The red pill movie. A 0?!

[Terminal Blue]

Picking up your kids from school, shopping for clothes with them or helping them with their homework are all important and necessary parenting responsibilities but also great ways of connecting and bonding with your child, that is the bottom line of the issue, being part of your child's life.

The family courts disagree.

Kids often end up deeply resenting the person who tells them to do their homework, makes them eat vegetables or forces them to go shopping for clothes, but it is still ultimately in their best interests to have someone do that. To reduce the material labour of parenting to merely "bonding" is frankly disingenuous.

The simple fact is that the courts do not make decisions based on the perceived best interests of the parents. they do not recognise that parents have "rights" to their children. Their job is to attempt to determine the best interests of the child, which they do sometimes get wrong - it is a difficult job and parents of both sexes can be very good at manipulating their children into pawns within custody battles. Meeting a child's emotional needs or "bonding" with them is great, but if it's all you do then frankly you're not a very essential part of your child's life.

Traditionally speaking, the man of the household spends the most time away from home working for the wage that keeps the household running, the woman spends the most time on the household and, as a consequence, with the kids, would you then argue that the man's contribution to "family labour" is lesser even though it is still a necessity?

Yes.

I mean, it isn't a necessity is it. Plenty of single parents (usually but not always women) raise their children alone, while increasing numbers of couples do make a genuine effort to share parenting responsibilities, if not completely equitably then more equitably than in the past. This is a major reason why shared custody is becoming increasingly common after separation, because increasingly fathers do take an active role in their children's lives. Increasingly many fathers do make genuine sacrifices in terms of their career in order to participate fully in the lives of their families. The MRM does not seem to include or represent those fathers.

And yeah, I get it isn't always the individuals fault. I get that not everyone is actually able to obtain the kind of flexible working practices required for this kind of arrangement, but again, you'll never see men's rights activists talking about that or demanding a broader platform of change beyond "I'm angry, give me stuff I feel entitled to".

The biggest problem in the current system is that most fathers are still expected to fulfill their obligation as the provider of the family even as their presence from the family is cut off, they are still expected to make their contribution without actually being part of the home they still support.

Expected by whom?

Most women, at this point, work. Most women who work work full time. Women contribute, on average, around 40% of household income. This is generally in addition to being primary child-carers. While there are women out there who expect to be able to stop working altogether when they have children, it is increasingly rare for that to happen, so no, I'm not going to buy that there is some great and terrible expectation on men to fulfil their obligation as sole provider. Contribute, yes, provide, no.

And again, we're still ultimately skirting around and bringing in all these issues of blame and expectation and who is responsible for men's decisions when actually, it doesn't matter. The courts aren't there to be moral crusaders or to vindicate the societal importance of men's "provider" role, they're there above all else to determine the best interests of the child and ensure that sufficient provisions are made to protect those interests.

Of course courts would order sole residency transfers from mother to father more often when mothers are more likely to be awarded custody by default in the first place.

Again, you're not understanding. The problem is not that women are "awarded" custody, the problem is that when couple's separate women tend to end up with informal custody of children before the case has even reached court. Actually, the majority of divorces or custody disputes never go to court, the parties simply reach an agreement among themselves. Of those that do make it to court, the circumstance is usually that the father is applying for shared residency or custody of kids who have already been living with their mother since the separation.

It's going to be difficult to argue that you're the primary caregiver of your children if you're not actually caring for them. In a few very sad cases, particularly those where domestic violence is alleged to have occurred, this will be because the childrens' mother simply took them and left, but usually it's because the couple informally accepted that it would be best for the children to remain with the primary caregiver in the short term, and since the primary caregiver is still usually the mother, you see where this is going..

If the traditional contribution of the mother is valued more when it comes to dividing up custody time than the father's traditional contribution (and these are still very common even throughout the western world) then I can see why some people would deem this system biased against men.

Sure, it's biased against men. It's biased against women. It's run explicitly in the interests of children.

Generally, the interests of children is to remain with or to have more contact with the person who has provided them with the majority of care throughout their lives, whether that is their mother or their father. If you've accepted the position of not having to be that person, then you can't expect people to treat you as that person. If you've committed to living up to a "traditional role" that does not involve caring for your children, why should a court accept the argument that you're more fit to care for those children than the person who has already done it for you?

Which brings us back to the fundamental problem of the MRM, that fundamentally for all the talk of fathers rights they seem to place no particular value on fatherhood itself. It's just an arbitrary hill on which to die.

 

[BeerTent]

issues concerning divorce and child custody

Do men who actually seek custody get awarded it less often than women? My understanding is that the mother will often simply get custody by default simply because the man does not often contest it.

I have seen numerous accounts where men have lost custody battles because, 'children need a mother's touch' in a 'court' battle I have been personally involved with, we had proven in court that the mother had used advil on the children to put them to sleep, and intentially starved/neglected one of the two twins. She was awarded custody.

This is a complete failure, and an embarrasment of our judicial system in both, Canada, and the US. I stress, a judical issue, not an 'Men's Rights' issue. We don't need MRA's fucking it up for other men.

An example of these points is circumcision, I really despise it's practice regarding both woman and men and although I am happy that female circumcision is banned in many parts in the world it baffles me that male circumcision is widely accepted (especially in the States.). I find it sickening to cut baby's up for "aesthetic" reasons (and don't get me started about religious reasons). Seriously blows my mind.

Agreed that both male and female circumcision should be against the law (excluding medical necessity obv.) but the two are not really comparable. It's like comparing someone with a hangnail to an amputee.[/quote]

There are medical reasons behind Male circuncision. As much as I'd like to join this conversation further, I'm still on page 1 and I'm on a phone. I'm also about to start a 12 hour shift with 2-3 hours of sleep. Joy.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I havent seen this film, but I'm sure it deserves a zero.

You can be as brilliantly artistic as you like when you film someone taking an incredibly painful shit. But I'm still not watching it, even if the soundtrack and set design was amazing...

OK maybe if it was narrated by Morgan Freeman.

And this is from someone who thinks men's rights are as important as women's. I just don't like the association with the red pill movement. As if that group was anything but a detriment to the ultimate goal of near equality (truly symmetrical equality being an impossibility due to inherent physical differences in genders).

The movie has no association with the Red Pill movement or subreddit and actually explicitly points such out in the movie. "The Red Pill" is simply a reference to the Matrix movie where Cassie Jaye (the filmmaker) was unable to see the world the same way again after speaking to the various Men's Rights Activists, and so she thought it was an appropriate title for the movie. It's unfortunate and confusing that /r/theredpill uses the same slogan for their movement, but the movie is not about /r/theredpill or PUAs at all.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Does the fact that she was crowdfunded by Breitbart & company make her Saul of Tarsus act more believable or less?

The movie was NOT funded by "Breitbart and company." It was kickstarted by some 2700 backers and full editorial control of the movie was retained by Cassie Jaye. Yes, former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos can be given a lot of credit for spotlighting the campaign, which may not have been funded without him writing about it but Breitbart as a company and Milo as an individual have no control over the movie and no financial stake in the movie's success.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "Saul of Tarsus act" but I assume that you're implying that she wasn't a "real" feminist before making this movie. If you take a quick look at her IMDB page (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1787884/) you can see that her previous films were about gay marriage issues (The Right to Love: An American Family) and about christian purity balls ( Daddy I Do) which are both taking quite progressive stances on the issues in question. I find it kind of sad that you have to imply that she's faking her former beliefs, as if nobody who isn't already an MRA could possibly find some sympathy for the problems men go through.

Totally agree that these are serious problems but I don't see how feminism is to blame for workplace safety standards not being enforced properly, most feminists I have talked to would LOVE for the draft to be gender-neutral or better yet, done away with altogether.

The movie never says that feminism is to blame for all of the issues that men face. In fact, while there is a section talking about feminist interference and protesting of the MRAs, all of the MRAs interviewed are quite clear to state that it's not all feminists who are the problem, and that feminism isn't the root cause of many of the problems, they just get in the way of trying to solve the problems or institute new laws that further harm men.

