Sexual Statism – The end of men
Sometimes an article is perfect the way it is, and sometimes an article is soooo good it needs to be copied and pasted in it’s entirety. This is one such article. (with permission).
The decline of the male economy – and of fatherhood – arises less from the empowerment of women than from the government’s usurpation of the family.
In “The End of Men,” the cover story of the July/August Atlantic, Hanna Rosin describes “how women are taking control of everything.” Suggesting that “the economics of the new era are better suited to women,” Rosin believes the fair sex are winning the struggle for the survival of the fittest. In what is apparently cause for celebration, she writes, “three-quarters of the 8 million jobs lost were lost by men” in the ongoing Great Recession. “The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with macho: construction, manufacturing, high finance.” She contends that the economic crisis “merely revealed–and accelerated–a profound economic shift that has been going on for at least 30 years.”
The Atlantic used the same issue to ask, “Are Fathers Necessary?” Pamela Paul cites a widely publicized study purporting to prove that fathers are harmful in rearing children and that lesbians do it better. The study is politics camouflaged as social science–its authors acknowledge that the parenting virtues they extol are defined “in part in the service of an egalitarian ideology.” Their message echoes Rosin’s: within the home, as in the national economy, men are unreliable at best and pathological at worst. The Atlantic assures us that the decline of men is the product of impersonal forces against which we are powerless to respond, even if we wished to–which apparently we do not.
Rosin, whose essay is #1 on the magazine’s “Biggest Ideas of the Year” list, certainly identifies an important trend. But the phenomenon she describes is the result not of inexorable social forces but of conscious political decisions. The end of men is the consequence of the most profound trend in public life today: the sexualization of politics and the politicization of sex.The emergence of sexual politics has elicited strikingly little critical treatment. Yet it represents the most radical change in the nature of government in modern times. The economic effects are only symptoms. More far-reaching are the vast shifts in political power at every level. Feminist ideology pervades every item on the public agenda: not just “women’s issues” like abortion but everything from gun control (think of the “Million Mom March”) and DWI laws (Mother Against Drunk Driving) to foreign policy (Code Pink). “Women have the most to gain and the most to lose in the climate crisis,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed during the Copenhagen conference. “The impacts are not gender-neutral… . Women feel the consequences first.” Not an issue in public life has not been “gendered.”
The transformation of society wrought by sexual politics is most readily apparent where Rosin begins her article: with what she calls the “matriarchy” of the inner cities. Government policies produced this matriarchy: the men who are “increasingly absent from the home,” as Rosin writes, have been removed by welfare agencies and courts. The women are “making all the decisions” in inner-city households because the men have been forced out and government has usurped the role of father and husband, providing protection and income directly to the women and children. This produces in urban America not a “working class,” as Rosin terms it, but a class of government dependents whose living arrangements have been engineered by state officials.
As single motherhood spreads from the lower to the middle classes–among whom it is growing fastest–so does Rosin’s matriarchy. In the suburbs as in the cities, it is promoted by government machinery originally justified as helping the poor: child-care services, care for the elderly, public education, and publicly controlled healthcare.
Rosin insightfully observes that “the U.S. economy is in some ways becoming a kind of traveling sisterhood: upper-class women leave home and enter the workforce, creating domestic jobs for other women to fill.” This is an economic bubble about which G.K. Chesterton long ago warned. “The whole really rests on a plutocratic illusion of an infinite supply of servants,” he wrote, “Ultimately, we are arguing that a woman should not be a mother to her own baby, but a nursemaid to somebody else’s baby. But it will not work, even on paper. We cannot all live by taking in each other’s washing, especially in the form of pinafores.”
Like the recently burst bubbles in banking and housing, this one is a creation of state regulation. It reveals the trajectory of the new sexual politics: not toward eliminating gender roles–which the welfare state has not done and can never do–but toward politicizing and bureaucratizing feminine ones.
While elite feminists did assume previously male occupations, many more women have entered the workforce in professionalized versions of traditional homemaker roles. This has transformed childrearing and other domestic tasks from private family matters into public, communal, and taxable activities, necessarily expanding the size and power of the state and leading to the creation of vast bureaucracies to oversee public education and social services.
These are precisely the professions now being expanded by the Obama administration’s massive stimulus expenditures. The effect is to amplify the intrusion of the state into the home–indeed, the displacement of the home by the state. For as feminists point out, the feminine functions were traditionally private. Professionalizing feminine roles has therefore meant institutionalizing in government bureaucracies responsibilities that were once characteristic of private life. The politicization of children and the usurpation of parental rights under the guise of child protection are the clearest manifestations of this.
Fathers have been marginalized, and their lives are ever more directly administered by the state. They are not simply “absent,” as Rosin writes–they are increasingly likely to be under the control of the judicial and penal systems. Rosin’s article provides a telling example of a particularly state-feminist form of punishment now meted out to men: therapy.
None of the 30 or so men sitting in a classroom at a downtown Kansas City school have come for voluntary adult enrichment. Having failed to pay their child support, they were given the choice by a judge to go to jail or attend a weekly class on fathering…. This week’s lesson…involve[d] writing a letter to a hypothetical estranged 14-year-old daughter named Crystal, whose father left her…
What is clear from Rosin’s account is that the therapy, like the penal system, has been designed less to punish the alleged crime than to psychologically recondition men. The class leader grew up watching Bill Cosby living behind his metaphorical “white picket fence.” “Well, that check bounced a long time ago,” he says. … He continues, reading from a worksheet. What are the four kinds of paternal authority? Moral, emotional, social, and physical. “But you ain’t none of those in that house. All you are is a paycheck, and now you ain’t even that. And if you try to exercise your authority, she’ll call 911. … You’re supposed to be the authority, and she says, ‘Get out of the house, bitch.’ She’s calling you ‘bitch’!” … “What is our role? Everyone’s telling us we’re supposed to be the head of a nuclear family, so you feel like you got robbed.” … He writes on the board: $85,000. “This is her salary.” Then: $12,000. “This is your salary. … Who’s the man now?” A murmur rises. “That’s right. She’s the man.”
This is not law enforcement. It is government indoctrination.
Rosin neglects to mention that none of the men in Kansas City has been convicted of any crime. They have not run afoul of police, prosecutors, and juries through the normal criminal-justice process. Instead, they are subject to welfare officials who exercise quasi-police and quasi-prosecutorial powers. They are brought–in what is sometimes described as an “expedited judicial process”–before a judge (or a black-robed lawyer known as a “judge-surrogate”) who may spend a few seconds glancing at some documents before entering orders to evict them from their homes, separate them from their children, confiscate their earnings, and sentence them to re-education or incarceration, all without the benefit of due process.
Attorney Jed Abraham calls this system of bureaucratic adjudication “Orwellian”: “To [enforce] child support, the government commands … a veritable gulag,” he writes in From Courtship to Courtroom. Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University agrees: “The advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support … have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state.”
Preventing crime and aggression is evidently not what state-feminist ideology is all about: at its heart is economic redistribution and political power. Near the end of her article Rosin notes, quite approvingly, that “violence committed by middle-aged women [has] skyrocketed.” This is taken as a sign that “the more women dominate, the more they behave, fittingly, like the dominant sex.” Rosin references an ultraviolent Lady Gaga video that “rewrites Thelma and Louise as a story not about elusive female empowerment but about sheer, ruthless power. … She and her girlfriend kill a bad boyfriend and random others in a homicidal spree and then escape in their yellow pickup truck, Gaga bragging, ‘We did it, Honey B.’”
Rosin and her allies are more subtle–and most importantly, they have coercive state power at their disposal–but the bragging sounds remarkably similar.
Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family.
Yeah I read this article Julie,
Thanks for posting it in it’s entirety.
Baskerville is in my view a social commentator par excellence.
Comment by Skeptik — Fri 13th August 2010 @ 12:21 pm
Thanks for the link Julie.
