You are free insofar as you obey. — Bitter Crank
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
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
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
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
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.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
,Michael — Michael
Ciceronianus the White — Ciceronianus the White
oysteroid — oysteroid
I assume this refers to the laws of USA... — BlueBanana
and you're from USA? — BlueBanana
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
... 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
This procedure would not be used primarily to prevent STDs, other than HIV. — Bitter Crank
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
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
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
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
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
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