Do men who actually seek custody get awarded it less often than women? My understanding is that the mother will often simply get custody by default simply because the man does not often contest it.

Yes, child custody is granted to the mother in over 80% of cases, and it often has to be conclusively proven that the mother is unfit to serve as a guardian in order to win a custody battle against her. The movie gives many examples of many different situations in which it happened.

Cases where the woman's lawyers advised her to falsely claim that her husband beat her in order to get quick and easy custody.

Cases where the mother was granted custody even when the mother was negligently treating her child (deliberately trying to make him overeat to have more in common with her and less with his father) and where the child and the child's psychologist were concerned for his mental health, and where the child actually cataloged his weight and showed that when he had visitations with his father his weight went down and then went back up when he went back to his mother.

Cases where the father committed suicide right after a court hearing where he was told he wouldn't be able to have any custody rights to his child.

Cases where the mother put their child up for adoption without the father even knowing until the child was gone.

I could go on.

men's lack of reproductive rights.

I will have you know, as a man, that my right to have an abortion has never been placed in jeopardy.

Reproductive rights are about more than just the right to have an abortion or not. As a man, your only reproductive right is to not have sex, and if you do, to use a condom. If anything goes wrong after that, whether it's your fault or not, you no longer have any right to decide what happens. Women have a lot more pre-conception choices than men do, including birth control pills and all manner of other pregnancy prevention tools. But the main issue is what happens after conception. There are several possible outcomes that can happen when a woman gets pregnant, and unless both parties decide that they want to keep the child or abort/adopt the child, the father is at the sole mercy of the court/the mother for every other outcome. The mother may have to make the tough choice of whether to have an abortion, give the child up for adoption, or try to tough it out as a single mother, but at least she gets that choice. For a man, once a child is conceived, they no longer have any rights to decide what happens with their child. This is of course a very difficult problem to solve equitably for all involved due to the inherent biological nature of childbirth, but men get the short end of the stick in every single outcome that isn't in agreement with the mother.

This also isn't even beginning to delve into the issue of paternity fraud, where a woman can claim that someone is the father who actually isn't. This is often seen in cases where the mother is cheating on her husband and fathers someone else's children without her husband's knowledge, or where the woman simply doesn't know who the real father is but needs to name someone to gain child support/welfare benefits/whatever. This actively harms not just the man who is roped in to father someone elses children, it also harms the legitimate father who may have wanted to be a part of his kids lives, and it harms the children themselves.

It's also not mentioning the cases where some women trick their partners into getting them pregnant, either by lying that they are on birth control or by other means; as well as the few select cases where a woman statutorily raped an underaged boy in her class and got pregnant. When the boy grew up, she sued him for back child support that he owed her for his rape-baby and now he has to pay his rapist for a child that he conceived while he was underage and has no visitation rights to (if he'd even want to.) (Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/)

After hearing the points mentioned above made by the MRM representatives and the counters by the feminist critics she changes her views on gender issues to a less one sided stance

Her views changed when she took money from white nationalists to make a propaganda film

This is not a propaganda film in any way shape or form, and it's pretty disgusting that you'd use ad hominem attacks against someone who didn't even have any editorial power in the creation of the movie (the movie was already completely filmed prior to her seeking any funding. The funding was for post-production) to try to completely discredit the entire movie.

An example of these points is circumcision, I really despise it's practice regarding both woman and men and although I am happy that female circumcision is banned in many parts in the world it baffles me that male circumcision is widely accepted (especially in the States.). I find it sickening to cut baby's up for "aesthetic" reasons (and don't get me started about religious reasons). Seriously blows my mind.

Agreed that both male and female circumcision should be against the law (excluding medical necessity obv.) but the two are not really comparable. It's like comparing someone with a hangnail to an amputee.

The film actually shows a short clip of a circumcision in progress. It's by far the most horrifying part of the film. It may not be AS BAD as FGM but it's still an awful, barbaric practice that is completely culturally accepted by most of society and in many ways seen as a requirement. Whereas FGM is nearly universally seen as abhorrent (as it should be.) The difference in compassion for these two highly barbaric practices is very alarming.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Picking up your kids from school, shopping for clothes with them or helping them with their homework are all important and necessary parenting responsibilities but also great ways of connecting and bonding with your child, that is the bottom line of the issue, being part of your child's life.

The family courts disagree.

Kids often end up deeply resenting the person who tells them to do their homework, makes them eat vegetables or forces them to go shopping for clothes, but it is still ultimately in their best interests to have someone do that. To reduce the material labour of parenting to merely "bonding" is frankly disingenuous.

Kids often respect and cherish parents that help them succeed at school including homework, or cook them great meals or take them shopping, these are among the most positive influences a parent can have on their child.
It does not reduce these acts to "merely bonding", in fact, recognizes the value of these responsibilities as the kind of familial involvement that fathers are after but often denied, it would be equally disingenuous to call these responsibilities "just labour" by the same token.

Yes.

I mean, it isn't a necessity is it. Plenty of single parents (usually but not always women) raise their children alone, while increasing numbers of couples do make a genuine effort to share parenting responsibilities, if not completely equitably then more equitably than in the past. This is a major reason why shared custody is becoming increasingly common after separation, because increasingly fathers do take an active role in their children's lives. Increasingly many fathers do make genuine sacrifices in terms of their career in order to participate fully in the lives of their families. The MRM does not seem to include or represent those fathers.

If you're floating on government benefits and welfare (and lets not forget the alimony) then yeah, having a dedicated provider in the house is totally redundant.
Self-sufficient households don't work like that, though, meaning that somebody is going to have to sacrifice that time with the children to make the breadwinning happen, the division of labour is usually divided up to make the household run efficiently, meaning, one maintains the kids and household, the other one earns most of the cash to enable that household to exist.

And yes, some fathers do succeed in being a larger part in their kid's life, but only if they can afford to, reducing their working hours, and thereby their income, and still able to afford the alimony they are owed to the mother.
That is no small feat and it should be applauded, but there are only few men who can make that happen, most can not even afford the court fees to even get the right to spend those hours with their kids.
The MRM would also represent those fathers, since they do not get the same support and benefits the mothers do, they are simply affluent enough to overcome those hurdles.
On the flipside, who else is there to stand up for father's rights?

Expected by whom?

The women that don't marry jobless men and the judges that obligate them to that role by law.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't fault the women for doing that, in fact, marrying an man of means is a responsible thing when planning to start a family, but bear in mind that wealth usually comes with the price of long working hours and therefore less time at home.
They could reduce these working hours to get a little balance in the home life, but that would require the woman to step up and take care of that gap in their income, but if she is not willing to then that's that.

Most women, at this point, work. Most women who work work full time. Women contribute, on average, around 40% of household income. This is generally in addition to being primary child-carers. While there are women out there who expect to be able to stop working altogether when they have children, it is increasingly rare for that to happen, so no, I'm not going to buy that there is some great and terrible expectation on men to fulfil their obligation as sole provider. Contribute, yes, provide, no.

Only roughly 57% of women work, that is most by a technicality yes, but they are not the primary providers, men invest the largest amount of time to make ends meet and as such, the least hours to see their children.
There's nothing wrong with that system per se, but to dismiss that contribution as far lesser than the nurturing aspect of the family spits in the face of their commitment, men do fulfill the great majority of hazardous and thankless jobs in our society and not because they are particularly fun.
They often do it for their family.

Again, you're not understanding. The problem is not that women are "awarded" custody, the problem is that when couple's separate women tend to end up with informal custody of children before the case has even reached court. Actually, the majority of divorces or custody disputes never go to court, the parties simply reach an agreement among themselves. Of those that do make it to court, the circumstance is usually that the father is applying for shared residency or custody of kids who have already been living with their mother since the separation.

