hard of hearing so you’ll have to get up pretty close. And don’t be afraid to get in between them and their cubs, too; they like that.

Well, maybe if said wet holes were smarter, we wouldn’t have those issues you talked about. Besides, I wouldn’t be with someone who has any of those said diseases. I actually want to get married and have a family and believe in that sort of thing.

Well, perhaps you’ll find a nice man who will overlook your obvious problems and make you his wife…

I can’t physically harm or threaten anyone. Insult, mock, degrade yes.

Mock? Us? ...Well, you can try, I suppose. Unimaginatively*. I mean, you’re kind of shit at it but keep it up, sport, and you’ll be ready to hit 4chan in no time! Ya gotta have a dream—if trolling is what you were born to do don’t let things like “grammar” and “basic human decency” get in the way! Attaboy!

* “Feminazi”? Saucy language like that is just going to kick off another discussion about cute jackboots. Amanda’ll turn that shit into a fashion thread <strike>faster than your dick shrivels in the presence of pitying women’s laughter</strike>; I seen her do it! :D

I’m just saying that decent people as well as douchebags can find themselves in a situation where they must accept responsibility for a child they didn’t want.

Well of course. Where you differ from the MRAs is that they’re unwilling to accept that. Look at Celda’s bed-wetting bitterness over the fact that birth control can fail, that there’s always a small risk that a man could be on the hook for child support in those cases. MRAs want sex, badly, but they’re also terrified of the potential consequences. Eventually, this translates into such obvious bitter misogyny that women can see it from a mile away, so their chances of getting sex at all are substantially reduced, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

MRAs are also unwilling to accept that, from conception to birth or termination, the woman is in full control of the situation because at that point it’s her body that’s affected. Sometimes (as with Celda) they’re upset that the woman won’t have an abortion, putting them on the hook for child support. Sometimes, as with the banned nutbar, they’re upset that the woman will have an abortion, depriving them of a chance to show off the result of their sperm magic to Jeebus. Either way, they don’t see the woman as a person but an incubator to be switched on or off.

Finally, once the child is born, MRAs are opposed to paying any portion of child support unless they (as opposed to the lying/cheating/crazy/money-hungry b*tch) control the situation 100%. The child himself barely registers as a pawn—it’s all about the man and how he’s been betrayed by the woman. So they’re left in a situation where, even if they wanted to move on gracefully with their lives, they can’t.

These are not the attitudes of mature men with a healthy and realistic attitude towards sex, women, children or even money. And those attitudes (mainly a result of extreme issues of fear and control) leads to misogyny and bizarre conspiracy theories about the legal system. You’ve seen their behaviour in this thread. It’s their refusal to recognise that prompts our contempt.

Your personal regrets over your situation are understandable, but you’re looking at your kids as a lot more than pawns and giving them the portion of love and support they’re due from you. As to your ex, you don’t seem to be lumping all women in with her or even assigning her sole blame for the divorce. You do seem to have a problem with the general concept of woman having control during the preganancy, but you accept the situation. So don’t worry: these are not the hallmarks of MRAs, or someone who defends them.

I’ll leave the thread with that.

My point was just this: during the few months when an unwanted pregnancy can still be ended, the decision, and the power over at least one man’s earnings for the next two decades, rests in the hands of the pregnant woman.

I suppose you’ll argue that this is as it should be, that it’s vanishingly small recompense for centuries of patriarchal oppression. Eh, you’re probably right. grin
Comment #220: SingleMalt on 03/10 at 02:27 AM

I don’t argue this is “as it should be.”  It just is.  It’s not some just revenge for men being shitheads.  The point is not to punish men for having sex.

It’s in the interest of the child, and society, for children to be supported.  It’s in the interest of women, and society, to respect their choices when it comes to their pregnancies. 

You seem to imply there’s some wonderful extra bonus fun for women being able to get an abortion or get an average of $4300/year child support from a man who maybe hates her for it.  That we get something out of taking a man to court to get money to feed our children. 

It isn’t.  It’s something that is of a part with having fertilized ova grow inside the woman, making it her literal physical responsibility.

It’s bad enough that a lot of men manage to de facto abandon their children.  To make it easy to separate from one’s child without consequence would create an underclass of bastard children.  These bastard children would have literally fewer rights than non-bastard children, not having the right to be supported by both parents absent adoption or legal abandonment. 

If we could make it so that fertilized human ova grew in tubes, or trees, instead of tummies, life would be “fairer.”  Until that time, we have to make the best choice for the child and society.

On the whole paternity issue, I just want to say, I never liked the argument that consent to have sex (even with contraception) automatically equates to consent to parenthood. It just seems WAY too close to the kind of rhetoric I’ve heard from the forced-birth brigade. Their usual version is “if a woman didn’t want to get pregnant, she should have just kept her legs closed.” The variant I’ve heard all too often from self-professed “feminists” (whether they actually fit that label is a discussion for another time) is “if he didn’t want to pay child support, he should have kept it in his pants.” In either case, it’s the same basic slut-shaming attitude: “if you didn’t want <consequence>, you shouldn’t have had sex.” I also think that if a man (or for that matter, a woman) wants to be a part of their child’s life, child support (depending on their income) SHOULD be a prerequisite, and that the only times a parent who DOES pay child support should be denied visitation rights are if they’re abusive or in an ongoing custody dispute and likely to grab the kid and run (actually one of the most common types of kidnapping, IIRC). Rights and responsibilities should go hand-in-hand.

Huh. Reading these comments makes me think that I’ve been pretty lucky in life. Where I come from, people don’t shirk their responsibilities, not if they want to keep the respect of their friends and family. And if they feel some strong emotions, bitterness or whatever, they talk it out but they don’t act on those emotions to the detriment of others. Maybe it’s because my family’s religious in a mostly-good way, or maybe it’s because we all have good jobs and have never had to choose between meeting our obligations and putting food on the table.

I guess when I read about guys that complain about lack of control, I understand it. I’ve been there. When you write that check every month, you really don’t know if it’s going to be spent directly on your kids. You know that some of it has to go to your ex—if nothing else, so she can raise the kids, right? And sometimes you wish that you had the power to control that a bit. You wish you could make *just* your kids comfortable, and let your ex suffer a bit. You wish there was some way to make it so your ex doesn’t get to live in the same house as your kids or eat the same food as your kids, because you feel like you’re paying for it and it’s a little unfair. And sometimes you get drunk with friends and you let that bitterness out, and you say that you hate that cheating bitch and wish that she and her good-for-nothing new husband would get real jobs and quit living high off of the sweat of your brow.

But you keep those feelings between you and your friends. You teach the kids to respect their mom and (new) dad. You grit your teeth when they accidentally call you by his name, or call him ‘our dad’ in front of you. You try to be happy that they’re finally in a stable nuclear family. And you keep writing those checks.

Is that really so uncommon?

“Where I come from, people don’t shirk their responsibilities, not if they want to keep the respect of their friends and family.”

This statement brought to you by confirmation bias, incomplete data, and the Letter Q.

My argument is that when a pregnancy occurs, a decent woman has options that are legal, moral, and ethical. A decent man has nearly* none.

And? Honestly, I’m not being sarcastic or mean when I say, tough. Them’s the breaks. Biology’s not fair, time to move on.

The variant I’ve heard all too often from self-professed “feminists” (whether they actually fit that label is a discussion for another time) is “if he didn’t want to pay child support, he should have kept it in his pants.”

No, there really is a difference. I struggled with this too until someone laid it out for me thus: everyone gets to control their own personal bodies, and whatever is inside their own personal bodies.

Fertilization of the ovum, gestation of the blastocyst, and childbirth happen inside the woman’s body, so she gets to choose about those things. A man’s sperm is inside his body until he chooses to put it somewhere else. If he wants to retain control over what happens to his sperm, then he should choose where to put his sperm accordingly. If he chooses to put it inside someone else’s body, then he gives up control of what happens to it from that point on, including the creation of a new, third person with the right to be provided for.

Biology isn’t fair. If, say, humans reproduced like seahorses, with males carrying and incubating the fertilized eggs? In that case the balance of reproductive choice would be pretty much reversed and it would be women who would be responsible for ensuring that if we wanted to control what happens to our eggs, we would have to be careful when and where we allowed them to leave our bodies. But we don’t reproduce like seahorses, so that’s not how we divide reproductive choice. The most equitable way is to allow that everyone controls their own personal bodies and anything inside those bodies.

“No, there really is a difference. I struggled with this too until someone laid it out for me thus: everyone gets to control their own personal bodies, and whatever is inside their own personal bodies.”

Man, this is one of those hair-pullers.  They’re really not the same thing at all.  Even a little bit.  I mean, the anti-choicer saying “You can just keep your legs closed”? Is asking everybody to just sort of pretend like there’s not some super-old, super-safe, pretty fucking easy (when you remove all the unnecessary obstacles) medical procedure that will result in the woman not having a baby just as reliably as if the woman kept her legs shut.  It’s like if we banned fillings and root canals and fluoride rinses and told everyone they could just not eat sugar.  Or!  If we banned condoms, and then told men that they could just keep it in their pants.

I mean, I suppose if I ever ran across a woman who was dead set against a) carrying to term and b) having an abortion and c) ever shutting up about the horror of having to pick one in the event of a birth control failure, I’d point out that she could, in fact, just not ever have potentially procreative sex.  So far, this lovecraftian response to the biological reality of pregnancy seems to be a dude thing.  Is it so very shocking that a guy who can’t get over the need to take responsibility for his own birth control or for his own choice of sex partner has it pointed out to him that, well, he can also exercise his right to remain abstinent?  Or that if you’re using condoms, and your partner claims to be in agreement with you re: birth control failure, and you have no reason to disbelieve her, and you’re still hand-wringing about the unbearable loss of control that is having to trust a woman, you’re not actually left with too many non-abstinence options for relieving that anxiety?  Or that maybe—just maybe!—it wouldn’t actually be such a fucking bad idea for you to not fuck until you could fuck without freaking the fuck out about everything you can’t fucking control when it comes to fucking?

Or!  If we banned condoms, and then told men that they could just keep it in their pants.

QF fucking T.

I dont understand how anyone can say this is unsurping mens choice rights? Men dont have the choice to force a woman to have an abortion so why should he expect to have a choice with child support? Its too presumptious. Not to mention, completely unfeasible since you’d have no way of figuring out the truth in court. You’d have alot of ‘she said, he said,’ going on (or maybe technically she/she he/he but I dont know laws on homosexual child rearing and pregnancy) and alot of lying going on as well. I’d be interested in seeing their (degenerate) method they’d go about sorting through it all in court (and how much would that all be to tax payers).

Agreed kristin!

Meanwhile, over in the real world, the New York Times blames an 11 year old for her own gang rape. Apparently, she dressed provocatively, the men and boys were “drawn in to it”, (surprising since a number of them were comfortable enough to record it on their cellphones), and we should feel bad that the perpetrators “have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/us/09assault.html?_r=1&bl;Anyone who thinks women have more rights than men in this culture can fuck right off.

Wow. Thats just heinous. I read about that in the Denver Post and it said that 11 year olds were circulating the pictures via their cell phones. It was only the victims friend who told the teacher. apparently rape is porn? Whats wrong with the victims 11 year olds peers and their perception of sex?

I wonder if the problem might be a the horrible mixing of children getting their sexual ques from adults, and adults increasingly engaging in the consumption of porn that if not rape itself, still carries misogynist themes. It may be that children are reacting to this porn as well, considering the difficulty of barring people from access of anything on the internet.

There are whole sites on the internet that is made up of porn created by the uploaders or uploaded by people who got the video, where women are raped. “Fucking a drunk/asleep woman” is considered a fetish, not rape.

There is also the narrative in USian culture that any sex a man gets from a woman, even if he takes it through force, drugs, or entrapment, is good sex and harmless.

Children aren’t immune to cultural narratives and neither do they have the critical thinking skills to understand that the cultural narratives they are exposed to are in fact harmful and should not be acted upon.

