site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32335 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

For those who remember the brazillian election last year, today pro-bolsonaro supporters have invaded the supreme court, congress and presidential palace (easier here since all are close to each other). I don't expect any politician to die, since they all leave on the weekend, but there will be probably more deaths than in january 6th.

For those interested in shenanigans like the shaman QAnon shaman, one particularly disliked judge (Alexandre de Moraes) had his door stolen.

What is the point of these delayed action pseudocoup/farce operations?

From the point of view of the organized strategic putschist, surely it makes the most sense to strike as soon as you lose the election. Announce that there were irregularities, arrest the other guy and launch a crackdown while you're still in control. Strategically speaking, that's what Trump should have done if he truly was interested in overthrowing democracy (which he clearly wasn't), if he even had strong loyalists in the military (which he likely didn't). You don't wait around, you strike as quickly as possible. He should've called for his supporters in November, not January. Many more would've come, I imagine. Why didn't Bolsonaro get rid of Lula on election night? Similar reasoning, I assume. He didn't think he had sufficient support or didn't want to overturn the election.

From the point of view of the man in the street, why would you wait months to have your big rally? Surely your emotions are hottest on election night? What is the delayed action mechanism that brought people to the Capitol on Jan 6, what is going on here?

The only thing I can think of is that weak leaders don't want to look like they're actually launching a coup by moving just after the election, so they do what Trump did and call for a rally much later when it's obviously pointless. That way they get to look like they're doing something to stand up for their supporters. Trump also made a tweet at one point urging for his supporters to be peaceful. But Bolsonaro himself condemned 'pillaging of public buildings' and denied he had anything to do with this incident. So what is the cause here?

I don't know enough about the Brazilian situation to confirm if it is the same, but calling his supporters out for a riot was Trump's plan D after his plans to overturn the election before January 6th failed.

  • Plan A was the plan announced at Four Seasons Total Landscaping focused on changing the results in the swing states by state-level political action including trying to get lawsuits in front of sympathetic state-court judges, jawboning Republican secretaries of state, and lobbying Republican-controlled state legislatures to intervene in the certification process. I don't know how surprising it should have been that Republican state-court judges and Republican secretaries of state were completely uncooperative with the plan, but they were.

  • Plan B was a more conventional military autogolpe - the plan proposed by Gen Flynn to declare the Dominion hack/fraud a foreign attack on US democracy and rerun the election with hand-counting under military supervision. Assuming the Jan 6 committee report is accurate, this plan was being taken seriously until it became clear that there was no way the military would co-operate.

  • Plan C was the plan to get Pence to overturn the election based on the legal theories in the Eastman memo. I don't know what the plan was to consolidate power after Pence announces Trump's re-election and Nancy Pelosi orders the House Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest him for couping. Pence refused to co-operate.

  • Plan D was to use the mob to carry out Plan C over Pence's objections, either by intimidating him or by causing enough chaos that the Secret Service removed him to an undisclosed location and someone else (probably President pro tem Chuck Grassley) could be convinced to do it.

This is consistent with my theory (which appears to be shared by most Mottizens) of how American conservatives feel about the use of power. Plan A is to do things legally, plan B is organised violence, and plan C (probably) and D (definitely) are disorganised violence. At any point before January 6th, getting his supporters to riot makes plans A-C harder.

I don’t know anyone who supported a violence coup on Jan 6 versus just letting Biden rule. Even the proud boys just wanted new elections.

I do think medium term the right is beginning to build justification for rule by force but we haven’t crossed that bridge yet. And we won’t cross that bridge provided their is still a belief that they have a voice in Democracy.

And I strongly support Jan 6. We needed a large loud and poorly behaved riot after the events on 2020. The casus bellus for a riot wing riot had long since occurred.

The argument for the right to eventually use force (or other norm breaking) is a feeling that the PMC and institutions are aligned against them but that they still have the people. And that the left doesn’t just want to share governance but that they want to crush them. We are not at this point yet. The right is at a point of thinking about how they can regain control from a narrow PMC that currently controls a lot of key institutions. That’s why we are having a Church Commission. It’s why Desantis is attacking Disney. It’s why we are thinking about BlackRock and their huge corporate voting power as Etf managers and thus insulated and voting with woke corporates. Most rich people are old white men and they own the majority of stocks but the PMC have control.

Perhaps violence some day. For today it’s figure out how to regain a semblance of an institutional counterattack.

but calling his supporters out for a riot was Trump's plan D after his plans to overturn the election before January 6th failed.

Which is why he repeatedly told them to go home in peace upon learning the police line was breached?

Organizing protests at places of government in an attempt to convince decision makers a particular position has large popular support is like the whole purpose of a protest. Suggesting that Trump organized that rally with the intent of it going violent is highly uncharitable.

These things act as a pressure valve perhaps?

I’ll be honest I would love to see bigger write ups on wtf is going on in Brazil from someone whose not msm to indoctrinated.

The crowds do seem quite large especially since isn’t their capital far from population centers?

My only hot take is the obvious if it were left wing protestors then these people would be participating in Democracy and getting their voices heard. But since the color coded red tribe they are fascists destroying Democracy.

I guess I ally with Bolsonaro because I’m told he is my tribe. So I hope e these protests work out.

I’ll be honest I would love to see bigger write ups on wtf is going on in Brazil from someone whose not msm to indoctrinated.

I don't know if he only tweets about it or has written something longer, but your best bet is probably Glenn Greenwald

He gets too culture warry. I like him but something like the Palladium article shared is aimed far more for people trying to understand what’s going. Greenwald gets into the team sports bits of politics.

My only hot take is the obvious if it were left wing protestors then these people would be participating in Democracy and getting their voices heard. But since the color coded red tribe they are fascists destroying Democracy.

I think you are correct, although it seems too simple, no?

Most news websites I know in Latam have a left bias, example:

In Italy, when the Meloni won as new prime minister, the news articles repeatedly used keywords as 'right-wing', 'fascists', 'extreme right-wing', 'neofascists', adding a sense of preoccupation, danger and explaining how minorities will be in trouble. Only a couple of articles noticed that this was the first woman in power in Italy but still not leaving aside she is neofascist.

Contrast this when Chile had a new president, no 'extreme left-wing' or 'comunist' keywords and despite the new president is a very young 'white' male, minorities are safe.

Going back to the protests context, a particular episode in Bolivia happened in 2019, big waves of people started protesting -Wikipedia link-, because among other things, it was unconstitutional for the president to run again. Despite the big numbers of people on the streets, the president was left tribe, so a lot of coverage had the word 'coup' in it.

Obviously different context, but in red coded Brazil there were a lot of protests in 2020 and 2021, both in favor and against Bolsonaro. But even when Comunist political parties call for destitution of the president, the description of the events is watered down. Wikipedia doesn't have much information on the events Brazilian protests 2020

Relevant context in the south of the continent is the organization of left political parties. Nowadays the organization is called Grupo de Puebla (sorry only ES in wiki), which is an update on the former São Paulo Forum.

I realized it's not easy to argue that 'news' companies have a strong bias without compiling a lot of events, links and run a very extensive analysis. Even then I wonder what kind of conclusions can be drawn. I guess anecdotal evidence is all we have for now.

I found this article to be somewhat informative.

https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/11/what-everyone-got-wrong-on-the-brazilian-elections/

Interesting article indeed. A pity that so many rightish leaders don't have any constructive ambitions, ways to create strong networks of support. I get the sense that when they're talking about the Brazilian left being 'patrimonial' and using 'cordiality', the right would just be corrupt for money's sake.

The mechanics are the same, though. It's an irregular verb. I am 'patrimonial', you are known for financial irregularities, he is in prison for corruption!

The left finds ways to fund all kinds of lobby groups, protestors, civil society organizations, academics:

The PT’s ability to build a wide coalition with a variety of churches, community centers, labor organizations, social movements, and intellectual currents stems from this very fact. Its ability to navigate the juridicismo of Brasilia’s ruling class and deftly nudge it to one side is the result of this deeply Brazilian instinct. Bolsonaro’s classical liberalism and the reduction of clientelism by scaling back the state runs counter to the social expectations of the Northeast.

I'm sure this is one of the many things that Lee Kuan Yew did excellently, he could find ways to ensure his electoral opponents were suppressed, even legal ways.

Or Lee Kuan Yew governed a largely Han Chinese society that is high trust, high IQ, and obedient. And Brazil isn’t that.

Eh, the West is also fairly high trust and high IQ, if less obedient. Yet the paragraph I quoted also rings true here. We have the state-sponsored or state-supported Blob of NGOs, intellectuals, media and so on. The left finds ways to create jobs for their supporters, ways to give them influence so they can support their patrons. And they face ostensively right-wing classical liberals who don't patronize their supporters in the same way.

I suppose I was thinking of times Lee Kuan Yew found some legal issues with his opponents, lawfaring them into the ground. That's not quite the same thing of course, though I'm confident he enjoyed the 'cordiality' of Singaporean judges. Meanwhile, the right in the West is regularly rebuked by the judiciary, the cordiality is on the other side.

deleted

A year and a day, and a year and a day....

I do find it amusing that people on social media are acting like Jan 6th invented the storming of the capitol.

What's the Brazilian security forces likely to do when Lula orders them to clear out the protestors?

The police are already trying to clear the protestors, though there have been accusations that they were lenient with protestors early, allowing the situation to devolve. The army is a mystery, they did nothing even when there were people calling for their intervention at millitary barracks (There is a common joke in Brazil that the only function of the army is to cut the grass and paint the sidewalk). By and large, the security forces are pro-Bolsonaro, but that does not mean they would disobey orders, and resistance from protestors may make then ill-disponed to help.

How likely is it to actually degenerate into wider scale conflict?

Hopefully nothing bigger happens, however, more incidents are likely to happen. Lula declared an intervention in the federal district, which shall probably lead to orders to remove the protesters's camps that were there since the election. However, that would still leave many willing to take action, and unless the government sucessfully destroys their organization capacity (mainly done in Telegram and Whatsapp), they will still have power to do this again, and I don't believe the state has enough power to do so, even if it resorted to authoritarian means.

Where are the Conservative Critiques of Family Court?

Conservatives, especially religious conservatives go on and on about the collapse of the family, declining sexual morality, and the increasing millennial failure to form families or have kids...

And yet I cannot think of a single major right wing thinker who's talked about one of the top 3 things causing all of this and which, unlike the pill, is a pure matter of public policy and government officials preying on the populace: Family court.

.

Just as abortion was sacralized in post-60s as fundamental inalienable right, that women should not be forced to carry to term or have a child and deal with the financial and social burden it represented... and just as religious conservatives the country over started begging and pleading with women to not abort, but instead to have the child, and then give it up for adoption, that "obviously" they should not be burdened personally and financially with raising a child for 18 years over 1 night's sexual concourse... just please don't kill.