Lots of misandry being challenged there.
I read the excellent Stephen Baskerville article alongside many other informative Men’s Rights Articles at Mens News Daily.
Comment by Skeptik — Fri 13th August 2010 @ 10:07 pm
Thanks for the post, Julie. Stephen Baskerville is a hero of the father’s and children’s rights movement.
Comment by Darryl X — Fri 13th August 2010 @ 10:48 pm
It must be lonley being Baskerville. He is the lone voice in Academia who does the thorough analysis of the anti-male, anti-family system in all its minute detail and evil banality. No doubt he sits in conferences with a dozen vacant seats all around him. Hero he is.
Comment by amfortas — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 2:33 am
Yes, I echo others in saying thanks for posting this article in it is entirety. It’s a piece that makes many good points concerning its subject. (Forgive me…)
I didn’t quite understand all the points Baskerville tried to make, for example, the economics theory discussing the assumption of an infinite supply of servants, or the claim that the men’s class leader was indoctrinating men (his quoted piece seemed more to provide important political information for modern men).
The NZ “stopping violence” courses under protection-order legislation are a much more sinister example of state-feminist forced therapy. Men who have allegations made against them are punished without trial to a form of weekly periodic detention where, under threat of imprisonment, they are indoctrinated to feel guilty for much of what men do, defined as using or abusing “power and control” from their position of patriarchal privilege. That is not to say that some or many men don’t get something useful from the courses. But forced therapy to indoctrinate people into the political ideology preferred by those in power is usually thought of as the domain of totalitarian dictatorships, and it’s amazing that we see it happening in our democracy. Of course, every totalitarian state that forces therapy on citizens will argue that any problem with the ethics of doing so is outweighed by that state’s higher aims for social improvement as predicted under its superior ideology. Predicted but usually not achieved, in part because the state’s abandonment of accepted ethical principles is unlikely to lead to a more ethical society.
Comment by Hans Laven — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 9:39 am
Dear Hans,
your comments are spot on.
The quality of performance of Stopping Violence courses has supposedly never been measured.
A well intentioned society would check before implementing, that the available research supported this approach. (See Donald Dutton – it does not! The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is helpful to most people, but is of limited relevance to explosive violence issues, which relate more to childhood emotional neglect. Thus we can spend money on these courses for a long time and expect to see almost completely negligible change in homicide statistics. Measures to protect young children from emotional neglect are the main drivers of improvement in our homicide statistics.)
A well intentioned society would measure the outcomes from these courses, as quickly as practicable – say within 2 or 3 years, just long enough for outcomes to be measure-able. This has not happened. Then, when the performance is accurately known, respond by improving their performance (maybe by throwing them out?).
The published reports do not include accurate measurement, meeting the standards of quantitative sociology, they are just opinion pieces, from asking mainly those who benefit (or depend!! =conflict of interest!!) on these courses continuing to run.
As the generations pass by, then anecdotal stories accumulate, in the public domain, of men attending such courses up to 8 times. If the course was addressing the relevant issues, then surely maybe 3 or 4 times for the odd person, but 8??
The important social issue is the whole-society cost benefit for these courses, rather than the dramatic but rare examples that travel as “urban myths”. Our decisions should be based on the society wide performance, not the odd anecdotal stories. But stories is the first step to moving in a better direction.
The public wisdom eventually catches up with what is going on and eventually drives politicians, but maybe 25 or 30 years later than would have been achieved by competent monitoring in the first place.
We can help to speed up this process, by sharing many stories and making sure that they are accurate and not misleading. (Thus public safety does seem to be the opposite of secrecy and privacy.)
There was a forum at Unitec in February 2010 about DV courses. The convenor made somewhat similar comments to mine above. I looked around the room, to see what how the beneficiaries of these courses would respond. The words sailed across the audience’s heads and was safely and gently absorbed into the plaster of the rear wall. Business as usual!!! There was no further discussion of quantitative measurement of course outcomes, let alone cost benefit analysis. They didn’t seem to understand the language.
The knowledge to answer these issues is lying around in some academics heads and in library books, some now 25 years old. Lets get this research information out into the wider community.
These books aren’t very entertaining, but if we see them as important, then lets understand the issues and argue constructively. If we don’t offer suggestions for improvement, then likely no-one will listen to us.
I hate to admit it, but one of the strongest communicators and educators of social issues into our wider community, is TV drama (and advertisements). Some of the communication is “correct” and positive, some just spreading negative stereotypes and prejudice. Eventually the positive wins, it just takes toooo long. MurrayBacon.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 11:39 am
Hans,
My read of Baskerville’s comments about servants is that the USA is under current feminist hegemony destroying millions of PRODUCTION JOBS whilst creating more service roles.
The first thing Obama did upon gaining the presidency despite millions more MEN than women losing their production jobs during a recession was to set up yet ANOTHER Govt department for women.
The economy under Obama has then created many more service jobs which don’t actually create economic wealth.
An example would be creating bureaucratic jobs.
It’s all well and good to have a certain amount of service jobs and workers – people who provide things like your coffee at Starbucks, who will wash your car or laundry, who will take in your kids during the day and help you with your tax claim etc.
However as the state expands, bloats and gloats under statism a tipping point arrives whereby there aren’t enough folks actually producing wealth by constructing and reconstructing things – national infrastructure, buildings, roads, bridges, airports etc and producing things for export to create wealth in the first place.
But what can we expect?
An Ivy league suit wearing lawyer most of his adult life, who has never had his hands dirty with a production job in his entire life to relate to the many millions whose craft is to do so?
I think not.
Of course it suits many USA corporations who blithely move production jobs offshore to where they can use cheaper labor. ‘China incorporated’ you might say.
All fine and dandy many think as they purchase their cheaper cellphones, computers, microwave ovens etc etc (cars and airplanes coming soon).
However as the ballooning of the state and increase of service industries intensifies (largely Boomer generation driven) a tipping point arrives where infrastructure gets left behind and wealth creation through the actual production of saleable items for export drops.
It’s ironic. The biggest export item of late from the USA in terms of wealth creation for Americans has been – jobs.
If the USA production jobs keep continuing to be exported to countries like China and Mexico for cheaper labor, more and more Americans (already 10% unemployed!) WON’T be able to buy the items produced by them. The only way the govt can then prop people up economically is to pump more money into the economy and create more ‘service’ rather than production jobs – in other words inflate it.
What happens to an overinflated balloon?
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 12:14 pm
Murray,
Thankyou.
Wise, wise words.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 12:18 pm
Ok, I understand that one more now. Thanks, and to Murray too; you’re quite right, the fact that these ideological experiments never included any plan to measure their effectiveness is telling.
Comment by Hans Laven — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 2:33 pm
In addition to establishing additional agencies for women in his administration, Obama and Biden (author of the horribly misandrous Violence Against Women Act), have continued to promote extraordinary opportunities for women in education (university), while the ratio of young men and young women in university declines precipitously. Although very evil and irresponsible people, including Obama and Biden, have implied that the reason young men are no longer attending university is their alleged laziness, the real reason is that no incentives exist for them to attend. It doesn’t translate into better income most of the time (like me, for instance in the sciences – I would have a greater net worth had I not even attended university and just become a Walmart stock-boy, instead of pursuing a career in the sciences, including a PhD), and if it does, those higher incomes and education are imputed for the purpose of paying “child support” after the man’s wife snatches the children and runs off with another man. Not only is there no incentive for men to attend university, but there is an active disincentive – they are actively discouraged, in favor of women attending. An education for men is actually discouraged and punished in the US today. Imagine that!! We are discouraging half our population from pursuing an education, as if our population isn’t stupid enough. As if women have ever done more than men in university or as professionals. Forget how they’ve completely destroyed the concept of family and civilization. On every Father’s Day, Obama has also continued to condemn fathers, demanding that they step up and be responsible, without acknoweldging the gross mistreatment of them by the family courts and that they did not abandon their families and children, but that they were driven from their families and children by the State and mothers. My what a tangled web we weave.
