I’ve had it up to here with this deadbeat-dad-guy currently being promoted by some men’s rights group (poor, rightless men!) as a poster child for how to behave like a stupid white male 20-something jerk. I allude to this so-called “Roe v Wade for men” dealio, wherein the MRA group claims, apparently without grasping that there are over 387 fundamental differences between pregnancy and money, that since women can have abortions, men should be able to bag on child support.
This scenario would restore the natural order, which has been dangerously out of whack ever since Roe v. Wade gave women that extra little measure of human dignity, by returning the financial responsibility for child-rearing to anybody but the father. If the mother can’t pay and the kid ends up on food stamps, it’s no skin off the deadbeat’s nose; society owes him the right to boink anything that moves, and ought to foot the bill.
So all this is is a laughably whiny attempt at financial retribution against women who dare to flaunt their humanity by claiming personal autonomy. “What! Women claiming ownership of their own uteruses? We’d better sock it to those lying, entrapping cuntalinas where it really hurts: their fashionably tiny handbags!”
Speaking of lying, entrapping cuntalinas, Amanda observes with her usual clarity that the mythical Conniving Bitch character is central to this, and every other, deadbeat-dad-guy’s argument.* The Conniving Bitch is always trying to trick some poor feckless dude into coughing up his precious bodily fluids because lard knows if she can produce a son and heir she’ll be entitled to half the Quartermain fortune! Or, if she’s not a character in a soap opera, she’ll be set for life with that princely $500 a month in child support she’ll be lucky to ever see. And, because the only way to avoid this grievous inequity is to stop boinking women without condoms, the feckless dudes of America are obviously powerless to stop this juggernaut of bitchly evil.
Pedestrians on the Sidewalk of Average Intelligence, hie thee to the nearest underpass. It’s raining baloney.
*Because I have officially acquired chemo-brain, I seem to have written one of those poorly-structured sentences that inadvertently says something more or less antithetical to the intended point of the sentence. I’m too lazy to fix it, though. Sorry, Amanda!
Assigning child support responsibilities to biological fathers is, in fact, a product of the patriarchy. Namely, it links a child’s financial and social status to the child’s paternity — and so is patriarchal by definition.
A non-patriarchal system would support children without regard to their paternity.
A non-patriarchal system would not award higher or lower child support depending on whether the bio father has a high or low income (thus linking the child’s status to that of the father, which is an arbitrary arrangement, although we are accustomed to it as the normative)
There are a few societies left in the world that don’t do this — where, for example, a woman’s brother is responsible for the support of her children. This is arguably better than paternal child support, but not ideal, because clearly it still presupposes a system where men have acccess to financial resources and women don’t.
Now, what I am looking for (maybe in my next lifetime?) is for women to control enough financial resources that women and children have what they need to survive without regard to their attachment to a high- or low-status male.
Then the payoff for seeking high-status males will be a lot less, and women can focus on the things that make their lives truly satisfying and worth living.
Until we enter that state of bliss, I guess enforcing paternal child support is what we have to aim at.
The only good thing about this case is that it’s happening in Michigan. While my state might be rapidly succumbing to all kinds of ridiculous godbaggery, Attorney General Mike Cox (who may or may not still be considering a run for Governor) has spent his entire tenure in office going after deadbeat dads. And it’s been wildly popular in Michigan…well, with everyone who isn’t an MRA douchebag.
Why even link a child’s status to the economic status of the mother, for that matter? Your suggestion would still end up with a world wherein women would be saddled with the childcare responsibilities. There’s a strong argument that even in an egalitarian society, there should be a mechanism for given men responsibility for children so that women aren’t assumed to be the Natural Parenting Unit, which is also, IIRC, a patriarchal claim.
And as long as biological fathers retain an interest in their children, those children who manage to achieve paternal (or even avuncular!) support will have, under all situations, an advantage over those who don’t simply because there’s twice as many people to take care of them. Your proposal would end up with a world where men are wholly separated from childcare, which I think is the opposite direction in which to go.
I agree that the community should bear a far greater responsibility for childcare. But your proposal sounds like a ham-handed attempt to create a gynocentric society that would probably backfire badly. There’s a reason why matrilocal societies still expect avuncular support. And I suspect that you wouldn’t be able to form an avuncular society, since you’d have to convince men in existing societies to abandon paternity claims.
Betsy said: There are a few societies left in the world that don’t do this — where, for example, a woman’s brother is responsible for the support of her children. This is arguably better than paternal child support, but not ideal, because clearly it still presupposes a system where men have acccess to financial resources and women don’t.
it also presupposes that all women have brothers. I guess a child with seven aunties and no uncles would be SOL.
Betsy in #1: I would hope that a post-patriarchal system would contain only people who acknowledge the hubris and folly in all human reproduction. But I get your point.
My little niggle here is that if biological fathers skip out based on some kind of nutjob conniving bitch theory, the community is left holding the bag, which to me seems less fair than if the guy who couldn’t keep it in his pants is left holding the bag.
Um, that was to Betsy.
Also on the larger matter, there is precisely one important analogy between men and women in the matter of pregnancy: the fact that both, after birth, will be saddled with (usually welcome) financial burdens. In real life the burdens aren’t equal, so you can make a case against “choice for men”. But were the (financial) burdens equal, then your ability to make an argument against giving men limited choice in the financial domain would be a lot weaker, unless you also want to argue that women shouldn’t be able to have an abortion for financial reasons, which obviously you don’t. Since, for example, both men and women are equally likely to have prior children. But we have not yet reached financial equality, so it would probably be bad policy.
Agreed that once again this is a by-product of our society’s limited community support for children’s well-being. One can blame that on the patriarchy, I guess.
They don’t want us to have abortions. No, wait: now they want us to have abortions, or else!
If anyone tries to pretend that this is all about turning women into virgins (no sex, no abortions) or whores (sex on male demand, with no inconvenient obligations for said man) — in other words, one of the two culturally acceptable roles in a patriarchy — then I invite them to pull their heads out of their asses. None of these is about protecting innocent little foeti. It’s about protecting men’s right not to have to think of women as human.
((head explodes))
it also presupposes that all women have brothers. I guess a child with seven aunties and no uncles would be SOL.
The child would have seven aunties though. In theory, in an avuncular society, all the mother’s siblings would help out, and so the difference would be minimal….unless all the aunties had a gazillion children, of course. Which once again highlights the problem with letting men off the hook in a matrilocal/matrilineal society.
They’re controlling women so they don’t have to control themselves. I can’t think of any more monstrous demonstration of selfishness than that. “Oh, well, I don’t like condoms, I can always make the bitch have an abortoin. Or I can leave town.” They’re so damned lazy and selfish that abandoning women is for them nothing but birth control.
Stupid whiny-ass piece of crap. He’s looking to place the burden of birth control squarely on the woman, meanwhile, he gets to go screw anything he wants without having to worry about any consequences. Bullshit! If he’s that worried about getting someone pregnant, he should have used birth control. If he really didn’t want to have a child, he should have used birth control. It’s really sad that these morons are trying to equate personal autonomy with a little cash.
Now, I do recognize that this is the same argument that anti-choice people use against women who seek an abortion. My answer is that the two situations are not analogous. Birth control can, and does fail, even when both parties are careful. Once the deed is done, the choice belongs solely to the woman. However, if a man is adamant that he does not want children, he should insist on birth control, even if the woman claims she cannot get pregnant.
So, this guy, a 25 year-old computer programmer, is claiming “fraud in the inducement”. Let’s assume, arguendo, that women really do try to trick men into getting them pregnant in order to force child support payments (as if!). Child support is based on the man’s income. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but a computer programmer is not going to make the money that say, an NFL player would, or a CEO. Why would a woman choose a computer programmer, whose likely isn’t making six or more figures annually, when she could choose to fraudulently induce a much wealthier man into her bed, and thus receive higher child support payments?