A new set of institutions were put in place to recreate every social, financial, personal, and hypothetical legal burden that even the most fever dreamed feminist never imagined a patriarchy might impose over one night's coupling. But for men.

Just as it became sacrosanct that every woman should be able to have sex and escape any possible financial or personal burden, even if she doesn't use protection, nor takes the morning after pill, nor avails her self of first trimester abortion, nor second, nor third, nor gives it up for adoption in the first, second, third or forth year, but in the fifth year, or even the fifthteenth! surrender the child to the state or for adoption with no ongoing legal, social, or financial penalty...

It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin. That the legal system gains full power over every asset, skill, or income source, he has ever or might ever have, and that if he tries to evade legal """Responsibility""" (as if this something that would ever consider being applied to a citizen of one of the other 82 genders) his wages will be garnished, his assets forcibly confiscated, he may be imprisoned, and in many jurisdictions his passport might even be confiscated.

.

And yet Conservatives who claim to be critics of the state and claim to be critics of state intervention in family life... seemingly have nothing to say about marriage and the family being converted from an inviolable religious and moral compact, to a state contract whereby the entire thing can be disolved, and indeed is financially incentivized to be dissolved... except for the part where every asset and dime you might ever make is now at the sole discretion of the state for how it would like to redirect them.

They have nothing to say about a religious partnership essential being converted into a slavery contract. Nor that instead of doing the reasonable "Egalitarian" thing like setting a standard child support amount that all non-custody parents should be expected to pay as a universal obligation (all children being equal) family court judges are instead allowed incredible discretion to assign amounts based on the income or percieved competence of the non-custody spouse... because obviously bieng productive is the worst possible crime in our society.

.

This is the great trend of conservative criticism. Point at the decay, (failing families, schools, communities, ethics) but cower from even raising the possibility that the laws and policies which caused the decay might be reversed.

Every conservative laments the decline of the family... none will suggest ending no-fault divorce or reversing the presumption of custody, such that a parent who cannot afford to raise a child on their own is presumed to be the parent less qualified to receive custody, thus removing the incentive for an unproductive deadbeat wife to divorce as a means to take her husband's assets.

Every conservative laments that social institutions used to work better, and that social values are decaying... none will broach returning to the policies and matterial realities that produced those quality institutions.

.

.

Edit/ Addendum: (realized I didn't include this las night)

My solution is the same one that has worked throughout all of history in every institution that's been functional:

The person with the power is the person with the responsibility.

If women are to be empowered to abort whenever they like, surrender to adoption or the state whenever they like, and generally have full control... THEN THEY SOULD BARE FULL, TOTAL, AND FINAL FINANCIAL RESPONCIBILITY.

Family court should not exist.

The names on the bank accounts keep the accounts. Same with the houses and assets. And any joint assets accounts are divided in even... you don't even need a court all these things would happen naturally and the banks, etc. would oversee the pre-arranged division.

80% of divorces are started by women... this would end that very quickly and defacto limit divorce once again to real documentable instances of abuse. Since there would no longer be a financial incentive.

.

Out of wedlock births should never result in a court case unless there is a criminal charge of sexual assault.

It should simply be the woman's full and final responsibility.

These are the conditions that produced the sexual norms conservatives were so fond of In the 19th century and before, if a man got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, that was a her problem. Full stop.

Even if a community thought they could try to force the responsibility on him, he could just disappear a few towns over.

This is what created the intense emphasis on chastity, and the sense of ruin that accompanied fallen women.

THESE ARE OUR TRADITIONAL SEXUAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS.

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

.

If the founding father's had been threatened with a coterie of lawyers threatening to drive a wedge between them and their wives, then claiming for themselves the power to divvy up every child, animal and asset whilst claiming for themselves a share (often the lion's share)... The founding father's would have slaughtered them to the last.

There are good reason to criticize family court. Divorce rape is a thing in need of wild reform. However, I think even modest proposals to abolish family court and usher in the return of some 19th century norms takes it a bit too far. Making only women responsible for the consequences of pregnancy (while rolling back abortion rights) is exactly the kind thing which might convince me that maybe a patriarchy does exist, and then I'd look silly so I'm against it on those grounds alone. As proposed, I really wouldn't want be a woman in that society.

Sweden has at least been talking about letting fathers abort responsibility up until 18 weeks; an incremental change in the right direction.

Abortion rights effectively can't be rolled back. Rolling back abortion in America is like trying to Ban guns.

You're never getting the guns back, and you're never going to be able to stop anyone of any means (like anyone who has a credit card) from just buying a $200 plane ticket to a sanctuary city or second country and getting an abortion there... And that's if you somehow got a federal abortion ban that's never going to happen, and was actually enforced with a new federal agency, which is even less likely to happen.

Abortion has joined gunownership and porn access in the category of things that are literally inalienable... Like I doubt any possible series of votes or governments could ever get rid of them.

It's been happening since at least Casey, with Dobbs being a major sea-change. Since Roe they've been consistently rolled back. Rolling them back further has buy-in with a significant portion of lawmakers. I'm befuddled by your comment as this all seems fairly obvious.

And how do any of those laws or "Roll-backs" actually prevent any woman with a credit card from actually getting an abortion?

Demand for abortion is inelastic. Keeping the child costs 100-200 grand + 100-200 grand in effort in the first 18 years, getting the abortion... even if its fully banned, costs a $200-500 plane ticket to the nearest jurisdiction that will perform one... and every single american can get $500 in credit (seriously when i was young I worked in collections... doesn't mnatter how many times an american has gone bankrupt... they can get that lone at some interest rate)

.

Unless Anti-abortion activists start proposing hard travel-restrictions for pregnant women, or serious infanticide level (decades) prison time for women who can be proven to have had abortions... its all symbolic

KR didn't say that abortion rights should be rolled back, though.

British conservative Peter Hitchens talks about this a lot, about the strangeness of courts siding with the promise breaker in cases of no-fault divorce.

In Ireland you've got John Waters (distinct from the American filmmaker), whose own bitter experience in the family courts means it is a common topic in his writings.

Speaking of abortion, this study (from Japan) gathered thousands of comments on reddit currently:

https://www.psypost.org/2023/01/abortion-associated-with-lower-psychological-distress-compared-to-both-adoption-and-unwanted-birth-study-finds-64678

The psychological distress scores were lowest for those who experienced a wanted birth (14%), then went up slightly for those who chose abortion (20.3%). Distress went up again for those choosing adoption (31.5%) and those experiencing an unwanted birth (30.7%). […]

Additionally, the study concludes with these thoughts, “This study showed that among women who experienced an unintended pregnancy, the unwanted birth and adoption group had worse long-term psychological distress consequences. Abortion did not lead to negative psychological consequences. Therefore, it is important to ensure equal and safe abortion opportunities and providing more support to women with unwanted birth.”

  • -12

Please don't do this. If it's related to what Kulak said, explain why you brought it up. If you just thought you should put it there because the topic is related, make a new op about it - as it is it looks like a passive aggressive attempt to troll Kulak by pointing out another example of the thing he is annoyed about. Sort of a "haha yeah you said all them words and it's only getting worse, eat shit!" kind of jab.

What do you imagine to be the tradeoffs of your plan?

What I anticipate if it were implemented: huge numbers of men swearing off financial responsibility for the kids they father out of wedlock. Instead of them paying for the upkeep of kids, the responsibility switches to the government. Which is to say, taxpayers: people who never have sex, people who have sex responsibly and don't have kids, and people who have kids and take responsibility for them. The only people to benefit from financial abortions are men who have lots of irresponsible sex, with more irresponsible sex being better rewarded.

That's not to say family courts are great or can't be improved, but the government being involved in intimate disputes will always result in some people getting screwed, because it doesn't have the capability to get full visibility into the situation.

So just don't fund them through tax dollars.

A child is an expense little different from a dog. Its 20-100 lbs of mammal. Everything else is social signalling.

If a mother actually can't earn enough to afford to feed it in her studio apartment... she should give it up for adoption as anyone that incapable is clearly also going to be incapable at everything else to do with child rearing.

We have millions of competent well adjusted infertile couples who wish they could adopt... why the hell do we subsidize incompetent mothers one penny?

why the hell do we subsidize incompetent mothers one penny

Subsidize is doing a bit of work, here; as far as child support goes, it's a choice of how we split what's currently the man's contribution. Regardless of anyone's level of sympathy for irresponsible mothers, there's no reason that they should get less sympathy than irresponsible fathers. And even if we did want to subsidize irresponsible fathers compared to the status quo, allowing financial abortions would unleash a dynamic that results in substantially greater financial subsidization of children by taxpayers.

And hypothetically, at least, all this money is going to the upkeep of the child. If the money not actually ending up benefitting the child is the concern, you'd get a lot more buy in (from me, at least) with ideas on how to make sure a greater proportion of child support goes to benefit the intended beneficiary.

Regardless of anyone's level of sympathy for irresponsible mothers, there's no reason that they should get less sympathy than irresponsible fathers.

We generally grant less sympathy to those with more power over the situation. We've decided to grant women more power than men over the decision to become parents (via abortion), so it stands to reason they should get less sympathy than men if they are irresponsible.

Oh, so now you’re assuming away the disaster that is our foster care and adoption system. Just have the free market do it, I guess.

How many “competent well adjusted infertile” couples are there, really? Are they still champing at the bit if you slash all government involvement? If you flood the adoption pool by removing all consequences for lovin’ and leavin’?

There is actually a huge shortage of children for adoption at the moment, not just babies but also older kids without mental issues. Children moved into this system would very quickly find a new home.

infertile couples, as well as single people who can't have kids the old fashioned way outnumber the available adoptable children by a massive percentage.

The reason there are foster homes at all is government bureaucracy, and problem children who realistically can't be raised by anyone.

If the standards of adoption were lowered to what they were in the 1890s damn near every child under 5 would get adopted.

If the standards of adoption were lowered to what they were in the 1890s damn near every child under 5 would get adopted.

Only possible if you also have the populace of the 1890s who won't put pressure on politicians the first time a child is adopted then killed/mistreated by the adoptive parents. No point wishing for the laws and norms of the 1890s today. Those are downstream from your population.

How many “competent well adjusted infertile” couples are there, really?

Iirc there’s a ratio of about 20 families per child waiting for adoption

I’m seeing ~2 million families in the adoption process and 113,000 eligible children in 2021. So...yeah, that’s about right. Is this just CPS bureaucracy? I’d think the state would want to hand kids off ASAP.