It's going to be difficult to argue that you're the primary caregiver of your children if you're not actually caring for them. In a few very sad cases, particularly those where domestic violence is alleged to have occurred, this will be because the childrens' mother simply took them and left, but usually it's because the couple informally accepted that it would be best for the children to remain with the primary caregiver in the short term, and since the primary caregiver is still usually the mother, you see where this is going..

I do see where this is going, and I disagree with it happening.
As I mentioned before, most men can not afford to be part of their kid's life anymore after divorce, the court fees are expensive and the cases can go on for years if both sides are willing to subject their kids to that.
There is also nobody stopping the mother from taking the kids to live someplace else after the separation, and the father is left with no recourse to get them back save for legal intervention from the police, and they're not gonna help since they are technically HER kids too and there has been no legal decision on the matter.

We can both agree that the family courts should have the child's interest as their top priority, but the best thing you can do for the child is to have both their parental figures in their life, not just one over the other, fatherlessness (as well as motherlessness) has severe consequences on the development and the future of the child and the courts do nothing to restore this balance, I consider that a failure on their part in regards to their child-focused responsibilities.

Sure, it's biased against men. It's biased against women. It's run explicitly in the interests of children.

Generally, the interests of children is to remain with or to have more contact with the person who has provided them with the majority of care throughout their lives, whether that is their mother or their father. If you've accepted the position of not having to be that person, then you can't expect people to treat you as that person. If you've committed to living up to a "traditional role" that does not involve caring for your children, why should a court accept the argument that you're more fit to care for those children than the person who has already done it for you?

Because they didn't, they did one half of it, but it is the only half you seem to care about.
I disagree that the majority time spend with the children is the metric with which we measure one's parenting capacity, a father that works so many hours he only gets to see his kids 3 hours on a weekday as opposed to his wife's 9 hours should not be discounted as a "lesser influence", those 3 hours he spends with them could be of equal importance to his wife's 9 just for being a positive influence on their lives, parenting is more than just nurturing.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Kids often respect and cherish parents that help them succeed at school including homework, or cook them great meals or take them shopping, these are among the most positive influences a parent can have on their child.

Right, but these are precisely the things which men are not doing, which result in the courts deciding that they are secondary childrearers. If MRAs were genuinely out there expressing the principle that it's actually valuable for men to do these things, to make personal sacrifices in order to do these things irrespective of whether it is fun or convenient or meshes seamlessly with career ambitions or personal interests, that would be amazing.

And it is labour. It is work. It takes time and energy which could be spent on other things. In an ideal world, work should be fun and rewarding but sometimes it is not. Sometimes taking a child shopping will be a fun "bonding" experience and sometimes it's going to mean dragging them screaming around a clothes store. When it comes to care though it doesn't matter, it literally does not matter whether the time you spend with your children is fun or nice or convenient for you or even for them, it matters that they are given the care they need to survive (and hopefully thrive).

If you're floating on government benefits and welfare (and lets not forget the alimony) then yeah, having a dedicated provider in the house is totally redundant.

Or if you're both working.

Like, that does happen you know. It is the 21st century, women have been allowed to work for some time.

But I forgot this is MRA-world, where all women are simultaneously lazy, gold-digging bitches scrabbling for your hard-earned money and wicked feminazi hags trying to take all the power away from men with their high powered influential careers.

They could reduce these working hours to get a little balance in the home life, but that would require the woman to step up and take care of that gap in their income, but if she is not willing to then that's that.

That's that, is it?

The poor man has literally no control. He is forced to marry a woman against his will (provided she's spoken to his mother and the dowry has been agreed upon). He is legally compelled to work full time because otherwise court officials will show up and stuff a black bag over his head and he will never be seen again. He could never, never make an independent choice to select a partner whose lifestyle and ambitions are compatible with his own, to ensure his partner has a stable income, to encourage his partner to pursue an independent career, to express a desire to share parenting responsibilities equally. It would be straight off to the gulag with him!

What a terrible matriarchal world we live in where men are literally incapable of even speaking with women they've agreed to marry about their own desires and ambitions because they're so abjectly helpless and terrified before them.

I mean, the alternative hypothesis.. and bear with me here because it's getting crazy, is that men could actually express some preference or control over the lives and families but choose not to because they're perfectly happy not to have to juggle career with domestic and childcare responsibilities.

There's nothing wrong with that system per se, but to dismiss that contribution as far lesser than the nurturing aspect of the family spits in the face of their commitment, men do fulfill the great majority of hazardous and thankless jobs in our society and not because they are particularly fun.

Men have also literally fought, legally and culturally, to prevent women from being allowed to do those "hazardous and thankless" jobs. Again, where are the MRAs campaigning to improve and support women's access to the job market to prevent men having to do all these horrible and thankless tasks to which they are inevitably doomed by the cruel matriachal order?

Oh right, we don't care about that here in MRA world. We only want men to be be given lots of special treatment and respect to recognise how great and special and important they are and how amazing it is that by preventing women from working they protect them from all the horrible things which work entails (like getting paid for what you do).

As I mentioned before, most men can not afford to be part of their kid's life anymore after divorce, the court fees are expensive and the cases can go on for years if both sides are willing to subject their kids to that.

But.. we've already established that men do all the work and women are lazy bitches who don't work. How are women effortlessly affording these court fees which are so hard for men to pay that they literally have no choice but to curl up in the foetal position and have a sad?

Also, I've mentioned this several times now. Legal aid. Like, it's an actual genuine problem which affects not just the family courts but the basic ability to access justice in almost every area of life. Again, where is the men's rights backlash against cuts to legal aid, or the insufficiency of legal aid provision?

Oh right, that's not something you can blame on evil conniving women is it..

There is also nobody stopping the mother from taking the kids to live someplace else after the separation, and the father is left with no recourse to get them back save for legal intervention from the police, and they're not gonna help since they are technically HER kids too and there has been no legal decision on the matter.

Reverse the genders, and everything you've said is technically true. There is nothing stopping a father from taking the kids to live someplace else after the separation, the mother is left with no legal recourse to get them back save through the police and family court system, and the former are unlikely to take action without a clear legal decision. This is not some special unique power women have. The reason women end up with the kids is almost always because it has been informally agreed to be the best option for the kids. There are cases in which parents simply take the kids or obtain a court order to prevent the other parent from seeing them, and they are very sad and distressing, but those cases happen to both men and women.

We can both agree that the family courts should have the child's interest as their top priority, but the best thing you can do for the child is to have both their parental figures in their life, not just one over the other.

And?

Like, noone doubts that this is the ideal. Shared parenting is increasingly the norm after a divorce. But it isn't always possible or desirable for a huge variety of reasons. The fathers rights position, when you actually look into it, is insane.

Parents are important because of what they actually do for a child, not because of who they are. It's often desirable to have two parents rather than one because in some cases they can do more. However, if the relationship between those parents has deteriorated to the point they are incapable of cooperating in their children's interests, then I do not accept that being exposed to that relationship as a child will necessarily be positive.

I do not accept the father's rights position that fathers automatically improve their children's lives just by existing, I think fathers improve their children's lives when they actually do things to improve their children's lives.

Because they didn't, they did one half of it, but it is the only half you seem to care about.

Because it's the only half that actually involves caring for children, which is what we're talking about.

I disagree that the majority time spend with the children is the metric with which we measure one's parenting capacity, a father that works so many hours he only gets to see his kids 3 hours on a weekday as opposed to his wife's 9 hours should not be discounted as a "lesser influence", those 3 hours he spends with them could be of equal importance to his wife's 9 just for being a positive influence on their lives, parenting is more than just nurturing.

However, imagine what happens if we remove each of those people from the child's life.

If we remove the father, then the child still gets up, still goes to school, still has prepared meals and maybe has a boring evening of having to entertain themselves by playing alone.

If we remove the mother, the child sits in their own filth for nine hours until social services catches wind and removes them, or they get sick and die.