As adults, and importantly social justice advocates, we should combat these narratives not just to prevent other adults from doing bad, but to let children know that everything adults do and say is not right and they shouldn’t accept and act on harmful messages.

I think problems like children raping children, and adults raping adults, might be less common if criticisms of porn, like from Dworkin, Jender, and Dines were as commonplace as porn and the porn culture that invades our spaces through all mediums.

Bean Slap and R.T.: I remember in 4th or 5th grade, repeating things (songs, jokes, apocryphal Randy Beaman-style stories) that I thought were funny or cool just because the kids who passed them on to me obviously thought so. The kids I passed them on to thought they were funny or cool because *I* did. Some of those things were really shockingly racist and/or misogynistic, and make me cringe in retrospect.

Also in that age group, I distinctly remember that my school had a “bad girl” that kids thought of as trashy. Like the Cleveland victim, she often dressed “older” than her age. She developed breasts before anyone else in our grade; she got her period earlier than any other girl; and of course those things were evidence that she was dirty. I suspect none of us really knew what a slut was, but we knew she was the kind of girl that got called a slut :( My heart breaks for her now.

Anyway. Factoring in those two memories, I can unfortunately see how if we had had today’s cell phones, the video might have been passed around. It makes me sick

Here’s part of my whole problem with this discussion.

Men who are raped by women should never ever ever be forced to pay child support, because rapists should never be given parental rights. In an ideal world, if a woman is convicted of the rape of a man, and the rape of that man resulted in a pregnancy, her parental rights should be terminated, and the man (or, if he is a minor, the boy and his family) should be given the option to either take custody or to give the child up for adoption.

Women who are raped by men should never ever ever be forced to interact with their rapist, ever again, *especially* if they bore a child from that rape. Rapists should have parental rights terminated, full stop. I would support rapists being forced to pay child support to their victims as reparations after parental rights have been terminated (normally, terminating parental rights also terminates the need to pay child support.)

So the bad law that MRAs keep citing? Is bad law. But there is nothing about “rapist managed to get the courts to grant her child support from her child victim” that implies that all men should have the right to sever themselves from the need to pay child support when they consented to the sex, any more than there is something about “rapist managed to get visitation rights with the children he fathered on the woman he raped” that implies that all women should have the right to unilaterally terminate the visitation rights of the father of their child when the only sex they had with that man was fully consensual. I mean, think about it. If the fact that one time, this woman got the boy she raped forced to pay child support means that all men should have the right to free themselves of child support, then logically, the fact that this one time, a rapist got visitation with his kids, means that women should have the right to terminate a man’s parental rights and deny him visitation just ‘cause. This… doesn’t fit with MRA beliefs in general.

If a rapist got the courts to grant her child support from her child victim, that is awful. But if he never actually pressed charges, or if she was not convicted because he consented and there was a Romeo-Juliet law that made her action technically not rape, then of *course* she has the right to sue for child support, because in the eyes of the law, *she’s not a rapist.* This doesn’t mean she isn’t. And men who sue their ex-wives for sole custody, and get it, because they accuse their ex-wives of poisoning the children against them, when in fact the issue is that they are raping their children, have generally not actually been convicted of child molestation at that point, but it doesn’t mean they’re not raping their kids. (And yes, this happens.) Unless there is a legal finding of rape, neither a mother seeking to deny her ex custody nor a father seeking to get out of child support are going to get anywhere by claiming the other raped them, because if there isn’t a conviction, then legally it didn’t happen.

I probably should not need to point out that the phenomenon of men getting visitation (or even sole custody) after raping their wives…. or even raping their KIDS… is much much much more common than the phenomenon of women getting pregnant by raping men and then demanding child support. But I probably have to, because MRAs live in a fantasy world where the basic fact that men are 90% of the murderers and 90% of the pedophiles and 90% or more of all rapists in general doesn’t mean men should suffer any discrimination whatsoever, but if one woman somewhere gets away with abusing a man, it proves that there is perfect parity between the sexes and therefore we need to discriminate against women to prevent them ever abusing men in any way, even if by doing so we vastly increase the incidence of male abuse of women.

“So the bad law that MRAs keep citing? Is bad law.”

It sounds like it might have just been bad application of the law.  Since, in the law’s eyes, the mother wasn’t a rapist, there’s not a lot to tell us how it would have played out had the state not opted to take a plea for a reduced charge.  If she’d been convicted, had RAPIST stamped in giant red letters on her file, and the courts were still not only allowing her custody but ordering child support from her victim?  The law needs to be changed so that that’s not happening.  If the DA is shrugging their shoulders, going “Rape laws, how the fuck do they work?”, and letting rapists plea down to lesser charges that don’t carry the same civil penalties no matter what the likely consequences for the victims?  That’s an enforcement issue and would need to be dealt with as such.

None of which, of course, lessens the squick inherent in seeing MRAs crusade against the child support order like that’s the biggest injustice of the entire situation.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of outrage against the state for deciding that the boy’s case wasn’t worth a vigorous pursuit, or against the older girl for abusing her position and the age difference to assault a boy in her charge, or concern that this outcome is going to damage anything but the boy’s bank account.

“But I agreed to write the piece for a couple of reasons. . . The other reason is that I do think their complaints/pseudo-arguments do, unfortunately, have traction their small numbers wouldn’t predict.  The reason is that we still live in a sexist society and their arguments tend to play off unquestioned assumptions people have who haven’t really thought deeply about what patriarchy really is and what it means.  And the result is that a lot of men who think of themselves as liberal and even feminist, but who still have a lot of unexamined male entitlement, occasionally are swayed by these whines masquerading as arguments.”

But sometimes, engaging these whines does the opposite: it has the effect of legitimizing them as a credible argument.  Like what happened with the Clarisse Thorn “creepy” article, which was ostensibly put forth as a discussion of men’s sexuality, but was in reality men telling women that they should be nicer and ignore their intuition and past experiences in favour of being more receptive to men’s advances.  While I came in too late to be able to load the original posting as it kept crashing, I did follow the discussion around other blogs.  What I saw was that Pandagon (referring to both Amanda and the overall flavour of the commenters) was the most “extreme” , with extreme meaning believing that women didn’t owe random dudes anything.  Everywhere else, it was rare to see a guy, even the professed liberal/ feminist ones, not sympathize with the difficulty in approaching women, and then move on to the conclusion that women should be more accomodating.  I saw many parallels with the abortion argument - in both cases, what’s at stake is women’s autonomy, and in both cases, there’s an attempt to establish a middle ground when there isn’t one.  Either you believe in women’s autonomy or you don’t.  So the idea that the problem that needed to be fixed was women’s attitudes got a lot of traction even from more progressive men, in no small part because everyone was seriously engaging the MRA argument.  I think the effect was that men, rather than examining their entitlement and trying to distance themselves from the assholes, actually became more sympathetic to their complaints.

I’m still somewhat sitting on the fence as to whether it’s a net benefit or a negative to try and reach out to the left-leaning guys at GMP or other sites, but the “creepy” discussions pushed me a bit in the direction of negative.

I guess when I read about guys that complain about lack of control, I understand it. I’ve been there. When you write that check every month, you really don’t know if it’s going to be spent directly on your kids. You know that some of it has to go to your ex—if nothing else, so she can raise the kids, right? And sometimes you wish that you had the power to control that a bit. You wish you could make *just* your kids comfortable, and let your ex suffer a bit. You wish there was some way to make it so your ex doesn’t get to live in the same house as your kids or eat the same food as your kids, because you feel like you’re paying for it and it’s a little unfair. And sometimes you get drunk with friends and you let that bitterness out, and you say that you hate that cheating bitch and wish that she and her good-for-nothing new husband would get real jobs and quit living high off of the sweat of your brow.
Comment #236: SingleMalt on 03/10 at 12:01 PM

The average child support payment doesn’t even pay for the kid, let alone slosh into the mother’s support.  I realize you think you’re not in that category, maybe you aren’t.

But are you really saying that you’d like to control your ex-wife?  Seriously?  That she should suffer?  And you don’t think there’s anything wrong with not just having this feeling, but thinking this should be possible for you to do?

If I’m misreading and you’re just stating your feelings knowing they should never be enacted into law, please tell me.  You sounded so reasonable and logical until this “make her suffer” idea popped up. 

What do you think your kids would think about you if you could make her suffer?  She would get crummy food while they get good food?  She lives in a shack while they get nice beds in a nice house?  I would only hope they had the humanity to share their good food and nice home with her.

SingleMalt,
a woman is not facing only the posibility of something effecting her life for 18 years.  She is risking her life (Seemingly healthy women still die in both pregnancy and childbirth).  Risking her health for an extended period (9 months to forever). 
In addition, she faces the same choice of supporting the child for at least 18 years or being a complete total douche-fuck.  The fact you don’t understand this means she has a slightly longer window to decide to back out already makes your non-douchy-ness really questionable. 
As does the fact you think you are only on the hook for 18 years, longer if the 1st goes to college as is being discussed now.  If you think that stops at 18 or the end of college, you are not someone I would have any respect for As A Parent.  Seriously.  My kids are 23 and 27.  If they need my help, they’ve got it.  Period.
I pity your pregnant wife that you don’t understand this.  I really, really do.

It sounds like it might have just been bad application of the law.

Yeah, and as others have pointed out, it’s not like there’s EVAR EVAR bad application of the law that negatively affects women, amirite? No adoption laws forcing women to get permission from their rapists to surrender a baby, no employment laws preventing mothers from making deadbeat dads pay child support, no sex crime laws forcing moms to send their kids for visitation with known abusers. Nnnnnope.

You wish there was some way to make it so your ex doesn’t get to live in the same house as your kids or eat the same food as your kids, because you feel like you’re paying for it and it’s a little unfair.

I think most of us here are older than 12. Just sayin’.

COME ON MAN SHE IS THE MOTHER OF YOUR CHILDREN. SHE IS RAISING THEM. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!

Everywhere else, it was rare to see a guy, even the professed liberal/ feminist ones, not sympathize with the difficulty in approaching women, and then move on to the conclusion that women should be more accomodating.

Yes, you have to put yourself out, and women will turn you down. So what? As Robert Burns put it (Epistle to Dr. Blacklock):

And let us mind, faint heart ne’er wan
A lady fair:

Further, women who are “more accommodating” put off a lot of guys. Consider the portrayal of the “psycho hose beast” in Wayne’s World. It’s certainly difficult for a woman to bend her personality to accommodate the often fragile male ego.

“More accommodating” =/= a cartoony exaggerated character in a movie. If I remember correctly, that girl was a borderline stalker, and she was awkward in such a way that she would’ve put anyone off whether she was a man or woman, or whether she was looking for a relationship of friendship.

“Fragile male ego”, screw that noise.  I ( and many other men ) would have no problem with a girl being more upfront. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, and if a guy sees something wrong with it then it may be his *own* fragile ego (or some other reason completely)  and no the fragile ” male” (i.e all guys ) ego.

Oh, you know what, I’m sorry, i thought you were arguing that the aversion to that was somehow right ( now I don’t think you were ) when you were just statring that it existed and I came off as too combative . Sorry….

Also, yes, I don’t think anyone should have to be more accomadating if they don’t want to be ( just read a little bit farther up)

Well, in all fairness, there is a need for a lobby for men’s issues. One look at the statistics that pertain to living standard, draws a very sobering picture of the status of men when compared with women. Whether it’s due to oppression or not, there is no doubt that men have a rougher deal in life on average.

I don’t know if MRA is the answer but something is definitely needed because what has been until now, is clearly not enough. Men are our sons, fathers, brothers and anyone who has any compassion will not want this to go on. Men need to free themselves from the rigid gender roles that they are still expected to follow. It seems that they never got that same chance to emancipate themselves.  It makes me very sad to see people I care for suffering because of their gender and they have nowhere to go for support. Everybody would win if there was a stronger men’s lobby. Otherwise we can’t be surprised if they run into the arms of extremist groups.