53,500 were adopted. Contrast the >17 million children living with single mothers. Assuming an even distribution, that’s still almost a million per year. What fraction of those would be dumped into the adoption system if child support were demolished?

To start with, only about 30% of single mothers receive child support to begin with, and surely some(if not most) of those would choose not to give up their children if it gets cut off.

Lowball well over 50% of those wouldn't surrender, and if they're recieving child support then there's a father who hasn't disappeared who would presumably be willing to assume custody in again over 50% of cases...

Considering any woman getting child support is middle-class enough to have gone through the legal system and won a court case... the final number who might surrender is probably under 5% of women receiving child support.

I doubt that any woman receiving child support is necessarily out of poverty, but agree with the broader point that for most, the alternative to child support is being poorer, not surrendering their children.

Bureaucracy is part of it, but part of it is also a very uneven demand for children. Contra the claims of adoption advocates infertile couples do not regard any child as better than no child. There is very high demand for young (infant) healthy children. There is very low demand for kids who are older, or have behavioral problems, or disabilities.

Who would've thought.

And yet Conservatives who claim to be critics of the state and claim to be critics of state intervention in family life... seemingly have nothing to say

I don't think this is true at all. I hear critiques of the biased family court system all the time. It's one of the most common anti-feminist talking points. And it's not just the new anti woke conservatives either. The classic religious conservatives are very opposed to divorce.

"Conservatives" and anti-feminists aren't the same thing. The distinction I see between them is that one tells men to get married, and the other tells men not to. Being opposed to divorce is just, at this point, a word game. Where both sides are against 'divorce' for completely different reasons.

In fact a few states in the south have introduced a possibility for couples to opt out of the possibility of no-fault divorce. I do not think that the MRA crowd was behind these laws.

Kulak, I'd agree except that a woman having a baby requires, still, even now, a man to get her pregnant. And men who don't control their own fertility now see the effects of that. I agree that there is a lot of unfairness and damn stupidity, but come on.

It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin.

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

What is your opinion of things like fellatio? Anal heterosexual intercourse? A lot of things that men expect now as normal parts of sexual activity which once were considered the province of whores only, and even a whore might balk at some of them?

Men profited every bit from the sexual revolution as women did, and the bad effects of that liberalisation were argued down - by men as well as women - as religious imposition on the freedom of others, prudishness, repression and the rest of it. Howard Stern didn't get a reputation as a hero taking on the fuddy-duddy FCC by broadcasting home improvement tips and how to repair your car yourself:

Between 1990 and 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined owners of radio station licensees that carried The Howard Stern Show a total of $2.5 million for content it considered to be indecent.

In May 1985, Stern claimed the highest ratings at WNBC in four years with a 5.7% market share of the afternoon audience. In a sudden turn of events, Stern and Quivers were fired shortly before they were to go on air on September 30, 1985, for what WNBC management termed "conceptual differences" regarding the show. ...In 1992, he believed Thornton Bradshaw, chairman of WNBC owner RCA, heard his "Bestiality Dial-a-Date" segment that aired ten days before his suspension and ordered the show's cancellation.

I don't like the rise of single parenting, abortion as birth control, and general promiscuity encouraging women to behave like whores - sorry, sex workers, where sex work is real work. But as they say, it takes two to tango. Men who were glad that now they could get free milk without having to buy the cow still have responsibilities.

And it's the children who suffer the most out of this entire mess of broken homes, irresponsible mothers, half-siblings with different surnames because you all have different dads, dads who never show up in your life and are out producing more half-siblings with other women that you don't even know exist. There was a bitter 'joke' in an old job that in about fifteen years time there would be a lot of unintentional incest, as the kids involved in what we were working on grew up and starting dating or at least hooking up with others they met out socialising, with no idea that was their half-sib.

Conservatism? Yes, I'm for the old-fashioned type where men who wanted sex without strings or consequences have to keep it in their pants (or pay for a whore) every bit as much as women were expected to do. Instead, we've got both sexes (and all genders) behaving like dogs in the streets, mounting a bitch in heat, and with as little thought for the litter of pups afterwards.

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

What is your opinion of things like fellatio? Anal heterosexual intercourse? A lot of things that men expect now as normal parts of sexual activity which once were considered the province of whores only, and even a whore might balk at some of them?

There have been cases of women using turkey-basters to impregnate themselves with semen that was not ejaculated inside them (kept from fellatio, or caught in a condom from either vaginal or anal intercourse). That's what KR is referring to, unless I miss my guess, with "if the sperm is stolen".

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

Women these days seem to by and large (or at least women on the left) agree that just because a woman chooses to have sex, or chooses to not take birth control, or chooses not to get married, it shouldn't matter, and a women should basically be able to choose her own future regardless, whether via abortion, whether by putting the baby up for adoption, whether by keeping the baby and having the man pay child support, or whether by leaving the baby at a safe haven baby drop off. They have decoupled the decision for women to have sex from the decision to start a family or keep a baby.

Men want this decoupling too, and it wouldn't be hard to do it. Simply give the man the same decision of whether they want to be listed as the father on the birth certificate. You can even put a time limit on it, like he has to opt out before sex, even. If he doesn't want to be listed as the father, then the women still has the other aforementioned options, even right down to the no questions asked baby drop off.

If you don't believe that women should have all those options, if you believe that having sex means that a women has some sort of familial responsibility to society, to the baby, etc, then I can understand you thinking the same about men. Otherwise, I think it makes you a hypocrite to believe that just because a man has sex, he's taking these responsibilities.

I don't know why whenever this comes up the first thing that happens is implications that people who are in favor of men having options actually hate women, or think that women are evil temptresses or something. Men who have opinions about this IME rarely think such things, and I think it's uncalled for and uncharitable to ascribe such motives to them. I think it speaks to the fact that that strategy of accusing men of hating women seems to be somewhat unchecked in power. Everyone wants to think that there are evil men who want to hate women everywhere.

Its really bizzare because like everyone of every gender hates everyone else... resentments are just the baseline of the adversarial/cooperative game that is any negotiation or sexual relationship.

Straight women bitch about men.

Straight men bitch about women.

Gay women bitch about Gay women.

Gay men bitch about Gay men. (I swear...the shit I've heard from my gay friends, They're more "homophobic" than my most conservative relative could ever be)

And trans people of both types bitch about both genders, cis and trans.

.

Resentments and frustrations with the desired sex is like the baseline of all people everywhere...

The fact that we expect "Oh you just hate women" for any male perspective political discussion that touches on the sexual... but would be agast at anyone dismissing a feminist or abortion rights activist "You just hate men" is deeply telling of how poisoned these conversations are.

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

The issue is that one party has a gazillion options to either abscond responsibility or to forcibly share them with others, backed by the power of the state, i.e. men with guns - while the other party is looking down the barrel of said guns. It takes two to tango. Yet our society only cares about one set of toes being stepped on.

My solution is the same one that has worked throughout all of history in every institution that's been functional:

The person with the power is the person with the responsibility.

If women are to be empowered to abort whenever they like, surrender to adoption or the state whenever they like, and generally have full control... THEN THEY SOULD BARE FULL AND TOTAL FINANCIAL RESPONCIBILITY.

These are the conditions that produced the sexual norms conservatives were so fond of In the 19th century and before if a man got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, that was a her problem. Full stop.

Even if a community thought they could try to force the responsibility on him, he could just disapear a few towns over.

This is what created the intense emphasis on chastity, and the sense of ruin that accompanied fallen women.

THESE ARE OUR TRADITIONAL SEXUAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS.

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

This exactly. Modern western conservatives are still operating in the same framework as modern western liberals, while the societal problem is being caused by the framework itself. Only an exogenous change can bring about a solution to the issues of western modernity.

I would guess Kulak is angry, at least in part, because of cases like these: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/

California issued a similar state court ruling a few years later in the case of a 15-year-old boy who had sex with a 34-year-old neighbor. In that case, the woman had been convicted of statutory rape.

In both cases, it was the state social-services agency that pursued the case after the mother sought public assistance.

"The Kansas court determined that the rape was irrelevant and that the child support was not owed to the rapist but rather to the child," said Mel Feit, director of the New York-based advocacy group the National Center for Men.

Of course, the money is in practice going to said rapist, because custody is irrelevant and there's 0 oversight to make sure the money is actually being spent for the benefit of the child. And speaking of custody, no one seems to care about the child rapists raising children.

Is sexual inter course between married couples really that different now compared to decades ago? I think non vaginal intercourse was probably quite common. Big difference is now how those things occur as part of dating.

I mean, no, people who have strong taboos usually follow them. Observant Jews usually don't eat pork, Americans marry their cousins drastically less often than others, and people decades ago probably had a lot less oral sex. Of course there's probably no way to get high quality data on the subject, but the existence of a strong taboo is usually good evidence the taboo is generally followed. And the taboo on fellatio in the past was quite strong.

I vaguely recall seeing surgery data suggesting that fellatio rarely occurred outside of marriage but wasn’t uncommon within marriage. In the last twenty years pre marital sex shrank but pre marital fellatio skyrocketed.

I’ll see if I can find that data somewhere.

Surgery data?!

Survey data — autocorrect

Phew. For a second there I wondered if women these days used more teeth than I was thinking.

I’m open to believing it but my priors are that we should assume taboo sexual acts were genuinely less common.

Agree that premarital fellatio has probably replaced premarital sex to some extent.

Framing this as a men's rights issue rests in the assumption that the mother has sole custody, but nowadays, most child custody is 50/50.* Hence, there is no custodial parent, and child support is paid by the parent with the higher income, at least in California. So, I guess conservatives should address this problem by pushing for more equal pay for women.

PS: See calculator here.

*A trend opposed by conservatives and pushed by liberals back in the day

but nowadays, most child custody is 50/50.*

That... doesn't seem true (caveat: underlying data is an industry study), even for newest divorce cohorts, and even for California specifically.

There are plausible arguments in favor of those results, or to say that you're just speaking for a theoretical ideal standard rather than the actual results, or that they don't 'count' (either because of non-contesting fathers, or because it's 'really' red state faults, although it's somewhat tricky to isolate cause and effect), but I don't know where you're getting this claim.

OTOH, this says that, in CA, "Both parents agree in 51% of cases that one parent should become the custodial parent." So, if fathers are agreeing that the mother should get sole custody, even if that means they will be paying more in child support (which they will, given the formula used in CA), and despite the fact that CA law requires joint custody as the default, where is the injustice in those payments?

It may well be the right policy! But it's a different claim.

And there's at least the potential for injustice. Trivially, even contested court case ones still favor sole-mother over sole-father custody ("5 out of 6" by your link), and maybe that's reflects some correct (if possibly sexist) policy, but it'd also look pretty similar if a lot of fathers weren't getting a fair shake, or where ostensibly 'neutral' standards end up making it unlikely for a father to be able to achieve all the necessary hoops. Even parents agreeing on custody doesn't necessarily avoid problems of coercive 'agreement', especially given the normal bail-and-plea-bargain arguments about the costs of the justice system are, if anything, far stronger here.