Comment by Darryl X — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 5:48 pm
Does anyone on this site still believe that a peaceful solution to our dilemma exists? We really are at war and wars are not won through peaceful means. As much government as necessary and as little government as possible.
Comment by Darryl X — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 5:49 pm
Well written Darryl X. Few politicians seem brave enough to tell the truth when it comes to the gender war. Obama not only doesn’t tell the truth but is deliberately fighting on the enemy side. Indoctrination is such a pervasive thing.
Comment by Hans Laven — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 6:46 pm
@Skeptik…
I must take exception to your comments regarding those who “help you with your tax claim”.
Nobody does more to keep money out of government hands and in the hands of consumers than your tax consultant**. The “economic wealth” to which you refer does need a buyer after all.
(** Admission of professional bias and shameless self promotion.)
Comment by gwallan — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 8:13 pm
Thanks, Hans. “Indoctrination” is a great word for describing what’s happening. “Brainwashing” and others are good too. Anything but “education”.
Comment by Darryl X — Sat 14th August 2010 @ 11:23 pm
Yeah OK, Mr gwallan tax-wrangler extraordinaire.
I’m not arguing against tax consultants per se, just agreeing with Baskerville that too much state is a bad thing as it doesn’t create wealth and it gets to be too intrusive hence inantalizes people. What’s even scarier is in feminist culture with the burgeoning of the state it becomes the instrument of the oppression of men especially (and by extension everyone).
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 15th August 2010 @ 6:59 am
@Darryl X,
A peaceful way Ala Gandhi or close to you Martin Luther King must exist.
You see the majority of men when confronted with the Courts are happy to pay, play docil, apologize and play chattel in the life of their children.
Men need to start play stubborn. Disengage from any ‘solutions’ forced on them by the Family Yourts. Go to jail if need be etc.. Refuse to play any part in the life of their children if they are disadvantaged by the Yourts etc.
Comment by tren — Sun 15th August 2010 @ 12:52 pm
I prefer living in nations where the state government is much smaller than in NZ, USA, UK, Oz.
Places where people get to keep more of their own money and as a mature adults uses it as they see fit, rather than relying on some ‘all knowing, sensitive government’.
Unlike when I was living in New Zealand, I’m smart enough to be living somewhere that I don’t need to work each day until lunchtime or thereabouts paying taxes before I finally start earning money for myself for some dubiously named ‘welfare state’.
Typically I pay between 3 & 5% income tax and 10% sales tax on consumer items.
By the way that gets me health care insurance too!
Besides which I see the tax take in western feminized countries all to often gets used to pay for women’s this and women’s that whilst men miss out, whilst the largest sex specific ‘return to the investor’ (taxpayers) men there get that I can think of is a burgeoning prison system.
I’m amazed more Kiwi guys don’t see this and show greater self respect by leaving and publicly stating the reason for doing so.
I certainly encourage it.
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 15th August 2010 @ 12:54 pm
Yes, I agree with you here tren.
Bloated feminist government will not change one iota and reduce itself so that people can get on with thier lives unhindered by big nanny state by itself.
People have to figure out their own ways of disengaging from the beast.
For some it’s voluntary austerity thereby not inputting vast amounts of tax money to feed the beast. For others it means taking off overseas to places where they can mature into adults who’ve overcome the need to have the state ‘take care of them’ as much as they allow in western feminized countries.
Here’s one of my favorite videos at the moment.
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 15th August 2010 @ 1:04 pm
I would note that 120,00 of them are not paying child tax “debt”.
Regards
Scrap
Comment by Scrap_The_CSA — Sun 15th August 2010 @ 5:34 pm
Hi Scrap,
We could debt as anything more than a day late. The huge bulk of debtors are those that most businesses call 30 days. We normally treat them kindly with penalties if they ask nicely.
Comment by Ms IRD Officer — Sun 15th August 2010 @ 8:50 pm
So what youre saying here Julie is that if men feel disenfranchised by the present system where they are all the give and no take, then the best solution would be for them to give a bit more?
How much do you reckon I should give?
Tax 30% (rounded off)
Child Tax 27% on gross income
Local rates 5% of my income
GST 12.5% on its way up soon
Im left to support my family on what is left. It would be lovely to take 12 months off to put a bit of time and effort into supporting the mens effort but IRD and the money hungry ex see my “ability to earn” as being more important than what I actually earn.
Comment by mits — Mon 16th August 2010 @ 11:39 am
Why Baskerville sits alone is because he is not distracted by the personal relevance of any situation. He thinks downward to explain what you can’t see while you are in the grips of injustice, and distracted from learning. What he describes (imo) is the evolution of the political state of The Family, to a Political State of the family, which might be reconciled as a modern tribalism founded on a perception of security. What he describes is a rollercoaster to nowhere running from a world at war with itself. Object and you will be the terrorist from within rather than the terrorist from the outside looking in.
Comment by Watchful Eye — Mon 16th August 2010 @ 11:41 am
theres a new term..Domestic Terrorist
Comment by Ford — Mon 16th August 2010 @ 12:43 pm
Creating a NZ government ministry for men??
Seriously Julie, I reckon you need to think this through some more.
That completely misses the point of Baskervilles excellent article and advocates creating the antithesis of what he’s calling for – smaller government.
Aslo I’m afraid that the creation of a ministry of men’s affairs in NZ it may just like other bodies which are supposed to support men and thier issues get usurped by feminists whilst also creating create an even more bugeoning state apparatus for demonising men there further. It would mean MORE taxes and more men unable to be involved in Men’s Rights campaigning because they’re therefore even more financialy stressed than before.
Of course those who are professionals dealing with men would probably love a ministry of men’s affairs to exist.
More government taxpayer funded pork for them.
A simpler and much more elegant route to take which brings about sexual equality and a more level playing field AND cuts back state expenditure, thus providing relief for the financially stressed taxpayers would be to scrap the ministry of women’s affairs instead.
Comment by Skeptik — Mon 16th August 2010 @ 4:39 pm
Thank-you Julie and sorry about the poor grammar and spelling in my previous post. I was dashing off a quick response before heading off elsewhere.
I’m not sure what you mean by a ministry outside of government.
If it’s a ministry surely that means part of a government, or do you mean a church ministry?
Comment by Skeptik — Mon 16th August 2010 @ 8:29 pm
I disagree with it being a good idea.
I think alternately if the ministry for women was disbanded it would be a far better move.
That’s because the ministry for women has for many years and still advocates misandric policy.
As a statute they also automatically have input into EVERY piece of legislation that has gone before parliament.
Think about that for a moment.
A ministry that’s run by women, for women. Not for men too, or children too. Only for women’s interests; and ideologically captured long ago by hardliners to boot.
It’s been that way for decades now, which is why feminists are able to gleefully celebrate more and more gains for women and to hell with men.
They in turn are very well connected to careerist academic feminists who routinely produce the fallacious misandric ‘statistics’ such as 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence, 1 in 3 women experience sexual abuse etc etc.
These are unfortunately seriously deranged people given the power to use feminist spin to drastically degrade the lives of every NZer.
Whats more they rationalize their taxpayer funded existence as do women’s/gender studies departments in universities as necessary.
They will counter by saying they reckon that there are so many male politicians that parliament already has enough male perspective as women’s studies departments will similarly say all other departments in universities represent a male perspective. It’s a bizarre, Kafkaesque rort on unsuspecting and hard working new Zealand taxpayers and very dangerous set of affairs which to my mind is cancerous to NZs cultural, political and economic development and needs cutting out – every last cell of it.
Comment by Skeptik — Tue 17th August 2010 @ 2:47 am
I disagree with both parts.