(Apologies to the computer programmers out there; I don’t mean to denigrate your occupation. It’s just an example to highlight the idiocy of this moron’s claim).
“Forcing” a man to pay child support is in no way equivalent to forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. It’s an idiotic argument. It likens the sexual act to a contract, and uses the aforementioned contractual defense of fraud in the inducement. It reduces sex and/or relationships to a business relationship.
Fortunately, family law looks to the best interests of the child, so I’m hoping that any rational family court judge unfortunate enough to have this case assigned to her/his docket will see through this pathetic attempt to avoid resonsibility, and toss it out. At the very least, I hope the judge doubles the child support.
Mandos,
Why even link a child’s status to the economic status of the mother, for that matter? Your suggestion would still end up with a world wherein women would be saddled with the childcare responsibilities. There’s a strong argument that even in an egalitarian society, there should be a mechanism for given men responsibility for children so that women aren’t assumed to be the Natural Parenting Unit, which is also, IIRC, a patriarchal claim.
There is a couple of ways I could respond to this:
1) Women are already saddled with the childcare responsibilities and are the primary custodial parents in the overwhelming majority of cases anyway.
2) Socializing the costs of social reproduction doesn’t necessarily entail socializing the responsibility if that fathers could still certainly be parents in their kids lives, what would be different is that the individual parents would not longer be responsible for a large share of the financial burden of social reproduction
3) You are factually wrong. Fathers are not automatically given parenting responsibility as per #1. This case is about child support, which, last I checked, wasn’t parenting.
And as long as biological fathers retain an interest in their children, those children who manage to achieve paternal (or even avuncular!) support will have, under all situations, an advantage over those who don’t simply because there’s twice as many people to take care of them. Your proposal would end up with a world where men are wholly separated from childcare, which I think is the opposite direction in which to go.
Yeah, now they are just mostly seperated from childcare. Its amazing how you subtly equate dollars with parenting, but, sadly, a child-support check *already* doesn’t equal parenting.
I agree that the community should bear a far greater responsibility for childcare. But your proposal sounds like a ham-handed attempt to create a gynocentric society that would probably backfire badly. There’s a reason why matrilocal societies still expect avuncular support. And I suspect that you wouldn’t be able to form an avuncular society, since you’d have to convince men in existing societies to abandon paternity claims.
Well, of course not. The very backbone of patriarchy is controling social reproduction so that women, as a class, can be used by men to reproduce a society hostile to them. We already see that the limited amount of control over social reproduction women have taken back with BC and abortion cause hysteria on the part of patriachy, and for good reason. Without control of social reproduciton, patriachy is doomed.
Hey there Twisty and Twisty friends!
Im just dropping in to call the troops to Arms, and here you are ranting on the abortion issue.
Life is full of syncronicity, aint it?
Anyway, here’s a link to a protest we had in Columbus, Ohio yesterday. I would be grateful to you all if you would pass the word and help rally the troops.
Women Arise
Thanks much,
Joan of Arc
(AKA: Kelley Bell)
After reading this, I had to update my own entry (here) on the subject (which features a mug shot of the chief promulgator of this "Roe vs. Wade for Men," who was peddling his horseshit on CNN this morning - feel free to print image and use for target practice!) with a link to your post.
Chemo or no, you consistently kick ass. (To belabor the obvious.)
Yours in struggle (& all that) - V.
(Who fervently hopes that the wee bit of html here will neither befoul this, my first effort to post a comment on this blog, nor annoy its benevolent host.)
This is more of that “equality under the law” crap that I was arguing about with some jerk named Darren at Happy Feminist.
He said, magnanimously, that he was willing to pay “pregnancy restitution” to a woman if she would refrain from an abortion so that he could then keep, and raise, the child himself.
(and I’m so sure he wouldn’t file a child support claim against the mom in that case, right.)
Then, in the next breath, he said he didn’t want to pay child support for his current, existing son: that he wanted to raise him, and that he would never pay child support to the mother.
And we’re supposed to beleive, after hearing that, that he’s willing to pay a woman for a year of her life??(Whatever that’s worth)…..
And that somehow this equals, in his twisted brain, “equality under the law”. Wow. Amazing.
Paying a woman to be pregnant is not equality under the law. It’s indentured servitude.
All I can get from this new twist in Father’s Rights Fuckwadery is what we already knew about them to begin with:
They want total control of women.
- Men get to decide if she will have an abortion or have a pregnancy
- Men get to decide who will raise the resulting child, and
- Men who don’t want the baby, and who don’t want to pay the imaginary “pregnancy restitution”, and who don’t want to pay for an abortion, can also not pay child support when said baby is born.
Um, guys? You already have equality under the law. Here it is:
If a woman has a baby, and doesn’t put you on the birth certificate and doesn’t name you (read: doesn’t want you around) you don’t have to pay child support and you don’t have to be a daddy!
If she does “make you pay support”, as is her right to do if she feels it is necessary for the best interest of the child, you get to be a daddy and have a role in the life of the child you are supporting, just like mom!
That’s equality under the law!
I don’t think legal paternity=patriarchy. It just acknowledges that there’s two parties involved - it’s a legal connection to the baby - not ownership or custody. Because the woman can’t step away from her responsibility (obviously) I think it’s a fine compromise to legally bind the man to the kid with money. It’s not putting him in a position of power - just denying him the privilege of walking away.
heterosex is scary.
In my perfect world, guys who don’t want to have children, or even risk the chance of having children shouldn’t fuck women.
Because women do what they want with their bodies and that doesn’t have to involve the men she has sex with.
I’ve told this to men many times and it is amazing to see their horror when they contemplate the idea that having sex with women doesn’t mean they get to control them. It bugs them so much that women (could) have more reproductive control options than them (ie have sex or not, use birth control or not, use Plan B or not, have abortion or stay pregnant, give child up for adoption or raise baby and demand child support). Of course a lot of those choices are pretty shaky–we all know who’s to blame.
And I get to see that deep down most guys are so much part of the patriarchy that at least some part of them believes that controlling women is okay, especially for sex. Fuckers.
It would help if men had more birth control options than the condom. That way they couldn’t whine about evil tricksy women lying to them about the pill.
Conservatives are so fucking eager to lecture pregnant women about responsiblity. Where are the conservatives who are so interested in personal responsibility on this issue? Not-so-strangely silent. Unfortunately, they aren’t at all interested in personal responsibility or children. They are interested in punishing sluts.
I’m willing to bet that if/when abortion is made illegal in this country men will still want the “right” to abdicate responsibility.
Phyllis Chesler did a 7 year study on child custody. After extensive research she found that in 83% of cases, fathers are awarded child custody. Contrary to patriarchal propaganda, only 17% of mothers are awarded custody when there is a custody dispute. If a mother happens to be one of the fortunate in those 17% of cases, the father can challenge the judge’s decision, in which case he has a 90% chance that the decision will be reversed and custody will be awarded to him. In fact, a Philadelphia lawyer informed me that she hasn’t seen a case yet in a which a father didn’t get custody. Abusive men are 9 x as likely to seek custody of children. So he can continue to control and abuse the mother. And chances are, he’ll get it.
It is a big fat lie that mothers get custody and fathers have to pay child support. In the vast majority of cases, it is the opposite way around. If a father is paying child support and doesn’t have custody, then the overwhelmingly odds are that you are looking at a father who wasn’t interested in custody and couldn’t be bothered with going to court and disputing it. Keep this in mind when you when you listen to the hot air being blowing out of the asses of men’s rights’ groups. These are the men who weren’t interested in custody and couldn’t be bothered with going to court. They just wanted their cake and eat it too. They don’t want custody and they don’t want to pay either. When it comes to women, they just want to find them, feel them, fuck them, and forget them.