Of course there is potential for injustice. It certainly would not surprise me to find that there are unequal outcomes. But note how far we are from OP's original claim.

"5 out of 6" by your link

But if in half those cases (3/6) the mother has custody because the parents agreed thereto, that means that in 2/3 of the cases mothers get custody, rather than in 1.5/3, were contested cases evenly decided. Of course, we don't know for sure what pct of agreed cases give custody to the mother, but it is probably very high. So, again, we seem to be far from OP's original claim.

*Note that the headline in think in that link is: "Monthly Child Support Payments Average $430 per Month in 2010." This says that the average amount paid in 2017 was $6,760 per year, which does tend to undermine OP's claim that men are being impoverished.

What claim do you think the OP's making that this doesn't hit? Because 'it's only financially ruinous for people below some very common income level' doesn't seem hugely incompatible with his statements

((Kulak does miss the statutory maximum for child support/alimony in some states, so there are some limits to what extent family court can garnish wages, but... most states set them extremely high.))

'it's only financially ruinous for people below some very common income level'

Given that that number is a an average. and averages are skewed by large numbers at the high end, there is no evidence that it is financially ruinous for anyone. It might be, but what I said it true: that the data** tends** to undermine his claim. That is a very mild claim, after all.

Sorry for the "argument in depth" nit-picking, but I think we should be cautious about that stat on "agreements". Much more so than regular contracts, family court has a lot of room for coercive behavior that won't show up in a court record. "If we have to go to court, I'll say you hit me." All the "children need their mother" social bullying. The dynamic where the parent who works less handles more of the scheduling for things like playdates and doctors appointments. I know of one example where the wife only filed for divorce after a year long campaign of meticulous planning and coordination so she could drop a Tunguska-tier mindfuck on the guy and get away with everything while he was reeling in the psychological wreckage. That one would count as an "agreement" in the stats.

I suspect the number for "percent who feel like they came to a mutually fair deal" would be lower.

Well, that might be true, but that sounds like a very different claim than the one that OP seemed to be making.

And highwaymen only shoot their victim 1% of the time... the rest of the time they reach and agreement to surrender their valuables.

The threat of the court and violence fundamentally makes all of these agreements coercive... Just because the guy with the gun (the government) is standing in the corner and not saying anything doesn't mean he isn't the most important factor in the outcome

Do they agree because they know they will lose a court battle? Because if so (and I genuinely do not know), then your caveat is fully generalisable and would equally apply to, e.g. people railed by having plea bargains pushed on them.

And again, that was an over-correction from the past, where men could initiate divorce and have sole custody of the children while the mother had no rights. Courts then started giving custody to mothers equally, then preferentially (as the parent who would be doing the child-rearing while the father was considered the bread-winner) and then solely, even if the father wanted to be involved (and a lot of fathers didn't, let's remember: men who left wives and families for a new partner and started a new family with her).

Society has the turning circle of a supertanker, so changes take a long time, are hard to start, and harder to stop once started. That's why all the fast social engineering which is promoted as "what harm can it do?" takes a while to turn out to be "but how could we possibly know?" once the damage becomes apparent. You can run for a long time on the social capital of the old standards, like driving a car on the fumes in the tank, but eventually you need to put more fuel in or else you're stranded.

And again, that was an over-correction from the past, where men could initiate divorce and have sole custody of the children while the mother had no rights. Courts then started giving custody to mothers equally,

??? That is the exact opposite of what was the norm in the past:

The earlier judicial trend preferring mothers in custody disputes following divorce became nearly universally established in case law and was ratified by many state legislatures.

Beginning in the 1970s a major swing in custody law sharply reversed what had been a well-entrenched preference for mothers. Most states adopted laws conferring an equal status on the custodial rights of mother and father with a favorable attitude toward joint custody.

I expect that they refer to deeper past than 1970. Though I lack knowledge here - from what I understand in sufficiently older times "who gets children after divorce" was irrelevant as there was no divorce.

Note that it says, "Beginning in the 1970s a major swing in custody law sharply reversed what had been a well-entrenched preference for mothers," which implies that it had been around since before 1970. And, there was some divorce before then; what did not exist was no-fault divorce.

Yeah but I think farnear is referring to like the 1770s, when women had few to no rights in custody.

So, I guess conservatives should address this problem by pushing for more equal pay for women.

Women have equal pay, ceteris paribus. They should push for women looking for mates with the same SES as them.

Human females exhibit hypergamy to a greater extent than human males do. Thus even if the distribution of wages of men and women were identical, the hypergamy gap would cause men to overrepresented among payers.

Correct me if my math is incorrect, but in a world in which average income for women was the same as average pay for men, would it not be impossible for the average woman to make less money than her partner? I think perhaps your observation strengthens my argument.

Not necessarily, you could just get less marriage/cohabiting overall, with the higher earning women and lower earning men remaining single.

In terms of marriage, this has already happened. While the wage gap between men and women has shrunk since the 1980s, the wage gap between the average husband and wife has remained the same.

Women rarely marry men who earn less money than them. If you reduce the number of higher (relative to women) earning men, then more women won't marry at all.

Your math is wrong. Consider a universe of 6 people.

  • 3 men, A=$20k, B=$50k, C=$70k, for an average income of $46.66k.

  • 3 women, X=$20k, Y=$50k, Z=$70k.

There is an identical distribution of wages (and hence average pay is identical), meeting your criteria.

Female hypergamy means a woman is only willing to marry someone who earns more than her. So C marries Y (gap of $20k), B marries X (gap of $30k), while A and Z remain single. The average married woman earns $25k less than her husband.

Imagine two equal sized groups of men and women. They have identical income distributions. Then, randomly match each of them to one of the other group. Couples where the male makes more are accepted; ones where he doesn't are rejected. Then repeat the process repeatedly.

You end up with most people being matched, but there being an income gap between the members of every couple, along with a group of low income single men and a group of high income single women. You could calculate the expected distribution of the income gaps (bounded by 0 at the bottom) and the expected size of the single groups by statistical characteristics of the original income distribution.

In fact, even if women earned more on average than men, if you repeated that same process, paired men would always have higher incomes than their female partner, by construction. You'd just end up with larger groups of singles.

Are you arguing for a communistic equal income distribution or full replacement of wages with UBI? I am deeply skeptical that you're unaware of the reality of the wage gap, namely that it's overwhelmingly a result of different choice and tradeoffs between men and women.

I am not arguing for or against it. I am merely saying that if in fact men on average pay more in child support than women do, and** if that is a problem** that should be addressed, then pushing for more income equality would be a way of doing so. Whether that would be sound policy, given the other costs and benefits associated with that outcome, is an entirely different question.

And, btw, yes, I am aware that the gap is a result of different choices and tradeoffs, but I am also aware that those choices and tradeoffs are the result of constraints, some of which are socially imposed and can change. Once upon a time, for example, almost no women chose to go to medical or law school, perhaps because when my aunt graduated law school as one of two women in her class, she was only offered jobs as a legal secretary. Now, women make up the majority of medical and law students, So, there might well be ways of reducing the income gap other than "communistic* equal income distribution or full replacement of wages with UBI."

*Whatever that means; it is usually used purely as an epithet, rather than as an analytical term.

And, btw, yes, I am aware that the gap is a result of different choices and tradeoffs, but I am also aware that those choices and tradeoffs are the result of constraints, some of which are socially imposed and can change.

It's true that women face tradeoffs in the face of constraints. It's also true that men face tradeoffs in the face of constraints.

Most academic, media, and government work ignores the latter set of tradeoffs. But I'd argue that men face stricter constraints. If men looking for partners felt they could get away with working part time with lifestyle businesses as video game streamers, you would see the income gap disappear or reverse.

And, btw, yes, I am aware that the gap is a result of different choices and tradeoffs, but I am also aware that those choices and tradeoffs are the result of constraints, some of which are socially imposed and can change. Once upon a time, for example, almost no women chose to go to medical or law school, perhaps because when my aunt graduated law school as one of two women in her class, she was only offered jobs as a legal secretary. Now, women make up the majority of medical and law students,

Ah, I basically assume that changing that dynamic is vanishingly unlikely. In the most egalitarian nations, it's more extreme. And those lady doctors go on to become pediatricians and marry surgeons who double their salary; I'm guessing there's a similar dynamic for lawyers. The core thing you would need to change is "women prefer men who out-earn them" with a secondary "men don't care much about how much women earn". You'd also have to equalize out how much of a working lifetime men and women take off to raise children. I am skeptical that those things are amenable to social constraints, which makes it a very silly line of speculation.

"communistic* equal income distribution

I meant it as a catch all for economic systems where income/rewards are totally untethered to chosen behaviors like hours worked, risk undertaken, etc.

I imagine you're thinking of closing the gap including women making more money but gaps can closed in either direction. Instead of women making the choices of men, which by and large has made them quite a bit more miserable, men may begin making the choices of women and this might result in the pie shrinking for all. It seems dangerous to me to disincentivize working harder and earning more.

Yes, it might result in a shrinking pie, and that might be a bad thing. But that is why I said, " Whether that would be sound policy, given the other costs and benefits associated with that outcome, is an entirely different question."

How inconvenient. But at least society at large recognizes that men are widely sacrificing their interests for society and their sacrifice is appreciated. It would truly be a tragic mistake to expect men to sacrifice for society while also holding them in contempt.

More comments

Correct me if my math is incorrect, but in a world in which average income for women was the same as average pay for men, would it not be impossible for the average woman to make less money than her partner?

Only if you assume it's impossible for people to be single.

I think you are making a lot of very far-reaching claims without bringing a proportional amount of evidence in general, but probably the easiest nitpick is

(as if this something that would ever consider being applied to a citizen of one of the other 82 genders)

Does this have any meaning deeper than dunking on the outgroup by freely associating one thing they do that you find bad with another thing they do that you find ridiculous? Presumably, the "82 genders" line suggests that you are specifically talking about progressive gender self-identification and not biological sex, which is therefore in particular open to biological men as well as women (and in fact its usage by biological men seems to be the part that takes up the majority of conservative mindshare). You claim that "responsibility" is not something that is expected of "one of the other 82 genders". Do you have an example of biological men getting out of child support payments by claiming to be a demiboy, femme or whatever other things you count as one of the 82?

Do you have an example of biological men getting out of child support payments by claiming to be a demiboy, femme or whatever other things you count as one of the 82?