Using this as a stunt to draw attention to the need for men having a voice is well intentioned, but under the current National-Act alliance the idea of getting yet another ministry is anathema to them. It has a snowballs chance in hell of becoming a reality.
What will be much more attractive to them is advocating the disbanding of the ministry of women’s affairs instead.
To do so means the government spends less, not more and as I said before ends a female monopoly on policy and policy development input.
Not only that, but a concerted call for the disbandment of the ministry for women’s affairs doesn’t preclude stating that the reason to do so IS to get men’s voice heard rather than silenced beneath the din made by the feminist women’s ministry.
It seems very strange to me that you post Stephen Baskerville’s article in it’s entirety which is clearly advocating the shrinking of government and much needed relief for the general taxpayer and from government intrusion into every aspect of life. Then you apparently seem to be still arguing for the setting up of a ministry of men’s affairs with the attendant risk of still further taxation on men, without those men getting representation either mind you.
There’s are questions I want you to consider too Julie.
In this instance seemingly arguing for the setting up of a ministry for men’s affairs as a preference over the disbandment of the ministry of women’s affairs, you are a woman coming to the MENZ site apparently trying to argue what men should do.
How do you think that comes across to men reading here?
What does that say about your ability to listen to men and advocate what they want rather than push your own female agenda?
Comment by Skeptik — Tue 17th August 2010 @ 5:43 am
Julie,
A good place to start what? Increasing the State further?
Adding yet another ministry instead of getting rid of the feminist one which is complicit in the wrecking of lives (ministry of women’s affairs)?
Creating another government structure to feed off instead of being more self reliant?
It appears you’d sooner agitate for an increase in an already bloated and interfering State, and burden men and women both further with the cost of this to the taxpayer.
It also appears that when challenged about this you’re content to duck the challenge rather than face it and get a man to protect you (in this case very surprisingly Jim Bailey – who in several recent postings of yours you indicate you can’t even work with as you view him as dangerous and an isolationist empire builder).
All very bizarre.
Comment by Skeptik — Tue 17th August 2010 @ 11:57 am
Here’s another article from Professor Stephen Baskerville.
It too enunciates the compelling need for less statism.
He is in my view a very fine writer and courageous social critic.
Comment by Skeptik — Tue 17th August 2010 @ 3:42 pm
The end of men through sexual statism eh?
You think that the burgeoning state is only about oppressing men eh?
No, no, no dear friends.
As horrendous as that seems it’s MUCH much bigger than that.
Take a deep breath and try cultural suicide as a concept.
Sexual
Statism
tick…tick…..tick….
Comment by Skeptik — Wed 18th August 2010 @ 8:12 am
Interestingly I came across
this statement recently:
So there we have it – evidence there’s some energy in the National party to scrap the MWA.
Now, if indeed English is about to axe the MWA I’ll be the first to write him a letter expressing abundant gratitude. That alone would probably seal my vote with the Nats come the next election.
I urge every NZ man to push in that direction.
To hell with the crackpot notion that a National-Act alliance will ever agree to creating yet more government. Like I said earlier in the thread a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.
Comment by Skeptik — Thu 19th August 2010 @ 12:33 am
Hans,
Thank you for long overdue clarification about the nature of the protesting to take place at parliament.
I still prefer the option of axing the misandry of wimmin’s unfairness over that of setting up a ministry of men’s affairs too. I just don’t see it as a viable political outcome although I understand the motive of masquerading as a men’s affairs department to draw attention to the need for men’s collective voice to finally be heard by the powers that be instead of marginalized as it has been for several decades now.
Warren Farrel, a writer you’ll be familiar with said the next step for the men’s movement was to move beyond consciousness raising amongst men to the point of political activity. I see the protest will be part of that next step and wish all participants well.
Comment by Skeptik — Fri 20th August 2010 @ 8:55 pm
Skeptik 14th August
Sorry to go back a few days but you were so right about Baskerville’s comments Re the more servant thing. I watched a report on Aljazera last night about the financial crisis in Greece. The politicians (who in Greece like many nations are in the pockets of the elite) created so many public service jobs that people were standing around doing nothing all day. And yes sooner or later someone has to pay the ferry man. The ferry man (in the worlds’ case – every country with a central bank anyway – is the IMF. Greece is about to default on $800 Billion to them. The IMF says it will demand that the retirement age go up another 12 years, the pension and wages to go down and a number of other demands carefully planned to effectively take control of a countries sovereignty. It’s such an outcry in Greece (massive riots etc) and the people are so outraged with their crooked politicians that one politician (responsible for financial matters) has been murdered with treats of other politicians to be next. The European media barely gave the incident a mention. And that makes sense when the IMF (a small group of private investors) own Reuters news agency, the Associated Press, CNN, NBC, Time magazine and well most of the press. The rest of Europe are now trembling, keep an eye on the smaller EU members like Ireland, Spain and Portugal. I guess what I am wanting to piont out is this…Politicians like Obama are not making these decisions themselves, it’s the international bankers. They will keep on printing and lending that money which causes “deflation” of that same money (i.e. the buying power of your money gets weaker and weaker)until they not only usurp our families but the sovereinty of a country. The world reduced to slaves. Thats what happens to an overinflated ballon and it is carefully planned.
Stand up!
Comment by Roy — Fri 20th August 2010 @ 8:58 pm
Yes, I lean towards the “get rid of MWA” too. Setting up something that sounds similar said to represent men will give legitimacy to the MWA and will encourage people to think fairness has been achieved, “oh well we have one for men now too”. But the outcome will almost certainly be that the men’s one will be severely constrained while the MWA is allowed to go on installing its misandry for years yet. Some call for a “Gender Affairs” body, but I think such matters would be better addressed by a solid constitution that guaranteed equal rights for both genders.
Comment by Hans Laven — Fri 20th August 2010 @ 9:45 pm
Take a look at this
It’s not recent but oh doesn’t it make you want to laugh and cry at the same time…
Comment by noconfidence — Fri 20th August 2010 @ 10:29 pm
Hans,
I agree.
I’m also afraid that the setting up of some kind of ministry for gender affairs would only most likely end up being like gender studies – a trojan horse organization labeled euphemistically. In other words it would still be the ministry of women’s affairs only under another (misleading) title. Same shit, different name that’s all.
I too think there’s a need for a solid constitution that guarantees equal rights for both sexes.
Thank you. I hadn’t thought of that.
As an example of just how easily some newly formed ministry for gender affairs could succumb to ideological capture from misandric feminism one need think no further than the that dreadful indictment on NZ The so called Human Rights Commission doesn’t do it’s job when it comes to men.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 21st August 2010 @ 12:26 pm
Good move.
I think the thread cleaned up shows allot of well formed careful analysis.
I recently made Angry Harry aware of youtube videos showing MRA protesting outside NZ ‘family’ courthouses in recent years and he has sent his thanks.
I dare say he’d therefore be favorably disposed to receiving video footage of protests from MRA in NZ more directly from the protesters themselves.
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 22nd August 2010 @ 10:17 am
It’s not just the MWA that needs axing.
There needs to be a major rethink in the way public money is invested in expensive tertiary training as well. Filling our medical schools with women, who then go on to become mainly G.P.s who withdraw from the medical work-force much sooner than men is an appalling waste of public funds. No business would prioritise its precious capital in such a poor way. One doesn’t have to think very long to come up with ways that would get the best doctors for the money spent, without starting a gender war. Full cost for students, with debt partially forgiven for each year worked in NZ would be a start.
Comment by rc — Sun 22nd August 2010 @ 12:06 pm
rc,
I agree entirely with what you’re saying.
I’ve also been thinking long and hard about MENZ as a leading website in promoting NZ Men’s Rights Activism online.
As recent events have shown we can and often do have competing ideas and need to debate them.
That’s healthy.
Thinking about the debates I get the impression that whilst most of us are pushing in the same general direction, the debates get going about the strategy for arriving at our shared goal – long overdue human rights for men. But we get endlessly bogged down, and occasionally very personal in arguing over what is the best strategy and what action to prioritize.