#259,
Dont think so, for example suicide stats show succeeded suicides. Women have more suicide attempts but because they use methods that have more intervention they are less likely to die (ie, overdose versus guns). Womens suicide attempt rose 700%. If you talk about murders it is mostly men doing it to men. For women the opposite is true same with sexual assaults. Not to mention but do you know what a stronger mens lobby would do? Check the woman who was raped repeatedly by her husband and then forced to share custidy with him after they divorced. It was helped out by American Coalition for Fathers and Children (and MRA group). You dont know what they believe and the lies they adhere to. Theyre misogynists through and through. Theyre no more a mens rights group than the KKK is for white rights. Dont be so naive.

That is a good point helen.Usually the kid is with her longer than 18 years.

Alara,
Yes but in regards to not being able to deny fathers the right to see their kids if theyve had consensual sex, what if he was a rapist of other women? What if he was a domestic abuser?

alara: “and therefore we need to discriminate against women to prevent them from ever abusing a man in any way even if by doing so we vastly increase the abuse of women”

What?

@Bean Slap

Firstly, suicide is nothing like the same thing as attempted suicide. Attempted suicide is very often just a call for help and never intended to succeed. I have had more experience with those people than I could handle in my life.

Secondly, suicide is only one of many men’s issues. In all measures of living standard, men come off worse. A good indicator is their lower life span because this is closely tied to living standard. That’s why the life expectancy is often used to compare the living standard of minorities in the same area. Why is it so effective? Because most things that pertain to your living standard have a direct influence on your life span. Examples are health, safety, education, poverty, homelessness all of which men averagely get the worst of in western countries. Nobody who looks objectively at those statistics can deny that men are the more suffering gender.

“If you talk about murders it is mostly men doing it to men. “

And that makes it not an issue? What a hateful thing to say. Tell that to those who lost someone that way. It’s like saying “oh that’s his own fault because he’s a man. He should have picked a female to murder him”.

Are you really so cold hearted that you will deny men any issues? Why? What would you lose from men improving their lives? It doesn’t mean women’s lives will disprove. In fact, I can testify that many women’s lives will be a lot better when men’s lives improve. Everybody wins, if we start caring and stop hating.

“MRAs live in a fantasy world where the basic fact that men are 90% of the murderers and 90% of the pedophiles and 90% or more of all rapists in general doesn’t mean men should suffer any discrimination whatsoever.”
There SHOULDN’T be any discrimination. The fact that a majority of rapists are male does not mean that a majority of men are rapists. As an analogy, a majority of porn stars are women. This obviously doesn’t mean a majority of women are porn stars.

anit:  “Examples are health, safety, education, poverty, homelessness all of which men averagely get the worst of in western countries. Nobody who looks objectively at those statistics can deny that men are the more suffering gender. “

Health:  women live longer, but this isn’t because they get some kind of special care from the government or society or employers; they’re just naturally longer-lived.  They are denied full control of their bodies when pregnant, and diseases and problems peculiar to women or more often suffered by women tend to be ignored or investigated less thoroughly because the assumption seems to be that they’re making it up (e.g. menstrual cramps, fibromyalgia).

Safety:  Airbags in cars are designed for the “average driver/passenger” who is a 180 lb 5 foot 10 person with small or no boobs.  Care to guess who that is most likely to match?  Men often work more dangerous jobs, it is true.  But most men do not work in mines or drive a truck through the ice.  Men who act in unsafe ways (speeding, playing with guns) are hurt more often, but that’s their choice.

Education:  Women do better in school than men.  Maybe they’re smarter, maybe they’re just conditioned to be less rebellious, even though they are called upon less in class and more often ignored or belittled.  It makes some difference, but not enough:  Once they graduate, women with the same grades make less money.

Poverty:  You’ve really blown it here.  Worldwide, women are much more likely to live in poverty than men, both because of employment discrimination and also because they are usually the ones who end up caring for children.  The feminization of poverty is the rule in the US as well—“In 2009, nearly 5 million more women than men lived in poverty.”  http://www.nclej.org/poverty-in-the-us.php

Homelessness:  Men do exceed women here, but, according to Wikipedia, “The fastest-growing group of homeless people in the United States is composed of single women with two or three children.”  They point to domestic violence and divorce, decline of the welfare state, and lack of affordable housing as contributors to this change.

Men need to free themselves from the rigid gender roles that they are still expected to follow. It seems that they never got that same chance to emancipate themselves.

That sounds like women are no longer expected to follow rigid gender roles but men are.  But I know that can’t be right so it’s either worded poorly or I’m misreading it.  Maybe you can also refresh me on how that happened for women, how they got the “chance” to emancipate themselves.

Everybody would win if there was a stronger men’s lobby. Otherwise we can’t be surprised if they run into the arms of extremist groups.

Check it out, guys. EVerybody would win if there was a stronger lobby for the rights of white people. Otherwise, y’know, we can’t be surprised if they run into the arms of the KKK.

WHAT WHITE PEOPLE TOTALLY HAVE PROBLEMS TOO ARE YOU HEARTLESS OR SOMETHING

Wow. So much anger here. Firstly, I try to keep my feelings out of discussions like these. I also avoid using foul language and straw man arguments and, most of all, I have zero tolerance for sexism. If you wish to convince me of anything, then you must rise up to a comparable standard. I will not respond to those who can’t or won’t do that.

Now, in case someone tries to extrapolate from this that I have no arguments, here are a few responses:

“:  women live longer, but this isn’t because they get some kind of special care from the government or society or employers; they’re just naturally longer-lived.”

The only studies that have ever been made to establish a comparison, have revealed no significant difference in the life span between the sexes. There is also no evolutionary explanation that would justify such a big difference.

“Safety:  Airbags in cars are designed for the “average driver/passenger”
Airbags? You serious? I was talking about safety in general in particular the risk to become a victim of violent assault.

“Education:  Women do better in school than men.  Maybe they’re smarter, ....”
So maybe men earn more because they’re smarter. Right? Wrong. This is just blatant sexism of the very kind that feminism was trying to get away from. I can’t talk to people like you. Sorry.

“the MRA groups are misogynistic - there may be, probably are, large numbers of men who self-identify as MRAs without being misogynists, but the VAST majority of the vocal MRAs and the MRA groups ARE misogynist, and THAT is their agenda. “

It seems like they’re saying exactly the same thing about feminists. Given some of the sexist bigotry I’ve seen here, it would seem that both sides have their share of radicals. That doesn’t make the basic idea bad.

Let me put it the other way round. If men are not allowed to have a lobby of their own as some people here are suggesting, then how can we know when they’re oppressed? If women were not allowed any representation as women, then everyone could just say “they don’t need one because they aren’t oppressed”. Only if there is a form of representation, can one even start discussing these issues. So even if men aren’t the more suffering gender as you say, they still need representation or they’ll quickly become the 2nd sex. One could argue that the very fact that they don’t have a lobby is evidence for male oppression.

Yeah, Anit, when you compare rebels to reactionaries, your argument is shot down before it’s begun.  Men are reacting because their historic, unlimited power is less than it used to be. Sucks to be them, poor babies, but it’s not an injustice. It’s slightly less privilege. They’ll have to cope.

I’m not even going to go into the blatant hypocrisy of feminists saying that men who don’t want kids should simply be celibate or become homosexual. You know, since homosexuality is a choice and all.

I’ll just say this to completely prove that Amanda’s argument that more feminism is needed to solve men’s issue is wrong.

Feminists fight AGAINST men’s rights.

Here are some examples to prove my point.

Father’s rights group want shared parenting (equal custody) to be the default if both parents want custody and neither parent is unfit. They feel that men should not be punished for being men, and that women should not be awarded custody to their kids simply for being women. Currently women are awarded primary custody almost all the time, even if the husband was the stay-at-home Dad and the woman was the breadwinner.

Feminists fought against this. http://www.glennsacks.com/enewsletters/enews_11_28_06.htm

Men want protection against false rape allegations. They feel that a man’s life should not be ruined simply on the allegation of a woman. Currently, a woman can accuse a man of rape for no reason, and the man’s name is splashed in the paper and his life is ruined. So, they fought for laws granting men anonymity until charged with the crime of rape—not convicted, just charged.

Feminists fought against this, causing it to fail. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10760239

Men want an end to the justice system favouring women simply becaus they are women, and giving men harsher sentences simply because they are men.

Feminists fought against this, arguing that no woman should ever be sent to jail, even female murderers. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23388859-womens-prisons-should-all-close-within-a-decade.do

As you can see, the claim that feminists fight for men’s rights is a blatant lie. Don’t believe any feminists that say that. Feminists fight for women’s rights, often at the expense of men. Feminism is about female favoritism, not equality.

Comment #272: Celda  on  03/12  at  02:18 PM

Anit:
The airbags are an example of most safety equipment.  Protective clothing for wrok places?  Hard to find in sizes small enough for the average woman.  At 5’6” I’m slightly taller than average and wear a size 7 (dead average for women) shoe.  I have a hell of a time finding proper clothing for when I work in the field and it costs me more (I am a civil engineer who works construction).  Logic fail in that you cannot extrapolate an obvious example given situation.
The responses re DV & homeless shelters are perfectly reasonable in that you are being oblivious and disingenuous, at best.  They even, to a point, agree with you.  Women have grouped together to provide women’s shelters for both with their own private money.  Men are free to do the same.  They do not chose to do so.  That is their problem and not that of society, at least Not Any More So than when it was women with no resources.  Women were not, for the most part, given these things.  They went out and spent their lesser earnings despite higher expenses to fund a need they know they are themselves vulnerable to.
Schools are still basically of the model that was developed by and for educating men.  The fact women are now doing better at that is a problem of society that should focus on all learners, not making things harder for girls and women.  The only groups that seem to be “advocating for men”, as you put it, appear to do so only by trying to tear down women not lift men.  Feminists have enough to do trying to improve the lives of girls, childless women and women with their children (about half of which are, you know, BOYS).
The fact they don’t have a lobby is not evidence of male opression.  It is evidence that even most of the whiners know they are not, as a gender, the ones who are 2nd, and have enough self-respect not to try to claim they are.  They are discriminated against for other subgroups they belong to often.  For their gender? Um, no.

Celda,
Most feminists I know, want either joint custody or custody to go to the primary caregiving parent, all things being equal.  For the good of the children involved, because feminism, in general, for most of us, is about equality or equivalence t(to be more correct)  Generally, the men’s and father’s rights groups are only interested in custody to the point of how having custody reduces or does away with the need for anyone to pay child support. 
I have seen joint custody work and not work.  The only place where it seems to be even close to truely equitable is a friend who has actual split custody (3.5 days at each house, a separate bank account into which both pay for major expenses like school expenses, scout expenses, daycare, summer camps, etc) that were then discussed and agreed on before payments were made.  The other parent had to be ngged and reminded constantly, not because the money was unavailable or the intent wasn’t there but because that wasn’t what that parent was societally trained to take care of.  Yeah, my friend was the Mom.  Getting things equitable was a hell of a lot of emotional work for her, and they had a pretty decent break up, comparatively (as much as you can have with someone who cheats on you multiple times, despite being in an open relationship so the requirement is being up front and honest about it, not keeping it in your pants).
Know what Celda? The other’s are right.  You do sound like you are a not particularly bright teen who has learned how to google.

Celda, no matter how often you repeat lies it doesn’t make them true.

Celda:

Father’s rights group want shared parenting (equal custody) to be the default if both parents want custody and neither parent is unfit. They feel that men should not be punished for being men, and that women should not be awarded custody to their kids simply for being women. Currently women are awarded primary custody almost all the time, even if the husband was the stay-at-home Dad and the woman was the breadwinner.