Not in the US, but it has been tried in Ecuador: NYPost: ‘Punished’ dad legally changes gender to female in bid to gain custody of kids.

Not quite the same: not having custody isn't really "responsibility" that trying to get custody would amount to escaping from, and pretending to be the one gender/sex that is traditionally taken to be entitled to children does not show that the remaining 81 "neogenders" have anything at all to do with it.

Fair point.

I don't think there are any easy solutions here. What do you think should be done if the mother doesn't want to abort but the father wants to just ditch both the mother and child? What should be done for mothers who put their own career to the side to focus on taking care of the home and children, but they find out their husband has been cheating on them? I don't think there are easy answers for those. Maybe family courts as they are are too biased towards women, but I think there is no good alternative.

I mean, from a tradcon perspective, there's an obvious solution, it just isn't very nice to single moms or cheating dads. From a secular progressive perspective there's also two obvious solutions(the state takes care of everyone, or the US system). You cannot half-ass it.

Father should be able to elect for a "Legal abortion/surrender" where he surrenders all rights and claims to the child, at any point in the child's developement.

If the mother then decides she can't support the child and elects to abort or put it up for adoption so be it.

This is the only solution that doesn't get into absurdities of women somehow having the inalienable right to abort or surrender their child, yet men somehow being bound from the moment they (or their wife's boyfreind) ejaculates.

Couples looking to adopt currently have to wait years and there is a dearth of adoption candidates. Or social problem is not a surplus of children but a surplus of legal and social regulations destroying the impetus to have children

Father should be able to elect for a "Legal abortion/surrender" where he surrenders all rights and claims to the child, at any point in the child's development.

That doesn't equalize things out though.

Consider that without any legal processes the woman takes most of the physical risks. Whether she chooses to carry the baby to term or have an abortion she will have some form of drug, operation, or birth to go through, then whatever physical changes stem thereof. The man in contrast can walk away. She has skin in the game that will impact her no matter what. He does not.

So if you think the job of laws is to incentivize both parties with skin in the game so as to discourage being irresponsible decision makers, the legal incentives should not match. The woman already has a set of built in incentives. The legal system should not be treating men and women equally, because their situations are not equal. In order to equalize risks men NEED to be penalized more heavily either socially or legally.

I can pump and dump my way across the Midwest leaving a trail of pregnant women behind me. A woman can do the same only every 9 months and only by accepting the physical consequences to herself each time. The social impacts are not equal due to the biological issues not being equal.

I can pump and dump my way across the Midwest leaving a trail of pregnant women behind me.

If you could do that, you'd be so extraordinarily handsome and charming that those women probably wouldn't mind, at least on a lizard brain level.

The stopgap mechanism you are looking for here is female mate choice.

Mate, its not that difficult. I'm in my 50's with a beer belly and average looking at best. I still get hit on regularly. Add in small towns with not much choice and its not that tricky.

Don't mistake the online stuff for what its actually like in most of America. Being an average reasonably charming guy with maybe one good quirk and confidence is all you need. In the 1 year after my divorce I dated 23 women between 25 and 40 and i wasn't even looking for one night stands. In my case a British accent helps. I've been hot on by waitresses multiple times on ways i never was back home.

You certainly don't need to be extraordinarily handsome and charming. I'm not. Just average and decently charming. Remember we're not trying to land 21yo super models if we're just trying to sleep our way around.

Oh, I had the foreigner-with-a-british-accent-in-the-states experience before. It helps enormously. But that is different from rawdogging your way through the nation like some dollar store Zeus.

And I would hazard the guess that the type of woman who lets a random stranger at a bar nut in them without protection is too busy to frequent bars most of the time, with all the pregnancies and abortions she'd be getting and whatnot.

Sure it's probably trickier to hit and quit right away, but turn up go on 2-5 dates and move on is probably a much easier path.

But we've already settled on this (certain red states notwithstanding). Women do face all the physical risk, but they also get sole right to decide if they're willing to undertake that risk. The issue is if they should have the right to force someone else to participate in that decision for two decades.

Remember we're looking at incentives. Sure the woman gets to decide if the baby happens or not, but the father still faces no direct repercussions from that.

The fact each woman in my pump and dump scheme gets to decide if they want to go through an abortion or not doesn't impact me directly. Without child support I can merrily do it as much as i like.

For there to be incentive for me not to do that, I must have some extra thing at stake. Me not getting to choose puts me back where I was. There has to be something beyond that. Something that can have a direct negative impact on me.

That used to be perhaps social pressure and the risk of a shotgun wedding or a beating from the womans family whose virtue was "spoiled". Now its child support.

All of those solutions recognise the man has no direct negative incentive to curb his behavior while the woman does (which doesn't mean all women do or will of course and birth control can reduce the risk of said disincentive).

If I sleep with zero women I have no kids, if I knock up 50 women and they all choose abortion I am no worse off than when I started. So that isn't a disincentive. Thats just allowing the women to undergo x to get back to the status quo. If I don't have to risk anything then, my behavior is not disincetivised. And given sex is fun and the urge to procreate, (especially if i don't have to do any work on raising the kids) my incentive is probably to keep doing it. The negative incentive needs to be high on a societal level.

It's not like every case must have the same solution: no one-size fit all solution and all that. There should be a distinction between: "I love my husband and want his child but he cheated on me" and "I want to pregnancy-trap this man by punching a hole in the condom". If you read the excellent comment from problem_redditor in this thread you will notice that the situation is more deranged than you might expect. I actually was feeling angry by reading it.

I cannot really comment on the fairness of American family courts (I've heard comparatively few complaints from local friends who have undergone divorce), but if one believes that women and men have deep, inbuilt biological differences making them more suitable for different walks of life (as many conservatives tend to do), wouldn't it tend to be only too natural to find that in such situations custody should indeed, as a matter of course and unless there are considerable complicating the factors, go to the woman (as the sex stereotypically more suited to raising young children personally), and that the man's role would likewise be to contribute financially (as the sex that traditionally has done the yeoman's share of paid work)? I mean, you can just say "well, they shouldn't divorce in the first place", but there have always been cases of family separation, for one reason or another.

Because as far as task specialization goes, "You take all the risk, I all the reward" isn't as good a deal as it sounds.

How do you post here so long, and keep trying to come up with these gotchas without your brain presenting you canned responses like "my rules applied consistently > your rules applied consistently > your rules applied inconsistently" that you must have seen a thousand times before?

Be less antagonistic and more charitable. This entire thread is you assuming that your view of the world is right and that @Stefferi does not genuinely have a different perspective, but is insincerely playing gotcha. If you actually think that, ask more probative questions rather than jumping straight to the accusations and the snarling.

I'm not sure why that question should be summed up as "trying to come up with a gotcha". It's a genuine question.

The whole "my rules applied consistently..." thing, which I have indeed seen many times before, always seems to start with the presumption that it's obvious who the "me" and the "you" are. One might as well see the conservatives who are the "you" who want to apply their rules inconsistently; inbuilt biological gender roles when it benefits them, equal treatment of the sexes when that is what benefits them.

It's what I've called the "rule of equal but opposite hypocrisies", it seems almost every time one makes what is basically a hypocrisy argument between two positions they themselves could be seen as being equally hypocritical, just the other way around.

It seems to me there is a difference between (1) believing gender neutral rules while believing that gender will lead to different results and (2) believing rules should not be gender neutral.

I'm not sure why that question should be summed up as "trying to come up with a gotcha". It's a genuine question

It's an attempted gotcha because you're trying to win an argument with conservatives by holding them to their own standards.

always seems to start with the presumption that it's obvious who the "me" and the "you" are.

How can it be any clearer? In the context of this conversation one side believes in gender equality, and the other in traditional gender roles. You're clearly not writing from the perspective of someone who leans to the side of traditional gender roles.

One might as well see the conservatives who are the "you" who want to apply their rules inconsistently; inbuilt biological gender roles when it benefits them, equal treatment of the sexes when that is what benefits them.

No, one might not. Name one currently implemented policy that does not benefit women, which is justified by appealing to traditional gender roles.

It's what I've called the "rule of equal but opposite hypocrisies"

That's a misnomer if I ever saw one. Here not only would you have to show a single policy existing, you'd have to show there are roughly as many of them currently in force, as there are progressive ones.

Women vote, act, and campaign for the interests of women, men do not. The only conservative policies inside the Overton window are therefore policies that help (a different subset of) women differently.

Thus we get:

Progressives: anti female accountability, handouts for professional women

Conservatives: pro male responsibility, handouts for mothers

Conservatives aren't eager to spend a lot of political capital helping out men who made the mistake of, as the saying goes, "sticking their dick in crazy".

Women tend to care more about family courts. It’s easy to get them riled up with stories of suffering children. Many aren’t sympathetic to men who get a raw deal there.

Plus, there’s a bit of schadenfreude involved. Liberal men often buy into the extremely pro-women talk in their circles. They are usually the ones who end up marrying the BPD / NPD / Cluster-B women who work the courts against them.

I'm not sure this is true. As far as anyone can tell, poor secular people(who might be more socially liberal than conservatives or republicans but are much more socially conservative than liberals or democrats) bear the brunt of marrying women with actual mental illnesses. I'm sure that the women who marry liberal men are more likely to have been diagnosed with mental illnesses, but that's confounded all to heck. It is likely slightly better to be a white wealthy religious conservative than a white wealthy religious liberal, from this perspective, but I doubt there's a massive difference.

From what I can tell, the men who end up with crazies tend to be mostly the poor and uneducated. Coastal, upper middle class, professional men tend to end up with a woman similarly socially situated; you might say those partners have their own psychological issues, but they're not the ones who pull knives on you, issue false accusations, burn your stuff in the yard, make dramatic "attempts" at killing themselves, or have three secret baby daddies.

I’m more talking the far left aspiring creative types. Look at this list of Zoe Quinn’s exes. Or Dave Foley and Tabatha Southey.

The more upper class have the social structures to defend themselves.

The lower class lefties take cultural cues to reject traditional expectations of women but don’t have anything to replace them with.

They are usually the ones who end up marrying the BPD / NPD / Cluster-B women who work the courts against them.

Any stats on this?

To my understanding the conservative critique of the family court is that if you're are that point everything has already failed. It's like asking for the dietician's take on the relative nutritional value of coke and pepsi. If your communities are producing reproductive couples that would rather seperate than stick it out for the kids then your problem is far upstream of how the messy details of the split get worked out.

Whether or not the woman is willing to stick it out is clearly going to be influenced by how good the alternative seems.

Almost everyone at some point in a relationship has niggling doubts and frustrations, and handing out a golden parachute is a clear incentive to turn small issues that could've been resolved into divorces. Sure you can dream up a fantasy world where cultural forces overpower economic ones, but why not grab at every weapon you can?