I think it’s important to recognize that we are in a new place.
The Men’s Movement has moved from the consciousness raising stage to the political stage.
That’s not to say that consciousness raising is now unnecessary.
There are a great many folks to still wake up to men’s issues.
Unless I’m mistaken folks like Rex McCann still do allot of very valuable work in that area, bringing men together who subsequently discover through his skillful facilitation that they share common issues of disempowerment as men.
As I was saying earlier though as a collective it seems to me we are moving to the next phase, and learning allot as we go. We are gradually morphing into a grass roots ‘political party’ as such.
Not one that has candidates standing for seats in a general election, but a kind of political party nonetheless. I understand that in such organizations debates need to take place.
However bone fide political parties don’t do what we’ve been doing of late however.
For they have strict rules against ‘washing their dirty linen in public’.
That means they keep the up close and personal conflict AWAY from public scrutiny. They have public relations to think of, something I’ll return to later in this posting.
I think therefore we need some kind of mechanism for communicating our personal differences ‘behind closed doors’ so to speak.
Just look at the difference to this thread now that it’s been ‘cleaned up’ of all the personal stuff! And imagine you’re a newcomer to the MENZ site reading the thread. It’s in stark contrast to what existed before.
When I think back to my first opening and reading the MENZ website several years ago it was a big moment. A pretty scary one truth be known.
What was I getting into?
Was I now part of an underground movement?
Would it alter me in ways I was unprepared for?
Would I be shocked and distressed at things I read there?
These are big existential questions involving the possibility of making profound changes to one’s personality and worldview!
So I surmise that even though newcomers may not quite have the same degree of trepidation I had back then, as thankfully these days as Men’s Issues are a little more mainstream, it may still be a BIG move for them, especially for the more timid or downtrodden personalities.
So with such possible difficulties in making that move, they click and start reading only to see what appears from their perspective a bunch of ‘psychos’ having a right royal verbal ding dong in text form.
I imagine to them it’s very off-putting, and therefore as they shy away seeing the infighting, another potential ally in the struggle for human rights for men is lost, at least temporarily, but perhaps for a long, long time.
I’d therefore welcome a way for us ALL to communicate with one another as the need arises to deal with the more personal stuff AWAY from MENZ threads.
Perhaps by private e-mail, secured (non-public) facebook messaging or similar?
What do others think?
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 22nd August 2010 @ 2:14 pm
[discussion about moderation removed by JohnP]
I read the longish comment you wrote #16 and I agree with what you’ve written. I hope it’s not a problem putting the protests up as an event before any new debate or discussion comes up. September is a big month.
Here’s a couple of interesting sites to look at.
http://www.greatfathers.org.nz
http://www.dad4life.co.nz/
Comment by julie — Sun 22nd August 2010 @ 6:18 pm
As Julie states at the start of this thread sometimes an article is perfect the way it is, and sometimes an article is so good it needs to be copied and pasted in it’s entirety. This also is one such article. (with permission).
grab a cuppa and settle in for a longish and very interesting read IMO (about 10 – 15 minutes)
Marriage, Fatherhood And Why I Have Avoided Both
Sunday, January 3, 2010
By Robert O’Hara
There has been a systematic deconstruction of the importance of fathers and fatherhood during my lifetime. It was deliberate and has many broad, long lasting and downright scary implications. Along with this deconstruction comes a particular phenomenon that, when I am confronted with it, both alarms and bewilders me at the same time. This phenomenon is that of the single mother by choice.
I had an experience recently with one of these women who want to become mothers yet seem pathologically indifferent to the idea that there is another parent that may have actual human feelings about the matter. I was at a holiday season party with a friend and struck up a conversation with a younger woman I had met about six months prior during a party hosted at the same house. I was happy to see her because I knew she was pregnant but was a little puzzled because she did not appear to be pregnant now and I knew that she was early on the last time we spoke.
Hesitantly, I asked if she had given birth as anything could have happened and didn’t want to bring up something unpleasant. As it turned out I had committed what could quite possibly be the worst faux pas that anyone could make in casual conversation. She lost the baby at five months.
“Oh my God I am so sorry” I said “Please forgive me for bringing it up.” “Are you OK?”
“Oh please don’t be sorry it’s ok to ask and yes I am fine.” “But it was a harrowing experience.” She said.
Losing a baby at five months is an extremely dangerous situation to be in. Once the child is that big and you lose it (in this case it was a blood clot that was brought on by a bad case of the flu) it becomes septic very quickly and mortality rates when this occurs are high. “They told me that I might not make it and even if I did I may never get the chance to have a child again.” She said. I looked at her with genuine sympathy and relief and told her that I was glad that she was all right and she should try to get pregnant again. Of course I wished her luck too.
Trying to avoid any further embarrassment I looked to see if she had a wedding ring on and after seeing that she didn’t I asked, very cloddishly this time, “How did your boyfriend take the loss of the child? Is he ready to try again as well?”
She looked at me and without much more than a wince she said “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
Even more embarrassed at this point I said: “Oh I guess situations like that are hard on relationships.”
To which she responded: “No there never was a ‘boyfriend’ I just got pregnant and decided to have the baby.”
Now feeling like a complete imbecile: “Oh….. that’s great…..I really respect that. I am sure that the guy was torn up about it though.”
“He didn’t even know that I was pregnant.” She said, again without a wince.
Now, tossing modesty to the wind, I asked: “Was this someone you just lost contact with, you must not have known how to get in touch with him. That happens in life I suppose.”
“No, I knew how to get in touch with him” She answered incredibly. “I would have needed to do so after the baby was born of course for child support, but I just didn’t let him know. I didn’t need the drama. It’s all right though I will try again soon. I want to be a mother so bad!” She concluded with a gleeful smile.
Needless to say I was flabbergasted. Not knowing what to say before I distanced myself from her I simply exclaimed rather insincerely: “Well good luck with all that!” To which she said with still more clueless glee and without a hint of awkwardness: “Thank you so much I am very excited to try again.” After which I set a vector for the other side of the crowd and proceeded to move as fast as was socially acceptable.
For the next ten minutes I tried to comprehend what I had just been privy too. Here was a young woman of about twenty five, nubile, happy and not too dumb, who wanted to have a baby. Ok, normal enough but she didn’t seem to have any interest in developing a relationship with a man who might be an active father in the child’s life. Ok again, lots of women feel that way, it’s none of my business right? But why not just go to a sperm bank? But of course! You can’t collect child support from a sperm donor! At least not yet.
I thought of this poor guy who didn’t even know he had started a pregnancy with someone. He was left in the dark while this woman proceeded to make plans for the rest of her life, the life of his child and his own life without his input. I would like to think that he would have wanted to know how his unborn child was doing and also prepare for the massive change that was about to overcome his future, and perhaps find joy in the fact that he was about to become a father. Then again, he was spared the agony of losing an unborn; something he certainly had a right to know as well I would think. Obviously she did not.
She literally and unabashedly thought of his contribution to the whole affair was first as a sperm donor, and then after the baby was born, an ATM machine for the next eighteen-plus years. I could not believe that what we had just conversed about was spoken openly, in mixed company and with no shame whatsoever. I remember somewhat of a creepy crawly feeling coming over me and I went to the dry bar and made myself a very strong Gimlet. After the second one the feeling finally went away.
The strange thing is that this girl isn’t necessarily a bad person. And, funny enough, you could arguably say she isn’t totally irresponsible either. How is that you might ask? Well, the law makes it possible for her to do this and still be assured that there will be support for her and her child. This effectively negates the need for a father. Along with that negation are any “sperm donor’s” right to be an active part in his child’s life and the fleecing of a goodly part of his income for the next eighteen years which is going to a person who has absolutely no accountability to him or need respect his wishes in any way, or his choice in even becoming a parent to begin with.
