I read a post over at Amy Alkon's blog entitled "Muzzling Men" that really made my blood boil, and it should make yours boil too, if you care about men and their civil rights. The post was on the work being done by Glenn Sacks and his group, Fathers and Families:
Via Fathers and Families rather outrageous legislation criminalizing men's relationship choices. Glenn Sacks writes:
There's a link at Sacks' site to email their letter to relevant committee members. From an op-ed by Sacks:
Why not criminalize the use of pregnancy by women to trap men into getting married? This makes as much sense as CAPA. Seriously, why aren't the Nazis proposing these laws tarred and feathered?
Via Fathers and Families rather outrageous legislation criminalizing men's relationship choices. Glenn Sacks writes:
Fathers and Families has joined with the ACLU of Michigan in opposing the Michigan's Coercive Abortion Prevention Act (CAPA). It is one thing to criminalize violence or threats of violence designed to coerce a woman into having an abortion. It is quite another to criminalize men's personal relationship choices, as CAPA does. Fathers and Families does not take a position on abortion, but we do oppose CAPA.
There's a link at Sacks' site to email their letter to relevant committee members. From an op-ed by Sacks:
HB 5882 [CAPA] actually makes it a crime for a man to "change or attempt to change an existing housing or cohabitation arrangement" with a pregnant significant other, to "file or attempt to file for a divorce" from his pregnant wife, or to "withdraw or attempt to withdraw financial support" from a woman who he has been supporting, if it is determined that the man is doing these things to try to pressure the woman to terminate her pregnancy.
Why not criminalize the use of pregnancy by women to trap men into getting married? This makes as much sense as CAPA. Seriously, why aren't the Nazis proposing these laws tarred and feathered?
Labels: men's rights (or lack thereof)
posted by Helen Smith at 3:11 PM
60 Comments:
While it's outrageous, it's no surprise. Men are the serfs of modern day America.
A few days ago, I sent one of my sisters an email as part of a discussion that began when she sent an email of a joke that belittled men. There's a 40 plus year history in my family of the women belittling men. I had hit my limit. Among other things I wrote to her, after she said she loved her brothers: "I do not see how you can love someone and support denying him or her equality under the law. How can you love someone and deny them every possibility of reaching their highest potential and dreams? I do not know what emotions arise from repressing others but cannot see how love is part of it."
The email filled two and a half pages printed. I'm at the point where I'm prepared to cut off all contact with my sisters. No sense in aiding and abetting our oppressors.
Hmmm... I have to take exception here, and say that, to me, doing these things WITH THE INTENT of coercing an abortion is equivalent to throwing a living child out in the street, which you cannot do even if it is not yours.
That being said, I think it's totally reasonable to do ALL these things if the intent is to get rid of the woman, or to force her to put the kid up for adoption.
Gordo - the law enters the realm of mind reading, and, again, puts men at a complete disadvantage legally to women. Women can get an abortion any time the want, no explanation needed, no permissions needed. Why can't a man simply leave or withdraw? I support the position that a man should be able to terminate his parental rights and any parental obligations under the same conditions that a woman is allowed to obtain an abortion.
I'm a man. I fully understand that anytime I engage in a sexual relationship a child could be the result. I will support and raise any child that I conceive. I accept my responsibilities without question.
I also understand that it is perfectly legal for a woman to have an abortion at any time, even up to minutes before birth. That leaves me with only one choice. Do not engage in a sexual relationship with any woman who supports abortion. She can't kill my baby if she doesn't conceive it first.
Presumptive paternity renders the marriage contract null and void. Get this. She can run around behind your back, get pregnant and slap you with child support for another man's bastard. But if she gets pregnant by you, she can have an abortion.
Do you like apples? How do you like them apples?
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I'm a man. I fully understand that anytime I engage in a sexual relationship a child could be the result. I will support and raise any child that I conceive. I accept my responsibilities without question.
I pretty much agree with you and have a 40 year old daughter to prove it. But, under the law men should have the same choices and protections as women. Since a man can't have an abortion, he should be allowed a legal equivalent, i.e. absolution of responsibilities. Surely, every woman fully understands that anytime she engages in a sexual relationship a child could be the result.
