You are free insofar as you obey. — Bitter Crank

I saw what you did there, with posting that video. Yeah, things are turning Orwellian fast. Fuck your rights, and your voice, they're infringing on, and disagreeing with mine, and I'm righteous as fuck.

It's not me it's reality.

I'm not sure what it is you find offensive here. Do you feel a father should not be responsible for child support unless he knows he has a child? Do you think that if a mother doesn't tell a father there is a child, the child isn't entitled to support from his/her father? — Ciceronianus the White

Seriously? Of course the father has no reason at all to be obliged to support a person he does not know and whose existence he has no responsibility over. The woman is the one deciding to 1) not abort and 2) not give the child up for adoption, so she is responsible due to having made a moral decision. How is the biological connection any basis for responsibility?

apparently in some jurisdictions the way that the law is written a woman can give birth to and raise a child without ever telling the biological father, and then sue him retroactively for child support payments. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I assume this refers to the laws of USA and you're from USA?

Seriously? Of course the father has no reason at all to be obliged to support a person he does not know and whose existence he has no responsibility over. The woman is the one deciding to 1) not abort and 2) not give the child up for adoption, so she is responsible due to having made a moral decision. How is the biological connection any basis for responsibility — BlueBanana

I was seeking clarification, but was unclear. I was wondering when, if ever, the OP felt a father has an obligation to support his child.

Presumably, in order to become liable under the law, the father is made aware of his child's existence in the course of the paternity proceedings. So, the child of which he was unaware enters his awareness. Paternity would be established, you see, before the law imposes liability.

So, is what gives offense the fact that the father is unaware of the child before he became aware of the child? Would he be responsible if he was aware, all the time?

It seems he would not be, at least as far as you're concerned. The woman, evidently, has sole responsibility because she didn't abort the child or give it up for adoption. It seems you think these are her decisions alone. Or are they her decisions alone only if the father is unaware, and because the father is unaware? Should the father have a say in decisions whether to abort or give up for adoption when he is aware of the child? But if the answer to that is "yes" why is that the case if the "biological connection" is no basis for liability?

Should the father have a say in decisions whether to abort or give up for adoption when he is aware of the child? — Ciceronianus the White

No. In the case neither of the parents made the decision to have the child, neither parent should have a say in whether the other parent will have any part in taking care of the child. Of course the child has human rights so both parents are responsible to at least put the baby up for adoption to make sure someone else is taking care of them.

This matter of that child support law seems rather simple to me. If you cause something to happen, you bear at least partial responsibility for it. Sex tends to cause births. If you have sex, you had better be ready to take responsibility for whatever might result from your action.

How does your lack of knowledge of something diminish your responsibility? Is it that you shouldn't have to pay if you aren't getting anything out of it, if you aren't allowed to participate in the child's life? Is it an exchange? Is your obligation to your children strictly a function of what you get out of your children?

If you don't want to potentially end up supporting a child, keep your sperm far away from any eggs. If you put your sperm near an egg, you have accepted the risk and should be made to bear the responsibility that truly belongs to you.

Suppose you start shooting large rocks with a powerful slingshot over buildings in random directions, not knowing where the rocks land. Now suppose that someone gets hit with one of those rocks and loses an eye and you know nothing about it. If some evidence surfaces later that connects you to this injury, should your previous ignorance of the damage you caused get you off the hook? I think not. You should be punished and made at the very least to pay as much as possible for any damages you caused.

Why is sex any different in this respect?

Too many men refuse to take responsibility for what results from their sexual activities. It reflects badly on all of us men.

If I were to be told to pay child support for a child proven to be mine, one that I had been previously unaware of, I would embrace that responsibility and more. And while I would be frustrated with the woman for not telling me sooner, I would think it right that I be made to pay.

Suppose you start shooting large rocks with a powerful slingshot over buildings in random directions, not knowing where the rocks land. Now suppose that someone gets hit with one of those rocks and loses an eye and you know nothing about it. If some evidence surfaces later that connects you to this injury, should your previous ignorance of the damage you caused get you off the hook? I think not. You should be punished and made at the very least to pay as much as possible for any damages you caused.