Is it any wonder why so many men are shying away from fatherhood these days? Is it any wonder that men are shying away from marriage as I have in order to avoid a situation where there is a 50% likelihood five years after the wedding date that you may end up as just another sperm donor turned ATM machine?
The fact is that there are women like this everywhere and their numbers are growing. It isn’t that they are evil and intentionally want to mar society with single parent homes and all of the high social costs associated with them. It is simply because society enables them to do so. They simply don’t care. And why should they? To them, men have become objects when it comes to reproduction and nothing else. And, there are some who say that we are all better off that way. Are we?
One thing is for certain: it is not better for men. And for all the heated arguments pertaining to the effect that it has on children another thing is for certain: the norm is quickly becoming one in which a child can no longer expect to have a significant male presence in their life at all while they are growing up. Think about it. Very soon the average child will have no male parental figure in their life and no significant adult male figure in their life until they get their first job. By no means was my father perfect, but I can’t imagine how my family life, or my subsequent employment life would have turned out had he not been there while I was growing up.
I have a difficult time with the complaints feminists have of “the constraints of traditional gender roles” placed upon men and women by the so called “Patriarchy.” As the story goes the “Patriarchy” decided that they had to keep women down because if they didn’t then women, being far superior to men, would eventually eclipse them in influence and power. So in order to do this they, the Patriarchy, created roles for each gender.
The male role was one of privilege, being the one who left home and made his way in the world and the female role was one of subjugation, that of underappreciated and often abused home maker and mother. She was not allowed to leave the home and get an education in order to gain awareness so she herself might make her own money; money being the ultimate symbol of power and domination. The Patriarchy, and men in general, are scared to death of this thought and that is why they continue to keep women down in the workplace and also why men in general are “intimidated” by successful women today.
But, as the story goes on, the Patriarchy, being made up of the bumbling idiots that all men are, shot themselves in the foot. They had stupidly created for themselves a paradigm in which men have limited gender roles as well. Men were now required to be the providers and protectors and as such they began to suffer too at the hands of the almighty and oppressive Patriarchy. So the only answer was to destroy the social system that made the “traditional family” possible.
This deconstruction of the family was of course not aimed at deconstructing the importance of motherhood. Mothers, being women, are far superior and supporting them at the collective expense of society is crucial for the future of humanity. Fathers on the other hand are men after all and don’t carry the baby for nine months. Furthermore, as the narrative continues, they are just men, and as such, do little more than sport a warbling sack filled with genetic goo between their legs that during copulation is inserted into the woman in an offensive manner by the use of something called a penis which is affixed to the top of this sack, the only useful part of a man’s body.
There was still one problem with this deconstruction of the Patriarchy though, the fact that women need someone to provide for them while they are gestating, breastfeeding, and weaning their children into adulthood. What was there to do about this huge problem?
Well, men need sex right? In fact they will do anything for it and they are so stupid that they are easily manipulated by those who control it. So we will just make them pay for it in the form of a “fine” called Mandatory Child Support. Since men can’t control themselves it will be easy to sucker them into an arrangement like this and if they will not or even cannot pay we will have their drivers license revoked, get their passport privileges taken away, revoke their business license, and if all else fails, throw them in jail. And just to make sure that other men who won’t or can’t pay their “fine” get the picture we will post the offender’s names and faces on a pizza boxes so they can never be too comfortable while watching their beloved Football and guzzling beer.
That is a fair trade as far as men are concerned right? Easy sex and a child that they get to play with one day out of fourteen for about four hours or so, only if the mother wishes of course, in exchange for eighteen years of monthly installments the amount of which he does not get to decide on or even negotiate. There we go! Problem solved.
The above narrative may seem funny and surreal, like some kind of Orwellian satire, but make no mistake; it is this world view that has driven the development of family and divorce law for the past forty years. U.S. Court and Legislative decisions have been rigorously pushed through regarding child custody, child support, and domestic violence that make the civil and private environment for husbands and fathers hostile. Mothers are almost guaranteed custody of their children in the event of a divorce. The father need not be a presence in the child’s life in order to be placed under child support obligations, and thanks to the Violence Against Women Act a man can be forced out of his home for even so much as perceived slight, giving any woman, battered or not, a means to eject the father from his home and his children’s lives.
People will try to soften it up a bit by making conciliatory remarks from time to time like paying lip service to enforcing visitation rights and occasionally granting primary custody to a father only after the mother turns out to be so worthless there is absolutely no other alternative. Regardless, these are essentially the limitations facing men when it comes to reproduction. If married, a woman can file for divorce at any time and the father will still be expected to maintain her and the children at roughly the same capacity as he did while he was married. What if he loses his job, wants to change careers or for any of a plethora of reasons or simply becomes less than able to pay? No matter, he is still required to pay child support or he may face jail time.
When a man is in a stable marriage and falls upon hard economic times he can work it out with his wife and family. In the event of a job or career loss he can approach them and say “I am sorry kids I will not be able to get you new clothes for another month or two.” Or in the case that he may want to change his career thus allowing him to spend more quality time with his family he can approach them and say: “hey everybody, I have decided to pursue my dream of becoming a high school teacher so that means you kids won’t be getting brand new cars on your sixteenth birthday. But I will also get to spend lots of time with you in the summer.”
No one would deny that every human being has a right to deal with a crisis or make choices as they see fit for themselves and their families. Yet somehow, when men become non-custodial fathers they cease to become human beings.
The non-custodial father is essentially a wage slave. He does not have the luxury of being able to fall upon hardships and rebound in a new form with the same ease as a man who is not a father. He does not have the right to choose his path of employment with the freedom that others do. The amount of child support a non-custodial father must pay is calculated according to his Imputed Income. In other words, it doesn’t matter what kind of job you have, what kind of job you want or whether or not you even have a job, you must pay the amount that they say you are worth.
If you have a degree in electrical engineering yet make your living by doing something you love like playing Jazz Guitar, tough luck buddy, you got to go back to designing high pass filter circuits for Spacely Solid State Inc. even if you do hate the pencil necks that work there and were contemplating suicide before you finally quit after you paid off your student loans.
Despite what many would tell you, divorced and never married mothers have far more social and economic support available to them than the average man of any marital or parental status. If divorced they can go on and start another family with ease, not having to worry about the loss of child support. However when a divorced man starts another family he does so with an existing burden, limiting him severely in many cases. I am heartbroken when I hear stories of spiteful ex wives who, upon hearing that their ex husbands are planning to have another child with the new wife, petition the court for more child support and get it due to financial incentives courts have to raise child support payments.
Education is another glaring example of disparity when it comes to these two groups of people. A single mother can walk into the financial aid office of any university or college and there is someone there specifically to help her. Available for the single mother are copious amounts of grant money which a specialist (and yes, there are specialists who make their living doing just this for single mothers) can mine for her according to her specific circumstance. She will have access to a daycare facility and perhaps some transportation. Her scholastic performance and over all well being will be closely tracked by the institution as many federal and state moneys provided to the school are contingent on the amount of single mothers getting an education in the system.
I used to work in Higher Education and I can tell you for sure that demographics drive the money supply for Public-Post-Secondary education administration and all of the inflated salaries that go along with it. And the one golden demographic that attracts the most money are single mothers with dependent children. I could almost hear all of those enrolment specialists hop to their feet as I read the headline: “Obama Says Single Mothers Should Go Back to School.” Is there any educational assistance for single custodial fathers or non-custodial fathers with dependent children? No. Do they need the assistance? Yes. Do they deserve it? Well, according to the people dolling out the money, apparently not.
Then there is the appalling way that we treat single custodial fathers who need social services. One of the worst stories that I ever heard was that of a a single father who had lost his job, and being poor to begin with, lost the roof over his head and went with his daughter to a homeless shelter to seek help. Like any responsible father he decided to inquire about the possibility of getting some assistance for his daughter in the form of funds for a school uniform. He was determined not to let the current yet temporary state of affairs interrupt the education that his child was getting at a good school where the uniforms were required.