Feminists fought against this. http://www.glennsacks.com/enewsletters/enews_11_28_06.htm

Followed this link to the link to Michigan NOW.  Which didn’t have anything on its site.  If you had followed to the SOURCE MATERIAL you could have quoted that, but you just take the word of Glenn Sacks on what the legislation was and why NOW opposes it?  Shame on you.  I found the following: 

“Renee Beeker, president of Michigan NOW. “Women are not winning custody battles; they are gaining custody by mutually agreed upon arrangements. In about 55 percent of the contested custody cases, women lose,” she said.

The opposition to the bill said creating a fitness test for custody would increase litigation costs for divorcing couples and traumatize children as parents “mudsling” back and forth trying to prove unfitness.

....in order for joint custody to work or for parents to be able to agree on an arrangement in the first place, they have to be willing and able to cooperate, which certainly isn’t the case in the 40 percent to 60 percent of unresolved custody cases that involve domestic abuse, said Kathy Hagenian, vice president of public policy for the Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Her group worries that abusive partners could use the 50-50 custody presumption as leverage to keep an abused spouse from leaving the relationship out of fear of losing his or her children.”

Men want protection against false rape allegations. They feel that a man’s life should not be ruined simply on the allegation of a woman. Currently, a woman can accuse a man of rape for no reason, and the man’s name is splashed in the paper and his life is ruined. So, they fought for laws granting men anonymity until charged with the crime of rape—not convicted, just charged.

Feminists fought against this, causing it to fail. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10760239

Do you think that rape charges are just automatically filed when an accusation is made?  And that the charges always end up in court?  You are either naive or trolling.

The link you provided states the reasoning for not doing so:
“A spokeswoman said: “Why should men accused of rape have special protection not offered to those facing charges of murder, terrorism or child abuse?

“People are no more likely to be falsely accused of rape than of other crimes. Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against rape survivors?”“

Why indeed?

Men want an end to the justice system favouring women simply becaus they are women, and giving men harsher sentences simply because they are men.

Feminists fought against this, arguing that no woman should ever be sent to jail, even female murderers. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23388859-womens-prisons-should-all-close-within-a-decade.do

From the article you quoted but apparently never read:

“The radical proposals are made by Labour peer Baroness Corston, in a report commissioned by the Home Office. ” 

Not “FEMINISTS.”  Good grief, any woman says something and suddenly it’s ALL FEMINISTS saying it?  I for one don’t want criminals going unpunished even if they are women.

As you can see, the claim that feminists fight for men’s rights is a blatant lie. Don’t believe any feminists that say that. Feminists fight for women’s rights, often at the expense of men. Feminism is about female favoritism, not equality.
Comment #272: Celda on 03/12 at 01:18 PM

As you can see, Celda is completely unable to evaluate what Google vomited up on Celda’s browser.  Don’t believe anything Celda says.  Celda fights to spread lies and half-truths, completely at the expense of Celda’s credibility.  Celda is about misogyny, not men’s rights.

Followed this link to the link to Michigan NOW.  Which didn’t have anything on its site. 

I found it on archive.org, which is now 1000% improved, for November 2006.

MichNOW’s objections to mandatory joint custody: Eradicates best-interest-of-the-child standard, which uses a 12 factor test. No exceptions for domestic violence/child abusers. Ignores reality that joint custodians are ineligible for TANF, and that joint custody burdens kids through constant pingponging from home to home.

Further, comparing the situation of men in the US to men in the UK is quite useless. People in the UK have many fewer rights than we do regarding, for example, gun ownership and freedom of speech. There is no separation of church and state, of course—HM government even supports a variety of sectarian schools.

“The fact they don’t have a lobby is not evidence of male opression.  It is evidence that even most of the whiners know they are not, as a gender, the ones who are 2nd, and have enough self-respect not to try to claim they are.”

That is circular reasoning. You’re just assuming they aren’t oppressed and using that assumption as an indication for why they aren’t oppressed. One could have said the same thing about women in the early days of women’s lib.

A spokeswoman said: “Why should men accused of rape have special protection not offered to those facing charges of murder, terrorism or child abuse?
“People are no more likely to be falsely accused of rape than of other crimes. Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against rape survivors?”

Actually, keeping people accused of ANY crime anonymous until they are at least indicted sounds like a good idea to me. It would make it easier to get an impartial jury, for one thing.

@celda

I’m not even going to go into the blatant hypocrisy of feminists saying that men who don’t want kids should simply be celibate or become homosexual. You know, since homosexuality is a choice and all.

So it’s okay that men demand women give up their options to have an abortion because they “chose” to have sex, but it isn’t fair to then say that men who don’t want to experience the consequences of having children keep it in their pants?

That sounds hypocritical.

To add: considering how heterosexual men are extremely insecure about their sexuality, I think that they are not truly heterosexual, but socialized to be something they may not be. If one were truly heterosexual, they wouldn’t be bothered by gay persons to the degree sexual minorities witness in straight people in the US.

And straight men insist that being gay is a choice, well then in reply to that, being heterosexual must a choice. Until straight people stop making unreasonable demands on sexual minorities, and backing those demands through law and violence, heterosexual people can frankly eat it when they’re told back that they should go gay.

However, it’s pretty apparent that MRAs want to be able to have sex without consequences, while making women the sole bearer of the consequences. Also considering that it is political men who are the ones by numbers alone who are restricting womens’ reproductive rights, mens’ voices are worth very little in this debate.

Men want protection against false rape allegations. They feel that a man’s life should not be ruined simply on the allegation of a woman. Currently, a woman can accuse a man of rape for no reason, and the man’s name is splashed in the paper and his life is ruined. So, they fought for laws granting men anonymity until charged with the crime of rape—not convicted, just charged.

Men need to earn this protection by not being rapists to the degree they are. Dworkin called for an entire day, just one day where men wouldn’t rape. Men as a group has failed to live up to this.

So it’s more than fair to take the words of women over men when it comes to rape in the US.

Wow. Even after showing proof that feminists fight against men’s rights, pandagon commenters still deny it.

Generally, the men’s and father’s rights groups are only interested in custody to the point of how having custody reduces or does away with the need for anyone to pay child support.

Here we have one of the blatant and stupidest lies parroted by feminists.

On the one hand, feminists all agree that child support payments are a pittance and are nowhere near the full expense of actually raising a child. He just “writes a check” which doesn’t even cover the cost of raising a child.

Yet, SIMULTANEOUSLY, you have feminists arguing that fathers only want custody to not have to pay child support.

But wait, I thought that the cost of raising a child was much more than child support payments? So that means if the father has equal custody, he is spending more money than he would on child support.

Surely it couldn’t be that fathers simply want to spend time with their child, rather than being forcibly separated from them by the female-biased courts?

Do you think that rape charges are just automatically filed when an accusation is made?

No. Because, a lot of allegations are either false, or have no evidence. (of course, some courts will press charges even if there is no evidence beyond her word) Do you agree that a man should be named as a rapist in the newspaper after a woman says he is? From your posts it seems you do, which you see as perfectly ok. Since the victims are only men.

“A spokeswoman said: “Why should men accused of rape have special protection not offered to those facing charges of murder, terrorism or child abuse?

“People are no more likely to be falsely accused of rape than of other crimes. Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against rape survivors?””

Why should women who claim they have been raped have special protection not offered to those victims of any other crimes?

Women are no more likely to be the victim of rape than of other crimes like theft or assault. Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against alleged rapists?

Good grief, any woman says something and suddenly it’s ALL FEMINISTS saying it?

Ah, the “no true feminist” argument. Logical fallacy.

And straight men insist that being gay is a choice, well then in reply to that, being heterosexual must a choice.

Wow…so you believe that straight men say being gay is a choice?

We’re done here. Fucking bigot.

Wow…so you believe that straight men say being gay is a choice?

I know that straight men say being gay is a choice.

We’re done here. Fucking bigot.

Oh noes, I’m not being nice to the straights! Why that’s just like the hegemonic, systemic, violent oppression perpetuated by straights against sexual minorities.

Keeping people accused of any crime anonymous seems like a great way of “disappearing” people.

Men need to earn this protection by not being rapists to the degree they are. Dworkin called for an entire day, just one day where men wouldn’t rape. Men as a group has failed to live up to this.

What the fuck? So as long as ANY man is a rapist, that means they ALL are? By that logic, ALL allegations are false, unless you can find me a 24-hour period during which no woman on earth told a lie.

DataSnake, maybe you should read Dworkin

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html

By that logic, ALL allegations are false, unless you can find me a 24-hour period during which no woman on earth told a lie.

Considering the skepticism that rape victims are subject to, I think it’s fair to say that the current operating logic is that all allegations of rape are false.

Men hate being held to account.

Men hate being held to account.

Well, being held to account for the actions of EVERY MAN ON EARTH, in any case. The thing you and Dworkin (and yes, I DID read that article you linked) don’t seem to realize is, men are INDIVIDUALS. There is no central male hivemind. I can no more make some man I’ve never even met stop committing rape than you can make Sarah Palin stop being such a pillock, and refusing to even TRY to work together as long as even ONE of the more than three billion men in the world isn’t onboard is at best abject idiocy and at worst shameless, pointless grandstanding.

the fact is, if a woman reports a rape, there’s MAYBE a 50% chance of cops taking it seriously.

....

Considering the skepticism that rape victims are subject to, I think it’s fair to say that the current operating logic is that all allegations of rape are false.

Bullshit.

http://www.falserapesociety.blogspot.com

Lots of examples of men getting arrested and raked over the coals with no evidence other than an allegation.

Here’s a goodie:

17-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Rape on Woman’s Say So Even Though She First Said She was 70% Sure Someone Else Raped Her, and Before Police Bothered to Investigate Her Claim

http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/17-year-old-boy-arrested-for-rape-on.html

Another one:

Male Student Expelled from College for Sexual Assault—Even Though His Alleged ‘Victim’ Was Criminally Charged for Lying About It

http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/male-student-expelled-from-college-for.html

*IF* it ends up in the paper or on the TV news, what happens? 95% of the story is about how SHE was dressed, WHERE she was, WHAT she was doing, HOW she was drinking, WHO she was with - i have NEVER seen a MSM report about rape NOT victim blame.

Bullshit.

I just went to google news and typed in ‘rape articles’ and found the first three, which were obviously about rapes. All three had no victim blaming: http://marietta.patch.com/articles/ex-deputy-convicted-of-rape-kidnapping-4

http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2011/03/11/news/doc4d7a966de402c023090310.txt

http://cranberry.patch.com/articles/cranberry-ems-director-accused-of-rape

ompletely. someone posted a link about the GANG-RAPE of an ELEVEN YEAR OLD GIRL - and the fucking article went on and ON about how she “dressed”

Nope. The residents of the town were the ones that talked about that, not the author of the article.

FURTHER, Celda, false rape accusations are less than HALF the accusations of other violant crimes, percentage wise. for assult, murder and etc, the rate of false report hovers a bit over 4%. the rate of false report for rape is about 2%

AHAHAHAHAHA.

False. The 2% number has no source.

http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v33-issue3/greer.pdf

I know that straight men say being gay is a choice.

And I know that gay men have AIDS. I’ve seen them myself. So, all gay men have AIDS.

Comment #288: DataSnake

Dworkin and I do know that men are individuals, but it doesn’t absolve the group of the harm it has committed through power and domination.

@Celda

And I know that gay men have AIDS. I’ve seen them myself. So, all gay men have AIDS.

Another thing said by straights to systematically harm sexual minorities. Are you trying to dig yet another grave for yourself?

Another thing said by straights to systematically harm sexual minorities. Are you trying to dig yet another grave for yourself?

.....

*whoooosh*

That’s the sound of my statement going over your head.

Let’s try it again.

You see, it’s a fact that there are gay men with AIDS. They exist, I’ve met them, most people have met them.

Now, to use that fact to justify the claim “all gay men have AIDS” is what is known as a logical fallacy, and therefore invalid.

Much like how your claim of “I know straight people say being gay is a choice” is a logical fallacy, since your only possible justification for it is that you’ve met straight people who say that.

I didn’t realize you were so stupid as to need it to be spelled out explicitly. My mistake.

