From Human Stupidity, an MRA blog rather obsessed with underage girls and the alleged evil of age of consent laws:
[I]f a 15 year old … can decide to have sex with a 16 year old … [h]ow come she cannot have sex with a 35 year old? Age discrimination by law?
Are you worried about manipulation of the tender 15 year old? I have a solution:
what about legalizing sex with underage adolescents, if they first undergo an hour of mandatory counselling and a 2 day cool off period? That should take care of this issue. This would guarantee safety for the 15 year old against being conned or manipulated. More safety that is offered to 21 year old tipsy Friday night party girls who may feel sorry for what they did yesterday
I think he might actually be serious here. Though it’s pretty clear he’d be happy with any excuse to make it legal for 35 year-old men to have sex with 15 year-old girls.
@Brandon- and who exactly is going to pay for foster care, oversight and training of foster parents and the court or bureau that will decide when to give the children back?
Your suggestions are not going to magically happen without cost either.
So, children are taken away from parents who FOR WHATEVER REASON cannot provide for them as you would like. Now what? Do you propose we stack them like cord wood and throw a tarp over them until their parents demonstrate they have enough income?
Give me a number. What’s your lower limit on ‘can afford a child’? Do parents get screened annually to assure they haven’t fallen below it? Who does the screening?
Social workers cost money and are already over-loaded. Foster parents are screened and trained and that costs money. Foster parents in my state are reimbursed for the child’s care costs and the child’s medical and dental care is covered- that costs money. Adding more kids to that system would cost more money.
@Need to know: It isn’t about money. It is about providing a basic life for the child. I don’t think it is too much to ask that parents can feed, cloth and shelter a child. So I can’t give you a number. Unless you think that women should be able to have children without any foresight in caring for the child.
Women also make a conscious decision to have a child. There is birth control prior to conception. Morning after pills for any “whoops the condom broke” problems and abortion. So I find it highly implausible that you just “whoops…I had a kid”. The mother made a decision to not take birth control (ya ya ya but if you take it as prescribed it is 99% effective), didn’t pressure the guy to wear a condom (he shouldn’t really need pressuring…but you can refuse if he doesn’t wear a condom), if the condom breaks you can get the morning after pill and if you miss all those “I want out” windows…you have abortion. There are enough tools and resources to prevent pregnancy, so I don’t buy the whole “well birth control failed” or “he wanted sex without a condom” excuses.
Of course there are always HUD, section 8, WIC and food stamps, food pantries. But I would think it would be highly demoralizing to rely solely on the kindness of strangers, charities or the taxpayer.
@Voip: Love isn’t more important than money. But when you don’t have a meal in your stomach, food is more important than the dopamine swimming around in your head.
*sighs*
Brandon obviously has not met a lot of people-especially those from the inner city who are poor as it is abundantly clear he was raised with money.
Oh, but Elizabeth, he was homeless once, so he knows all about it. Plus, bootstraps.
Brandon, I can agree with you on that, yeah, there are probably people having kids in the US that can’t afford them. But the reasons for that are complex, a primary one being that sex ed in this country is shit (remember abstinence only education? Or protests outside of abortion clinics… oh, wait, you live where that doesn’t happen.)
“Whoops…I had a kid” is actually plausible if you 1.) have been given poor sex ed information (in my four years of high school sex ed, they never once showed how to put on a condom properly), 2.) have poor access to birth control in the first place (the nearest PP in my state is so overloaded I’ve never managed to make an appointment), 3.) realize “I don’t want to put on a condom” is a frikkin’ battle sometimes or 4.) you’ve been taught that abortion is wrong, that it’s illegal, or you don’t have the funds.
You want all kids to be “wanted kids”? So do I! But most of the people in my generation who actually know shit about sex were lucky enough to find it on the ‘net… not because we were receiving accurate info from our schools, families, or peers. There’s a lot of shit to shovel before the majority of people have access to real information rather than simply being told “abortion is murder”.
@katz and @Pecunium: yeah, at least here in Canada we do have universal health care. Physiotherapy isn’t covered, though, for some reason, so that’s a big out-of-pocket expense for her. It’s a really shitty situation – she’s looking for work she can do from home, but until then I suppose the RSPCA should repossess her cat. o_0
This sounds like the set-up for a really weird anime!
All true, no doubt, but as I pointed out to you above, there are actual constructive things that can be done to alleviate child poverty. None of them include redefining poverty as abuse.
Yeah, it really sucks that some parents find themselves unable to provide the basic necessities for their children. No doubt some of those parents are also abusive or neglectful. But for the ones who are not, and who would like to provide for their children but can’t (because of OH I DON’T KNOW, THE SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION WE’RE GOING THROUGH RIGHT NOW), something can be done! Really quite easily in an affluent society!