I'm quite confident that this isn't the first child support diatribe to grace these halls. See the "purview of women" section from /u/Texas_Rocket's angry gesturing at Roe v. Wade. After the decision came down it was quite a popular topic.

While I don't care to hang around MGTOW communities, I'd imagine criticizing family courts is a natural hobby for them. It certainly makes for a nice motte to go with the more...broad...complaints about sex.

Perhaps those bitter young men aren't the God-and-country conservatives you're hoping to find? As noted by others, perhaps you should ask the Catholics how they intend to handle divorce.

Where are the Conservative Critiques of Family Court?

All over conservative forums, which is to say "not anywhere the typical mottizen is going to encounter them". This is not a topic for /r/exchristian or /r/exmormon this is a topic for a deacons' meeting and accordingly you're not going to find it here.

It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin. That the legal system gains full power over every asset, skill, or income source, he has ever or might ever have, and that if he tries to evade legal """Responsibility""" (as if this something that would ever consider being applied to a citizen of one of the other 82 genders) his wages will be garnished, his assets forcibly confiscated, he may be imprisoned, and in many jurisdictions his passport might even be confiscated.

This is the part that leaves me flabbergasted. I've seen close friends have their lives left in utter shambles after being cheated on and left by a wife who decided that he was nothing more than a piggybank. Men who were allowed only a pittance of time with their children, despite having no criminal record/history of abuse/etc. That the modern, overpowered family court allows women to destroy the lives of decent men for absolutely no reason is a stain on our society, and will undoubtedly have more severe ramifications as future generations grow up saying "yeah there's no way I'm risking my life by getting married and ending up in a financial/emotional/spiritual dumpster like my dad".

It makes me physically angry sometimes that so much societal and conversational capital is spent on the most trivial "microaggressions" that supposedly-marginalized communities experience, yet massive legal aggressions with the demonstrated effect of driving men to suicide are only spoken of in hushed tones in the dark recesses of the internet.

Maybe those men should have understood more clearly that if they use their superior earning potential to convince women who would not otherwise sleep with them to do so, then "if one day when you've already used up most of your lifetime SMV on me you grow fed up with me, you can still smash the piggy bank" is part of the trade offer they are implicitly making. There is maybe a coordination problem if the market is such that most men need to make that offer (read: go for women who they can impress with money) to be able to compete, but apart from the possible market-based fixes (if most men are actually rational in making that gamble and we just hear disproportionately about the few that drew the short end of the stick: has something like alimony insurance been done?), I can't say that I've personally ever found it difficult to "date up" economically (though of course "up" is an especially big range if you are an academic).

I think that's a rather dated heuristic. In many urban centers, women outearn men.

Maybe those men should have understood more clearly that if they use their superior earning potential to convince women who would not otherwise sleep with them to do so

It's not exactly often made explicit that this bargain is being made.

if one day when you've already used up most of your lifetime SMV on me you grow fed up with me, you can still smash the piggy bank" is part of the trade offer they are implicitly making.

If this is the trade on offer for something that absolutely must be done to perpetuate the species I suggest we change the offer because the alternative is perishing.

You ready to roll back the whole sexual revolution, or just the parts that hit your identity group?

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil. We had a better system, but Horny Liberalism burned it to the ground in the name of sexual liberation. Well, you asked for it, here it is. There is no risk-free way to allow other people access to your brain, dick, heart and bank account, but allowing that access is a choice you make. Those who make poor choices have to pay for them, one way or another.

tough subject. incredibly corrosive. we are indeed all culpable for wickedness.

i'm reminded of one of the last good sermons i heard. no new ground here--the sins of the father are laid upon the children. parents sow, adults sow, children reap.

lasciviousness did push "sexual liberation" but it wasn't liberalism. it was aristocrats, de jure and de facto, who wanted to eat up whichever attractive commoner women they pleased and fear not the morning. they sowed that pitch-black evil. it lives on. the sex most participatory "perpetrates" the greater share of this evil (whatever that means), but people go with the flow. they always only ever do. they cannot recognize evil as such, they don't know how. look at who their parents were.

there is no righteous solution. these generations have reaped and now they cannot be made whole. artifice will tidily segregate and man will gain great productivity and be so much less for it.

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil. We had a better system, but Horny Liberalism burned it to the ground in the name of sexual liberation. Well, you asked for it, here it is.

Absolutely agreed. Western men are equally as responsible for the current state of things.

There is no risk-free way to allow other people access to your brain, dick, heart and bank account, but allowing that access is a choice you make. Those who make poor choices have to pay for them, one way or another.

If only western society applied this logic to women as much as it does to men...

I've been seeing this rhetoric from certain factions of the right recently, but now I suppose it's being espoused by someone whose attention may be accessible to me—so maybe you can help me out understanding this one.

Who, pray tell, is the audience for this statement? Cads who are looking to get married and start a family? Married men who are looking to fuck around?

What is the thesis of this rant? "Sorry fellas, as long as there are promiscuous men out there, your married ass can't expect fair treatment from family courts."

I am deeply confused.

Who, pray tell, is the audience for this statement? Cads who are looking to get married and start a family? Married men who are looking to fuck around?

The intended audience is anyone dissatisfied with our current norms surrounding sexuality. The thesis is that sexuality is not a series of simple knobs that can be individually fine-tuned to achieve a desired outcome, but is rather a deeply interconnected, highly complex, and highly consequential social system that we cannot reliably conform to our whims.

The sexual revolution's thesis was that crusty old religious fuddy-duddies and repressed bigots had packed our sexual norms full of pointless, killjoy rules based on their own superstitions and hangups, and that once these were removed everyone could just do what felt good and be happy all the time. So they removed all the rules, a whole lot of people got badly hurt, and now they've had to reimpose new, worse rules and people are still pretty unhappy with the results. The claim here is that there are simple, obvious changes that will fix the problems and then everything will be fine. I don't think that was true before, and I don't think it's true here either. Risky sex is always going to be risky sex, no matter how we shuffle the risk around, and the inescapable fact is that all sex involves a significant degree of risk. There are solid strategies capable of seriously mitigating the problems people are pointing to here, but they involve living a Trad life that avoids divorce entirely, not attempting to "fix" divorce so it doesn't fuck people up, something I'm pretty sure it isn't possible to do.

That doesn't mean that none of the examples provided are probative; some of them display some degree of bias, and some are just straight-up badly decided. But I'm fairly confident that these specific issues of female rapists getting child support from male victims are very much edge cases, and while I entirely endorse fixing them, doing so isn't going to do a thing to help the much larger class of despairing men referenced in the comment I was replying to. The fact is that divorce is actually pretty awful, no matter how we try to shuffle its components.

If enough people recognize the failures of the current system, maybe we can as a society try for something better. In the meantime, people are better off accepting that the problem they're pointing to simply isn't going to get fixed, and start looking for workarounds.

That doesn't mean that none of the examples provided are probative; some of them display some degree of bias, and some are just straight-up badly decided. But I'm fairly confident that these specific issues of female rapists getting child support from male victims are very much edge cases, and while I entirely endorse fixing them, doing so isn't going to do a thing to help the much larger class of despairing men referenced in the comment I was replying to. The fact is that divorce is actually pretty awful, no matter how we try to shuffle its components.

But only one part of the argument is about how to "fix divorce". I agree it will never be a pleasant affair.

The other half is "Divorce policies are currently set up to be maximally awful for men and maximally beneficial for women. This is unfair." Your comment does not address this at all. That we may never find a risk distribution that will leave everyone happy is not a good reason to adopt a massively unfair one.

So they removed all the rules, a whole lot of people got badly hurt, and now they've had to reimpose new, worse rules and people are still pretty unhappy with the results.

Very much not a fan of the dude but relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/592/

The audience is dissatisfied young men. Maybe incels, maybe RETVRNers: what matters is openness to women-as-outgroup. The goal is rallying a bloc via distrust for that outgroup. You’re seeing this in right-wing spaces because more liberal ones have very strong antibodies against the general sentiment, for better or worse.

Your interpretation of the thesis is almost correct, but you skipped the premise of societal decay. It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—are the real hypergamists. Thus it becomes “sorry fellas, so long as society is willing to tolerate women acting like whores, your married/responsible/trad ass can’t expect fair treatment.”

There’s a lot to unpack about an almost Marxist version of this argument that’s popular on the far right. But I don’t think you have to bite that bullet to express dissatisfaction with the state of affairs.

The audience is dissatisfied young men.

Dissatisfied young women, too. The current situation makes us all wretched.

what matters is openness to women-as-outgroup.

...What?

Your interpretation of the thesis is almost correct, but you skipped the premise of societal decay. It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—are the real hypergamists. Thus it becomes “sorry fellas, so long as society is willing to tolerate women acting like whores, your married/responsible/trad ass can’t expect fair treatment.”

None of this is accurate. Your married/responsible/trad ass can absolutely expect fair treatment, provided you find a woman willing to treat you fairly, which absolutely can be done. I have in fact done it, and it is delightful. What you can't expect is fair treatment from a system that is, in general, breaking down. There is no way under current conditions for our system to adequately police sexual ethics for men OR women, because we broke too many of the necessary tools, and most of us value personal gratification over workable general rules. It was stupid to imagine that emotionally and sexually intimate relationships can be regulated the way one does parking violations, but here we are.

The problem with relationships is not "Females". The problem is that relationships are necessarily fraught, and we as a society removed most of the safety mechanisms. One can (and should, in my view) find pockets that voluntarily maintain those safety mechanisms. Otherwise, one should understand that there's a lot of risk lying around for everybody that the prevailing narratives resolutely paper over.

Unfortunately, a lot of people making these complaints are the same people helping to generate the risk. You aren't stuck in traffic, you are traffic, as the saying goes. Men and women both embrace Horny Liberalism, and then when the long-term effects manifest, imagine that they can patch the downsides without having to compromise their own desires. Foolishness, but humans were ever thus.

It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—are the real hypergamists. Thus it becomes “sorry fellas, so long as society is willing to tolerate women acting like whores, your married/responsible/trad ass can’t expect fair treatment.”

Maybe we should look up a word before we write an analysis. Your search bar is right there. Type hypergamy into it.

I looked it up, and it seems to fit. Relevant quotes from the first few links:

What point were you trying to make?

You are describing a fairly anodyne observation, that women are more social status conscious and care more about that in their partners, and using Urban Dictionary's almost unrecognizable definition and describing them as whores, which conflates hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

I don't think many of the people you are describing would primarily think of women as whores. They would describe them as gold diggers. Or maybe they would describe them as whores. But not because of hypergamy. They are very distinct traits, even if they are both leveraging sex appeal for personal benefit.