Zorro - The marriage rate is at historic low in the U.S. You, obviously, know why.
Why not criminalize the use of pregnancy by women to trap men into getting married?
Because we'd have to build prisons to house millions of women, and we don't have the money.
Mighty big "if" in that first 'graf.
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" Why can't a man simply leave or withdraw? I support the position that a man should be able to terminate his parental rights and any parental obligations under the same conditions that a woman is allowed to obtain an abortion."
Fellas, fellas,
Haven't we been through this already? The time to withdraw is BEFORE you impregnate the crazy b. If you want to exercise your rights to "withdraw" after the baby is in her belly and growing, guess who ends up supporting your "choices" if your crazy b. "friend for teh night" decides to keep the baby that the two of you (inadvertently?) started?
Yep -- it's all the rest of us taxpayers -- male and female -- who have practiced self discipline and not hopped into the sack impregnanting or getting the pleasureful benefits of your time with crazy b. in the first place...
Don't seed em, if you can't breed em. And for heavens sake fellas: get to know the lady's character BEFORE you hop into the sack.
You can continue complaining about unjust laws, or you can ... take the power OUT OF THE LAWS HANDS by taking care where you sprinkle your seed...
"Zorro - The marriage rate is at historic low in the U.S. You, obviously, know why."
Remember too, the way entitlement programs work these days. If you marry your pregnant b., then the male salary plus the female salary determines gov'mint benefits.
If you don't marry the crazy b you impregnated, and leave her hanging and reliant on the state (which is the rest of us taxpayers paying for these social programs), then she gets more as a "single parent -- the poor out of work dear with no financial support because the lousy fella off and ran once he realized he wasn't exactly getting the milk free anymore...
In short, government incentives have made plenty of men, women and couples determine it's in their financial benefits to bear the baby out of wedlock, and to push the nutrition and healthcare costs directly onto state taxpayers.
My fave are the fellas who won't marry her, and put her knowingly on the state programs, but then "sticks around" to "help where he can" and play babydaddy when it's convenient (esp. when it's a boy!).
These are the multiple "single mom" pregnancies the state ends up paying for.
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Why not criminalize the use of pregnancy by women to trap men into getting married? This makes as much sense as CAPA. Seriously, why aren't the Nazis proposing these laws tarred and feathered?
Not possible in a society where women are allowed to vote. Most women view the bottom 90% of men as sub-human.
Democracy has a life-cycle, after which it is followed by a feminist police state. No other outcome is possible from women having 4-5 generations of voting rights.
Further continuation of the women as "victims" of those evil men. When are women going to stand up for themselves and say "I am an adult, and I make my own choices and live with the consequences"?
Probably never in reality, since we reward bad behavior and punish good.
I guess the legislature in Michigan thought the state was not being depopulated fast enough. That place is hell on earth. I never thought we would see the US as a whole run so much like a third world country but at least Michigan will always be around to prove that things can always get worse.
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Surely, every woman fully understands that anytime she engages in a sexual relationship a child could be the result.-The Dadvocate
I offer Mary and her three comments above as a counterexample.
By the third date with the woman who is now my wife I knew her position on abortion. It was the same as mine: not an option. She told me years later she was really impressed when I called it "a crime against humanity." She figured I'd give her the "woman's choice" nonsense like everyone else. We already have three kids and one night we went out and got drunk and, well, you can guess and thought she might be pregnant again, even though we decided no more kids. Our attitude was, "oh well. If there will be another baby thank you God."
"When are women going to stand up for themselves and say "I am an adult, and I make my own choices and live with the consequences"?"
Why should they? When you men are willing to do their bidding to bed them ... and then push them off as not your responsibility (nor the child you've planted) onto the taxpayers.
Change the system incentives and you'll change the women's choices.