But advocating for social justice and supporting welfare programs, that just isn’t half as satisfying as sitting back and taking pot shots at poor folks, now is it?
Brandon: @Need to know: It isn’t about money: No, according to you it’s about, “resources” and t is about providing a basic life for the child. I don’t think it is too much to ask that parents can feed, cloth and shelter a child. all of which are free for the asking.
Except they aren’t, or you wouldn’t be whinging about how all thos nasty poor people ought to be forbidden to have (or perhaps merely keep) children.
For their own good, of course.
Molly: Or protests outside of abortion clinics… oh, wait, you live where that doesn’t happen.)
Molly, he lives in Boston, where clinics are bombed, and/or shot up. So there’s not any anti-planning of parenthood in Massachusetts, which isn’t the most liberal of places when you get into the more rural areas outside the communities along 128.
And not so much in Southie either, where the more egregious aspects of American Roman Catholicism are more prevalent.
kristinmh has the right of it.
The poverty is the problem, not the poor people. You won’t fix one by punishing the other.
“Molly, he lives in Boston, where clinics are bombed, and/or shot up. So there’s not any anti-planning of parenthood in Massachusetts, which isn’t the most liberal of places when you get into the more rural areas outside the communities along 128.”
Dang. Hasn’t he been talking about how this stuff is *more available* where he lives?
Molly: The lack of clinic access and funding doesn’t affect Brandon’s life in any way, therefore it cannot affect anyone else’s life in any way. The entire universe revolves around Brandon and Brandon’s problems and Brandon’s wang, don’t forget.
It’s more available than many places, but it’s not The Netherlands, or Germany, or England. It’s the US, and even the most civilised parts of it (e.g. Mountain View, or San Mateo Calif. San Francisco liberal) the PP clinics have bullet-proof window and protests that happen more than once a week; at locations that don’t do abortions; just women’s health and STD testing.
That Johnathan Swift fellow had a few interesting ideas!
It’s also possible that, oh, I dunno, poor people could have kids deliberately.
So what’s best for a poor woman (who meets your standard of “poor,” of course) is that she have neither.
How old are you, Brandon? You write like a 19 year old who’s just taken an Economics class, but I remember that you’ve already had a career in the military, so you must be at least in your mid-20s.
Holy lol. You think that people would prefer to have their families broken up than to rely on taxpayer money. You think that watching your shrieking 4 year old get driven away to foster care is less demoralizing than accepting a handout.
It’s like Skynet is just beginning to learn about emotions through you.
“It’s also possible that, oh, I dunno, poor people could have kids deliberately.”
Voip, that’s true as well, but I thought that point had been covered already. Also, I know more about sex ed than I do economics. XD
Voip, that’s true as well, but I thought that point had been covered already. Also, I know more about sex ed than I do economics. XD
Oh yeah, I know you know that. Just Brandon’s barely-concealed wish to relegate all poor people to an existence without children for the good of the productive, deserving citizens is EVEN MORE FUCKED-UP than his attitude that he’s being totally non-manipulative when he tells his partners that he’s going to sleep around and if they don’t like it, he will leave them.
Christ in Heaven, imagine the thankless job that your average Child-Remover must have. Those dudes drink so much, they go home and hug their kids and shiver a little, the turnover in the Child-Removal Division of HHS is so high, and Brandon, it is all your fault.
“…Brandon, it is all your fault.”
Wait, what? XD
Brandon’s a closeted eugenicist, isn’t he? I can only think of one surefire way to make sure poor people don’t reproduce…
@Katz: Ya, I am a eugenicist because I want potential parents to have some foresight when bringing a child into this world. If that isn’t hyperbole….then nothing is.
Raising children is a social service. It is good for society. In many ways, it is society. Not to mention that the cost of foster homing 22% of children (percent of US children living below poverty line) in the country would be fare more than what even a solid welfare system costs. You would end up paying strangers to take care of kids, to house and feed them, you might as well pay their loving parents to do the same.
Brandon: @Katz: Ya, I am a eugenicist because I want potential parents to have some foresight when bringing a child into this world. If that isn’t hyperbole….then nothing is.
Then nothing is. Because that has been the argument of eugenicists for more than 100 years. Specifically a large body have argued the poor and the “stupid” need to be kept from breeding because they will overwhelm the rich and the “smart”.
Then there are the racists, but classic eugenicists have been class based.
@darksidecat: Again, I never mentioned poor or the poverty line. There are still people in this country that make little but still give their children food, clothing and shelter.
Raising children that one can afford or properly care for is a good thing. Bringing children into this world that will suffer from hunger or lack of shelter is a social burden, since society has to pick up the tab to raise your child because you are unable too.