Why is sex any different in this respect? — oysteroid

Sex is no different. What is different is that in your example the injured party sued the culprit as soon as they found out who it was, whereas in the child support case they did not. I'm pretty sure that in most jurisdictions if somebody incurred an injury from somebody, chose not to sue, then decided to sue twenty-one years later, the case would not even be admissible to court.

Also, the suing is not consistent with the purpose of child support, which is to be used to provide for the child. If the suing occurs when there is no longer a child, it cannot be used for that purpose.

Michael — Michael

,

Ciceronianus the White — Ciceronianus the White

oysteroid — oysteroid

If a woman lies to a man about using birth control; conceives, gives birth to, and raises a child and does not tell him; 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc. years later retroactively demands child support payments from him; and the law supports her the whole way, it should not have to be explained how anybody could find all of that morally and legally unacceptable.

The "best interest of the child" argument is poorly thought out. If a man knows that he is a father he will act like a father. That means doing things to increase his income, giving up a lifestyle that is not a good example for his child, etc. Giving women financial incentive to have their maternal cake and eat it too, and in the process keeping a man from being the father he could be, is not in the best interests of children and encourages behavior that hurts them.

If I recall correctly, I believe that Farrell shows that men who have a lot of money are the favorite targets of such fraud.

It may not be a widespread phenomenon like sexual assault, but it is sexist and dehumanizing nonetheless. If just one man and one child is treated that way it needs to be corrected. It reduces fathers to nothing more than sources of sperm and financial support.

As far as I know, only the men's rights movement--a movement that is supposedly not needed and is supposedly misogynistic--is the only place where the problem has been noticed.

It is just one example of why the "no men's rights movement is needed" assertion is false.

I assume this refers to the laws of USA... — BlueBanana

The way that I remember the book, that is correct.

and you're from USA? — BlueBanana

Yes.

I wonder whether that story about retroactive child support for a child somebody never knew existed is an urban myth. A bit (not a lot) of internet searching turned up mostly UK sources, which seemed to agree that the Child Support Agency - now the Child Maintenance Service - can only backdate debts to the date when it first contacted the father to demand support payments.

There's no point getting all upset over an injustice that either never happened, or only happens in a few niche legal jurisdictions.

Ok, could you please fix the attitude of USA being the center of everything, and using the circumstances in it as arguments while discussing global topics?

There are legitimate men's rights issues that tend to get overlooked due to how we view men culturally and legally...

The most common "batterer intervention program" in the US is known as the Duluth model which basically was born out of the same hum-drum feminist pseudo-science that runs the contemporary SJW racket.

It begins with the assumption that men desire power and reinforce that power by oppressing women and children (in the home, in this case) because they have been culturally/ideologically inducted into a patriarchy where they are entitled to do so. It demonizes men as oppressive homunculi and categorizes women as innocent by default.

Determining custody and visitation rights following a divorce falls heavily in favor of women, and while there may be some biological basis for this there do appear to be numerous horror stories where children are left with mothers who are far less fit parents than the father.

Circumcision is actually not a moral thing to do to a child if you think about it, for both males and females. Dozens, perhaps over one hundred, male children die each year because of circumcision in the US. Blood loss, anesthetic complications, infections, painkillers, and other fatal complications can and do arise each year as direct or indirect results of circumcision. The reasoning typically given (other than the standard: "god told us to mutilate our genitals") is that it reduces the risk of contracting STDs (there was a circumcision fad in the 80's that promoted that idea). What it also does is drastically reduces sensitivity of the penile glans, which I can only imagine makes sex less pleasurable (maybe they just have less sex in general...). Is that not a decision we should let them make when they're an adult? If your child asked you if they could have a circumcision, would you allow it?

The idea that a man cannot be raped, and also the idea that we're living in a rape culture perpetuated by men, are the result of the victim-oppressor mentality run amok. Why should a man be insulted, laughed at, and shamed if he should allege that they have been "raped" by a woman? "A boner is consent" is the same argument as "physical pleasure on the part of the woman is consent". It takes some thinking about, but without even getting into the ethics of inebriants and positions of authority, it's pretty clear there is a cultural double standard: man can be raped, it's just that nobody cares.