There is no deep and abiding mystique to this. Parents don't have to be amazing parents. They don't have to tell their kids a bedtime story or tell them they love them 40 times a day. They do have to keep them alive and healthy and make sure they are able to go to school and do the other things children are required to do. That is the basic fundamental requirement of being a parent. The rest is optional.

Like, I'm glad we've moved on from "dads are important because they provide money" to "dads are important because they actually do stuff", that's a good start, but just because you're doing stuff doesn't mean the stuff you're doing is of critical importance.

 

[bluegate]

I disagree that the majority time spend with the children is the metric with which we measure one's parenting capacity, a father that works so many hours he only gets to see his kids 3 hours on a weekday as opposed to his wife's 9 hours should not be discounted as a "lesser influence", those 3 hours he spends with them could be of equal importance to his wife's 9 just for being a positive influence on their lives, parenting is more than just nurturing.

However, imagine what happens if we remove each of those people from the child's life.

If we remove the father, then the child still gets up, still goes to school, still has prepared meals and maybe has a boring evening of having to entertain themselves by playing alone.

If we remove the mother, the child sits in their own filth for nine hours until social services catches wind and removes them, or they get sick and die.

There is no deep and abiding mystique to this. Parents don't have to be amazing parents. They don't have to tell their kids a bedtime story or tell them they love them 40 times a day. They do have to keep them alive and healthy and make sure they are able to go to school and do the other things children are required to do. That is the basic fundamental requirement of being a parent. The rest is optional.

Like, I'm glad we've moved on from "dads are important because they provide money" to "dads are important because they actually do stuff", that's a good start, but just because you're doing stuff doesn't mean the stuff you're doing is of critical importance.

If you remove each of those people from their child's life, then the remaining parent would alter their behaviour to accommodate for their child's needs.

A mother without a husband to support for her and their child would most likely no longer be able to afford to spend the entire day with their child and would have to go out and find ways of providing for herself and the child and would have to find someone to look after the child when she is out, working to provide for the child.

And a father without a wife to support their child while he is at work would arrange for a babysitter for the child, either professional care or having the child's grandparents look after the child during the day, and maybe even arrange to work less hours in order to spend more time with the child.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

You really seem hung up on that MRA thing, huh?
Please do note that I made no effort to imply any malicious intent or conspiratorial insinuations, I merely present my perspective with the data I have available, I do believe that derision and condescension are entirely unnecessary when discussing these human right concerns, even if they are mostly focused on men's in this particular case.
I do not place blame on "the women folk" or the usual suspects for that matter.
I do hope you can bear it.

Right, but these are precisely the things which men are not doing, which result in the courts deciding that they are secondary childrearers. If MRAs were genuinely out there expressing the principle that it's actually valuable for men to do these things, to make personal sacrifices in order to do these things irrespective of whether it is fun or convenient or meshes seamlessly with career ambitions or personal interests, that would be amazing.

And it is labour. It is work. It takes time and energy which could be spent on other things. In an ideal world, work should be fun and rewarding but sometimes it is not. Sometimes taking a child shopping will be a fun "bonding" experience and sometimes it's going to mean dragging them screaming around a clothes store. When it comes to care though it doesn't matter, it literally does not matter whether the time you spend with your children is fun or nice or convenient for you or even for them, it matters that they are given the care they need to survive (and hopefully thrive).

You seem to be under the impression that this whole "bonding" thing is just for kicks, it is not, it is primarily for the psychological well-being and development of both parties involved, primarily the child.
Also, the great majority of the population do not have careers, they have jobs, getting a better-paying but unhealthier job to invest that money into your family's well-being is most certainly a personal sacrifice, not one that changes diapers or packs lunch, but one that keeps the family out of the rain and keeps them from sucking nutrients out of the couch cushions.

Or if you're both working.

Like, that does happen you know. It is the 21st century, women have been allowed to work for some time.

But I forgot this is MRA-world, where all women are simultaneously lazy, gold-digging bitches scrabbling for your hard-earned money and wicked feminazi hags trying to take all the power away from men with their high powered influential careers.

The point was that it becomes much easier to be a single parent when the government steps in to become your provider instead.
Of course women do work, but I do think the industrial revolution proved to us that when less labour is necessary to keep the household running, it is usually women that work less to make more room for domestic concerns, men take pride in being able to provide for the home, especially when they can do it so well that their wife does not have to work.

That's that, is it?

The poor man has literally no control. He is forced to marry a woman against his will (provided she's spoken to his mother and the dowry has been agreed upon). He is legally compelled to work full time because otherwise court officials will show up and stuff a black bag over his head and he will never be seen again. He could never, never make an independent choice to select a partner whose lifestyle and ambitions are compatible with his own, to ensure his partner has a stable income, to encourage his partner to pursue an independent career, to express a desire to share parenting responsibilities equally. It would be straight off to the gulag with him!

What a terrible matriarchal world we live in where men are literally incapable of even speaking with women they've agreed to marry about their own desires and ambitions because they're so abjectly helpless and terrified before them.

I mean, the alternative hypothesis.. and bear with me here because it's getting crazy, is that men could actually express some preference or control over the lives and families but choose not to because they're perfectly happy not to have to juggle career with domestic and childcare responsibilities.

This one comes from experience, or rather, from the patients I've worked with and men I've spoken to, make no mistake, this does not come from a place of oppression.
The men involved do make their concerns known, but choose to accommodate their partner as well as they can as opposed to asking for a larger contribution on the financial front, it felt like a failing as a husband or so they told me.
Yes, ambitious women do exist, but like I stated earlier, it's usually women that start working less in favor of domestic concerns (especially when they start having children) and the reason should be obvious: it makes life at home far more pleasant, fun even.
By the same token, a lot of women take pride in their housework, a lot of old couples I work with (bear in mind, most of them are well over 80 years old) praise each other for the contributions they made, even in between the jabs they make at each other.
I don't think men are too lazy to also support the domestic side of the equation, in fact, they are continually investing more and more hours into work to support their wife and kids, I don't think they should be shamed or dismissed for doing so.

Men have also literally fought, legally and culturally, to prevent women from being allowed to do those "hazardous and thankless" jobs. Again, where are the MRAs campaigning to improve and support women's access to the job market to prevent men having to do all these horrible and thankless tasks to which they are inevitably doomed by the cruel matriachal order?

Nothing bars women from applying to these jobs nowadays, save for physical requirements for some.
They are still hardly applying for them though, and I can't blame them, living away from home on an oil rig or in the mines for weeks at a time is a horrible way to make a living, but when a living has to be made, it is more often men that sign up for these sorta jobs, no conspiracy required.

Oh right, we don't care about that here in MRA world. We only want men to be be given lots of special treatment and respect to recognise how great and special and important they are and how amazing it is that by preventing women from working they protect them from all the horrible things which work entails (like getting paid for what you do).

I think you have been informed about the fact that paying different wages for the same work is illegal and has been for a long time, if not, forgive my assumption.
I also think it is unfair and untrue to paint all opponents of women in hazardous jobs as only men.

But.. we've already established that men do all the work and women are lazy bitches who don't work. How are women effortlessly affording these court fees which are so hard for men to pay that they literally have no choice but to curl up in the foetal position and have a sad?

Also, I've mentioned this several times now. Legal aid. Like, it's an actual genuine problem which affects not just the family courts but the basic ability to access justice in almost every area of life. Again, where is the men's rights backlash against cuts to legal aid, or the insufficiency of legal aid provision?

Oh right, that's not something you can blame on evil conniving women is it..

Legal aid cuts affect everyone equally, it's a legal (or civil?) issue, not a men's issue specifically.
Furthermore, most men still have to pay the fees out of their own pockets on top of the alimony they owe, some fathers can hardly afford those.
Also, I'm not saying women can effortlessly afford these fees either, but they generally do have more resources available to them.
I would also consider it rude for calling them conniving, they are well-meaning people too.

And?

Like, noone doubts that this is the ideal. Shared parenting is increasingly the norm after a divorce. But it isn't always possible or desirable for a huge variety of reasons. The fathers rights position, when you actually look into it, is insane.