@celda

You seem to miss the magnitude by which straights say that being gay is a choice; national tv personalities, politicians and legislators , and religious leaders say this, on top of Joe Everyman.

That is why I don’t “believe” that straight people say so, that is why I *know.*

Until I see better of straight people across the US, they’re on my shit list and considered suspect of being an oppressor until shown otherwise.

@ R.T.
Your comments are flooded with sexist prejudice. Nothing that you say is helping the “dialogue” between men and women but only fueling further resentment. I challenge you to debate WITHOUT using sexism as justification or reason for your opinions.
Can you rise up to that challenge or is that asking too much from you?

As for the false-rape debate, I’m not taking sides in the MRA vs feminsism here, but everybody please keep the following in mind:
Our justice system and that of all western democracies, is based on the fundamental belief that punishing someone innocent is a greater evil than not punishing someone guilty. This belief founds the principal of the presumption of innocence that we know today. Though both outcomes are not desirable, when a choice has to be made between the two, it must always be the first. The actual number of false accusations doesn’t change that as long as there are any at all and that much we all can agree on.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the accusation of rape, is in itself a severe punishment. This kind of power has no place in a society that is based on the principals of the presumption of innocence. It puts people’s lives at the mercy of others who may or may not be honest. This too, we can all agree on.

I know it’s not very ‘satisfying’ to have to realize that rapists could go unpunished but the purpose of our justice system is not to satisfy us.

#264, alita
Well no, most suicide attempts are actual attempts not just mere crys for help. Not to mention but I like how you could call me inhumane when I cite that it is mostly men killing men but you merely dismiss womens suicide attempts as mere dilettances. Again it has nothing to do with mere crys for help but men are more likely to use guns which have a lower rate of interference than women. In regards to the murder rate, no it is not inhumane. Yesterday I read in the newspaper how a guy got in a bar fight with another guy over ‘looking at his girl,’ only to have the other guy pull out a gun. This is whats behind the murder rate. Stupid reactions from idiotic initiations.It is anything BUT sympathetic. Now when you consider women the majority of murders against them are from guys, not women. That IS sympathetic. In regards to life expectancy men are les likely to go to the doctor than women. So irresponsibility is now a call for victimhood? Dont think so. Some have even hypothesized that it has something to do with testosterone. Mens life expectancy has also rose and is only a few years shorter than womens. Men reportedly have a higher life satisfaction than women so again, dont think you can go around claiming men have it hard. Your justifications for that claim are a joke. Put down the Warren Farrell and pick up some reality. I read “The Myth of Male Power” and throughout the book he lies like he breathes. Even according to his own sources they dont say what he claims they say and false comparisons abound. When he’s not lying or making false comparisons he just has the stupidest theories like “workplace incest” or he thinks that because Tammy Lee Baker lived off of her husbands income that makes her an accomplice and that she shouldve gone to prison too (then shouldnt that apply to their kids as well).On page 210 he says we never know the name of the woman who caused an air traffic controller incident. Well, even according to his own sources that isnt so:http://articles.latimes.com/1991-02-09/news/mn-656_1_control-tower. He says that because we knew the name of the man who caused the Exxon Valdez Oil spill but didnt know the womans name that “when a man fails to protect, we persecute the man; when a woman fails to protect, we protect the woman (and yeah he made that entire theory off of that mere incident that is based off of a lie). ” It’s just rubbish.

Not to mention but mostly everwhere men (sans for china) have a higher suicide rate. In Rwanda, Sudan, Afghanistan, India, Iran,Sudan,Saudi Arabia, ect. No one would say that merely because of that men have it harder.

#266,
And oldfeminist according to this:http://abcnews.go.com/WN/homeless-female-veterans-americas-streets/story?id=10099653

“Women Veterans Four Times as Likely as Men to Wind Up Homeless”

As well a woman is more likely to be sexually assaulted in the military than shot by enemy fire

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/144696/women_soldiers_forced_to_resort_to_back-alley_abortions:_why_are_their_reproductive_rights_denied?page=1

...and when defending their country not only do they have to worry about sexual assault but also back-alley abortions since they dont have the rights afforded to them by civilian women

#270 anit,
““The only studies that have ever been made to establish a comparison have revealed no significant difference in the life span between the sexes. There is also no evolutionary explanation that would explain such a big difference.””

Are you serious? Complete rubbish anit. Some have hypothesized that it has to do with women having two double x’s that men don’t have. In other words they have a spare and men dont. Not to mention but whats the big deal? Life spans have increased and the difference is a mere couple of years. Comparing quality of life is what matters and spending a couple of years suffering alzheimers in some nursing home hospital doesnt sound that enviable to me. The average rate of death isnt young but well into life so I dont see how this has anything to do with men being mistreated anywhere.

“One important reason is the big delay — and advantage — women have over men in terms of cardiovascular disease, like heart attack and stroke. Women develop these problems usually in their 70s and 80s, about 10 years later than men, who develop them in their 50s and 60s.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827162,00.html#ixzz1GVEvKRDs”

“But, in general…. men do worse than women. They smoke a lot more.
They eat more food that leads to high cholesterol”

“Men in their late teens and 20s go through something called “testosterone storm.” The levels of the hormone can be quite high and changeable, and that can induce some pretty dangerous behavior among young men. They don’t wear their seatbelts; they drink too much alcohol; they can be aggressive with weapons and so on and so forth. These behaviors lead to a higher death rate.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827162,00.html

....and yes evolutionary traits have been suggested

As for men, Perls believes “their purpose is simply to carry genes that ensure longevity and pass them on to their daughters. Thus, female longevity becomes the force that determines the natural life span of both men and women.”

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/10.01/WhyWomenLiveLon.html

And men have actually increased their life expectancy

“Life expectancy for men in England has risen by almost three years in a decade to close the gap with women, Department of Health figures show”

“The statistics show male life expectancy has increased by 3.7%, compared with a 2.5% increase for females”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/28/life-expectancy-increases-england-men

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/20557.php “life expectancy in USA increases”

Not to mention but are you saying that a white middle class man has a better life than a black lower class woman? The black lower class woman lives longer than the white middle class man

Joke: MRA ersion of equality; well then lets just kill her so theyre equal when the man dies!

#270 anit,
And girls have been doing better than boys in school before they even had the right to vote. Girls/women do better even internationally in such places as Saudi Arabia and Japan. This is even with gender segregation and respective genders doing the teaching. In Saudi Arabia women even out earn degrees than men. No one would say that these places are matriarchies. Boys grades have actually improved and the gap is actually seen among the lower classes. At the middle class level its about 1% difference. I would chalk it up more to gangs/violence than anything as even at the poorer levels girls do better. Kate Millett in her book, “Sexual Politics” even notes that girls do better than boys in school when she wrote the book which was in the 60’s. According to the Department of Education boys are less likely to study, do their homework or come to school prepared.

270,
Anit:“It seems like theyre saying the exact same thing about feminists”

Yeah and the KKK says the same thing about the NAACP doesn’t make it equal.

How do you know youre oppressed? Um, I dont think anyone who was actually oppressed has ever even remotely asked, ‘how do we know if were oppressed?” Do you think you had Black Americans during the 1950’s ask that and seriously not know? Dude, youre not. Not to mention but with the crazy and unsubstantiated crappola you all spout all you’ll end up doing is screwing over women. And admit it, thats what you want. Theres not one MRA page where it isnt a constant hate filled tirade against women by either the authors or the posters and most of the time its both. All you have to do is check all the main MRA pages to see that. Youre a hate group.

helen w.h.: “Schools are still basically of the model that was was developed by and for educating men”

Which is why I hate the words describing female students as ‘co-eds’-even today and outside of porn movies.

@ R.T.
Your comments are flooded with sexist prejudice. Nothing that you say is helping the “dialogue” between men and women but only fueling further resentment. I challenge you to debate WITHOUT using sexism as justification or reason for your opinions.
Can you rise up to that challenge or is that asking too much from you?

Yay a tone argument.

Considering that men have institutionalized sexism to oppress half the human population, it is they that have to improve the dialogue between them and women and female persons.

If our big tough manly men can’t handle suspicion and harsh words, which is less than they deserve, well it just goes to show that at the core of their being they’ve a fragile and socially coddled ego.

And I reject your challenge. Don’t tell me to shut up and try make my criticism into some sort of game asshole.

#276 oldfeminist,
Agreed. I was going to go through the links because I smelled a big pile of unsubstantiated crap and misapplied claims about feminists. I liked your analysis on it! Not to mention but men are more likely to be falsily accused of other crimes such as mugging than rape. Why do the MRA’s fixate on rape? Also, not all rapes get put in newspapers so it seems quite petty. The logic simply doesnt follow; for example if women are most likely to be falsily accused of shop-lifting should that mean on that one crime that until a conviction is made that no one should release her name to the public? Why? Next you know they’ll say mens names shouldnt be released even when they’ve been comvicted of a crime because some men have been falsily convicted.

@Bean Slap

The reason why I think we won’t find common ground, is because you are fixed on an “us vs them” approach to gender issues. Any sympathy that goes to men is regarded as an insult and an attack on women. Any attention given to male issues is seen as trying to harm women. You’re on a mission to fight a gender war and because of that, you fail to see that helping one gender is helping both. Our lives are inseparably tied together and fighting each other will only harm both.

“you merely dismiss womens suicide attempts as mere dilettances”
No, I pointed out a difference between suicide and attempted suicide. That was independent of what gender is affected. Trying to label me sexist huh? Not gonna work.

“So irresponsibility is now a call for victimhood?”
Blaming and dismissive ignorance. What we need to ask ourselves is WHY men are not taking care of
their health as much as women. Not just dismiss it as “bad male behaviour” and ignore. I’m sure men don’t want to become ill so obviously there is something that’s not working properly for them. It’s not about “victimhood” but about caring about each other. You should try it.

Am I supposed to know Warren Farrell?

“Comparing quality of life is what matters and spending a couple of years suffering alzheimers in some nursing home hospital doesnt sound that enviable to me. The average rate of death isnt young but well into life so I dont see how this has anything to do with men being mistreated anywhere. “

Talk about loss or perspective. You need to understand the implications of the statistical differences - not just interpret a specific scenario. I said above, that life expectancy is a function of quality of life and I also explained why.

All those links you listed are just suggestions and speculations. They are neither conclusive nor reliable. The really telling issue is, that you’re so quick to dismiss the most likely explanation because it doesn’t suit your “us-vs-them” agenda. If you cared at all about fairness and equality, you’d not have gone running off to find everything you can to contradict the possibility that men are having a hard time.
If you had two kids and one of them is more of a problem child who gets hurt after doing something silly, I sure hope you’d not just dismiss it as “oh well that’s her own fault for being so silly”. Caring parents would ask themselves why this child is behaving that way and would first look at themselves to blame.

“Dude, youre not. Not to mention but with the crazy and unsubstantiated crappola you all spout all you’ll end up doing is screwing over women. And admit it, thats what you want.”

What makes you think I’m not a woman? Because you’re a sexist bigot who can’t get away from viewing everything through gendered lenses.

The truth is that I care a lot about humans - male or female and that approach leads me to question some of our attitudes towards men in particular. It is very telling that, bringing up the discussion of male issues, provokes so much dismissiveness and anger from feminists. Even if there weren’t any male issues, DISCUSSING it should surely be allowed. It clearly shows that many feminists don’t hold by their own claim to be for equality. You feel threatened by the very thought of discussing men’s issues. Apart from being hateful, it is also very stupid because men’s issues affect women too and not dealing with them hurts women as well. Your attitude is only going to hurt people - male or female.

@ R.T.
“If our big tough manly men can’t handle suspicion and harsh words, which is less than they deserve, well it just goes to show that at the core of their being they’ve a fragile and socially coddled ego. “

Thank you for showing everyone why your opinions are not worthy of anyone’s attention. Appropriately, I will not give you anymore of mine.

#278 hector,
And whats weird is the British are less religious than the U.S. and 29% think that we’d all be better off without religion.