The definitive comment on laws of this sort that attempt mind reading was made by English Chief Justice Brian in 1468 (7 Y.B. Edw.IV. f. 2 (Pasch pl. 2)): The thought of man shall not be tried, for the devil himself knoweth not the thought of man.
Otherwise, keep breeding the crazy bitches boys.
And then come here, and mama helen will talk to you like the victims you are, poor boys.
Remember, if you wouldn't put a loaded gun into the hands of a baby, don't put a loaded gun into the damp environs of a crazy lady ... who's gonna make you a crazy baby, that indeed, you will then be called on to support, over the taxpayers who didn't get screwed as bad/good as you!
It's really not that hard. And I for one, unlike helen seemingly, think that plenty of you fellas are capable of self discipline and better breeding.
Shame on you, Helen Smith, for pushing hatred of women. Every column you write could have been written by some swaggering, mouthy male misogynist. I will never understand women who hate women.
Change the system incentives and you'll change the women's choices.
Simple enough. Sterilization of the mother and father as a non-negotiable condition of welfare benefits.
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Helen is not pushing hatred of women. She's pushing back on state intrusion into matters that have never been considered the state's business, and have become so only because of the expensive welfare state we've erected with good, but sadly misguided, intentions.
Just as there are men who behave badly - impregnating women with at least disregard for the risk and then leaving them - there are many women who intentionally get pregnant to trap a man.
I had the latter happen to me - she swore up and down she was using birth control and demurred when I tried to use a condom anyway (going so far as pulling one off while we were having sex - you try to stop in the middle of things), and then cheerfully announced a pregnancy.
I had another girl claim pregnancy that turned out to be 'false pregnancy' in similar (though not so dramatic) circumstances.
I was always very clear with women I slept with that I expected both of us to use birth control and that I would not marry someone simply because the became pregnant.
Being very clear about expectations and boundries in these matters is critical for both men and women. Women who do not wish to get pregnant can take precautions, as can men. Both should.
She lied. I lied. Her current husband is raising our child. Paternity fraud is a real problem.
there's no question that misandry is rampant in our culture but any straight guy who doesn't bag it before vaginal intercourse needs to have both of his heads examined.
Well any law that pretends to read "intent" into action is flawed form the beginning...but not anymore flawed than a law that says an un-breached human is not human and perfectly bio-garbabge if so deemed by the woman and as legitimized by hypocrisy...I find it no different than what the Nazi's did to the Jews in WWII, they redefined "human" and thus it was perfectly ok to legitimize murder...we've done the same.
We have re-framed the debate and the redefined what constitutes living value so screw us with a law or two, we asked for it.
It will only get worse and the moral outrage here is quite amusing.
If you support abortion and oppose this law I find your argument void of reason to begin with...
The issue of "rights" supposes that there is a right and wrong...remove that and this is what you get.
Well.
Prostitution is looking more and more like a viable alternative.
Isn't that a sad commentary.
Just remember:
Prostitutes can get pregnant too!, and act accordingly.
RE: Simple enough. Sterilization of the mother and father as a non-negotiable condition of welfare benefits.
Nevermind how harsh that might seem... the taxpayers get nothing back. How about: Mandatory Payback Plan. X percentage of your check, if you work, is garnished each month ... not to support the mother or child, but to pay back the taxpayers. Once all paid in full, then you can reapply for more benefits, if you have another baby on the way. If you have another on the way BEFORE paying back what you already owe, the State puts the infant immediately up for adoption.
I mean... if you can't pay the bill to bring the child home, how will you feed/clothe/shelter/educate that child without taxpayer help?
You want to end the two Americas: the "elite" and the drains? It will never ever happen so long as some people choose to plan and invest in their own families, and others are willing to accept the government raising their kids. The disparity gap will only grow wider and wider as some children are raised and taught by their own (not minimally paid daycare workers), and fed real meals, not school cafeteria food for breakfast and lunch, or worse Cheetos and pop because mama didn't want to get up and make a lunch that day.