In cases of kidnapping, Chesler couldn’t find a single case of a father being pursued or prosecuted. 80% of mothers who do the same thing, however, are hunted down like dogs by law enforcement and prosecuted.
Chesler took actual transripts taken from the witch trials during 1692 and compared them to the trials and tribulations mothers face in the courtroom today. Almost word for word, they are one and the same. The same tactics and attacks that were used on women to find them guilty of witchcraft over 400 years ago are still being used on women today to prove them guilty of being unfit mothers.
It would help if men had more birth control options than the condom. That way they couldn’t whine about evil tricksy women lying to them about the pill.
Fortunately, there are actually increasingly clever male contraception alternatives in the works. So this might actually come to pass and this might come true.
1) Women are already saddled with the childcare responsibilities and are the primary custodial parents in the overwhelming majority of cases anyway.
I’m aware of the point that you are raising that childcare != $$$. However, I hope you’ll agree that $$$ is still pretty important in our society—as food may be in a subsistence or hunter-gatherer society. So if you have a choice between women receiving $$$ and women not $$$…
In other words, my point is true regardless.
Well, of course not. The very backbone of patriarchy is controling social reproduction so that women, as a class, can be used by men to reproduce a society hostile to them. We already see that the limited amount of control over social reproduction women have taken back with BC and abortion cause hysteria on the part of patriachy, and for good reason. Without control of social reproduciton, patriachy is doomed.
So in other words, you are claiming that paternity claims, male inheritance, etc, are all essentially components of patriarchy, and a just society would necessarily be matrilineal, among other things. There are a lot of implications that unfold from that.
The notion that men who do not want to have children should either use birth control or not have sex is, as we all know, the same argument that anti-choicers use regarding women. I don’t think that is the best argument to use against this whole ridiculous notion of a man’s right not to pay child support.
Now I’m certainly no expert on Roe v Wade, but my understanding is that the court stated that the government has an increasing interest in protecting the rights of the fetus as it nears viability, and that the state could place some restrictions on abortion later in the pregnancy. (Roe experts - feel free to correct me if this is wrong.)
Just as the court found that government could limit a woman’s reproductive right as the fetus nears viability, then surely the government has some right to limit a man’s “reproductive rights” (ugh!) once the child is born. The government requires these men to pay child support. It does not require them to visit or see their children, change dirty diapers, give the kids a bath, schlep them to music class, etc. It simply requires some measure of financial support. It seems pretty certain that in balancing the rights or interests of the two parties — the father and the child — (and yes, it is the child interest here, not the mother’s) that paying some measure of financial support strikes an appropriate balance.
Oh, and to hell with these assholes!
Mandos,
So in other words, you are claiming that paternity claims, male inheritance, etc, are all essentially components of patriarchy, and a just society would necessarily be matrilineal, among other things. There are a lot of implications that unfold from that.
No. It isn’t that paternity is inherently patriachal it is the socialy constructed dependence of women upon men for social reproduction that is patriachal. That isn’t to say that a just society would necessarily be matrilineal, etiher, however.
The notion that men who do not want to have children should either use birth control or not have sex is, as we all know, the same argument that anti-choicers use regarding women.
Actually it’s not, the abstinence only religion expects a inhuman level of arbitrary perfection from it’s followers and is hypocritical, and patriarchally biased all up the wazoo to boot, whereas on the other hand the “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” theory of child support obligations rests purely on the idea that a woman, because she has agency and opinions (well, us BAAAAD, unladylike women have opinions, often ones above our playstations, whatever that means) will have a good idea whether or not she will carry any unintended pregnancy to term or not before she actually gets pregnant.
This means that, due to women having agency and opinions, men also gain the magical ability to discern whether or not coming inside any particular woman might lead to them getting stuck with child support through a magical sparkly power called: Pre-Coital Conversation.
Now as a man has the ability to discern the full risks of the act of having sex, before he has sex, and chooses to have sex anyway, he basically consents to the pre-existing risks. This means that men do not have to forgo sex completly if they do not want to end up paying child support, they merely have to forgo sex with women who’ll make them pay child support if they get pregnant, much like how not-yet-convicted peadophile john derbyshire does not currently (to the best of my knowledge) fuck small boobyless children, using the amazing power of not sticking his cock inside them.
on the other hand, if he says to a woman, before conception occurs, “See here honey, I want to have sex with you, but if having sex with you means that I might end up paying for a child I can’t handle taking care of, with a woman who I do not think is the woman I want to raise a child with, I must point out that I cannot morally consent to having sex, does this present us with a problem?” and she says “nope, now eat me, bitch” (or words to that effect) then she has waivered her right to ask him to pay for or to, in any other way, help take care of any resulting children.
Of course as the men who whine loudest about this sort of stuff still ask “what do women want?” of each other on a regular basis, the idea of setting down a verbal contract before sex if it worries them so fucking much, or sucking it the fuck up and accepting responsibility for their actions, seems unlikely to occur to them.
Because that would require actually talking to their “whores” in sentences that haven’t been preordained by whatever sleazoid written “dating system” book they’ve been reading this week, and that just won’t do.
No. It isn’t that paternity is inherently patriachal it is the socialy constructed dependence of women upon men for social reproduction that is patriachal. That isn’t to say that a just society would necessarily be matrilineal, etiher, however.
I’m not intelligent enough to discern the difference between “the socially constructed dependence of women upon men for social reproduction” and “paternity”. It seems to me that (DNA testing aside) it’s hard to ensure the latter without some (perhaps very mild) version of the former.
on the other hand, if he says to a woman, before conception occurs, “See here honey, I want to have sex with you, but if having sex with you means that I might end up paying for a child I can’t handle taking care of, with a woman who I do not think is the woman I want to raise a child with, I must point out that I cannot morally consent to having sex, does this present us with a problem?†and she says “nope, now eat me, bitch†(or words to that effect) then she has waivered her right to ask him to pay for or to, in any other way, help take care of any resulting children.
Is this true? I really mean that. I don’t know. Can a woman precoitally waive support obligations?
Fortunately, there are actually increasingly clever male contraception alternatives in the works. So this might actually come to pass and this might come true.
Actually Mandros, birth control for men has been around for decades. Men won’t use them. And if I was a woman, which I am, I sure as hell wouldn’t take any man’s word for it that he’s using birth control. Because a hard cock knows no conscience. It will say and do anything it has to in order to gain access to pussy.
I’m aware of the point that you are raising that childcare != $$$. However, I hope you’ll agree that $$$ is still pretty important in our society—as food may be in a subsistence or hunter-gatherer society. So if you have a choice between women receiving $$$ and women not $$$…
In other words, my point is true regardless.
Actually Mandros, the animal kingdom gets along just fine without any money or bank accounts, as humans did for countless milleniums.
What are $$ anyways? Dead guys drawn on the bark of trees whose value is based on shiny little rocks. Only men could think this was really, really important and had value. In short, the system is only as good as those who believe in it. So consider it nothing more than a religion.
So in other words, you are claiming that paternity claims, male inheritance, etc, are all essentially components of patriarchy, and a just society would necessarily be matrilineal, among other things. There are a lot of implications that unfold from that.
Of course it’s patriarchy. Men think they can own things. The air, the sea, the earth, and everyone and everything on it. Of course it’s nothing more than male fantasy. Men don’t own anything other than their own hairy dicks. But they continue to dream up fantasy laws in a fantasy system whose purpose is to give them power they’re not entitled to and take away and own that which doesn’t belong to them. And imprison and put to death anyone who won’t go along with their warped little fantasy. Again, consider it nothing more than a religion. It relies on a belief system.