#279,
Its also why we dont have a heterosexual or white lobby genius. The mens rights (ahem entitlements) lobby is the entire Republican party. So technically you dont need a lobby as you have a freaking party.

....and anit the only one whose using circular reasoning is you. You think that if you had a lobby that this would prove youre oppressed. True proof of oppression doesnt come from lobbyist propoganda.

@ Bean Slap,
you know very well that I never said that. The opposite. The fact that you deny men a lobby, is indication of oppression. THAT is what I said.

You must be standing on very weak reasoning to have to resort to such cheap methods of debate.

You did say “that.” You asked how you would ever know you were oppressed if not for a mens lobby. That is circular reasoning, that one needs a mens lobby to know they are oppressed.

Also did a little research on rape laws and found that in arizona a man who violently raped his wife will possibly only get 1/1/2 years in jail when if he wasnt her husband wouldve got 14 years. And then I find that Dean Tong a prominent MRA (who was later found to have beaten his wife and previous to that escaped child molestation charges) fights to keep it that way. Just like the hypocrisy surrounding the Coalition for fathers and Children in regards to visitation of his kids after he violently raped their mother.

Anit is another piece of datum in the vast sea data that says that men can’t take it.

To all the MRAs that are lurking or have contributed to the thread, don’t come to a feminist space crying about women being oppressive.

You need to realize that it’s men who’ve oppressed themselves with their toxic, deadly concepts of masculinity and norms of behavior. It’s men who run the governments, run business, lead religions, exclude women from the “serious” arts and philosophy, and in this hazardous soup of mens’ making, MEN DARE FUCKING COMPLAIN THAT IT’S WOMEN WHO ARE HURTING THEM!

Look at the world and see what men have made of, and if you want a better world after seeing that, then step up and fight for the oppressed. You’ll fuck up in this fight time to time, everyone does, but you’ll be doing more towards making the world better place than you are whining about how women don’t give you everything you want.

The first false rape claim is wrong by the blogs. Again you don’t get your sources from partisan sources so we shouldn’t be surprised. Your source is filled with a ton of bias. For one thing on the Andrew Lawrence rape accusation your “source” has already convinced themselves that Andrew is innocent in spite of not having any evidence. The first quote is predictably a misleading one suggesting that police investigated him on her 70% claim writing “17-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Rape on Woman’s Say So Even Though She First Said She was 70% Sure Someone Else Raped Her….” In fact the source they got this story from says otherwise, noting “at 70 percent sure, police investigators determined they did not have probable cause in that case,” Superior Police Assistant Chief Charles LaGesse told the News Tribune.” It further confounds when FRS.com writes “....And Before Police Bothered to Investigate Her Claim” as they were doing an investigation at that very moment and the arrest was based on other findings. In other words they need to arrest him while they are undergoing an investigation.It is also filled with a lot of victim blaming, select quotes and distortion such as this:” The accuser claimed she would remember forever the horror of her rape—the day it happened and the events. Yet, in her very first interview with the police, she told them she was raped one week earlier than the day it supposedly happened. Specifically, she told them she was raped on July 13, not July 20.  Yep, etched into her memory forever.” Then it’s filled with mockery and often disguises not only the sociology of rape but how the majority of rapes are carried out by the victim. One can see this in this paragraph: “She said she told no one about the alleged rape until July 31 — 11 days later — not even her boyfriend. What prompted her to tell was a supposed nightmare about the assault.  She was yelling in her sleep and woke up screaming. Her boyfriend convinced her that it would be safe to go to the police, he said, “to protect others from this.””First a majority of rapes are reported after the crime, in general about the length she waited. Rape is traumatic, shucks, who knew? Other misleading methods include not noting that the victim was scared for her life because her victimizer told her that he was friends with the police and would come after her kids. It also notes that she took a shower to get the smell of smoke off of her body (the accused did smoke) and initially out of safety decided not to go forward. “The alleged victim didn’t get a rape exam until four days after she reported the assault, saying that’s when Superior police directed her to do so. That exam, performed 15 days after the alleged rape, found no evidence of an assault.” So no evidence was found because she had washed it off. Also not knowing when to get an exam or even to get one is not uncommon with rape victims. Often they want to take a shower to clean themselves and don’t know theyre wiping away evidence. “The woman told police and later testified to a judge that she clearly saw her attacker holding a gun. Though police found no gun in Andrew’s possession or at a search of his home, they found a skateboard wrench in his room. An officer wrote: “I believe the wrench could easily be mistaken for a small pistol.” I don’t disagree with this.

“After receiving DNA test results that failed to tie Andrew to the crime scene, the district attorney’s office waited two months to drop charges. Two more months of hell for Andrew. Why?  WHY?” In this case its selective naivete; they were still investigating him. Not to mention but the following quote has nothing to do with the story.” Andrew’s mother’s partner, shocked about what happened, rhetorically asked a newspaper reporter: “Does that mean I can say that you came in and touched my breasts, I’m putting you in jail, dammit?” she said. “I don’t know you. But if I said you raped me … all I would have to say is you did it, and not prove anything?”  Yes, ma’am. That’s it. You are 100 percent correct.”No that’s not correct. The charges have been dropped because there wasn’t much evidence and the police inhibited a quality investigation. This quote and its resounding agreement only furthers to make rape claims not believed and to further paranoia. It also doesn’t make sense to conclude that just because the wrench didn’t have DNA on it that he didn’t do it. There would be no reason why the wrench would have DNA on it. It also makes no attempt at describing what happened to her after the incident, “The alleged victim in the case said she’ll soon move from her home near Lawrence’s to another part of Superior, and she and her boyfriend are both working two jobs for the money to make that happen.
She already lost two jobs, she said, one because some of Lawrence’s friends were there and made lewd comments to her,”and “She said she’s angry that police didn’t do more to investigate the case, including talking with neighbors; that they didn’t try to identify the other person she said was in her home as a lookout when she was raped. And when the DNA results came back, authorities never gave her the option of going forward with the case.” The story also omits the prosecution and other authorities perspective on it in which they supported his arrest. Being as he lied about his alibi and appeared extremely nervous among other indicators such as her call her a friend was could tell something was wrong. The woman also described to a “T” the guys friend whom she also initially thought had raped her.

@ Bean Slap,
asking a question, by definition, cannot be circular reasoning.
Yes, I asked, how we would know. It’s a legitimate question, if you consider that it usually requires some form of lobby to research into the situation of the group that it represents. Take the national organization for women as an example. If there weren’t any such organizations for women, then there would surely be too few people who point out the issues facing women.

Imagine it the other way round, if men’s rights groups were the only institutions that watch over gender issues for both men and women. That would hardly be in the interest of women would it? Oh, I’m sure they’d SAY they’re looking out for women too and they might even believe they are but we all know that’s not good enough. Denying women their own representation, in a gendered political arena would rightfully be called oppression. We’d all to often have the situation where those MRAs can simply decide that issue XYZ is not an issue and it’s “their own fault” just as you did above.

And this is exactly the situation we have now but the other way round. The way all of you are talking, is evidence for the need for political representation for men.

@ denelian,
another fallacy. Just because the government is mostly male, doesn’t mean it’s acting in the interest of men. Besides, the electorate is every bit as female as it is male, and it is they who the government answers to.

The same goes for history. History is about people. Historians specialize in areas that interest them and there’s nothing stopping you from researching the women in history if you think there is too little of it. Einstein is of interest to historians because of what he accomplished and not because he was a man. I’m sure you’d agree that women were very restricted in their roles throughout most of history and this obviously caused an imbalance in historically interesting accomplishments between the genders. But that isn’t the historians’ fault and it would be absurd to expect them to artificially emphasize women’s achievements just to ‘settle the score’.

Now, in case someone says that women have accomplished as much as men throughout history, then I’ll say: That may be, but it contradicts the currently accepted notion that women were oppressed throughout history. Why? Because an oppressed people will never accomplish as much or have as much influence as a non-oppressed people in the long run. Any one or neither of those theories might be true, but both of them can’t be true.

God, Anit, that’s stupid. So it’s not historians fault that they didn’t question their own prejudices and disappeared people? Adn that women can’t both be oppressed and still strive to create? Don’t strain something over simplifying that. 

  There’s so much fail there I don’t know where to start, from ‘it’s womens’ fault because they vote, too——-I’m sure you’ll find a way to blame women for not putting themselves up for election, too. Because there’s no context and there’s nothing that might hold them back.

“According to the records, Champaigne and Moe asked Lawrence if he was familiar with a rape that had occurred several weeks before just a few blocks from his home. He said he wasn’t. He started acting nervous, Moe wrote in his report.When asked about the assault or if he was involved, Moe said Lawrence started bouncing his knees up and down. He squeezed his hands together so hard they turned white. When questioned directly about the rape, “his breathing would rapidly increase, and I could see the veins in his neck throbbing,” Moe wrote”

He had been questioned prior to this and it was only when they mentioned a rape that he started acting nervously.

This is also why he was arrested:

“When Moe asked about his whereabouts the night of the assault, Lawrence gave a detailed description down to the half-hour, saying he played video games at home for several hours, had dinner with his mother, walked his dogs, did chores, watched movies, then went to bed at 11.But when police called Bergstrom and asked about his whereabouts, she gave a different version. He was at a friend’s house for several hours that day — Steven Brown’s house — across the street from the woman who claims Lawrence raped her.”

This also doesnt sound so good. Sounds to me like he’s lying, but of course your web site would make no mention of this. This is even AFTER they cleared the dates up for him. Doesnt sound like a solid excuse sounds to me like he was trying to say he never had any association with his friend or his house. Sounds like someone who doesnt want to be associated with that for a reason.

“Even when police made it clear to Lawrence that they were asking about his whereabouts on July 20, Lawrence said, he was so confused that he told them about where he was on the 13th.I thought it was the first Tuesday instead of the second Tuesday because they were saying two different dates, plus they said the middle of July,” he said. “I thought what I did on the 13th was the 20th.”

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/193114/publisher_ID/36/

@ ginmar
If my reasoning is flawed somewhere, then please point out precisely where how and why it is flawed. Just saying “that’s so stupid” is not an argument.
I have no particular attachment to my opinions and I’m more than willing to change them if you can give me reason to.

When we’re talking about history as a subject, we usually mean the CURRENT form of history and the historians that are around today. I have no reason to believe they are prejudiced in any particular direction. If they are, then do share it with us.

“Adn that women can’t both be oppressed and still strive to create?”

I didn’t say that. I said that any group can’t be oppressed relative to another group but still have the same influence on those matters that are most relevant to history as the group that is not oppressed. That is the definition of oppression that’s working here.

“There’s so much fail there I don’t know where to start, from ‘it’s womens’ fault because they vote, too——-I’m sure you’ll find a way to blame women for not putting themselves up for election, too”

I never collectively blamed women for anything. I was responding to someone who said that the government is effectively a men’s lobby and I pointed out the fallacy in that statement.

I’m actually trying to talk about men’s issues but find myself constantly having to justify that rather than actually getting into the discussion. For some reason people here find it deeply insulting that anyone might discuss men’s issues from a non-sexist perspective.

another fallacy. Just because the government is mostly male, doesn’t mean it’s acting in the interest of men. Besides, the electorate is every bit as female as it is male, and it is they who the government answers to.

If you think that the government answers to the electorate you must not be living in the US, where the government has catered to the defense industry, companies, and the top 1% for the past 30-35 years, after relatively light break between the 1930’s through sometime around the late 1970’s

Also you overlook the past where women weren’t part of the electorate until August 18, 1920, and social inertia alone can prevent legal equality from being social equality for a very long time. Consider how minorities, especially black people are treated in the US today, even considering that the 14th amendment was adopted July 9, 1868, compared against centuries of white supremacy and domination in the western world, a century and a half is nothing.

Einstein is of interest to historians because of what he accomplished and not because he was a man.