Parents are important because of what they actually do for a child, not because of who they are. It's often desirable to have two parents rather than one because in some cases they can do more. However, if the relationship between those parents has deteriorated to the point they are incapable of cooperating in their children's interests, then I do not accept that being exposed to that relationship as a child will necessarily be positive.

I do not accept the father's rights position that fathers automatically improve their children's lives just by existing, I think fathers improve their children's lives when they actually do things to improve their children's lives.

Actually, there are a number of long term detriments that affect fatherless children beyond the lunchpacking, shoe-tying and spoon feeding:
http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequences-of-fatherlessness/
http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-extent-of-fatherlessness/

As I've proposed before, there is more to parenting than just the nurturing part, just setting a good example for responsibility and discipline can do wonders for a child, by the same token, growing up in a motherless home would have devastating effects of similar magnitude.

Perhaps we have been talking past each other, but this is my point, I am a nurse in training, my concern is for the people involved, children growing up without one of their parents are far more likely to develop problems later on, becoming isolated from one's family has a terrifying effect on their mental state (and it seems to hit men even harder than women when it occurs).

I advocate for equal custody as a standard for the benefit of both the parents and the children, but the legal system must accommodate for this to be a possibility, if only the nurturing part of the household actually gets any recognition when it comes to the division of custody then I don't think equal treatment in court is possible for most men.

Labour is labour, when invested into the household, that becomes familial contribution.
We can agree to disagree on that, but that is my stance.

 

[jademunky]

The movie was NOT funded by "Breitbart and company." It was kickstarted by some 2700 backers and full editorial control of the movie was retained by Cassie Jaye. Yes, former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos can be given a lot of credit for spotlighting the campaign, which may not have been funded without him writing about it but Breitbart as a company and Milo as an individual have no control over the movie and no financial stake in the movie's success.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "Saul of Tarsus act" but I assume that you're implying that she wasn't a "real" feminist before making this movie. If you take a quick look at her IMDB page (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1787884/) you can see that her previous films were about gay marriage issues (The Right to Love: An American Family) and about christian purity balls ( Daddy I Do) which are both taking quite progressive stances on the issues in question. I find it kind of sad that you have to imply that she's faking her former beliefs, as if nobody who isn't already an MRA could possibly find some sympathy for the problems men go through.

The fact that, according to those who have seen the film, there are a great many more negative aspects of the redpill subreddit in particular and the men's rights movement in general that the film either glosses over or ignores completely makes me think that she is not acting in good faith here.

Yes, child custody is granted to the mother in over 80% of cases, and it often has to be conclusively proven that the mother is unfit to serve as a guardian in order to win a custody battle against her. The movie gives many examples of many different situations in which it happened.

Cases where the woman's lawyers advised her to falsely claim that her husband beat her in order to get quick and easy custody.

Cases where the mother was granted custody even when the mother was negligently treating her child (deliberately trying to make him overeat to have more in common with her and less with his father) and where the child and the child's psychologist were concerned for his mental health, and where the child actually cataloged his weight and showed that when he had visitations with his father his weight went down and then went back up when he went back to his mother.

Cases where the father committed suicide right after a court hearing where he was told he wouldn't be able to have any custody rights to his child.

Cases where the mother put their child up for adoption without the father even knowing until the child was gone.

I could go on.

I've been through the divorce process in Ontario myself (though thankfully children were not involved) and I know several divorced dads who were awarded custody. Yes it is a grueling process but they were able to ask for an assessment to be done and neither felt that the justice system was out to get them or stacked against them in any way comparable to a genuine civil rights issue.

This also isn't even beginning to delve into the issue of paternity fraud, where a woman can claim that someone is the father who actually isn't. This is often seen in cases where the mother is cheating on her husband and fathers someone else's children without her husband's knowledge, or where the woman simply doesn't know who the real father is but needs to name someone to gain child support/welfare benefits/whatever. This actively harms not just the man who is roped in to father someone elses children, it also harms the legitimate father who may have wanted to be a part of his kids lives, and it harms the children themselves.

You are acting like a woman can just point to a man and say "he's the father" and then the man has to get his wallet out right there on the spot. I've never been stupid enough to impregnate someone unintentionally and have a pretty low opinion of men who do put themselves in that situation. For those that are wrongly accused of having some sort of legal responsibility, I feel confident that the legal system has some sort of provisions to prevent blatant fraud.

This is not a propaganda film in any way shape or form, and it's pretty disgusting that you'd use ad hominem attacks against someone who didn't even have any editorial power in the creation of the movie (the movie was already completely filmed prior to her seeking any funding. The funding was for post-production) to try to completely discredit the entire movie.

It would be very easy to change the entire message of your film in post-production simply by omitting or adding a few key scenes and/or tweaking the musical score.

 

[Redryhno]

However, imagine what happens if we remove each of those people from the child's life.

If we remove the father, then the child still gets up, still goes to school, still has prepared meals and maybe has a boring evening of having to entertain themselves by playing alone.

If we remove the mother, the child sits in their own filth for nine hours until social services catches wind and removes them, or they get sick and die.

There is no deep and abiding mystique to this. Parents don't have to be amazing parents. They don't have to tell their kids a bedtime story or tell them they love them 40 times a day. They do have to keep them alive and healthy and make sure they are able to go to school and do the other things children are required to do. That is the basic fundamental requirement of being a parent. The rest is optional.

Like, I'm glad we've moved on from "dads are important because they provide money" to "dads are important because they actually do stuff", that's a good start, but just because you're doing stuff doesn't mean the stuff you're doing is of critical importance.

You really seem to have no actual experience with any parent judging from this post dude...Like fuck, since when are the only duties of a parent to feed, water, and shelter a kid before shipping them off to the daycare we call Elementary School? They aren't animals that start taking care of themselves as adults within two years. Fuck, my fiance's brother is 13 this year and I still don't trust the twerp with a paring knife and a block of cheese. I love the guy, but he found a way to hurt himself moving a one pound box when I helped her family move three different times in three years.

The duties of a provider may start with what you're talking about, but that shit falls way too fucking short for anyone that has any knowledge of kids to actually call themselves a parent. you've still got the emotional well-being, the knowledge to impart and the self-reliance to teach because school doesn't provide much of anything but a blank canvas and a few hundred handfuls of equations. The job of a parent is not to teach their kids how to survive, but how to succeed.

Any pair of shitbags can make a kid, doesn't mean the kid that results just needs food, water, shelter and you can call yourself a parent without me smirking or the state asking you why your kid doesn't respond when asked about their home life. But hey, what do I know, I'm just the half of the two parents that would just let their kid sit around in their own filth for nine hours until they died.

 

[Sight Unseen]

The fact that, according to those who have seen the film, there are a great many more negative aspects of the redpill subreddit in particular and the men's rights movement in general that the film either glosses over or ignores completely makes me think that she is not acting in good faith here.

Just to be clear because it is a bit confusing given how she named the film but the movie is not about the redpill subreddit at all. And I suppose you have the right to doubt her motivations but having watched the film myself and several interviews related to the film, that is not at all the impression that I get from Cassie.

I've been through the divorce process in Ontario myself (though thankfully children were not involved) and I know several divorced dads who were awarded custody. Yes it is a grueling process but they were able to ask for an assessment to be done and neither felt that the justice system was out to get them or stacked against them in any way comparable to a genuine civil rights issue.

Just because you personally haven't gone through the worst case scenarios doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't an issue that should be addressed. But your anecdote is noted.

You are acting like a woman can just point to a man and say "he's the father" and then the man has to get his wallet out right there on the spot. I've never been stupid enough to impregnate someone unintentionally and have a pretty low opinion of men who do put themselves in that situation. For those that are wrongly accused of having some sort of legal responsibility, I feel confident that the legal system has some sort of provisions to prevent blatant fraud.