“Gold diggers” would probably have been a better term, yeah. I somehow overlooked it, though I considered “mercenary...”

But I’ll stand by the appropriateness of “whores.” @FCfromSSC wasn’t just describing hypergamy, he was observing entrenched Horny Liberalism. Dismantling social institutions is absolutely associated with prostitution and vice in general.

You are describing a fairly anodyne observation, that women are more social status conscious and care more about that in their partners, and using Urban Dictionary's almost unrecognizable definition and describing them as whores, which conflates hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

I think you're refusing to recognize term (meme) creep here. The Wikipedia definition of hypergamy may be "an anodyne observation that women are more social status conscious and care more about that in their partners," but I never see anyone refer to women and hypergamy where it isn't shorthand for "status-seeking whores."

(FYI, I'm not @netstack)

...using Urban Dictionary's almost unrecognizable definition and describing them as whores, which conflates hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

Urban Dictionary is a perfectly fine source here, because it reflects the same attitudes and biases as the group we're talking about: they conflate hypergamy with being sexually loose for money because "dissatisfied young men. Maybe incels, maybe RETVRNers" conflate hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

See The Red Pill Community Forum|What is hypergamy? How to Benefit from Hypergamy & Everything You Need to Know About Hypergamy. for a second example.

If you think their claims are incorrect or confused, then go ahead and argue that. They are making the claims, though.

More comments

It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—

Do you find the "female", even if paired with "male" and not "man", offensive?

are the real hypergamist

Women value potential for financial prospects more than men. See this study, page 7 of the PDF. In every of the 37 global cultures included in the study, human females valued "good financial prospects" more than human males did.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply that your claim was incorrect. True statements are valid rallying flags.

females

I think your usage is appropriate.

There is a stronger form of the hypergamy claim where it represents a class interest, a cause rather than an effect. When “female” is used in that context, it is an attempt to sneak onto clinical high ground. I understand that’s not what you were doing.

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil.

What puts men on edge is not that there are bad women around who will do bad things. It's the fact that the women who do bad things are aided and abetted by the legal and policy systems in place, and the fact that the harms they perpetrate are often actively enabled and worsened by these systems.

And some of these harms are really egregious. You don't have to be in a long-term relationship with a woman for the state to try to obligate you. You don't even have to be a consenting party to the act that results in conception. In the case of a woman using deceptive and coercive means to trap an unwilling man into fatherhood, the system will vigorously extract money from that man and hand it to that woman for 18 to 26 years.

In one such case (Hermesmann v. Seyer), the father was a minor child who was statutorily raped, and the court found him responsible for the financial support of the resulting child. Other cases of male victims of statutory rape being made to pay child support include Nick Olivas and Nathaniel J. In the latter case, Judge Arthur Gilbert stated that "Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities."

The article "Fatherhood By Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination And The Duty Of Child Support" also has a very good rundown of things (and while I do disagree with some of the moral positions the author takes, the cases cited within shine light on an issue that is rarely focused on). Regarding the question of whether a male victim of statutory rape is liable for child support payments should the rape result in a child: "[T]here are numerous cases in which an adult woman became pregnant as a result of sexual relations she initiated with a minor child. Nonetheless, despite the number of times this question has arisen, every single court has answered it in the affirmative - holding that, yes, the minor father is liable."

Then there are also completely nonconsenting adult male victims of female-perpetrated rape that have been made to pay child support to the mothers. For example, an Alabama man known as S.F. in 1992 attended a party at the home of a female friend, T.M, and was raped by T.M. when he was unconscious. He was held responsible for child support, and on appeal his argument that the court should relieve him of child support duties failed. And in another similar case, Daniel was a Wisconsin father who claimed that the mother, Jennifer, administered a date rape drug to him, and despite the jury concluding that his sexual intercourse with Jennifer was involuntary, he had to pay child support. Then there are cases like Emile Frisard's, where there was no rape, but the mother got pregnant by retrieving the father's semen from oral sex and impregnating herself with it, and in that case the court also upheld his child support obligation.

Meanwhile, here's what happened in the one case in which a court was called upon to decide whether a female victim of sexual assault was liable for child support. "In DCSE/Esther M.C. v. Mary L., a mother refused to provide support for her three minor children on the basis that they were “the result of an incestuous relationship with her brother,” and, as such, “it was not a voluntary decision on her part to have the minor children.” In ruling, the court did what no court has ever done when confronted with the child support obligations of a male victim of sexual assault - the court ruled that the mother may not be liable. According to the court, “[i]f the sexual intercourse which results in the birth of a child is involuntary or without actual consent, a mother may have ‘just cause’ . . . for failing or refusing to support such a child.”"

And the article notes that this is the case despite the fact that women have more options than men after conception - "they can later elect to abort the child or give the child up for adoption, thus terminating her parental rights. In contrast, a father cannot make those choices absent the cooperation of the mother." I'd also add the morning-after pill as another example of a precautionary measure a woman can take (if she is sexually assaulted, or she is afraid her partner has poked holes in the condom, etc). Men also lack this option.

Again, it is not that women can harm men that makes a lot of men wary. It's not even that women can get away with harming men. It's that the system itself, even when acknowledging that the woman committed an intentional and morally inexcusable act on the man, will enforce the continuation of that harm.

There is no risk-free way to allow other people access to your brain, dick, heart and bank account, but allowing that access is a choice you make. Those who make poor choices have to pay for them, one way or another.

You are essentially claiming that if family court and child support etc are biased against men, men have to take that risk into account and if they don't, whatever happens is something they assented to. But I think it is hardly a viable choice when the "choice" in question is between lifelong celibacy and opening yourself up to the possibility of getting completely screwed over by an incredibly broken system. To claim that being unable to tolerate the former situation constitutes a "poor choice" on one's own part is really quite unfair. And the point falls apart even further when you consider the fact that men (and boys) who have been raped or otherwise sexually taken advantage of by women have been forced to pay child support.

You are essentially claiming that if family court and child support etc are biased against men, men have to take that risk into account and if they don't, whatever happens is something they assented to. But I think it is hardly a viable choice when the "choice" in question is between lifelong celibacy and opening yourself up to the possibility of getting completely screwed over by an incredibly broken system.

Sex is risky in many ways besides the obvious. Yes, if you choose not to be celibate, you choose to take on risk.

If you hook up with a malicious actor, you might get screwed over. This is true for women just as much as men. The nature of the screwing might be different, but for every story of some poor fellow who got drunk at a party and wound up stuck with 18 years of child support, there are plenty of stories of women who got drunk at a party and wound up with a child and a deadbeat dad. Or a stalker, or an abuser.

Men and women can be extraordinarily shitty to each other. Without being a conservative myself, I think there is much to be said for the traditional concept of, you know, being careful and selective about who you hook up with. This does not, of course, guarantee that one doesn't wind up with a bad partner who screws you over in the end, but it greatly reduces the likelihood.

I have little sympathy for anyone of either sex who wants to go sow their wild oats and not be held accountable for the reaping.

@KulakRevolt's screed is as usual as entertaining as it is devoid of rigor or probity. It's just another fist shaken at society, another reason why we should burn everything down. And all the people with deep grievances against women coming out, as they always do in threads like these, are missing the point of child support, as they always do in threads like these. The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. You want to get your dick wet, you know there is a possibility of producing a child, and if it's not your responsibility (jointly) to provide for that child, then whose is it? I see no reason why anyone else who wasn't involved in the bumping of uglies should have to pay for it.

Sure, I see your edge case of one woman in one case who was held not responsible for children she was forcibly impregnated with by incest, and I'll agree that there's a certain inequity there when compared with your other edge case of one guy who got drunk at a party and woke up a father nine months later. The law isn't an algorithm, this is like comparing that one man who shot someone in Kansas and got a suspended sentence and that other woman who shot someone in Florida and got life. Even if we agree that the cases are roughly comparable, this does not mean the law treats women murderers more harshly than men and thus laws against murder are sexist and terrible.

None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.

  • -18

(Helpful reminder to the thread that even off Reddit, we still don't downvote for disagreeing!)

Pretty clearly we do!

(Seriously, has ever been so. There is no amount of pleading or haranguing that will make people stop doing it. Just as a certain number of people will always report others for disagreeing.)

The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility.

And yet every single state in the US has safe haven laws where a woman can just hand away the kid after birth and is left with zero (0) consequences. The father doesn't even get to choose to keep the child, the mother can just hand it away. Those children become the state's responsibility as well but nobody cares about the hypocrisy.

Those children become the state's responsibility as well but nobody cares about the hypocrisy.

That's because safe haven laws are there to stop women dumping unwanted babies who will then die. They have different goals. Remember the legal system is not monolithic. It has been built by people with varying goals and ideas, who have assembled a patchwork of interlocking systems at different times, from different parties and different ideologies.

Having said that, do note, that the other parent may be able to petition for custody and in some states the State must specifically check with the other parent before revoking parental rights. It does vary by state. So it is not necessarily true that the father does not get to choose to keep the child.

That's because safe haven laws are there to stop women dumping unwanted babies who will then die.

Then why isn't their a provision to allow fathers to dump unwanted babies who will then die? If you're going to say it's because the mother may want them then the same argument also applies in reverse. And even given that some states allow the other parent to petition for custody, this isn't true in all of them.

Safe haven laws as far as i can tell don't specify which parent can use them. So men can use them its just much less common.

More comments

And I want to point out that this is how the conservative movement in the USA tends to see things. A man or teenaged boy who chooses to have sex is choosing to at least potentially make a baby. So is a woman, but most conservatives don't support abortion rights.

If you wanted to make a law that male rape victims can't be held responsible for child support, I suspect that the American conservative movement would go "ok, makes sense, but it's not the world's #1 problem". But this idea that sex can possibly be without commitment or "no strings attached" or whatever is absolutely foreign to conservative sentiment. Sex makes responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are babies, sometimes those responsibilities are just to your partner, but they're always there and you shouldn't try to wiggle out of them.

All this is well and good, if we lived in conservative world absolutely men should take responsibility for their offspring. But we don't live in conservative world, we live in the hyper individualist progressive world where accountability is a dirty word and men are noticing that everyone else gets to reap the rewards of this tradeoff except themselves. All these universal values that we're supposed to stoicly bear when they're against our interests seem to turn to sand the moment a situations comes up when they might defend our interests and we're starting to see that the game appears to be rigged. That if there is an universal value in play it is that we will do what is best for women and this is only not said aloud as to dupe credulous men. alimony seems very much to be less about the kid and more about the state leaning on it's monopoly of force to skip out on a bill that is the obvious consequence of its other policies.

If consent to sex is consent to a parenthood then lets live in that world, if it's not please stop pretending that we do when it harms me.