Men die at work and in wars (yes, more than women), and (supposedly) we don't get a reserved spot on any lifeboats. Men are culturally expected to be providers, which can be a boon or a burden depending on your lot in life. When Boko Haram kidnaps bus loads of schoolgirls, there are no kidnapped boys around because they've either been sent into the jungle to huff glue and become a child soldier, or were long since executed. In the first world, the floundering middle class is perhaps marginally impacted by most of these issues; I don't know if a full blown movement to address them need be called for.

But what does need to be called for is a movement against general stupidity and ignorance concerning the political, statistical, and ethical realities of the ideologies, issues, and proposed policies which we are facing. If you think explicitly paying individual women more than men for the same work (in order to even out the un-examined raw statistics) is praiseworthy, then you need to learn about statistics and economics. If you think that street violence is the best way to oppose fascist, supremacist, (but not authoritarian?) ideologies and rallies then you need to learn how to have a discussion or a debate. If you think that cash payments to minorities ("reparations") will change anything then you don't understand poverty and why it's growing.

We've been fighting so hard for equality for women and minorities since the 60's that we've created an industry out of it. But once that industry achieves the goals it was designed for, what happens to it? It looks for forms of oppression where there atren't any, invents new forms of oppression to decry, and eventually begins cannibalizing itself. Occupy Wallstreet was much closer to having a useful premise with "equitable minimum standards for all" as opposed to "more for individuals with specific and arbitrary demographic identities"...

The fight for the equality of women has paradoxically been hijacked into the fight for shaping women into what men want them to be from the 60s onwards. The permission of promiscuity amongst women is nothing but a trick that men have used to oppress women - only that oppression now goes under the proud name of liberation. What better form of slavery than when the slave willingly accepts the chains and even asks for them - fights for them?

The great disaster of modernity is that the destruction of legal/moral prohibitions and the unleashing of desire has led to desire becoming its own obstacle. Non-legal prohibition that arises out of rivalrous desire has the greatest potential to block access to the object of desire and traumatize the subject.

If a woman lies to a man about using birth control; conceives, gives birth to, and raises a child and does not tell him; 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc. years later retroactively demands child support payments from him; and the law supports her the whole way, it should not have to be explained how anybody could find all of that morally and legally unacceptable. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I can't help but wonder why someone would shoulder the burden of supporting a child for so many years simply because they believe that 15-20 years in the future, they may recover some of the money they spent doing so. It seems a particularly foolish kind of fraud, doesn't it?

... The reasoning typically given (other than the standard: "god told us to mutilate our genitals") is that it reduces the risk of contracting STDs (there was a circumcision fad in the 80's that promoted that idea). — VagabondSpectre

It would have been a fad if there wasn't actual evidence. As it happens, there is. I'll explain, but just to make it clear, I'm not arguing in favor of religious or routine infant circumcision.

For circumcised penises, the exposed glans and skin below the glans is dry, and slightly thicker. An intact foreskin helps populate the surface of the glans (and itself) with white blood cells which fight infection. As it happens, those white blood cells are the target of HIV. Removing the foreskin largely eliminates the white blood cells, and a slightly tougher surface is less likely to provide openings for the virus.

Mass adult circumcisions can be done using double-ring devices which fit around the penis on the inside of the foreskin, with a tight ring on the outside of the foreskin placed over the inner ring. The effect is to strangulate the foreskin, which tissue dies and falls off in about 7-10 days. It's not very painful and fairly safe. Yes, complications can occur. The advisability of using this technique depends on cost-benefit analysis. There is little risk and little suffering in the procedure, but great suffering and cost from developing AIDS. In many parts of the world, the chance of HIV infection and then developing AIDS is quite high.

This procedure would not be used primarily to prevent STDs, other than HIV.

Ordinary surgical circumcision is quite safe but requires much more skill and tends to be painful.

When I looked into this a few years ago I observed that the positions of peak medical bodies in countries where there is no significant religious or cultural pressure applied to any such position (hence, not the USA) is that male circumcision in the absence of pathology is not recommended. There are pathological circumstances such as phimosis where it is recommended.

In places where HIV is very high - particularly sub-Saharan Africa - the lessened risk of HIV transmission would be a significant factor, which it is not in other countries. However it would need to be weighed against the likelihood of more grave complications from the procedure in an environment where lower medical support is available and maintaining asepsis post-procedure is more difficult.