Well consider a few scenarios:

#1. The woman is married to someone and cheats on them and gets pregnant from the affair, then acts like the child belongs to her husband. It may be years until the husband finds out (or he may never find out) that the kids aren't his. What do you tell a man who finds out that the kids he's raised from birth aren't actually his?

#2. Exactly what you said wouldn't happen has actually happened. A man named Carnell Alexander went into an extended legal battle and almost went to prison over $30,000 of late child support payments for a child that he could prove 100% wasn't his. His ex-girlfriend simply named him as the father on a welfare application, so the state went to enforce child support payments on him. It took over 20 years of legal battles to finally get that charge dropped, even though he had conclusive proof that he was not the father. http://6abc.com/news/man-may-be-jailed-for-not-paying-child-support-for-son-who-isnt-his/490355/

I would imagine that scenario 2 is a pretty peculiar and rare occurance, but it HAS occured and could occur again in the future. There was a study published in 2016 though that said that in the UK approximately 1 in 50 (2%) fathers were raising a child that was not their own. That's not an insignificant number of fathers being lied to. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/fatherhood/one-in-50-british-fathers-unknowingly-raise-another-mans-child/

It is also worth noting that in France and Germany, getting a paternity test done without the express written consent of the mother is illegal and punishable with prison time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_paternity_testing#Legal_issues

It would be very easy to change the entire message of your film in post-production simply by omitting or adding a few key scenes and/or tweaking the musical score.

Fair enough, but I have to say that having seen the film, it is very balanced. She interviews a lot of notable feminists and talks herself about her own feminist beliefs throughout. While overall she does show sympathy to the MRAs, she doesn't bend over backwards to be a mouthpiece for them. She gives examples in interviews of stories that she wanted to include but couldn't because she couldn't find adequate sources to verify them. Overall, she provides extensive statistics and journalistic sources to support the MRAs claims, and they are referenced from reputable neutral sources like the national census, crime statistics, and other sources.

I'd still highly encourage you to attempt to watch the film. Even if you don't agree with the MRAs there is still a lot of good information in the film and it is well made. I definitely didn't agree with everything that they said and I don't think that the problem is always as bad as they try to make it look but there are still a great many legitimate issues that get brought up that are at least worth thinking about.

 

[Terminal Blue]

A mother without a husband to support for her and their child would most likely no longer be able to afford to spend the entire day with their child and would have to go out and find ways of providing for herself and the child and would have to find someone to look after the child when she is out, working to provide for the child.

A mother with a husband to support her generally still can't afford to spend the entire day with their child. The majority of women today have to balance work with childrearing responsibilities because there is generally no other choice. Heck, plenty of single mothers manage to balance work and childrearing.

And only a tiny handful of the population, full stop, could hope to earn enough even working full time to afford full time childcare.

Again though, we're merely confronting the limitations of the MRA position's obsession with decontextualized aggrievement and feelings of persecution over actually confronting real social problems. Why, in a society with declining birthrates and potentially facing an ageing crisis, is childcare not supported or monetized in the first place? Why are we still operating on a family wage system which no longer fits the realities of modern family life and was always based on a aspirational ideal of the nuclear family?

There is absolutely no reason why men could not be taking on the responsibilities of being primary childcarers. They aren't, not because they're persecuted or powerless before our matriarchal overlords, but because they don't want to. They don't want to for the same reason increasing numbers of women don't want to, for the same reason birth rates are going down whenever women are given the choice about their reproduction, because it's simply not rewarding. The MRM is fundamentally not interested in making it rewarding, they're fundamentally not interested in changing anything beyond giving more stuff to poor, innocent, persecuted men who selflessly and voluntarily endure the indignity of working paid jobs when they could be trying to juggle lower paid jobs with repetitive unpaid labour all day like those lazy gold digging women.

You really seem to have no actual experience with any parent judging from this post dude...Like fuck, since when are the only duties of a parent to feed, water, and shelter a kid before shipping them off to the daycare we call Elementary School? They aren't animals that start taking care of themselves as adults within two years. Fuck, my fiance's brother is 13 this year and I still don't trust the twerp with a paring knife and a block of cheese. I love the guy, but he found a way to hurt himself moving a one pound box when I helped her family move three different times in three years.

Well yeah, I have plenty of experience with parents. Heck, over the past few years I've been increasingly coming to terms with the fact that my parents were not actually the best parents, that a lot of their behaviour towards me has been very weird and that it's not just something I'm imagining or that typical sort of rebellion people have against their parents.

I have enough experience with parents to know that you can grow up with parents who are emotionally distant, who are outright absent, who deliberately undermine you or put you down, who project their own psychological hangups onto you, who are always stressed and tired and who otherwise aren't actually very good parents and most of the time it's okay. That's actually a pretty normal part of how we grow up, we realize that our parents were a bit weird and maybe even a bit shitty as people, but we get over that because at the end of the day they were good enough. They fed us, they clothed us, they didn't abuse us, they made sure we went to school and that we had a roof to sleep under when we came home.

Not everyone has that. I have friends whose parents sexually abused them, friends who had to learn to cook for themselves at aged 6, friends whose parents were downing two bottles of vodka a day and spending most of their time passed out, friends whose parents disowned them and left them homeless in their teens. That's the point at which a parent isn't good enough to be raising children, and even then in most of those cases noone did anything. Not spending enough "quality time" with children in the evenings doesn't even make it onto the radar. There's a basic hierarchy of needs at work here.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Again though, we're merely confronting the limitations of the MRA position's obsession with decontextualized aggrievement and feelings of persecution over actually confronting real social problems. Why, in a society with declining birthrates and potentially facing an ageing crisis, is childcare not supported or monetized in the first place? Why are we still operating on a family wage system which no longer fits the realities of modern family life and was always based on a aspirational ideal of the nuclear family?

There is absolutely no reason why men could not be taking on the responsibilities of being primary childcarers. They aren't, not because they're persecuted or powerless before our matriarchal overlords, but because they don't want to. They don't want to for the same reason increasing numbers of women don't want to, for the same reason birth rates are going down whenever women are given the choice about their reproduction, because it's simply not rewarding. The MRM is fundamentally not interested in making it rewarding, they're fundamentally not interested in changing anything beyond giving more stuff to poor, innocent, persecuted men who selflessly and voluntarily endure the indignity of working paid jobs when they could be trying to juggle lower paid jobs with repetitive unpaid labour all day like those lazy gold digging women.

Ah, so men who are cut from their family's life simply didn't want it enough, that clears things up.
You keep acting like working all day is somehow much nicer than working shorter days to take care of the kids later, ask around and see how many people, when given the opportunity, would like to be stay-at-home parents.
There's a lot of them, and there's a good reason why: spending time taking care of and bonding with your loved ones is a far more rewarding experience than working at an assembly line, sitting in your cubicle or risking your well-being in a chemical plant.

I don't think women need to be forced to stay at home, they would love to, and men would too if they could afford it but that is only reserved for the middle/upperclass men who indeed can afford that.
People generally don't like to work at their jobs, so you can see the amount of workhours decrease when the budget can afford it, and you usually see the woman's working hours decrease first, not out of malice or laziness, but because pleasing and accommodating your spouse is part of being a good husband, and making a good home is part of being a good wife.
Traditionally speaking, of course.

It's a division of labour to make ends meet, both parties contributing to a functional whole, families of higher economic status follow the "nuclear family"s model much closer much more often than poorer families and their children benefit from it.
Of course both parents could 50-50 the working hours and domestic responsibilities, but good luck finding a job that pays well enough for so few hours, those are very few and far between, lower income families see both parents working fulltime out of necessity and their children are at the detriment of that.

These are legitimate concerns, offer petty rants and self-righteous indignation does nothing to address them, blaming men for not contributing to the household "the right way" is a completely ignorant condemnation of the personal sacrifices they do make.
I would congratulate you on your career being so amazing, even though it would be presumptuous of me, but most people don't have careers.
People generally have jobs, and jobs suck.