And a woman could have accomplished what Einstein had if things were more equitable, which they still aren’t today. I know many male theoretical physicists but can name a single female theoretical physicist off the top of my head due to the suppression of women in the fields of science. If you’re current with science, you’ll still see a dearth of women publishing papers.

Still I see no reason to believe that the government is acting exclusively in the interests of the male gender. The idea is so absurd, that the burden of proof lies with those who make that statement.

“Also you overlook the past where women weren’t part of the electorate until August 18, 1920, ...”

We’re talking about CURRENT politics and it doesn’t matter to today’s gender politics, what was before 90 years ago.

“And a woman could have accomplished what Einstein had if things were more equitable, which they still aren’t today. “

I’m sure that’s true but it’s not how history turned out and we’re stuck with it. It would be dishonest of today’s historians to pretend that there was no oppression of women by artificially emphasizing how much influence they had on the course of events just to satisfy an ideological agenda. Like I said, that would make it look like there was no oppression.

As for today’s discrimination against women, that’s why we have a women’s lobby. All I’m saying is that there should be one for men too for the same reasons.

Also, really like those posters under all these falserapesociety.com stories. Real non-skeevy assholes for you (sarcasm):

anonymous:“Beyond disgusting.

The fact that the woman waited so long before she even reported is the first red flag. She might have been looking for attention or maybe feared she was pregnant from some illicit sex romp.
Then, the prior rape allegation is a huge red flag.
Then the identification where she said it was probably someone else.
Then his alibi witnesses, and the absence of a gun.
For these police to believe there was probable cause is beyond frightening. All they had was HER word, which was tainted by the first bad ID and the prior rape claim. Yes, women are raped. But when a woman says she was raped twice, it’s like Ben Roethlisberger, you start to wonder if it’s her.”

(this study found that women who had been victimized were seven times more likely to be victimized again http://www2.ucsc.edu/rape-prevention/statistics.html and women who were sexually abused as kids are more likely to be raped as adults)

anonymous:“we can raise the obvious question: if it’s a good thing for a father to murder his son’s killer after thirty-five years, then should the victims of false rape accusations also be allowed to take the law into their own hands?”

“Anonymous said… It is a perversion of a law enforcement that lets women lie to law enforcement with little to no consequences, but does not men men and boys lie to law enforcement with little to no consequences.” (she didnt lie)

arod99k:“Everyone knows that the police and prosecutors have to keep their Rape numbers high, to get more funding for next year” (perhaps Mr. Bumblefuck would like to see this :http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-md-ci-unfounded-rape-g.eps-20100627,0,7327424.graphic “Rape Cases Dismissed”)

anit:“I said that any group cant be oppressed relative to another group but still but still have the same influence on those matters that are most relevant to history as the group that is not oppressed.That is the definition of oppression working here”

What?

Not to mention but yes rewriting of history in regards to women is quite prevalent. See Warren Farrell’s book, “The Myth of Male Power” for one example of that.

In regards to talking about mens issues, again, youre not, but are putting out what you think are mens issues only to have it exposed that they arent (see men living longer). Not one place did you ever mention mens high rape rate and how to stop them from doing that. All your sources come from partisan websites that are major skeevy. You have only been exposed to those sites and nothing more legit. Its not that ‘youre trying to discuss these issues and keep getting “shouted” down,’ but that these issues are all shoddily supported and incredibly scewed or hypocritical. You have a very sheltered and one dimesnional distortion of reality thats fueled by open misogynists. I mean did you even READ the replys by those MRAs on your falserapesociety.com page?

anit,
I asked you if Black America would know they were oppressed without government interferance in the 50s and you never answered. Oppression doesnt come from any government group, the people know it ahead of time. You are asking that a group find out what if they are oppressed. That is as stupid as finding a group to affirm that they wear clothes. If one was truly oppressed you would know it. I find it incredibly stupid that men would think they are oppressed but yet these same men think women arent? Again its as stupid as having a heterosexual lobby group. Perhaps you think the heterosexuals should want to find out if theyre oppressed? Stupid.

In regards to your claim that historians shouldnt ‘settle the score,’ again no ones settling a score. Historians research womens history to dig up information that was oppressed or ignored in the times in which it was being made because a particular womens achievement would not fit the typical narrative of the day. This is why we dont need mens studies. Mens achievements were not buried due to their gender. This is what womens studies unfolds is those stories forgotten due to prejudice.

anit,
When you say that we should have a mens lobby for the same reason as women (under-representation, precedents of oppression/misogyny) that is not the same. Men dont have under representation! I mean we have never had a female president! Men are the majority of Fortune 500 CEOs! This isnt just nationally in America but internationally you are far from being under represented and not only that but in a majority of societies a strict and even more draconian misogynistic system exists in all these places against women (see Saudi Arabia) that severely privileges men. You also have no history of oppression by women.

@Anit

The past affects the present, I seriously suggest that you get some perspective rather than brushing everything away and complaining about the present as if it exists as some thing never effected by all of history.

Bean Slap has pointed out why your idea of men needing a mens’ lobby is a poor idea. I suggest really thinking about what Bean Slap and others have wrote. Men only have themselves to blame for what they do to themselves, no other.

Still I see no reason to believe that the government is acting exclusively in the interests of the male gender. The idea is so absurd, that the burden of proof lies with those who make that statement.

This is asinine.

Compare and contrast the privileges and power men wield compared to the privileges and power women wield. If you’re willing to be objective, the fact than men as a group rule over women as a group is bleedingly obvious.

Well denelian I can understand why we’d study euro history is because they had a substantial influence on us more than anyone (for sociohistorical reasons). I think in regards to white history, actually white male history is because the Americans (not euros) we study (we really only study medievel history in college) is due to the previous sociological privileging of those people. George Washington, Abe, ect. This is why antin, that we have black and womens studies. Men as a group arent excluded and werent excluded in the past. I think theres a difference between white people and europeans. Not all euros are white remember (italians, portugese, spanish, greece). When we say white people were often talking about people without cultural roots who abdicated their culture for the privileging of skin tone who may not even be full european heritage. White is in reference to the socio/cultural construct not an actual people. There is no such thing as real white culture like there is German, Egyptian, ect. Its just a skin tone. I mean many Japanese are white as are Jews and Iranians. Many european origined americans today come from immigration during the early 20th century and many of those people werent even considered white then.

@BeanSlap

“Not to mention but yes rewriting of history in regards to women is quite prevalent. See Warren Farrell’s book, “The Myth of Male Power” for one example of that.”

Look him up, he’s not even a historian.

“All your sources come from partisan websites that are major skeevy. You have only been exposed to those sites and nothing more legit.”

I never gave you any of my sources so you cannot know that. That was just a wild guess to try to discredit my opinion. I could throw the same kind of mud right back at you with a statement like “You have only read dogma from radical feminists and that is why you think you’re right when you aren’t”.
But I won’t say that because it’s a miserable and dishonest way to debate.

“That is as stupid as finding a group to affirm that they wear clothes. If one was truly oppressed you would know it. I find it incredibly stupid that men would think they are oppressed but yet these same men think women arent?”

You’re contradicting yourself. Those “stupid” men who think they’re oppressed, well they say they KNOW that they’re oppressed - the very condition that you require in the previous sentence. Absurd reasoning.
Wearing clothes is something that can be measured with certainty. Oppression can take many more subtle forms. One of the first jobs of women’s liberation was to convince women that they were oppressed in the first place. Many didn’t know how restricted their roles in society were. Many women today would not agree with you that they’re oppressed but you think they are. Hence, the possibility needs to be discussed no matter how “stupid” it seems to you.

@ R.T.
“The past affects the present, I seriously suggest that you get some perspective…”

I’m aware of that, but looking at the past in that particular issue was not sensible. Read the whole discussion and you’ll see why. The issue was that somebody said that the government is effectively a men’s lobby and I disagreed with that. See? We’re talking about the CURRENT government and not something from a century a go. Otherwise you could ALWAYS bring that point up. No matter how equal life becomes or how oppressed men become, you can always lean into the comfortable armchair and say “well until 1920 women weren’t even allowed to vote so there”. I suppose you feel that today’s generation of men are somehow responsible for past oppression of women. Us-vs-them mentality again.

“Men only have themselves to blame for what they do to themselves, no other. “
Fallacy again. Men as a group are not one entity that does something to itself consciously. Men do bad things to other men and those other men are victims as any woman might be. They are neither responsible nor are they to be dismissed solely on the grounds that they have the same gender as the person who is responsible.

“Compare and contrast the privileges and power men wield compared to the privileges and power women wield. If you’re willing to be objective, the fact than men as a group rule over women as a group is bleedingly obvious.”

Like I said above, show me exactly where I’m wrong and don’t just say “it’s obvious you’re wrong”. Anyone can say that.

“Like I said above, show me exactly where I’m wrong and don’t just say “it’s obvious you’re wrong”. Anyone can say that.”

In other words, “I’ve ignored everything you’ve said, every source provided, every single bit of reality that doesn’t line up with what I want to be true, so do it for me, mommy!”

As a lawyer (and definitely not the only one here) I am pretty disturbed by the misconstrued paternity, adoption, and child support laws shown by some posters in the comments.

You have to establish paternity legally in order to have parental rights to a child. This is usually a simple deal where you can go without a lawyer and take a DNA test, regardless of how much the mother doesn’t want you in her or her child’s life. If you fail to do this, you lose your parental rights. In most cases, you cannot be made to pay child support without that same DNA test.

Most cases, because there’s always adoption, and courts will sometimes force men who were married to the mother and acted as father to the child for a period of years to continue to pay for the child even after they discover the mother cheated or lied about paternity.

Generally married men are presumed to be the father of children born to their wives - we don’t require a DNA test to give them legal paternity rights. So a man may be forced to be a legal father without a DNA test, but only when they are married to the mom. They find out they were cheated on later, and the kid isn’t theirs and they don’t want to pay anymore, but they are the legal father and are required to. This can happen (in some states) and it sucks for the guy. But if the court didn’t require this, it would suck for the child.

Courts know both results are unfair, but they have to deal with the lesser of two evils at this point. Often if the actual DNA dad can be found and is made to pay child support, the guy who was lied to is off the hook, and can sometimes get reimbursed.

Most states have STUPID laws when it comes to underage sex.  And sometimes rape and statutory rape in general. We elect the people who make those dumb laws, in our state legislatures. The laws vary from state to state. I’m sure there are states where men are consistently treated unfairly in these cases due to the construction of the laws. Which were written by overwhelmingly male legislatures. Do with that what you will.

In most cases, you cannot be made to pay child support without that same DNA test.

Wrong, a woman need only name a man as the father and he will be on the hook for child support even if he does not take a DNA test. http://reason.com/archives/2004/02/01/injustice-by-default

As for the idiot feminists here (denelian, bean slap).

It’s insane how willfully blind feminists can be. Even after providing proof of claims (feminists fight against men’s rights, in many cases men get arrested and raked over the coals on NO EVIDENCE EXCEPT A WOMAN’s ALLEGATION, in direct contradiction to the feminist claim that “rape victims don’t get believed”, they still deny it.

When their bullshit claims get called out, they still deny it.

E.g. denelian said every rape article she read is victim blaming. I pasted three random rape articles from google, none of which had victim blaming. Seems like clear enough proof, right?

Nope, she still goes on about bullshit.

the 2% and the 4% are from the DOJ, 2009. actually, it was more like “2.1-3.3% vs 4.5-6.9%” if you factor in the +/-, which differed between the two.

More blatant lies, which no feminist calls out because they want to believe them.

There is literally no source for a 2 or 4% number. Provide a link, I have already done so to scholarly works.

Here’s another:

http://www.theforensicexaminer.com/archive/spring09/15/

Quote from that:

“Twenty-seven percent (27%) of these complainants admitted they had fabricated their accusation just before taking the polygraph or right after they failed the test.”

Fully 27% of “rape victims” admitted they lied.

As for Bean Slap, who blatantly lies about the article.

First of all, the “biased source” of falserapesociety.blogspot.com just reports from news articles.