I totally agree with you. Modern society rewards socipathic behaviour. I think this will lead to ugly consequences. We can become feminists or sjws or whatever but the system itself is flawed because of the reasons you mentioned.

I dont think, however that becoming a Christian solves any of these problems. Christians can get just as (if not more) frustrated sexually, emotionally or mentally as anyone else.

So these "isms" like feminism or masculinism are just like getting pills for the side effects caused by other pills etc. This "freedom" of modernity just polarizes society and is the biggest problem

We need a movement that addresses men's issues that isn't tainted by a poorly-hidden hatred for feminism. Feminism isn't about men, it's about women. If this pisses men off then it's time they start addressing men's issues themselves. Men aren't being forgotten, they're just not the focus of feminism. But this pisses many men off because it means the spotlight is no longer on them.

Yeah, too much freedom... not nearly enough bondage...

It is "freedom" not freedom. The devil is in the details.

Why the scare quotes then? I don't grasp the nuance.

It is not real freedom just an illusion of freedom. As Bitter Crank said: "You are free insofar as you obey."
You are free to do what the government or the corporations or the mass media wants you to do. The system is basically a slavery system with our eyes wide shut because we think we are free or that we are fighting for our freedom when being feminists or sjws. While the truth is our fight just increases the hate generated by people in power hence making their job easier.
But this is getting off topic.
(Edit: even animals have their tiny bit of freedom in the slaughterhouses, it's a matter of view.)

I don't think that things are so bleak, and I have faith in truth and reason, and people to recognize them. The greatest danger is simply silence, out of fear of not fitting in, basically. I think though, compared to most points in history, and most places currently on the planet, we're doing pretty damn good.

It's always out of superiority complexes or cowardice that we want to restrict freedom, because we think others are stupid and dangerous, and that's a stupid and dangerous thing to think.

This procedure would not be used primarily to prevent STDs, other than HIV. — Bitter Crank

Fair enough. I can imagine the popularity of circumcision rising along with the prevalence of HIV if it can or is it thought to reduce the risk...

Still though, we do have some strange as hell cultural norms surrounding the penis. In some ways to have (to be) a penis is to be resistant to physical or emotional harm (and thereby be expected to endure it). Female genital circumcision is almost universally accepted as abhorrent and immoral (mutilation), but male genital circumcision isn't even seen as mutilation by the average person.

Somehow the vagina is a sacred part of the female body, but the penis viewed as corrupting and dangerous; to be rebuked and reviled... This might be a tad anecdotal or over used, but this clip from a talk show really does demonstrate the double standard that men are treated with compared to women:

(they are talking about a case where a woman cut off her partners penis and ground it in a garbage disposal (IIRC he cheated on her))



Could you imagine the outrage (and rightfully so) that would be raised if a man cut off his wife's clitoris for cheating? Since it happened to a man though, emotionally people don't seem to have much empathy...

As far as a men's rights movement goes though, we don't actually need one. It would be enough for the women's rights movements to merely get back on sane rails.

Some people have brought up that since feminism is meant to be about gender equity, feminism itself can be used by men to confront issues disproportionately facing men (such as suicide). The issue with this is that most feminist schools of thought begin with the presumption that women are currently oppressed by men who hold all the power in society, therefore any analysis of cause and prescribed solutions will come in the form of simply blaming males for male (and all other) problems, and will inevitably suggest female/non-white empowerment (paradoxically in this case as a means to reduce male suicide) as a panacea.

In America, right now, if I tried to organize an event on a random university campus to raise awareness about male suicide, it would be protested and perhaps shut down by angry feminists who believe that any issue afflicting a particular gender must be approached through the looking glass of "intersectional feminism", or else it's misogynistic hate mongering and rape apology. The rhetoric is so charged and spurious that it leads to the formation of social media mobs (and a few real life mobs too) who are only interested in harming and shutting down the rapists, misogynists, fascists, supremacists, etc... This kind of punch first, ask questions never mentality drives most people far away from the feminist brand, and more than a few into various politically alternative corners. And thus the cycle continues...

We need a movement of conversation and less victim-hood outrage so that the handful of issues which do afflict men can be looked at and addressed without violent opposition from confused college students and their terribly naive ideas.