What happened to him and his daughter? They were separated, she was subsequently placed in a foster home and he has not seen her since. The rational quoted by the case workers at the shelter was “we can’t let a child remain in the care of a man in that condition.”
Contrast this with the treatment that single mothers get at homeless shelters. Case workers will bend over backwards to ensure that drug addicted women do not get separated from their children in the process of assisting them through a tough time in the name of preserving the ”sacred bond between mother and child.” I wonder what they feed the men who make up 80% of the population at homeless shelters; the scraps from the women’s table perhaps? I am afraid to find out. One thing is for sure, if you are a single custodial father you are in many instances considered no more of a human being than a non-custodial father.
In the fantastic Patriarchy described above “rigid gender roles” are enforced by societal attitudes and taboos. Yet in today’s society the male gender role of provider is enforced at gunpoint. This wouldn’t be so bad if as a man you had the same decision power in becoming a parent as women do, which you do not. The argument for abortion in Roe v. Wade clearly articulates that the state should not have a right to impose parenthood on a woman because it is an intimate invasion of the state into her life. I hear feminists cry all the time: “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF OF MY BODY!” Yet as I write this there are roughly 100,000 “bodies” in jail for not being the parent that the state thinks they should be. The only difference is that they are male.
Think of the characteristics of fathers in jail for not paying child support: below average intelligence, below average wage earners, below average educational attainment, the list goes on. No one believing in the “right to choose” would deny that if a woman isn’t ready to bear the responsibility of being a parent she should have the right to choose whether or not to be one. Yet here these poor guys are in jail rotting away not doing anybody, including their children, any good. Where was their choice when they needed it?
Furthermore, a single mother can abandon her newborn baby by dropping it off at the nearest emergency room or fire station and no one will say anything. She can give the baby up for adoption and no one will criticize her for being a bad mother. When was the last time you heard of a teenage girl who threw her newborn into a dumpster being portrayed in the media as being anything other than a “victim of circumstance” or having to pay any consequences?
And what of the over 50,000,000 abortions performed since Roe v. Wade? How many men were involved in those “choices?” That’s a whole lot of people to look at and say: “no, your feelings don’t matter, you are going to accept this decision made for you by someone else whether you like it or not.” That is one hell of an imposition isn’t it? But men don’t have the same feelings towards unborn children that women do so it doesn’t matter……right?
What’s more, if you are man like me who has decided to avoid marriage you are derided and called “irresponsible” or as suffering from “Peter Pan Syndrome.” All labels used to shame and cajole you into a gender role regardless of your analysis of that role and the risks, both financial and emotional, imposed upon you by the law should you assume it. Women and mothers are given choices that have a direct and profound bearing on the lives of the men they are married to and/or have children with, ultimately leaving these men with a marked diminishment of control over the lives of them and their children. Is it all that irresponsible and selfish to want to avoid such a contract? I think not.
Ahh well, here I am at the age of 38 never married and damn glad never to have done so. The risk of a horrific outcome is avoided. Some reading this may ask “is this guy serious, does he really think he can be happy without a wife and children?” Wife and children? Are you kidding? There is no such thing as a wife any more. A so called “wife” is really nothing other than a serious liability for your emotional and financial well being.
It is just too risky to get married with an overall divorce rate of 50%, with women initiating between 70% and 90% of them depending on whether or not you live in a state that has no fault divorce laws, in which case it is the later statistic of 90%. Children? Would you really have a kid if you knew there was this kind of likelihood they would be ripped out of your life and used as a proboscis to suck your wallet dry? I don’t think so, but incredibly men get married all the time.
I like my lifestyle as a single man. I like not having a car and riding my bicycle to work and play even though I risk injury. I like going to the bar and reveling it up with all of my other single guy friends. It used to be that being the aging single guy at the bar carried somewhat of a stigma. Not for me. I like doing what I decide for a living and not having someone else tell me what I should do or how much money I should make. A twenty thousand dollar wedding and the likelihood of a divorce that will cost me many times more for the rest of my lifetime with an estranged kid? No.
I think I am going to buy a second bicycle. Perhaps I will buy a used Reighley frame with a single speed drive train that I can put some kick ass wheels on. As I ride my bike I will be wearing my favorite biking attire: full length weather proof tights under a pair of cut off pants, not unlike that of Peter Pan. Until someone gives me a better option, that is exactly what I can be expected to do.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 18th September 2010 @ 3:56 pm
sounds like the X..only interested in herself and dosent give a shit who she walks over to get what she wants..dating is like putting your head on a chopping block ..why any man wants to gamble his life on a woman is bryond me
Comment by Ford — Sat 22nd October 2011 @ 6:36 am
Dear Skeptic, thanks very much for the post.
I have heard similar talks by mothers, in cases where I know the children too.
I often try to see how many different ways I can look at a situation (remembering how much I do know about the situation and guessing as to how much I don’t know too).
I agree that it scares me when any parent positions themself as a large fraction of a child’s life. To me, it feels like wanting to take all of the glory (ignoring that by wanting all of the credit, the chances of a crash and burn for the child are much increased). I wouldn’t want to take so much responsibility, for the child’s sake or for my own sake.
I am not denying that there are very successful solo parents, although when you look closer most of these have been in stable supporting relationships, until one of life’s outside catastrophes took away the other parent.
This is a very different situation from a mother who never had a mutual consenting stable relationship with the father, choosing unilaterally to have a child. Even more so when the prospective mother lacks work skills too.
The important difference, as seen from the child’s situation, is that one parent had the skills to negotiate and establish a stable adult relationship and the latter apparently lacked those skills. (Similarly, for issues of material resources or work skills…)
If there was a lack of interpersonal skills about establishing and maintaining adult relationships, this is a hint that there may also be a lack of parenting skills, so that this parent isn’t really likely to be a skillfull solo parent. It may also suggest that this solo parent may lack support from family and friends. This support is important for together couples – even more needed by solo parents.
All of this reflects lack of parenting knowledge on the part of the prospective parent(s). This comment obviously applies for the loose penis, as much as for the vagina.
I suggest this weakness gives us a very good suggestion about what we need to be doing as a society, to ensure better protection for our children – ensure much better parenting education for all members of our society, preferably well before they are able to become parents!
(Disclosure – I have been together, separated and solo parent.)
The USA provides the most carefully prepared statistics:
Center for Disease Control USA: childmaltreatment
Administration for Children and Families “¢ 370 L’Enfant Promenade, S.W. “¢ Washington, D.C. 20447
Child Maltreatment 2009
Thanks again Skeptic,
Best regards, MurrayBacon – axe murderer.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sun 23rd October 2011 @ 9:40 am
@Skeptik re post #41 – “The strange thing is that this girl isn’t necessarily a bad person. And, funny enough, you could arguably say she isn’t totally irresponsible either.”
As my circumstances continue to disintegrate and I try to embrace the inevitability of MGTOW, I read your full post here. (I’ve been a little behind on my reading – LOL – got too many other things on my plate.)
She is a bad person – a psychopath in fact. An absolute predator. If I had any misgivings before about MGTOW for myself, I don’t anymore after reading this post. My future is uncertain. Not it’s quality but life itself.
Abandoning your home and your past and living abroad without a passport in a strange land with strange people is already daunting enough, especially at my age. But throw people (women particularly) like the one described above into the mix and it’s downright scary.
Living as an outlaw, a fugitive, is going to be hard. But then the story above reminds me of how hard life is going to be otherwise anyway. That being said, it would be people like her here at home who drove me into exile and toward MGTOW in the first place.
These people gave me a choice between living as a slave and dying as a free man. Not a choice I ever wanted to make in my life. What has kept me tied to my “home” for so long is the possibility of meeting a woman who does not think like the one described in your post. But that possibility is very small for someone of my age and disposition.