But I don’t believe in God, (who sounds suspiciously like Santa Claus — always checking his list and checking it twice and gonna find out who’s naughty or nice), I don’t believe in religion, I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny or the Toothfairy, and I don’t believe in men or their absurd little fantasy system.
I’m not looking for equality, bud. That’s an insult. I wouldn’t lower myself to the level of a man. And as Audre Lorde put it, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” So reversing everything won’t solve a thing. Neither will working within the system. Because those are the master’s tools. And it’s still his house. IOWs, he made up the rules and the system. To favor HIM.
What if we decided the system was based on how many human beings one could produce? For each baby one could have, they got water. Water has value now. Not money. Men would be shit out luck, now wouldn’t they? Cuz they can’t produce any babies. Well that’s in essence what patriarchy is all about, Mandros. What men value. Not what women value. And the system is stacked to benefit him. No matter how much “equality” is given to women within this system, it’s a system that never had her or anything she valued in mind.
But you can’t imagine a world without patriarchy, can you, Mandros? You can’t imagine a world without money and bank accounts and hierarchies. You can’t imagine a world that doesn’t value what you’ve been taught to value. You can’t think outside the box. Like Pavlov’s dog, you just salivate at the ring of the bell.
But the animal kingdom does it every day. Humans did it for milleniums. Until patriarchy arrived and said, “I call I own it!”
All I can say is, look in the mirror, bud. That’s what you own. Nothing more, nothing less.
I’m not interested in equality. Equality is for underachievers. I’m not interested in lowering myself to men’s standards. I want liberation. Liberation from men’s system, men’s rules, and men’s values.
Nope, support obligations cannot legally be waived. The only time a biological parent can “opt-out” is if he or she voluntarily terminates parental rights, AND there is another adoptive parent waiting in the wings to adopt the child. For example, A and B conceive a child. If A decides to marry C, C wants to adopt the child,and B does not want to continue paying child support, only then would a court consider letting the biological parent out of paying child support. There is no opt-out provision. A court will always look to the best interests of the child.
But the animal kingdom does it every day. Humans did it for milleniums. Until patriarchy arrived and said, “I call I own it!â€
You’re mistaken if you think that there are no territorial animals nor like compensatory strategies. There’s no currency, yes…but there are transactions. You seem to have an idealized view of “nature”.
What if we decided the system was based on how many human beings one could produce? For each baby one could have, they got water. Water has value now. Not money. Men would be shit out luck, now wouldn’t they? Cuz they can’t produce any babies. Well that’s in essence what patriarchy is all about, Mandros. What men value. Not what women value. And the system is stacked to benefit him. No matter how much “equality†is given to women within this system, it’s a system that never had her or anything she valued in mind.
You’re assuming that there are values that are essential to men and women that are also different, without justifying them. Maybe I’m taking you too literally.
I just realized a serious error in my post, way above. When I wrote:
“If anyone tries to pretend that this is all about turning women into virgins or whores…”
What I meant to write:
“If anyone tries to pretend that this is about ANYTHING BUT turning women into virgins or whores…”
Not that anyone has called me on it. But I want to set the record straight, for my own satisfaction. Cut-and-paste is not always my friend.
I know women who claim to have tricked their significant others into impregnating them — claim it as a point of pride. You can see posters discussing the best way to do so on message boards for the “TTC” (trying to conceive) crowd — and the terminology here is impressive: they have to “plan an oops” because “hubby” won’t “babydance” with them unless they’re using protection. Flushing birth control pills, sticking pins into their wrapped condoms, saving used condoms and transferring the contents into themselves with turkey basters; there are all kinds of ways for women to get what they want.
I’m pretty sure, however, that “what they want” is not child-support payments. They’re doing it because they think that having a baby will prevent their men from leaving them, or because they’ve been told all their lives that they will never be truly fulfilled without experiencing the joys of motherhood, or for some equally nonsensical reason — but I very much doubt that they would be so eager to conceive if they thought they would only get a monthly check for it. They want the father to stay with them, not run off and have his paycheck garnisheed. When the patriarchy has raised you to believe that Mommy Daddy Baby = Happiness, that’s what you’re going to aim for.
It’s not fair to dismiss this guy’s claims outright. On the other hand, she might have thought she couldn’t get pregnant — a doctor might have told her as much, and she, having no reason to doubt him (probably a him), might not have asked for a second opinion. Regardless of the facts — and I’d like to hear from the mother, because she isn’t showing up at all here — I don’t think challenging the child-support system is the answer. Don’t they have enough trouble?
Lckynkl, the purpose of birth control for men (whose partners don’t have reason to trust them completely) would not be to prevent women from having to worry about it. The purpose would be so men could control whether they were likely to cause a pregnancy. Then both parties could take precautions to prevent pregnancy if they did not desire it, and the man could not blame the woman for an unplanned pregnancy if he didn’t use birth control. Actually, it’s pretty much the same deal now. If he doesn’t use a condom, what is he complaining about? I think I have a point here. If I donate eggs to an infertile friend, and I don’t like how she raises her child, I don’t have the right to say later that I want the child or I want a role in the child’s life. Once I give up my gametes, they become the property of whomever I gave them to. If you want control of what happens to your sperm, don’t give it away.
Terry:
The notion that men who do not want to have children should either use birth control or not have sex is, as we all know, the same argument that anti-choicers use regarding women. I don’t think that is the best argument to use against this whole ridiculous notion of a man’s right not to pay child support.
Yes, that is an argument the anti-choicers use. The twist, however, is that it is logically applicable to men who don’t want to pay child support but not to women who want abortions.
All people have the right to, within the boundaries of their own bodies, use birth control. A woman is entitled to do whatever she pleases to her own body - whether that means taking BC, using a condom or having an abortion - to prevent a child from being born. If a child were to be born to a woman because she chose not to use birth control, or because birth control failed, she would have obligations to that child.* A man has the exact same rights (bodily autonomous birth control) and obligations (parental obligations to born children).
The thing is, anti-choicers and these “men’s rights advocates” are trying to do the exact same thing: force the legal system to give men rights that women don’t have. In the case of the anti-choicers, they’re trying to deny women the right to control the natural processes of their bodies in order to prevent childbirth, a right that most are not attempting to deny men (the “most” excludes psychos who are trying to get rid of all birth control). In the case of the MRAs, they’re trying to give men the right to either control a woman’s bodily autonomy (by forcing them to/preventing them from aborting) or to void obligations that women can’t void (parental obligations).
* Yes, I know that women’s “right” to give children up for adoption or abandon them at hospitals/firestations/etc. is supposedly not a right men have. However, this situations apply only when the father is not present or not fit. If there are two parent’s names on a birth certificate, women’s “right” to abandon or adopt out children without cooperation from the father no longer exist.
LuckyNkl,
You are 100% right about custody situations and the way the cards fall . Fact is, moms who have custody have it for one of two reasons: Dad didn’t want it, or Dad “let” her have it. (or both) And that’s why more moms walk away from uncontested custody disputes with custody than from contested disputes. It’s very sad, but it’s true. Moms having any control at all over this is simply an illusion.
So in a sense, all this discussion about child support is purely theoretical - as is, at this point, mens’ roe v wade.
In fact, Fathers’ Rights groups teach men all sorts of clever ways to escape having to pay child support - such as fighting for custody. Or fighting for a 50/50 time split, in which case, most judges will waive support. That’s even become a law in Georgia , thanks to FRA lobbying.
So what we’re talking about here really goes back to control. Not really about the nit picky details of what’s “fair” to some, “unfair” to others. Or what’s “equal”.