 

[jademunky]

Well consider a few scenarios:

#1. The woman is married to someone and cheats on them and gets pregnant from the affair, then acts like the child belongs to her husband. It may be years until the husband finds out (or he may never find out) that the kids aren't his. What do you tell a man who finds out that the kids he's raised from birth aren't actually his?

If I've raised kids from birth, they are MY KIDS regardless of the irresponsible shithead who's sperm was involved. Finding out that my spouse had cheated on me would probably be the end to our relationship but I truly hope that I do not suddenly become the kind of simpleton who only values his children for their passing on his genetic information.

#2. Exactly what you said wouldn't happen has actually happened. A man named Carnell Alexander went into an extended legal battle and almost went to prison over $30,000 of late child support payments for a child that he could prove 100% wasn't his. His ex-girlfriend simply named him as the father on a welfare application, so the state went to enforce child support payments on him. It took over 20 years of legal battles to finally get that charge dropped, even though he had conclusive proof that he was not the father. http://6abc.com/news/man-may-be-jailed-for-not-paying-child-support-for-son-who-isnt-his/490355/

Yes but this is the kind of unusual situation where the legal system completely shat the bed. I'm sure that the family law system has some truly idiotic loopholes that assholes can sometimes exploit and yes, when paternity is in doubt and one party does not want responsibility, there should be a more robust system for settling that kind of situation but............. now this is going to sound ugly for me to say but the real lesson from #2 is DO NOT DATE PEOPLE ON WELFARE! I am sorry but wait until someone has their shit sorted out before you just stick your thing into them and hope for the best guys!

I'd still highly encourage you to attempt to watch the film.

Ehhhh, no I don't think I will, I have looked into that MRA pity-party-abyss before and that is not the kind of person I want to be.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Ugh.. The site ate my previous post somehow.

You keep acting like working all day is somehow much nicer than working shorter days to take care of the kids later, ask around and see how many people, when given the opportunity, would like to be stay-at-home parents.

Ask around and ask how many people, when given the opportunity, would like to earn nothing and be entirely dependent on their partner for everything.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find many men who don't immediately realise what a shitty idea that is. It is a shitty idea. We've talked about the tendency of women to leave (or be left with) the kids when a couple separates. What we haven't talked about is the tendency for men to leave with the credit cards. There is an incredible imbalance of power within a relationship when one party is financially dependent on the other, and if the worst comes to the worst and the couple does have to separate, what do you think happens to the dependent party? How easy do you think it is to find a job capable of supporting a family when you're in your 40s and haven't worked for 10 years?

It is a bad idea, and the only people who will voluntarily put themselves in that position are those who are either too naive to see the risks to themselves, or who have been taught that it's somehow their "duty" to put themselves in that position for the sake of their children. Men are not burdened with the latter, and you would be very, very hard pressed I suspect to find many men who are willing to put themselves in that position.

These are legitimate concerns, offer petty rants and self-righteous indignation does nothing to address them, blaming men for not contributing to the household "the right way" is a completely ignorant condemnation of the personal sacrifices they do make.

I'm not blaming anyone. If anything, I'm criticising the tendency to blame the family courts for making what are in fact completely appropriate decisions.

If you're going to get misty eyed over the idea of the nuclear family, then just accept that part of a nuclear family is role-segregation, and role segregation means people doing different things. It means one partner caring for children while the other earns the bread, so to speak. So why, in a world which works in this principle, should we suddenly be flipping the whole table and letting men have custody of their children? That's not their job, is it. It's not what men do in a nuclear family. That's not a criticism of them, is it? I mean, you said it yourself, the ideal family arrangement is one in which each parent has their own rigidly defined role and a man's role in that arrangement is to provide for his family, not to care for them. Why should we suddenly expect a court not recognise that distinction?

On the flipside, let's say that's not actually an ideal arrangement at all. Let's say it's actually incredibly dehumanizing to simply assume that it's a woman's job to give up her career and financial independence and devote all her time and attention to performing menial tasks to support her children, or that it's a man's job to cut himself off from family life and to work long hours alienating himself from the chance of developing a caring affectionate relationship with his children. Let's say we were to commit to the principle that everyone should have an equal chance to balance work with family, that everyone should share in both the financial and domestic responsibilities of a functioning family. Suddenly we're not just engaging in "petty rants and self-righteous indignation" are we, suddenly we're not just thrashing on the floor screaming about how unfair it is that the mean, mean courts won't give us what we want, we have a platform for a broader program of societal change which unites the interests of both men and women. We can use the energy we could have spent demanding courts give men more things (because reasons) to instead demand flexible working hours, to demand longer paternity leave, to demand better provision of affordable childcare so that all parents, men or women, have the option to play a role in their children life before they divorce and without compromising their ability to provide for their family.

But there will also come a point at which people need to adapt. If adaption is not what men actually want, then fine.. but don't blame the family courts for treating men who act as secondary parents as if they actually are secondary parents. Children are not an abstract reward or a punishment, they are human beings with their own interests and their own "rights" which, in many cases, will supersede the imagined "rights" of their parents.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Ugh.. The site ate my previous post somehow.

Was it about my previous post?
I was really looking forward to your thoughts about that. D:

Ask around and ask how many people, when given the opportunity, would like to earn nothing and be entirely dependent on their partner for everything.

Nothing is ever that absolutist, but if it's about relying on someone you love and trust?
Hell yeah!
Granted, that's not a good idea when you are considering divorce as an endgame outcome, or a depressingly possible outcome, but that's generally not what couples plan for.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find many men who don't immediately realise what a shitty idea that is. It is a shitty idea. We've talked about the tendency of women to leave (or be left with) the kids when a couple separates. What we haven't talked about is the tendency for men to leave with the credit cards. There is an incredible imbalance of power within a relationship when one party is financially dependent on the other, and if the worst comes to the worst and the couple does have to separate, what do you think happens to the dependent party? How easy do you think it is to find a job capable of supporting a family when you're in your 40s and haven't worked for 10 years?

It is a bad idea, and the only people who will voluntarily put themselves in that position are those who are either too naive to see the risks to themselves, or who have been taught that it's somehow their "duty" to put themselves in that position for the sake of their children. Men are not burdened with the latter, and you would be very, very hard pressed I suspect to find many men who are willing to put themselves in that position.

It's a matter of trust, call it naivety if you wish, but not everyone is mistrustful of their spouses.
Secondly, the institution of marriage provides all kinds of protections to women in case of such events, alimony probably being the most obvious, your professional prospects still suck, yes, but you're not left out in the cold, especially when you are also granted half the husband's assets.

Marrying a woman because she values your virility, beauty and personality enough to become the main provider for the household would be a dream come true for most men, sadly, it's just not gonna happen for most of us, it just doesn't seem to be the way human attraction works, c'est la vie.

I'm not blaming anyone.

Oh?

But there will also come a point at which people need to adapt. If adaption is not what men actually want, then fine..

There is absolutely no reason why men could not be taking on the responsibilities of being primary childcarers.

(On that note, how WOULD you make childrearing rewarding? and what would constitute as "rewarding" in this context anyway?)

Right, but these are precisely the things which men are not doing, which result in the courts deciding that they are secondary childrearers.

Because working long hours to give your family the means to live and thrive is not personal sacrifice, in fact, if you put it like that, it's totally logical that men are excluded from their family's lives.
It's almost like they're asking for it by setting themselves up like that.

If anything, I'm criticising the tendency to blame the family courts for making what are in fact completely appropriate decisions.

I still contest that measured time spent on childcare makes that parent the more valuable parent, being a good parent takes more than just meeting the child's vital needs, like I've shown you before, fatherlessness can have severely detrimental effects on a child's future and it is not in their interest to default full custody to the mother and require the father to negotiate his position up from there, a parent should only be denied custody if it is proven their influence is actually DAMAGING to the child.