Interestingly enough, though, recent encounters with three women have been weighing heavily on my mind as I decide what to do about my own circumstances. One is a woman who, for some completely stupid assinine insane reason, I’d fallen in love with (the probability of this happening is infinitessimally small). The other two are “friends” / acquaintances.
The first woman I’ll describe is an acquantance of eight years. She is thirty. She was with the Nat’l Guard and a former FBI Agent but now waits tables at a local restaurant. I think she is smart, if for no other reason but that she decided to quit a career with the federal government because she saw that it is dishonest and did not want to participate. She had cheated on her boyfriend of four years recently. Her boyfriend is a troubled but conscientious man (as far as I can tell) who grows dahlias so she can use them as centerpieces for the tables she waits.
His compassion and sensitivity touches me, so I’ve gotten to like the guy over the years despite a drug addiction and child support problems (from a previous relationship) and other less desirable or adaptive qualities. Although I think these less desirable qualities are just evidence of a man trying to survive and cope in a post feminist dystopian police state and I am sympathetic. So, I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt.
The man she cheated on him with is a young professional with a lot more money and a bigger dick (according to her). I guess he’s OK but I don’t know him that well. She had approached me for counsel about her situation (dunno why). She knows me (or at least of me) so she has some courage to approach me about a matter like this.
She had planned on dumping her drug-addicted boy-friend for this other guy she just met. I think she was looking for me to support her decision and was shocked when I didn’t (although I don’t know why she would be knowing me as everyone else does).
We spent considerable time discussing matters such as I and others have posted in threads on this site. (I was thinking the entire time that marriage counselors and other professionals charge about $300 per hour – if I was charging her, I could make a fortune! But matters like these are not about the money and a position as unpopular as mine may not attract that much money anyway.)
I told her that the pasture on the other side of the fence may or may not be greener but that is not important. What makes our life more fulfilling is not which pasture we occupy and whether or not it is greener but the effort we put into maintaining that pasture. Men are not an item on a grocery shelf to be selected but products of a farm, the quality of which is a product of a woman’s efforts maintaining the farm. The quality of that product is directly related to our efforts. I told her that if she treats her paramour the same way she treats her boy-friend, then the results will be the same. The pasture isn’t green just because or a result of the effort of her man, but the effort of her and her man.
In the end she said “goodbye” to her paramour and decided to stick it out through rehab and the child support mess with her boyfriend. I was pleasantly shocked. to some degree her decision for me was vindication of my own experience and circumstances.
I feel somehow I had defeated the machine that compelled this woman to chase money and a big dick and destroy the lives of innocent men without conscience or any sense of responsibility or impunity. I wish someone like me had counseled my ex-wife before she divorced me the way I had counseled this woman before she trashed another man for no reason. People are too afraid to hold women responsible for anything. They are too afraid to tell them the truth. I held this woman responsible for her behavior and told her the truth. It matters.
The second woman is an acquaintance of six months. She just turned eighteen. She waits tables at the same restaurant the first woman does. The tables are covered in construction paper and there are crayons sitting in the trays with the condiments. I have frequented this restaurant at night for the past five years to draw pictures with the crayons.
There is something about people enjoying the spectacle of an artist as a conduit of the world around him in the throes of expression. Like deer who stop in the middle of the road when struck by the headlights of an oncoming car. We are all voyeurs. We can’t turn our gaze away from a car wreck or the destruction of someone’s life.
I cannot afford to buy any drink or food (or crayons), but the owner lets me stay there and draw because I attract customers and make them drink (that’s the second person in my life who told me I make people drink – LOL – the first is my ex-wife’s attorney). He usually gives me a glass of Guiness for free. Sometimes if there is any food left over from the kitchen or patrons, he lets me have that too. These are good people. At a time when I feel less than human, these people have reminded me that I am.
For the past six months, this seventeen year old girl has “waited” on me (brought me a Guinness and food while I draw). I had felt bad because I could never afford to tip her of course. One night, I left and had forgotten my hat and returned to retrieve it. At the table where I had been sitting and where I had left my hat, my drawing had been cut out. I learned from the first woman (the thirty year old of the story before) that the seventeen year old had been cutting them out and keeping them.
I had not seen the seventeen year old around much this past month and learned that she has breast cancer and has been receiving treatment (at eighteen!). Trying to reconcile her condition and my circumstances and what I know feminists have done to misdirect funding dishonestly from overall medical research to disproportionate funding of women’s health has been difficult.
I really feel for this girl with breast cancer at age seighteen but at the same time am furious at the lies women have told to secure funding for women’s health at the expense of men which benefit her. A close encounter with a girl like this makes the bigger picture seem less important. As sympathetic as I am toward this girl as an individual and her circumstances, I am ashamed of the degree to which I am unsympathetic because of what her population has done to me and my children.
The third woman is one with whom I have fallen in love. She just turned forty-six and has two daughters and two grandchildren. We have known each other for a couple years. She had been my neighbor for most of that time but she and her boy-friend moved a few miles away for financial reasons. He was in the process of becoming unemployed – the company he worked for was down-sizing and he saw the writing on the wall. Once, when she still lived next door, she invited me over when her boy-friend was at work and she tried to seduce me. I was flattered but could not indulge her because I knew her boy-friend and was sympathetic to his circumstances.
Since they moved, her boy-friend left her and moved to the other side of the country to find employment. One night, I encountered her at the local grocery and we decided to spend some time together. Sometimes we went out and ate dinner together and sometimes we spent the evening at her place drinking coffee and talking till late at night. I enjoy spending time with this woman, despite what I know. She is great at conversation and I have always said, “Marry someone with whom you can have a good conversation because sex will not always be that important.” Hope springs eternal and I always hope to encounter a woman who is cut from a different cloth than that designed by our feminist regime. But her attempt to seduce me while she was still living with her boy-friend was never far from my mind.
Over the months, her true colors began to show. She has expressed a desire for a man with more money and who can take care of her. She has expressed desire for more sexual freedom. She is petulant and irresponsible. She began demonstrating instances of spontaneous and extreme and violent anger at me without any provocation. So, eventually, I unceremoniously left her, deciding I would not tolerate such mistreatment and abuse anymore as I have in the past. But then, once again, like with my ex-wife and so many others, I found myself alone.
These are the kinds of choices men are perpetually faced with in a totalitarian post feminist dystopian fascist police state. Endure abuse and anger and violence or live alone. Live alone or with a violent and abusive partner in a totalitarian post feminist dystopian fascist police state or live in exile poor and without a passport. None of the choices are good. By the 31st of December I will have made my choice and will be committed to it for the rest of my life or until the feminist regime is overturned and sense and reason are restored and I am granted clemency for my “crimes” against the feminist regime. I am a man of profound faith and have always tried to find the hand of divine providence in everything that happens. But I am unable to reconcile my recent experiences with that hand. Again, the choices men have today are very hard. I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
Comment by Darryl X — Fri 25th November 2011 @ 4:20 am
@Skeptik re post #41 – Actually, although women are enabled by the gov’t, they still have choices and they choose to do the most selve-serving and destructive things. It’s their choice. That makes them evil. They are not forced to do the things they do. Those who choose to give up freedom for security deserve neither.
Also, concerning sperm donation. In the US at least, mothers have successfully pursued annonymous sperm-doners for child support. So, even in those circumstances, the mothers are still not held responsible for their decisions and they do not accept any responsibility. They are evil predators.
Comment by Darryl X — Fri 25th November 2011 @ 4:36 am
#45..one thing i could never do was get it to sink into the x’s thick head was taking responsibility for her choices and actions and the amount of women ive come across over the yrs that refuse to as well..unreal..they always have some excuse to blame a guy and as you say..the law enables their crap
Comment by Ford — Wed 14th November 2012 @ 9:48 pm