I respect your point about liberation. Well said.
If men were truly interested in the determination of where and when they became fathers, they would have invented a male birth control pill by now. The fact that they can’t stomach the inhibition of their precious, all-potent sperm without losing their erections is just so freakin’ typical.
WEAR A GODDAMNED CONDOM!!!!
~C~
amaz0n, you have made the most articulate, logical argument that I’ve heard on this issue. I appreciated reading your comment.
I have no plans to have any kids. So I, feel that this issue doesn’t really apply to me personally. However, I’m a little unpleasantly surprised by how many folks in childfree online communities buy the men’s rights advocates arguments on this issue hook, line and sinker. Everyone knows sex can lead to babies. Maybe men get a little bit of a raw deal in that they can’t biologically terminate an unwanted pregnancy. However, women get a raw deal in a whole lot of other ways. Most of the deadbeat dads I’ve encountered aren’t downtrodden vitims who were dupe dinto supporting some greedy, lazy woman’s extravagant lifestyle. It is laughable that anyone who lives in the real world with their eyes open would even make that argument. People sitting around fretting about all of the poor, victimized men out there stuck paying child support is as silly as it is infuriating.
Mandos: “Can a woman precoitally waive support obligations?”
Not in my state, at least, and I’m willing to bet not in most jurisdictions. The reason the woman can’t waive support obligations is that the father isn’t obligated to the woman, his obligation is to the child, and the mother isn’t entitled to waive those obligations on the child’s behalf. I assume (though IANAL) that the reason for this is that, in the absence of parental support, support often falls on the community-at-large, as represented by the state, in the form of subsidized insurance, school lunches, etc. When the state goes after deadbeat dads, it isn’t doing so on behalf of the woman, and occasionally it doesn’t seem to be on behalf of the child either. The state wants to recoup what it pays out. This is why parents whose life circumstances change (they lose a job, or have a health emergency) can be in trouble with the state for non-payment of support even when an agreement exists between both parents that support amounts will be temporarily reduced. It’s not common, but it is unfortunate that parents who are able to communicate amicably about support issues can get in trouble, given how rare amicable decision-making seems to be in many circumstances. I think I recall the blogosphere discussing one such case several months ago, though I can’t recall where I read of it to provide a cite.
Actually Mandros, the animal kingdom gets along just fine without any money or bank accounts, as humans did for countless milleniums.
Only if you consider “might makes right” to be “[getting] along just fine”. You’re right, animals don’t buy–they take. I fail to see how that is any better. As for humans, although paper money is a recent development, the trade of scarce or useful commodities has been going on as long as people have been people.
What if we decided the system was based on how many human beings one could produce? For each baby one could have, they got water. Water has value now. Not money.
Ok, so water has value now. What do you do when you want to trade your water? Do you carry it around in buckets? People will get tired of that fairly quickly. After all, water is heavy, and there is always the risk of spilling your valuable resource. You would probably just leave the water somewhere safe, and exchange it by contract. I agree to give you X quantity of food in exchange for Y volume of water, we draw up the contract, and then we gather our respective items and make an exchange. The thing is, providing a sound, secure storage area for you water is a bit of a burden, as is all that moving it around. It’s really more trouble than it’s worth. So people get together and pool(heh) their water in large storage facilities, and instead of physically transferring the water, they leave it where it is and simply keep track of who owns what on paper. Now when we make a contract, instead me giving you water, I transfer control of that amount of water in the community tank to you. But writing all those contracts sure is a bother, especially for small stuff. So the people in charge of looking after the community water issue little pre-written contracts for various volumes of water, one gallon, ten, a hundred, and fractions of a gallon for minor exchanges. Now when you want to buy something, you just hand over the right number of pre-written contracts.
Hey, look at that! We’ve got banks and money again.
Oh, and as for the would-be “John Roe,” he’s right–it isn’t fair. It’s also not fair that some people have the metabolism of a hummingbird on speed and I need to bust ass to maintain a healthy weight.
Biology isn’t fair. Deal with it.
It is easy to pass judgement until you are in the situation. I agree that a man should have a choice. Take my situation. My husband dated a girl for a short time and found out she was married so he stopped seeing her. 4 years later and two months before our wedding, we got papers in the mail demanding he pay child support. Apparently, she went back to Colorado - had a baby and my husband knew nothing of it. However, her husband knew the child wasn’t his and refused to pay child support upon their divorce - so she came after us and won. You want to talk about a disruption in your life. The part of not being fair is not giving the father a choice. How would you like to find out you have a 4 year old roaming around that you weren’t even asked to take part in his life - now you are just asked to pay for it. You can’t call this guy selfish if he and the ex-girlfriend had talked about children. I believe she is selfish in getting pregnant when she lied to him and said it wasn’t possible. We pay our child support every month like we are supposed to - but I will say that we aren’t happy about it. Mostly because the mother of my husbands child has 3 kids with 3 different daddy’s, doesn’t work and lives off of child support and state funding. Tell me that is fair for women to do. It would be nice if all Americans were responsible and would do the right thing in waiting to have kids, etc. but it doesn’t work that way. Unfortunately, women definitly have more rights and know how to beat the system. I fully support what this guy is doing, men should have a choice somewhere in there and I hope he wins.
Sibyl,
I know women who claim to have tricked their significant others into impregnating them — claim it as a point of pride. You can see posters discussing the best way to do so on message boards for the “TTC†(trying to conceive) crowd — and the terminology here is impressive: they have to “plan an oops†because “hubby†won’t “babydance†with them unless they’re using protection. Flushing birth control pills, sticking pins into their wrapped condoms, saving used condoms and transferring the contents into themselves with turkey basters; there are all kinds of ways for women to get what they want.
When I was young, I knew a woman whose husband kept stealing her birth control pills and raping her because she was on her way to becoming a fairly successful country singer, and he wanted her to stay home and raise his babies. Which is neither here nor there with the point you’re making, really: I just think of this incident every time someone brings up the scenario of women tampering with their own BC, because I seriously doubt this incident was unique.
It’s not fair to dismiss this guy’s claims outright. On the other hand, she might have thought she couldn’t get pregnant — a doctor might have told her as much, and she, having no reason to doubt him (probably a him), might not have asked for a second opinion.
Actually, the medical industry is still learning so much. I was told in the late 80’s by two OB-GYNs that I would never get pregnant without fertility drugs, if then. I only knew they were wrong because my mother had the same condition, worse than I had it, yet here I am. NOW most doctors have learned from new research that women with my condition usually can get pregnant. So it’s very possible this woman AND her doctor(s) sincerely believed she was infertile.
But my doctors did tell me that technically, if you have your ovaries and uterus, there’s always a chance in hell, and advised me to use birth control as carefully as anyone else. If she didn’t get that advice, then her doctor(s) was remiss.
And even if she lied flat out to the father of the child, she didn’t force him into sex of any sort, and more particularly unprotected sex. That he put his sensory pleasure ahead of his desire not to be a father… well, I’m just getting the feeling he didn’t really object to causing a pregnancy until he got a look at what he was going to be expected to pay for support.
There are plenty of times on this blog that one or another of us has said that some guy is within his legal rights, but still an asshole. So maybe this woman is also an asshole, and lied for any number of reasons. Totally possible, but so what? If a woman tried to sue some guy for claiming that he’d had a vasectomy when he really hadn’t, she would become a nationwide laughingstock, and NOBODY would be trying to defend her right to believe what she was told.