If you're going to get misty eyed over the idea of the nuclear family, then just accept that part of a nuclear family is role-segregation, and role segregation means people doing different things. It means one partner caring for children while the other earns the bread, so to speak. So why, in a world which works in this principle, should we suddenly be flipping the whole table and letting men have custody of their children? That's not their job, is it. It's not what men do in a nuclear family. That's not a criticism of them, is it? I mean, you said it yourself, the ideal family arrangement is one in which each parent has their own rigidly defined role and a man's role in that arrangement is to provide for his family, not to care for them. Why should we suddenly expect a court not recognise that distinction?

First, I'd like to point out that "the nuclear family" is an ideal image from the 50's, not a family structure.
Second, at no point has this role-segregation been so absolutist as you make it out to be, cleaning the gutters, fixing parts of the house and teaching the kids have always been prime examples of masculine domestic work.
Men DO care for their family directly, they just don't put the same hours in most of the time.

The family structure of the man doing the heavy lifting so the wife takes care of domestic concerns is as old as the concept of family itself, before the industrial era, however, only the aristocrats could afford to let their wives stay at home full time and do their thing, manage the house's staff, take care of the kids, engage in music, art and poetry.
The further you go down the socio-economic ladder, the more you see women take on jobs and make a material contribution to the family to make ends meet, women have had jobs throughout history, but you can clearly see their time-investment decrease when the necessity diminishes, if the money comes easily enough, you can even see the father stay at home.

Halfway through the industrial revolution, we saw common men find the ability to provide for the household without the support of their wives or children (poor families had their kids work jobs as young as the age of 6 or 7 before child-labor laws), the "housewife" became a common image and entire industries sprung up to make housework even easier.
This phenomena can be observed throughout history across almost every culture, it is not a arbitrarily adopted system to "keep men in power", I believe it is a tendency that humans simply have and we're not gonna see it change unless we make drastic changes in the values people seem to hold.

OH! and it was usually the men that were given custody of the children in a divorce case until the "tender years doctrine" in the late nineteenth century, because their greater income could provide for the kids better.
Which is ALSO not something I agree with, but it goes to show what that "not-childcaring" part of traditional fatherhood may not be all that accurate.

On the flipside, let's say that's not actually an ideal arrangement at all. Let's say it's actually incredibly dehumanizing to simply assume that it's a woman's job to give up her career and financial independence and devote all her time and attention to performing menial tasks to support her children, or that it's a man's job to cut himself off from family life and to work long hours alienating himself from the chance of developing a caring affectionate relationship with his children. Let's say we were to commit to the principle that everyone should have an equal chance to balance work with family, that everyone should share in both the financial and domestic responsibilities of a functioning family. Suddenly we're not just engaging in "petty rants and self-righteous indignation" are we, suddenly we're not just thrashing on the floor screaming about how unfair it is that the mean, mean courts won't give us what we want, we have a platform for a broader program of societal change which unites the interests of both men and women. We can use the energy we could have spent demanding courts give men more things (because reasons) to instead demand flexible working hours, to demand longer paternity leave, to demand better provision of affordable childcare so that all parents, men or women, have the option to play a role in their children life before they divorce and without compromising their ability to provide for their family.

Funny, I believe we live in a time where these roles aren't as universally adhered to as in "ye olde days" but they are still very prevalent, but even back then men played an incredibly important part in the family, even when the hours they worked back then were even longer than they are today.
We both agree on that fathers should be given the opportunities to take an active role in their family's lives, but I think the 50/50 division is a pipedream for the most part, the person with the best hourly wage or best weekly income is going to take up the majority of the working time because that simply is the most efficient way to make money for the household.
The only way to correct that is to make every job pay exactly the same and allow only the same amount of hours each working day.

The main issue from my perspective is not that men don't get "stuff" enough, it's that the stuff they do is not valued equally, contribution to child-rearing at all can not be flatly measured in hours because, if that were true, the difficulties of fatherlessness would not be as severe as they are.
If we want men to spend more time at home, we must enable and encourage them to, not browbeat them into submission and tell them their contribution does not count, dismissing them speaking up about it as childish petulance for "wanting things because reasons" only seems like a lack of empathy or unwillingness to listen.

But there will also come a point at which people need to adapt. If adaption is not what men actually want, then fine.. but don't blame the family courts for treating men who act as secondary parents as if they actually are secondary parents. Children are not an abstract reward or a punishment, they are human beings with their own interests and their own "rights" which, in many cases, will supersede the imagined "rights" of their parents.

If the system fails, do you blame the people in it or the system itself?
Or to put it another way, if you make a game that you want to be played in a very specific way, but people play it differently because that seems more intuitive, do you blame the players for not playing it right, or do you adjust your design to accommodate that intuitive behavior?

I will not defend "the nuclear family" structure as the most beneficial, a completely egalitarian way of balancing house and work life would be most fair for all parties involved but we have yet to come up with a system to persuade people into "playing" that way.
And yes, custody to one's children is a privilege a parent maintains through responsible behavior, but from a public mental health perspective, being part of a family is an incredibly important part of one's mental health and the child greatly benefits from not cutting one of the parents away from their lives, that should be reserved for those responsible for actual abuse.

...

Holy shit, these posts are getting long, I hope you actually read all this.
Kuddos if you do.

 

[Phasmal]

Marrying a woman because she values your virility, beauty and personality enough to become the main provider for the household would be a dream come true for most men, sadly, it's just not gonna happen for most of us, it just doesn't seem to be the way human attraction works, c'est la vie.

Cool I'mma quit my job, put my feet up and tell my boyfriend that if he complains, he just doesn't value me enough.
Seriously, though, the way you put that just comes off as condescending. People don't become "main providers" because they're just so gosh-darn pure hearted. They usually do it for convenience, or out of tradition. It's usually "you do X(housework and child-rearing) and I'll do Y(holla holla get dolla)".
It is not "Stay at home darling because I value you so much".

And I say this as someone who has both supported their partner and been supported by their partner. There's only so much his personality sparkles when you get home and the washing up hasn't been done.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Cool I'mma quit my job, put my feet up and tell my boyfriend that if he complains, he just doesn't value me enough.

Nah, you'll find it far more effective to mock his lack of manhood and supposedly fragile masculinity, you'd be surprised how susceptible men can be to shame and guilt.

I do think we are miscommunicating here though, the division of labour is indeed not based on altruism but on pragmatic considerations.
However, in poor families, both parents work usually fulltime jobs, but when the household budget no longer requires two fulltime occupations you will usually see the mother lessen her professional workload sooner to see to domestic concerns.
In other words, the ability to dedicate more time to the household is won by affluence, that's how I see it.

And no, I'm not calling housework a "privilege" that women have, again, affluence affords you more time at home, and since the ability to provide is one of the main attracting factors for a potential husband it is usually the father that will provide this level of affluence, whenever possible, of course.

And I say this as someone who has both supported their partner and been supported by their partner. There's only so much his personality sparkles when you get home and the washing up hasn't been done.

Nobody likes a lazy bum, unless they are a cat, then it's okay.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Nah, you'll find it far more effective to mock his lack of manhood and supposedly fragile masculinity, you'd be surprised how susceptible men can be to shame and guilt.

Sounds like a problem with people's concept of masculinity. Quite frankly I'd say it seems like the thing to fix is this atrocious concept of masculinity and this pathetic desire to appear masculine. It's so utterly unnecessary and it is detrimental.

I think that ties into your play the game talk in the post above it too. You're defending people clinging on to a concept they don't need to. Their choice to cling on unnecessarily is their own problem, not something for reason to cave to.

People put importance on who the primary caregiver is for psychological reasons. They want to lessen the negative impact on the child. Psychological reasons shouldn't be trumped by someone's fetish for tradition or have to cave to it in any way

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

I don't think women need to be forced to stay at home, they would love to, and men would too if they could afford it

I'll thank you not to tell me or other people what they want out of life, please.

And I would rather be at my job than having to wrangle a midget psychopath for an equal amount of time. I hate kids.