Set the bar higher -- much much higher, like I'm suggesting the men here do in terms of their ... bed partners -- and we'll see what kind of America we get. Now, as it is? The drains seem to set the bar low for ALL of us. We ALL have to face declining schools (except in better priced areas where parents still care), declining child manners, declining diets, and declining intelligences simply because some people don't think about breeding BEFORE they get it on.
Breeding matters. You want good genetics, you don't breed a baby (meaning a young girl) and you sure don't make a baby with someone -- male or female --who can't take care of themself first. If you slip up and do, adopt out the infant. Society can't afford to keep paying for poor reproductive choices that simply can't be "unfixed" no matter how much money we throw at HeadStart, nutritional programs, special ed, etc etc etc.
Can't. Do. It. Start cutting these benefits entitlements today!
"The growth of [the divorce] machinery has been accompanied by a huge propaganda campaign that has served to justify punitive measures against citizens who are not convicted of any crime"
writes Stephen Baskerville in his book Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family). Excerpts here:
http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2008/06/witch-hunts-in-contemporary-america-is.html
… "'is there a species on the planet who is more unjustly maligned than fathers?' writes columnist Naomi Lakritz. 'Fathers are abusers, bullies, deadbeats, molesters, and all-around sexist clods who have a lot of gall wanting a relationship with their children once the initial moment of conception is over.'
… "The child-support system also overturns the centuries-old common-law [and common-sense] principle that a father could not be forced to pay for the stealing of his own children. 'The duty of a father (now spouse) to support his children is based largely upon his right to their custody and control,' runs one ruling typical of the age-old legal consensus, which most lay people today seem to assume still operates. 'A father has the right at common law to maintain his children in his own home, and he cannot be compelled against his will to do so elsewhere, unless he has refused or failed to provide for them where he lives, and the statutes providing for the punishment of a father (now spouse) for the failure to support his children, were not intended to change the common law.'
"As recently as 1965, the Oregon Supreme Court held that 'a husband whose wife left him without cause was not required to support his children living with her, absent a court or proof that denying them support during the period of the mother refused to return would harm the children.'
… "the intrusive tendencies of law governing sexual harassment or date rape are minor compared to the invasiveness government-enforced feminism has already realized in family law. Yet this receives no comparable scrutiny from critics of feminism, let alone from the mainstream media or civil libertarians.
… "What we confront here is a bureaucratic machine of a kind that has never before been seen in the United States or the other English-speaking democracies. … The implications reach far beyond fathers and even beyond the family itself, for forcibly severing the intimate bond between parents and their children threatens the liberties of all of us.
… "The regime of involuntary divorce, forcible removal of children, coerced child support, and knowingly false accusations is now warping our entire legal system, undermining and overturning principles of common law that have protected individual rights for centuries. The presumption of innocence has been inverted
… "Far from simple violations of particular constitutional clauses, these practices and powers are undermining constitutional government in its most fundamental principles. The power to take children from their parents for no reason is arbitrary government at its most intrusive, since it invades and obliterates all of private life. Yet we have created a governmental machinery that exists for no other purpose.
… "By expunging justice from family courts, we are institutionalizing injustice not only in our political system but also in the raising of our children
… "In a free society, courts exist to dispense justice. When courts stop dispensing justice, they will start dispensing injustice; there really is no middle ground. Without justice, asked St. Augustine, 'what are kingdoms but great robberies?' "
Interesting material Erik, thanks for posting it.
Seems to me that most of the abortion/marriage problems are spiritual in nature.
Trey
Mary's off her medication again. She's banned at Althouse, so she's come over here to vent her psychotic rage.
So, with HB 5882 if your girlfriend thinks you are considering a breakup, she zips out, has a quickie with some drunk or visits a sperm bank, then invokes the law. It's all he said/she said, so why not?
It doesn't matter if the man was using a condom, or even if their relationship was non-sexual. No proof, the woman's word wins.
women are foolish for acting irresponsibly merely because the law says they can.
bureaucracy is organic in nature and expands naturally exponentially, as plato observed, and becomes increasingly chaotic as a result.
and men are foolish for acting irresponsibly considering the penalties.
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It's a mess. And as has been said numerous times, the only way to "win", is not to play at all.