Excuse the pun, Sophist, but your argument holds no water. Because what I was giving value went completely over your head. It’s not the water that was given value, silly. The water is neither here nor there. What was given value was ability to produce life. And how this could then be used to stack all the cards in women’s favor to hoard resources. Just as patriarchy has done. I was giving an example of patriarchy, silly. And merely flipped the coin to show why there could be no equality in such a system. So of course you were able to arrive at the conclusion you did . Because it’s the very patriarchal system you so know and love!
Only if you consider “might makes right†to be “[getting] along just fineâ€. You’re right, animals don’t buy–they take. I fail to see how that is any better. As for humans, although paper money is a recent development, the trade of scarce or useful commodities has been going on as long as people have been people.
You’re of course wrong. On every point you make. But I do find your comments interesting. What animals were you thinking of? I’ll bet the farm you were thinking of predators. Interesting that you should compare man to a predator. That tells me a lot about you.
I, however, had the bonobo in mind. Our nearest living relative. Humans and bonobos share 98.4% of the same DNA. They live in a matriarchal society. Forget that macho “might makes right” horseshit. Bonobos are sensitive, affectionate, peace-loving and cooperative. And *gasp* they have no money, plastic, bank accounts or commerce and survive just fine! Which totally blows your theory all to hell. Especially considering they are our nearest living relative.
But I do find it interesting how far out on a limb you will go to support your beloved patriarchy and act as if it’s “natural.” **chuckle** Nothing could be further from the truth.
What I also find interesting, is how many people here act as tho reproduction is a 50/50 proposition. Only a man would consider that his 5 seconds of involvement was equal to all a woman goes through to reproduce. Men couldn’t possibly be overvaluing themselves, could they? lol.
When a man is able to pull a baby out of his ass, then he can claim it is 50/50 and have equal say-so. Until then, have a seat boys. You get what you put into it. 5 seconds of say-so.
Slavery was abolished in 1865 and it is illegal to buy human beings. Stop trying to put a monetary value on a child. You don’t get to buy them.
As for thinking that courts have the best interest of the child in mind, go sell that swampland elsewhere. We live under patriarchy, silly. So what courts have the best interest of is the interest of the fathers. Who of course are the ones who created the damn system in the first place. For THEIR benefit.
And while we’re at it, let’s set the record straight on welfare. At the turn of the 20th century, women often worked long grueling hours to make a few pennies. And had to put their children into nurseries to do it. Children weren’t cared for properly and were dying in alarming numbers. Especially when the flu epidemic hit. The patriarchs freaked out. And finally recognized just what mothers do and gave motherhood value. And so they offered to pay mothers if they would stay home with their children. IOWs, motherhood was recognized as a job and given monetary worth.
Welfare became negative because men despise anything women do. They feel entitled to free labor and services from women.
So the next time someone goes off about welfare, recognize what they are saying. That what mothers do has no value or worth. They feel entitled to the free labor and services of women. Even tho these women are providing the patriarchy with its greatest resource. Children. We have a word for people who toil without pay. They’re called “slaves.” We also have a word for people who feel entitled to the free labor and services of others. They’re called “slave owners.”
Twisty, for somebody with “chemo brain,” you do all right. You do all right for someone without chemo brain.
I love the image of “raining baloney.” Love it.
This guy is from the UK, yes? Whew. If he were from the US, given todays trend, he might just win his case (wipes sweat from brow).
Meanwhile I’m flipping the hell out over news about my birth control pills:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=35663
Bottom line: Pumping your body up with synthetic hormones may cause long-term, possibly permanent (?) damage to your sex drive.
FUCK. Back to bugging my obgyn for a tubal. That I actually have to get PAST the fertility gatekeepers for “permission” to go ahead with the operation (I’ve approached the System TWICE in the last 7 years) just blows my MIND.
It is easy to pass judgement until you are in the situation. I agree that a man should have a choice. Take my situation. My husband dated a girl for a short time and found out she was married so he stopped seeing her. 4 years later and two months before our wedding, we got papers in the mail demanding he pay child support. Apparently, she went back to Colorado - had a baby and my husband knew nothing of it. However, her husband knew the child wasn’t his and refused to pay child support upon their divorce - so she came after us and won. You want to talk about a disruption in your life. The part of not being fair is not giving the father a choice.
I’m sorry, but your husband did have a choice. Did he choose to have sex? Did he choose not to use his own birth control? Did he choose to cut off contact with the woman after having sex with her, thereby putting himself in a situation to not know that he had a child until long after it was born?
How would you like to find out you have a 4 year old roaming around that you weren’t even asked to take part in his life - now you are just asked to pay for it.
A child is not an ‘it,’ and he or she has needs, irregardless of the circumstances surrounding his or her birth.
You can’t call this guy selfish if he and the ex-girlfriend had talked about children. I believe she is selfish in getting pregnant when she lied to him and said it wasn’t possible.
Have you bothered to read this thread at all? Because as it was pointed out, it’s quite likely that the woman did think she couldn’t have children, and that the doctor who told her as much was simply wrong. Not to mention the fact that the man still put the responsibility for birth control or lack thereof on the woman, instead of choosing to take responsibility for his own desire not to have children by using birth control himself.
Unfortunately, women definitly have more rights and know how to beat the system.
Wrong. See post #13 for more information.
Erin — you said “the reason woman can’t waive support obligations is that the father isn’t obligated to the woman, his obligation is to the child, and the mother isn’t entitled to waive those obligations on the child’s behalf. I assume (though IANAL) that the reason for this is that, in the absence of parental support, support often falls on the community-at-large, as represented by the state,”
IAAL and that is basically correct.
“This is why parents whose life circumstances change (they lose a job, or have a health emergency) can be in trouble with the state for non-payment of support even when an agreement exists between both parents that support amounts will be temporarily reduced”
This, OTOH, is not generally so; a person can’t be held in contempt of court for failure to pay a judgment or child support payments if they are unable to make their payments. Now, the determination of that inability can be the rub; when people are unable to pay, they also tend to have a reduced ability to go to a court and prove that they’re unable to pay …
I, however, had the bonobo in mind. Our nearest living relative. Humans and bonobos share 98.4% of the same DNA. They live in a matriarchal society. Forget that macho “might makes right†horseshit. Bonobos are sensitive, affectionate, peace-loving and cooperative. And *gasp* they have no money, plastic, bank accounts or commerce and survive just fine! Which totally blows your theory all to hell. Especially considering they are our nearest living relative.
(emphasis mine)
The reason why they have none of these things is because they can’t conceive of these things and that’s because they have no way to talk about them. This I call the Utopian Fallacy From The Nice Animal, or UFFTNA. Actually, all analogies with animals that are supposed to be instructive for humans are deeply flawed. Aesop used animals because he was afraid to talk about humans, partly.
The reason why UFFTNA is problematic is that—aside from the fact that no two animal species can really be models for one another—utopias are easily disrupted. As soon as a single person decides that s/he wants a free ride, the very idea immediately poisons the utopia. As soon as a single person decides that s/he likes the predatory mode, the better (flawed) analogy is chimp, not bonobo. We can get cooperative, utopian animals because the range of expression for new thoughts is extremely limited. If we want utopia in humans, we have to establish dissipatory systems for thoughts that threaten the utopia. There’s no liberation without a price of some kind. Banks and money are merely one way of formalizing this insight and making it convenient for those positioned to take advantage of it.
As soon as, say, humans become aware of male biological heredity, which they did a long long time ago, someone (male) is likely to think that they want to know their offspring, for whatever reason—and there could be many. As soon as they want to know their offspring, there’s the possibility of forming systems to control sexuality. Does patriarchy immediately follow? I guess if the control system is strictly on male sexuality, maybe not. But then there’s still the problem of free-riders…
(And it doesn’t even require “social” awareness as there are animals who equivalent behaviours, but it’s possible that in humans it is a purely social event…)
Hedonistic
I hunted this down for you because a then 28 year old friend had her tubes tied and went into menopause shortly after. If I were you I’d do some research.