The issue with this is that most feminist schools of thought begin with the presumption that women are currently oppressed by men who hold all the power in society — VagabondSpectre

Whether we should blame third wave feminism, post modernism, identity politics, exhibitionists on talk shows, or something else, we seem to have lost important and useful terms. Yes, the personal is political -- but so much discussion seems to be nothing but personal. We need some larger categories.

Class is a larger category that doesn't get much mention, lately. Ordinary men have no more inherent power than ordinary women. Pair sex and wealth, and the power that wealth provides, and men and/or women have real power as part of a self-conscious class of people. More wealth, more power -- whether one is male or female.

Another trend that produces a lot of rubbishy discourse is the heavy focus on individual uniqueness. It isn't narcissism, it's the assumption that everyone is different and unique, except one's opponents who are all alike and are all stupid, to boot. We need the corrective of recognizing the ways in which we are all alike -- men like women, women like men, blacks like whites like asians, young like old, and so on.

Still though, we do have some strange as hell cultural norms surrounding the penis. In some ways to have (to be) a penis is to be resistant to physical or emotional harm (and thereby be expected to endure it). Female genital circumcision is almost universally accepted as abhorrent and immoral (mutilation), but male genital circumcision isn't even seen as mutilation by the average person. — VagabondSpectre

It seems to me that female genital circumcision and related practices like disinfibulation of the vaginal opening, are worse than male circumcision. That said, I don't see any justification for circumcision--a practice which arose as a religious cult practice.

The popular image of men is been subjected to fairly intense pejoration -- sometimes for laughs (the stupid, clumsy male in sitcoms), sometimes as leverage (the portrayal of men as violent threats to women), or as targets -- the elite male at the top of the heap who oppresses women.

This is all aided and abetted by the assumption that men and women are radically different needs, and have radically different needs.

We need a movement of conversation and less victim-hood outrage so that the handful of issues which do afflict men can be looked at and addressed without violent opposition from confused college students and their terribly naive ideas. — VagabondSpectre

Totally. But I think there are more than a handful of issues which men need to talk about -- for their own good, the good of women, and society as a whole.

Why do I think about killing myself?

How to live through times of technological change (about which, btw, I can't suggest much)

The future of work, or what to do when the factories close and won't be opening again

Where do we, as men--men who are not academics, not professionals, not highly skilled--stand in society?

Men have emotions, needs, drives, desires; how should we give expression to these?

How do we participate in raising sons and daughters so that they will grow up as competent social persons?

Smoking, drinking, drugs, gambling: elevators to the sub-basement...

Whether we should blame third wave feminism, post modernism, identity politics, exhibitionists on talk shows, or something else, we seem to have lost important and useful terms. Yes, the personal is political -- but so much discussion seems to be nothing but personal. We need some larger categories.

Class is a larger category that doesn't get much mention, lately. Ordinary men have no more inherent power than ordinary women. Pair sex and wealth, and the power that wealth provides, and men and/or women have real power as part of a self-conscious class of people. More wealth, more power -- whether one is male or female. — Bitter Crank

Occupy Wallstreet, as misguided as it all seemed, was at least asking the right questions. They had no coherent demands but they understood the shrinking middle class and the growing wealth gap as main issues. In my opinion, all of the effort BLM has spent could have been better used in trying to address poverty directly, but like men's vs women's rights issues, the presumptive frame work of oppressors and the oppressed causes emotion and resentment to grind any and all useful discussion to a halt.

Another trend that produces a lot of rubbishy discourse is the heavy focus on individual uniqueness. It isn't narcissism, it's the assumption that everyone is different and unique, except one's opponents who are all alike and are all stupid, to boot. We need the corrective of recognizing the ways in which we are all alike -- men like women, women like men, blacks like whites like asians, young like old, and so on. — Bitter Crank

But Mr. Crank! Shouldn't we place inherent value someone's ideas especially if they (the person or the ideas) are unique!?

Surely the world is obligated to contort itself into whatever twisted mental shape is required to placate and digest my own individual lunacy, lest, heaven forbid, I be offended.

Humans do tend to think in these cognitively relative terms though: we ourselves are individual and complex; an excuse for everything. Our detractors are monolithic and uniform; to be inherently blamed for everything.