As much as I love my own children, I wish I had never had them. Look what they have to look forward to.
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When are women going to stand up for themselves and say "I am an adult, and I make my own choices and live with the consequences"?
Except that women are NOT adults in a moral/intellectual sense.
Future historians will laugh at how some countries were foolish enough to give voting and legal rights to women. Such a thing will be seen as just as big of a 'what were they thinking?' as Mao's Great Leap Forward.
Despite all the gruesome truth about the total lack of morality of the female gender....
...I am losing sympathy for men, given at how little they are even fighting back against this. Where is the activism?
At some point, leaving your front door open with a neon welcome sign, while you go on vacation, makes you just as much at fault as the burglar who stole from you.
We have two genders :
The evil/selfish gender
The weak/pushover gender
"DADvocate said...
Mary's off her medication again. She's banned at Althouse, so she's come over here to vent her psychotic rage."
Nice try Mr Ugly.
Way to respond on topic and with all the substance you could muster.
For the record? No prescription druggie here, no record of mental illness. Funny how, you think it's so easy to smear someone online though. Betcha wouldn't say that to my face in person, even if you was trying to score points with your favority online professor, hun.
Stick to the topic at hand. And I'm sorry if you seem so personally sensitive to the issue of births out of wedlock, and having to repay the state for early unplanned offspring, in terms of state aid received by a baby momma.
-----------------
(I take it the kid's season is over? Eh. There's always hockey to follow now.)
"Betcha wouldn't say that to my face in person, even if you was trying to score points with your favority online professor, hun."
Priceless.
Trey
Nice try Mr Ugly.
If you ever saw my handsome mug, you wouldn't say that to my face, or otherwise. You'd be swooning.
Dadvocate, isn't Mary a man? Mary certainly threatens like a man. I seem to recall a conversation in which Mary said he was a man.
May only be a random synapse firing because of the increased intoxicant intake due to the holidays! My appologies to Mary if I am disremembering.
Trey
Dadvocate, isn't Mary a man? Mary certainly threatens like a man. I seem to recall a conversation in which Mary said he was a man.
Don't remember Mary saying he/she is a man, but Mary certainly does threaten like a man. However, women will sometimes make the "to my face" threat knowing she could slap him and get away with it.
mary has the syntactic pattern of another poster who's name i forget due in part to the aforementioned intoxicants of the season......and he was a man.
Does it matter if Mary is a man?
"Does it matter if Mary is a man?"
--
Probably because the habits of real life carry over.
A man you can attack.
A woman you don't dare attach - and not even physically - if you really say things she doesn't like, you may be in the clink for attempted rape.
But you wouldn't know anything about that, Cham, as a really naive person who has to ask the questions you do.
I'm starting to wonder about the links that Helen finds good.
We haven't seen much of the "life coach" Stuart Schneiderman lately, but all the more Amy Alkon.
I think Amy has the basic conservative / right-wing thing going, which is usually OK.
But she doesn't have anything more than average intelligence, little real insight, and she is as caustic as they come if you disagree with her. The problem is that she sometimes doesn't even understand that you *agree* with her, but in a different way, and she jumps first and asks questions later.
I don't get why she's not on welfare, but that's just me.
She does have the gift of tireless self-promotion, and she is confident of herself even in the face of a multitude of facts contesting that.
I don't know if that's good or bad. I always thought that I would rather have substance than style, but she apparently has a published newspaper column, so look at that.
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@Dr.Alistair said...
mary has the syntactic pattern of another poster who's name i forget due in part to the aforementioned intoxicants of the season......and he was a man.
_____________
Fred, if memory serves.
@Cham said...
Does it matter if Mary is a man?
________
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is two-fold. Misrepresenting ones demographic is an attempt to deceive one into being more persuaded by a position. The other is sockpuppetting, where one creates imaginary friends to make it look like a numerous and diverse group of people are backing them up.
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Why are men so screwed up?
Because they are raised by women.
My question to Blackgriffin is why it doesn't approve of equal rights for men?
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