Sorry we don’t have better options.
http://www.earlymenopause.com/causes.htm
“…some women experience premature menopause after tubal ligation (getting your “tubes tied” as it’s commonly called). Again, this is a result of the surgery interfering with blood flow to the ovaries — which ends up causing eventual ovarian failure.”
http://www.wdxcyber.com/nbleed9.htm
“Many studies in the literature have looked at this problem and they can be lined up on both sides of the question. Doctors have seemed to focus on the studies that show no difference after tubal ligation and some women’s groups, e.g., Vasectomy-Tubal Coalition and have felt this is a biased literature evaluation and that adverse effects are being ignored or hidden from women to make informed choices. With that in mind, and a recent message board question about menopause occurring after a surgery for diagnosis, I thought it would be helpful to review as many abstracts as I could find on Medline addressing this subject. This review has helped answer the following questions:”
Hedonistic
Just in case you missed this link within one of the paras:
http://members.tripod.com/~sterilization_rights/
Anybody who thinks that living in non-human primate society is a walk in the park doesn’t know anything about primate behavior. Primates are often extremely violent.
Furthermore,
Mostly because the mother of my husbands child has 3 kids with 3 different daddy’s, doesn’t work and lives off of child support and state funding. Tell me that is fair for women to do.
It is absolutely fair for any woman who has three children and no spouse to help out to choose to stay home with her children and provide them with primary care, and to expect therefore that the father(s) of those children will fulfill their parental obligation financially. I’m curious what you think that this woman’s other options are, if none of the fathers choose to pursue custody (and therefore a share of the primary care responsibilities). Should she put her three children in daycare in order to get a job, which quite possibly will not cover the cost of the daycare, much less additional expenses? Should she have some way to legally force primary care responsibilities onto the unwilling fathers of her children? Should she simply let the children starve to death, because she and an equally responsible man had a kid but the man wasn’t willing to provide for the child afterwards?
Do you think that your husband’s child support payment gets up on two legs and changes diapers, cooks meals, cleans the house, sends the kids off to school, reads a child a bedtime story, or tells a child “good job” when they got an “A” on a test? And if not, do you think that children do these things for themselves?
Luckynkl:
I’ve really enjoyed the information you’ve brought into this conversation. That said, I have a nit to pick:
This may be too tangential to matter much to anyone, but when you wrote “Because a hard cock knows no conscience. It will say and do anything it has to in order to gain access to pussy.” I nearly jumped out of my seat. Doesn’t intelligent, informed debate demand that we *not* reduce human beings to their genitalia? And does it not also demand that we dismiss the patently patriarchal assumption of heterosexuality?
When it’s the shitbag, fuckbag, godbags doing the fetishizing, I sure as hell don’t appreciate being reduced to the sum total of my reproductive organs. And again, not that it matters, but it hardly seems reformative or even progressive to suggest men are all simply giant, pussy-seeking cocks.
Or did I misunderstand your intent?
(I hope I did.)
Wrong. See post #13 for more information.
Ooopps! That should have been post #18, by Luckynkl.
luckynkl generally speaks in expansive, sweeping generalizations because she thinks it clarifies her point rather than obfuscates it. Among other interesting rhetorical habits.
Mandos
Here’s a male physician answering a woman about HIV risk after she had unprotected intercourse with a man whom she later found was positive.
“How do you know when a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving.
{snip HIV test explanation}
“And by the way: that observation about lawyers applies with
astonishing frequency also to men who are trying to get you in the
sack. Surely your mommy told you this? “
Amusing joke but…?
Seems self explanatory to me.
1. Guys will say anything to get women into the sack. (ref. Luckynkl)
2. It’s her fault if she’s now HIV positive (or, pregnant?) because she believed him.
3. It’s also her mommy’s fault.
Is there never any end to this?
Are you saying that the joke is more than a stereotype but an inescapable reflection of necessary human life?
Excuse the pun, Sophist, but your argument holds no water. Because what I was giving value went completely over your head. It’s not the water that was given value, silly. The water is neither here nor there. What was given value was ability to produce life. And how this could then be used to stack all the cards in women’s favor to hoard resources.
And my point is that by focusing on banks and money and credit cards and men’s love of shinny rocks you’re making the wrong argument. Money isn’t the result of what men value, it’s part of a more-or-less inevitable progression towards fungibility.
If you’re going to make the argument that what is considered to have value in our society was explicitly set up to benefit men at the expense of women, then make it, instead of getting bogged down in snark about how only a man would value a piece of paper.
What animals were you thinking of? I’ll bet the farm you were thinking of predators. Interesting that you should compare man to a predator. That tells me a lot about you.
Actually, I was thinking about pretty much all animals. Competition between two herbivores for limited resources is no less deadly than that between predator and prey. When one species come along and pushes another out of it’s habitat, that species ends up just as dead as one that was hunted to extinction.
I, however, had the bonobo in mind. Our nearest living relative. Humans and bonobos share 98.4% of the same DNA. They live in a matriarchal society.
Oh. So when you said “the animal kingdom gets along just fine,” what you really meant was that a tiny fraction of a percent of the animal kingdom gets along just fine.
By the by, the only reason they can maintain that idyllic, egalitarian lifestyle is that they are geographically isolated form the much more violent chimpanzee.
Forget that macho “might makes right” horseshit.
Despite the fact that it’s 99.99999% of how nature works?
And *gasp* they have no money, plastic, bank accounts or commerce and survive just fine!
Yeah? What’s the infant mortality rate among bonobos? What happens to bonobos born with birth defects? Genetic disorders? How many die of diseases that could be cured with a dollar’s worth of antibiotics? How long does the average bonobo live? How much longer could they live if they had developed the concept of medicine?
If your definition of “[surviving] just fine” is that the species still exists then you might be right. Personally, I want more than that.
Oh, and you’re wrong about the “no commerce” part. They will exchange sexual favors for food.
But I do find it interesting how far out on a limb you will go to support your beloved patriarchy and act as if it’s “natural.” **chuckle** Nothing could be further from the truth.
You’re the one singing the praises of “nature” here, not me. Whether or not patriarchy is “natural” or not matters not one whit to me. Getting eaten by a tiger is also natural. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of people being eaten by tigers.
“Nature” holds no special moral force for me.
Mandos:
Thank you, THANK YOU for pointing this out. Perpetuating the myth of men as brainless, sex-crazed cock-zombies only serves to further absolve them of responsibility for their actions; it’s “boys will be boys” writ large, a self-fulfilling prophecy that ensures men will continue to behave badly and then claim they can’t help it.
I know many men who believe that they seriously, literally have no control over their actions once their sex drives are engaged. This is not a good thing to believe. We can’t afford to let men off the hook, even in jest — no, especially in jest, because this is serious shit and it has consequences.
I do think, however, that Pony was not describing an inescapable condition of human life but rather lamenting the continued wrong-headedness that leads people to believe it’s a woman’s fault if she trusts a man and he lies — the wrongheadedness which makes such a joke possible.
# 14 “Then, in the next breath, he said he didn’t want to pay child support for his current, existing son: that he wanted to raise him, and that he would never pay child support to the mother.”
I hear this consistently among men who have children from previous marriages/relationships of whatever kind. whether ten days or ten years. It speaks clearly of the patriarchal notion that women and children are property owned and under their control and responsibility while they still have fucking rights. Once the woman becomes unavailable, then his ownership ends and thus his responsibility and connection.
The fact that children are thrown into this exchange game repeatedly illustrates that in the patriarchy, children are nothing more than an appendage of women, and/or a right to claim exclusive access to that woman. Once access is denied, everything connected to that women is denied, including the children.
The discussion here focuses mostly on the premise of the ‘trapped’ man. Fact is that most men don’t fall under that premise. Most often they will attempt to get a woman to marry them, because frankly, that guarantees them love, care and maintenance for free for life. What could be better? What I find most interesting, again, is that these same men will, when the relationship ends, use the ‘trapped’ argument’s premises and oftentimes win in court. And also repeatedly gain a sympathetic audience.
That is, they make the claim that since the relationship has ended (albeit, the pussy ain’t open for them), then they are due a suitable replacement prize to compensate. To share the care and cost of raising the children they spawned is not justified in and of itself.
They want compensation, they want something back for the cash they give out. If they can’t get pussy, they want the kids. The kids are nothing but trophies, prizes won in compensation for something else lost. Of course this usually occurs in two instances 1) Punishment 2) To assert dominance/control of the dispute.
Therefore, it only follows that men who never claimed or wanted to claim ownership of the woman’s body, feel righteous anger when she comes back and says he must pay for what came popping out after he screwed her. He doesn’t own or want her, why should he claim the kids?
Women regularly have children without marriage and choose not to pursue the man for child support and often times will even choose not to have the man involved in the child’s life at all. Some even go so far as to never even notify the man of the child’s existance, for a variety of reasons, thus foregoing support altogether. These women are playing along the patriarchy lines by accepting full responsibility and the men who spawn these children and most often more than happy to stay out of the way. This is why the Welfare Deform Act mandates paternity testing; because many women don’t want to deal with a custody battle/abuse or other negative consequences.
#25 Lucky says: “I’m not looking for equality, bud. That’s an insult. I wouldn’t lower myself to the level of a man. And as Audre Lorde put it, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.†So reversing everything won’t solve a thing. Neither will working within the system. Because those are the master’s tools. And it’s still his house. IOWs, he made up the rules and the system. To favor HIM.”
You haven’t yet clarified what proposal you have to alleviate the plight of children raised in poverty, that could be applied, say, within the next ten years; that is within the patriarchy we all know we aren’t going to change today. I like deconstruction too, but I also live in the real world and personally have had to raise three children alone in this godbag, patriarchy. I am not sure that my children could live off philosophy alone.
In the patriarchy a woman has no agency at all, never. The agency lies with the man and the man alone. The Men’s Rights groups are all in a tissie because women are asserting agency and they damn well don’t like it. The only tools available now are the patriarchy’s tools and to gain control, you have to take away the gun or point it the other way. Deconstruction starts with gaining control of the existing tools and going from there.
#38 Derekkeddy: “My husband dated a girl for a short time…. Apparently, she went back to Colorado - had a baby and my husband knew nothing of it. However, her husband knew the child wasn’t his and refused to pay child support upon their divorce - so she came after us and won.”
Of course she won because the child was conceived with his sperm. He had a choice to believe her claims and take his chances or put on a cap, but he gambled and lost. So did she. Maybe they both could sue the physician and get him to pay some too? I don’t think so as both had the ability to use birth control and didn’t. She has to care for the child, ponying up the cash to assist is the least he should do, whether you like it or not is not really the issue.
“Mostly because the mother of my husbands child has 3 kids with 3 different daddy’s, doesn’t work and lives off of child support and state funding. Tell me that is fair for women to do.”
So that woman is really a slut and she doesn’t deserve anyone’s support is that what is said here?
Does this thinking not align beautifully within patriarchal parameters of dismissing entirely the women’s experience?
You have absolutely no idea why this woman has three kids, or why she has a history of failed relationships and you insinuate that her having three children somehow reduces the import of your husband’s obligation. Dismissing her experience entirely sure serves the patriarchy well. Give yourself a star for being a good soldier in the war against women.
Your underlying message is that she’s a whore three times over. She’s used goods. In other words, be careful about devaluations made by a man who has an agenda to meet. If we assume what is said about her is true anyway, how does that reduce the husband’s obligation one wit? It doesn’t in reality, but in the patriarchy it does because she has no value.
So here we are again to another example of how woman are nothing more than another commodity that has only the value placed by its owners and since the nearest thing to virginity increases value, then the farther from virginity a woman gets, the less value she has.
She has no value because she is no longer of use to him, thus since she is no longer of use to him, what does the child mean to him? Why should he pay for something that gives him no gain? In other words, men have a right to expect that they should receive direct and immediate reward for their expenditures; an exchange should take place. Rearing children in the godbag patriarchy, has no value or reward, therefore paying for something that you no longer receive reward from (social status, sexual gratification), makes no sense in the patriarchy. So men regularly have no problem not paying, women regularly have no problem not asking and the patriarchy hums along beautifully.
It all begs the question of how we rise above our most innate functions. So many men dream of and deeply yearn for the virgin who offers the best guarantee of making his sperm into a full fledged healthy human. Hence, the farther from the virginal ideal a woman becomes, the less value she has. Obviously many men rise above this constriction using their intelligence to overcome what seems to be a functioning as deeply encoded as the will to live.
Patriarchy is primitive and it doesn’t work well when the participants have higher brain function than chimps. Too bad so many don’t seem to though.
So, in conclusion, in the interest of deconstructing the patriarchy, we must first ensure that the majority of the succeeding generations are healthy and have the ability to function cognitively on a level higher than just average. Therefore, for the immediate, those who wish to move this deconstruction must first and foremost push hard for as many children as possible having as high a standard of living as possible. This will indeed require working with the tools of the patriarchy.
I have no problem in starting a revolution by raiding the enemies war chest.
Last post in this thread, I swear!
I’d like to provide this post with a manual trackback from my very first blog entry. It’s a manual trackback because I can’t figure out how to make it happen automatically.
http://disgruntledamazon.blogspot.com/2006/03/dear-men-who-forgo-birth-control-but.html
Luckynkl generally speaks in expansive, sweeping generalizations because she thinks it clarifies her point rather than obfuscates it. Among other interesting rhetorical habits.
Sweeping generalizations? Oh, you mean like how white men enslaved an entire group of people and denied them human status just cuz they were black? Or like how white men rounded up entire group of people and stuck them on reservations and denied them human status just cuz they were native american? Or like how white men rounded up an entire group of people and put them in death camps and denied them human status just because they were Jews? Or like how men denied women human status by denying them the right to vote, education, the right to inherit or own property, a right to a bank account or a wage or even autonomy over their own bodies just cuz they were women? Are those the kind of expansive, sweeping generalizations you’re talking about that go clear over your head and you claim are confusing to your little boy brain?
So what game would you like to play now, white boy? That we’re all individuals? ROFL. Ok, I see. White men want to be seen as individuals. With human status of course. While they deny everyone else human status because of their sex, race, color, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion or sexuality, among other expansive, sweeping generalizations.
I do believe you speak with forked tongue, white boy.
What she said.
But add age. Particularly if you are an old woman, add age in the list of the dispossessed.
Luckynkl you are worth gold.
Luckynkl, that was me, Summer–a woman, thanks–who brought it up (in comment 51) in the first place. And my question stands: did I misunderstand your intent?
Is this a case of sweeping generalizations for everyone (good for the goose, good for the gander)? Or was there a point–a point I clearly missed–to your reductive men-as-pussy-seeking-cocks approach?
First off, hat’s off to you, Kate for comment # 60. Touche. Nail. Hammer. Bang.
You haven’t yet clarified what proposal you have to alleviate the plight of children raised in poverty, that could be applied, say, within the next ten years; that is within the patriarchy we all know we aren’t going to change today. I like deconstruction too, but I also live in the real world and personally have had to raise three children alone in this godbag, patriarchy. I am not sure that my c