Second, you made many mistakes (or lies) about it. First she said she was “70% sure” that the guy’s friend was the rapist. Police did not arrest anyone. Later, she saw the guy (not in a line-up, but on the street at night) and said she thought he was the rapist. The police arrested him solely on that.

Proving my point, just a woman’s allegation can get a man arrested based on zero evidence other than her word.

Then, Bean says that “of course he needed to be arrested, so they can investigate.”

Great, I’m sure you will feel the same way when I accuse you of rape. Have fun in jail despite no evidence we even met except for my word, that’s OK right, since you need to be investigated.

Then Bean says that because he acted nervous when being questioned, he is probably the rapist.

Wow, I can’t imagine why someone would feel nervous about being questioned by the police about a rape. The only reason is that he MUST be the rapist!

This is how feminists think. Accused of rape = rapist.

@ Rare Vos
If person A disagrees with person B, then it is person B who has to say why. How can I ignore something that hasn’t been said?

And your attempt to use shaming and sarcasm to drive a point home only reveals your automatic assumption of privilege as a basis for an argument that you probably already suspect to be pitifully weak.
Pathetic!

@Comment #331: anit

This burden of proof your insisting on thrusting on feminists is asinine.

This isn’t about claimant of gods or unicorns with marshmallow blood, but about sociology, which is real and friggen complex and people shouldn’t have to teach you about social reality when you can do the homework yourself. Hell, you’re living social reality, so put the time in to learn about it.

There are numerous statistics that show that men as a group rule, that men as a group get the best out of life, that men as a group are the ones that make the rules, even rules that are actively harmful to women. If you are getting information that men are victims (of who, likely other men) and the response is

If you think that the burden of proof is on feminists to teach you about reality, you are asking for too much and wasting our time. I’m autistic and physically disabled, is the burden of proof on me to “prove” that others like me and myself are discriminated against for being disabled too or are you going to listen to people whose life experience is that of a marginalized person and trust that we know what we are talking about?

I’m aware of that, but looking at the past in that particular issue was not sensible. Read the whole discussion and you’ll see why. The issue was that somebody said that the government is effectively a men’s lobby and I disagreed with that. See? We’re talking about the CURRENT government and not something from a century a go. Otherwise you could ALWAYS bring that point up. No matter how equal life becomes or how oppressed men become, you can always lean into the comfortable armchair and say “well until 1920 women weren’t even allowed to vote so there”. I suppose you feel that today’s generation of men are somehow responsible for past oppression of women. Us-vs-them mentality again. </blockqquote>

You totally overlooked my bit about social inertia when I was making that comment. Try to read what people write.

<blockquote>“Men only have themselves to blame for what they do to themselves, no other. “
Fallacy again. Men as a group are not one entity that does something to itself consciously. Men do bad things to other men and those other men are victims as any woman might be. They are neither responsible nor are they to be dismissed solely on the grounds that they have the same gender as the person who is responsible.

There are lots of oppressed groups that have men in them, find the specific group you belong to and join them, there is no need for a generic “mens’ lobby group” because again, as a group men rule even if some subgroups are treated like shit.

“Compare and contrast the privileges and power men wield compared to the privileges and power women wield. If you’re willing to be objective, the fact than men as a group rule over women as a group is bleedingly obvious.”

Like I said above, show me exactly where I’m wrong and don’t just say “it’s obvious you’re wrong”. Anyone can say that.

There is no single piece of datum that says men oppress, but history is full of data that points to the trend that men are oppressors.

I first thought feminists were wrong until I did the homework, you need to do your own homework too or else you will not understand feminist conversation. There’s jargon involved, and words that have meaning beyond the lay person understanding of them I suggest starting here http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/ and reading (not challenging and speaking over) what people say.

I love it when civvies like Celda bring up not just the Air Force Study, but the Kanin one as well, because it’s like a Christmas present of misogyny and stupid, all in one package.

The Kanin study is useless because Kanin never IDed the town and thus the methods that police department used to determine those rapes were ‘unfounded’ remains nameless. I kind of suspect, given that there’s mention that victims were polygraphed,  that those methods were extremely sexist and God only knows what else. 

The Air Force study mentions that the victims who recanted were given polygraph tests.  What people don’t realize is that in the military, accusing someone of rape is serious business, and the presumption going in is often that the victim lied, not the attacker. So a lot of effort is placed not on getting the rapist to admit it but to prove the victim a liar. Good job, Celda, in case there was any doubt what a woman-hater you were,  your use of these two pieces of crap pretty much ended all doubt.

You totally overlooked my bit about social inertia when I was making that comment. Try to read what people write.
My response, screwed up a tag.

And Celda is trying to act as if 27% of ‘all’ rape victims lied, not just the ones being attacked and pressured by the Air Force.

If person A disagrees with person B, then it is person B who has to say why. How can I ignore something that hasn’t been said?

You even fucked this up.

The burden of proof is on the one making a positive claim, like saying that you own a volvo, you have to come up wit the evidence to show that your claim is true.

Sociology is more complex than to allow un-nuanced simple positive and negative claims, but feminists and other oppressed groups have a lot of data that says that they are in fact oppressed.

But it’s not our job to do your homework because we can’t hold advanced conversations amongst ourselves when we’re always having to “prove” to people who likely won’t listen to us anyway the validity of what our conversations are about.

@ R.T.
  “If person A disagrees with person B, then it is person B who has to say why. How can I ignore something that hasn’t been said?

You even fucked this up.

The burden of proof is on the one making a positive claim, like saying that you own a volvo, you have to come up wit the evidence to show that your claim is true. “

Lol. I knew that seeing the sarcasm was expecting too much intellectual contortion. Look at what I was responding too and how absurd it was.

“There are numerous statistics that show that men as a group rule, that men as a group get the best out of life, that men as a group are the ones that make the rules, even rules that are actively harmful to women.”

The usual “it’s true simply because I say so” argument. YOU are the one saying men rule therefore it is YOU who has to say why. I don’t care how obvious it is to you or how “real” it seems. If you want me to believe you, then you must do better than just tell me I’m out of touch with reality. If you can’t back up your claim with facts then all you’re doing is preaching. Oh, and sending me links to read about more feminist claims is not good enough. By all means, quote other people’s opinions but put those quotes here and don’t expect me to do your research for you.

“I first thought feminists were wrong until I did the homework”

That’s funny, because I first thought feminists were right until I did my homework. What’s also funny is that most feminists would deny that you’re a feminist due to your open sexism.

“Sociology is more complex than to allow un-nuanced simple positive and negative claims, but feminists and other oppressed groups have a lot of data that says that they are in fact oppressed.”

You can always find data that suggests whatever you want it to suggest - whether it exists or not. Feminists will search for and interpret data to support their agenda and the MRA’s will do the same. The suicide rate is a good example. Feminists deny that it’s a sign of oppression. Others say it’s evidence (I’m believe neither). But nobody can deny one thing. And that is that if the female suicide rate was higher than the male suicide rate, then feminists would use it as evidence of oppression in a flash. Homelessness? Same thing.
See? It’s about agendas and political motivations. And if you just blindly believe everything that comes from one side and automatically reject everything else, then you’re a fanatic, not a truth seeker. And just like a fanatic, you are totally certain about your position. No amount of evidence could change your mind. You’re determined to view men as the enemy you need to fight.

“But it’s not our job to do your homework because we can’t hold advanced conversations amongst ourselves when we’re always having to “prove” to people who likely won’t listen to us anyway the validity of what our conversations are about. “

I did try to come here to talk about mens issues. It is you who seems to feel attacked by that. I asked before and I’ll ask again, what are you so afraid? The truth? I suppose it hurts to learn that your enemy is perhaps not the villain after all. It’s so comfortable and pleasing to you to believe that you’re victims of that villain and any suggestion that might shake that picture is taken as a personal attack. To you this has never been about making things better but about getting your own back on the enemy. At least have the courage and integrity to admit it.

Anit

I’m not going to try to compress 50+ years of feminist thought into a soundbyte for you.

Do your goddamned homework or bugger off.

You know you sound just like a christian trying to talk to an atheist; “you’re just blind in your convictions, you won’t believe in my evidence evidence ‘cause you’re close-minded” newsflash I’ve seen the evidence and rejected the anti-feminist position because it does not hold up to reality. If there was better evidence that said feminists were wrong, I’d accept it, but all the evidence I’ve seen are a few instances where individual men may have gotten the wrong end of the stick, compared to the mountain of evidence that shows that women as a whole get the wrong end of the stick.

Oh, and here’s something that may blow your mind: I’m male but gender-queer which gives me a different insight of what men are because I was socialized to be something that is destructive to humanity, a man, but have rejected masculinity for the toxic thing it is. I’m intimately familiar with that gender and being anti-man is not sexist, because there is no power in it, unlike the power of institutionalized sexism against women and female persons.

We’re done here. Fucking bigot.
Comment #282: Celda on 03/12 at 10:30 PM

Which one of us that you were quoting do you mean?  You mixed my words with someone else’s.

You asked how you would ever know you were oppressed if not for a mens lobby. That is circular reasoning, that one needs a mens lobby to know they are oppressed.

Comment #311: Bean Slap on 03/13 at 06:46 PM

This is what they think feminism is—making shit up and then getting women to believe it, because women don’t all automatically figure it out from jump.

Feminism is in noticing that the personal is the political.

@oldfeminist

<bockquote>Which one of us that you were quoting do you mean?  You mixed my words with someone else’s. </blockquote>

I think Celda was calling me a bigot as he quoted my line.

However Celda appears to cherry-pick and quote mine snippets of larger comments so even I wonder if he was addressing me or not.

I was pretty sure he meant RT, but it was certainly not clear.

@ R.T.

“You know you sound just like a christian trying to talk to an atheist; “you’re just blind in your convictions, you won’t believe in my evidence evidence ‘cause you’re close-minded” newsflash I’ve seen the evidence “

How can I believe evidence which you refuse to produce? It is YOU who demands that I believe your assertion but refuses to produce evidence while insisting that you’ve seen it. Why should we believe you? Until you produce any evidence, you’re just preaching.

Here’s the equivalent of what you’re saying:
Why won’t you buy my invisible car? How dare you ask me to show you evidence that it exists. I know it exists because I’ve seen the evidence and you just have to believe me. You’re so closed minded because you won’t accept evidence that I haven’t shown you.

I don’t care about your sexuality or your gender. Your opinions are what we’re dealing with here and phrases like “...but [I] have rejected masculinity for the toxic thing it is” are hateful and fanatic. You know, hate won’t make your life better.

Thank you, anit, for admitting that your hatred for women isn’t improving your life.  That’s the first step towards recovery from batshit crazy bigotry.  Good for you!

@Anit

You are being an asshole. You do not come into a feminist space and demand feminists and pro-feminists to prove their worldview to you.

Do your fucking homework. I gave you a link that will lead you all over the internet to feminist blogs and articles which will provide you evidence. It takes years to grasp the subject and understand the nuance and meta stuff, that’s why I can’t give you some nugget that makes it all click. You have to do the work to get that click.

Here’s that link again: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

Sociology isn’t an easy science like chemistry, biology, cosmology, geology, and physics where a person can point to one bit of evidence, one paper that says “here’s the good evidence that ‘proves’ my case.” Sociology is messy and fluid and we are carried along in it as we try to study it.

I don’t care about your sexuality or your gender. Your opinions are what we’re dealing with here and phrases like “...but [I] have rejected masculinity for the toxic thing it is” are hateful and fanatic. You know, hate won’t make your life better.

You don’t get that “man” is a gender and “masculinity” is a label of a certain expression of gender. I’m anti-man, anti-masculinity because of the harm this arbitrary social performance shit does, I’m not anti-male. Can you understand that nuance?

And fuck you for presuming what will make my life better. Men and masculinity have made my life suck so I have damn good reasons to hold the positions I do.

And gender-queer isn’t sexuality dipshit. I’m asexual, that’s my sexuality.