If consent to sex is consent to a parenthood then lets live in that world, if it's not please stop pretending that we do when it harms me.

What would this world that you don't think exists look like to you, besides banning abortion?

Something more like socially enforced monogamy, premarital sex being looked at more like experimenting with opiods than some life phase important for self discovery. I'm not really one of these conservatives, my preference is for the more freedom oriented world we do live in, I just find the inconsistent application of values grating.

All these universal values that we're supposed to stoicly bear when they're against our interests seem to turn to sand the moment a situations comes up when they might defend out interests and we're starting to see that the game appears to be rigged.

Correct; the meta-rule is just "you lose". It's not so strange that leftists endorse this situation. It is strange that conservatives do also.

Do you have similar feelings about revenge porn? After all, if she didn't want those pictures out there, she shouldn't have had them taken in the first place. I find it rather perverse that men who engage in oral sex with condoms are considered to be freely giving "a gift — an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee", so have no legal recourse should she decide to use the sperm to later artificially inseminate herself and burden him with responsibility for a child while women who consent to recording sexual activities are protected from his later use of said recordings.

I don't think revenge porn is directly comparable, but yes, I do think it's pretty stupid to put your nudes out there if you expect them never to be shared, and I also think that someone who shares someone's nudes nonconsensually is a scumbag.

As for these edge case scenarios people keep bringing up like the woman who digs a condom out of the trash to impregnate herself, I think the law probably should make exceptions for truly involuntary cases of impregnation (male rape victims, stolen condoms/sperm, etc.), which would be equitable with the right of women to use abortion to avoid involuntary pregnancy. That the law currently does not address these rare cases "fairly" is not a compelling argument to me that therefore all the other men who'd like to sever paternal responsibilities should be able to do so.

there are plenty of stories of women who got drunk at a party and wound up with a child and a deadbeat dad.

And if and when she did, the system won't hold her accountable. It offers her plenty of outs, such as 1: abortion, 2: safe haven abandonment, and 3: adoption, all of which she has a unique ability to access because she carries the child, and additionally any child born out of wedlock is in her sole custody by default and thus she won't be guilty of custodial interference by taking advantage of safe haven laws. Pray tell, why has your hypothetical woman not taken advantage of any of these options available to her, if she does not want to care for a child and the father is out of the picture? And which analogous "ways out" are fathers allowed?

The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. You want to get your dick wet, you know there is a possibility of producing a child, and if it's not your responsibility (jointly) to provide for that child, then whose is it?

Yet safe haven abandonment is explicitly allowed, and these laws absolutely create unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. I suppose that by the same token, you oppose safe haven abandonment as a method of surrendering parental responsibility for women, correct? If you have decided not only to perform the act that resulted in conception but also have carried the pregnancy to term and have eschewed every option to terminate up until that point, then you absolutely have the responsibility to care for it. Under this worldview, that is.

I'm not going to lie, this entire "personal responsibility" screed you've produced here sounds like an awfully convenient way to avoid the clear double standards that exist surrounding this entire thing.

The law isn't an algorithm, this is like comparing that one man who shot someone in Kansas and got a suspended sentence and that other woman who shot someone in Florida and got life.

If you look at it in isolation, perhaps. Looking at the entire picture, it forms part of a much larger pattern wherein women are treated with far more leniency and are granted far more options when it comes to abrogating parental responsibilities.

None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.

Sure. They're claiming it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities because women can.

And if and when she did, the system won't hold her accountable.

The law does hold women accountable for providing for the care of their children. Women have options men do not have for terminating pregnancy because men do not get pregnant.

Only a handful of infants are surrendered every year under safe haven laws. I doubt many of those were produced by fathers who otherwise would have been willing participants in the child's upbringing.

I'm not going to lie, this entire "personal responsibility" screed you've produced here sounds like an awfully convenient way to avoid the clear double standards that exist surrounding this entire thing.

The double standard is one enforced by biology.

Yes. They're claiming it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities because women can.

But they don't actually care about this, they just want to be able to have consequence-free sex and leave the woman stuck with the responsibility of deciding what to do if she becomes pregnant. I believe exactly zero arguments based on "unfairness."

The point you carefully elide is that in those cases where a woman can sever her responsibilities, she's also terminating any responsibility the father has as well. You also speak of adoption and safe haven abandonment as if this is a common and casual option, like Plan B.

  • -13

The double standard is one enforced by biology.

It's really strange how when this subject comes up so many people transform into BASED proponents of natural law.

Rape should be legal. Why would men be stronger than women if it wasn't to physically dominate them?

Nah, see men have two reproductive strategies and fucking everything that moves willing or not is just one of them.

Hobbes would justly point out that it is our duty to civilize and attune ourselves to the best parts of our nature, which here is clearly the second one where people marry and don't destroy each other in the chaos of the war of all against all.

Natural law isn't the state of nature.

That's a weird take and I don't think it's an ingenuous one.

Recognizing that biology has a material impact does not mean being a proponent of "based natural law" and fantasies about reverting to Hobbesian savagery.

More comments

Women have options men do not have for terminating pregnancy because men do not get pregnant.

In my opinion, abortion is a far more morally fraught method of surrendering parental responsibility than legal paternal surrender (LPS). There's the worse issue in abortion of "maybe we're killing something here that deserves rights" which simply isn't present in LPS. Perhaps hardline pro-choicers who don't see the unborn as being deserving of rights at any stage of development and don't see any moral greyness in any part of the issue would disagree, but IMO that's a thorny issue which is very unique to abortion. It actually appears to me that abortion is a more questionable practice than LPS. There are very few methods of surrendering parental responsibility that don't invite moral objection.

And that debate aside, the existence of abortion as a unique option for women that already exists by virtue of them getting pregnant raises the question as to why women have further additional methods of surrendering their parental responsibility that men do not after birth.

Only a handful of infants are surrendered every year under safe haven laws. I doubt many of those were produced by fathers who otherwise would have been willing participants in the child's upbringing.

By bringing up safe haven abandonment I'm not arguing that women are giving babies away that fathers want (though that is a distinct possibility and IIRC in the case of adoption there have been cases where biological fathers were alienated from their children - the rights of fathers are often not appropriately respected in these proceedings). Rather, I'm arguing that if a woman does not want a kid she's given birth to, she can abandon it, and put the burden on the state to deal with it.

If we were to be consistent with the principle that taxpayers should not be obligated to pay for children that aren't theirs, she should not be allowed to access safe haven abandonment at all. She should be made to keep the kid that she chose to carry to term, and help the state identify the biological father so the child can receive support from both parents. That this is not the current system is pretty incongruent.

But they don't actually care about this, they just want to be able to have consequence-free sex and leave the woman stuck with the responsibility of deciding what to do if she becomes pregnant. I believe exactly zero arguments based on "unfairness."

I'm a pretty strong supporter of LPS myself from a moral consistency standpoint. I'm also very certain your characterisation doesn't accurately portray my motivations for arguing in favour of it, given the fact that I don't have any desire to have "consequence-free sex" with women. Or just sex with women at all.

Very few of the policies I argue in favour of with regards to male-female relations actually end up benefiting me.

The point you carefully elide is that in those cases where a woman can sever her responsibilities, she's also terminating any responsibility the father has as well.

Correct. She is allowed to sever her responsibilities if she wants, and also terminate the father's responsibilities in the process. None of this contradicts my assertion that women have an array of options they can utilise to terminate their parental responsibilities, some of which they can utilise even after birth, and men typically cannot do so at any stage of the process without also having the woman's cooperation and consent.

Sex is risky in many ways besides the obvious. Yes, if you choose not to be celibate, you choose to take on risk.

Which doesn't apply to the rape victim cases.

None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.

I think that if the law had an unprincipled exception exactly for rape victims and nobody else, these men wouldn't be happy. I also think that if the law had an exception for rape victims that was based on principles, then the kind of principles that would support an exception for rape victims would inherently change the rest of the system, in such a way that they'd be happy.

To answer your first statement: absolutely! No one in my generation asked for this, no one in my circle wants it, and I think it should be the one burned to the ground. It’s pure societal poison.

As for men (or women) who treat their spouses in a "pitch-black evil" way, we've always had means of dealing with that, outside a parasitical family court machine. A strong family is a good start, for example. Something that the current M.O. has made scarce.

This. If I mistreat my future wife (who I'm pretty certain I'm getting from back home) she would have her own family to go to for support. Also my own family would probably disown me, because the consequences of it coming out publicly that they support their women hurting son would make it extremely difficult for my younger brother to get married.

And not just support. In a tight-knit community, if you beat up your wife (who is also someone's daughter/sister), you can expect a dad/brother/their buddies bringing hell to your front door the next morning.

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil.

The difference of course being that the former is done with the full backing of the state.

I don't think conservatives (or, at least, those of a particularly very religious bent) have nothing to say about family court and alimony and all that per se, but their current solution is probably something like a dead-simple "no divorce allowed" stance. No need for family court when the missus has no ability to file for divorce (or at least without damn good reason).

Even so, how is "abolish family court" supposed to work? How does the concept of family court account for millennial reluctance, outside of "divorce as a setback for men is so scary that it's yet another demotivator for the very-aware millennial?"

I think MRAs were the ones pushing hardest against lopsided alimony and all that, but for as much potential alpha as it has, it's just not been that attractive an idea.

but their current solution is probably something like a dead-simple "no divorce allowed" stance.

How many prominent conservatives (particularly politicans) openly advocate for getting rid of no-fault divorce?

How many prominent conservatives (particularly politicans) openly advocate for getting rid of no-fault divorce?

https://gillespieshields.com/101-facts-about-divorce-in-2021/

Every 13 seconds, there is one divorce in America.

That equates to 277 divorces per hour, 6,646 divorces per day, 46,523 divorces per week, and 2,419,196 divorces per year.

If you wanted to give every divorce full due process, do the math how much new courts, lawyers and judges would you need for this gigantic agenda, and how much it will cost.

I don't get your point? No-fault divorce is the most common kind of divorce. When no-fault divorce was introduced, the rate of divorce skyrocketed. No-fault divorce increases the number of divorces, and therefore the amount spent on divorces.

Feature, not a bug if you are against divorce.

Feature, not a bug if you are a lawyer. Otherwise, I do not see any benefit for anyone.

Increase the cost of X then you get less of X. So if you want divorce to occur less frequently increasing the cost drives down frequency.

How many prominent conservatives (particularly politicans) openly advocate for getting rid of no-fault divorce?

It's hopeless under current conditions, and we have our own methods of ameliorating the problem within our own communities.

none will suggest ending no-fault divorce

Really? Because at least the Catholic circles I run in will constantly rail against no-fault divorce, and even lots-of-fault divorce.


What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats