>Comment of the Day: Child support is worse than rape

>This brings to mind a post I read recently on that whackadoodle Paul Elam's site titled Rape is not Special and Neither are You where the writer states… "If you're the victim of a rape in the real world, you'll get over it." "Being raped doesn't make you a special person, and in fact, unpleasant, as unwanted sex is, it’s not actually that big a deal. Even if the rape is a particularly brutal and violent event – if the victim of a rape isn't physically crippled in the event, they'll recover…"It's not surprising to hear a statement like this from an MRA. We already know they have no empathy for others, especially women.

>@SallyStrange…I had to quote this…"Seriously though, yes. The only thing which transforms a blastula or a fetus into an "unborn baby" is the eager anticipation of a willing mother. She has the power to create it or kill it. If she doesn't want it then it's just a fetus. If she does then it's a baby. It is rather god-like isn't it? Hence all the womb envy.""eager anticipation" If thats the case just "will" the fetus dead. I mean with out your concious approval won't it just dissapear?A god-like quality? A biological function has now turned into god-like has it? Tell me when someone murders a non-aborted person is this also a god-like quality? Shall we change the title of mother to God?Geez NWO, I didn’t think you were especially stupid. Is this really so hard to understand? Basically I am agreeing with you, that yes, it is the whim of the pregnant woman that determines a fetus’ status as “baby”, that is, a human being with personhood status that deserves to be protected. Why? For the simple reason that only she is capable of protecting the fetus until it becomes an actual born person. A pregnant woman has the power of life or death. She creates the fetus and she can destroy it. That is rather god-like, don’t you think? Well, maybe you don’t, I don’t know. To me it seems that way. I mean, technically speaking, there’s no such thing as an “unborn baby.” Scientifically, it’s a fetus right up until the cord is cut. What determines whether a fetus gets defined as a baby? The willingness of the pregnant woman to gestate and birth that baby. If she doesn’t want it, AND she has access to legal abortion, then it never gets to be a baby. Creation or destruction? It’s up to the pregnant woman and no one else, unless you are willing to live in an autocratic state in which the government assumes that god-like power of creation. And then there’s this…Any arguement in favor of abortion is ludicrous, like @SallyStrange…"After all, this separate human being which has its own rights is perfectly free to pursue its interests…just somewhere outside of my body." So Sally can a child survive on it's own after birth? Yes thats it just walk away afterwards, that little bastard is on it's own.Well, assuming that I didn’t want the baby in the first place, and only went through the agony of giving birth because I didn’t have the option of terminating my pregnancy early on, then yes: I might just walk away from the kid. Why is that so surprising? Now it’s on you, collective you, the people who told me I wasn’t qualified to determine whether to have an abortion or not, to take care of the kid. I hope you’re down with raising taxes. Contrast that with a fetus, at least in the first two trimesters, which CANNOT be cared for by anyone but the pregnant woman. No matter how much you might wish to take that fetus away from that fickle, flighty female and gestate it yourself, it is a physical impossibility. Unless you have some secret patent-pending plans for a working artificial womb? I’d love to hear about that. So would the Nobel Committee.

>@Captain Bathrobe…You quote california legislation? You must be kidding. Tell me, if this so called legislation grants "default" equal custody, why, when the question of custody is arrises does the child "always" reside with the mother (by default) during the case? Doesn't the father therefore have to "fight" for equal custody? And then spend countless dollars only to lose. In the absence of a court order to the contrary, legal custody is presumed to be joint. I didn't speak to the issue of when custody is disputed, but that fact that joint custody is the default in CA in the absence of a court order is pretty much common knowledge among those of us who work in social services. Also, you're confusing legal custody (the right to make decisions for children regarding health care, education, etc.) with physical custody (the right to have the child reside with you). They are two different issues.

>Orion: Although I agree with almost everything you've said — including your comment about the pressure that rape victims experience to appear traumatized — I have to say that I took Sally's comment to mean that Cold was being disingenuous. Disingenuousness isn't the same as lying but it's pretty damned close.The subject of rape is problematic for many reasons, one of which, encapsulated by this discussion, is that for a misogynist, this subject engenders two contradictory pressures. On the one hand, there is the constant attempt to trivialize rape, because in the eyes of a misogynist, women shouldn't have autonomy over their own bodies anyway, while women's desires and feelings do not matter. On the other hand, rape has to remain a horrific experience because if you trivialize it TOO much, it stops being perceived as a serious threat by women, and its effectiveness in circumscribing women's behavior, controlling women's sexuality and punishing women's social transgressions evaporates; hence comparing everything to rape and the social expectation that rape victims fulfill the role of damaged goods.Cold follows that paradigm, of course, at once trivializing rape and exaggerating the burden of supporting one's own children. It is noteworthy, however, that it's easy to say "I'd rather be raped" if one is part of a group that's at a low risk for rape outside of prison and one that isn't customarily subjected to rape as a way to stigmatize and "destroy". It's an inflammatory figure of speech, more than anything else.

>Hey, you know what else only lasts a few minutes? Water boarding.But, really, water boarding can't be that bad. It's not really hurting anyone, it's just making the victim feel like they're drowning! I mean, what's a little water? Seriously, anybody traumatized by it is just a wimpy wimp and a liar. Didn't they ever play the dunking game as a child? /sarcasmIf I went around making those arguments, it'd be fair to assume I didn't know the first thing about water boarding.

>Captain,I too wondered if Sally meant "psychosis" rather than "psychopathy." It's true that psychopathy poses a different set of problems than other mental illnesses, since psychopaths often commit crimes, while schizophrenics or depressives are more likely to be victims. That said, a fair number of psychopaths do end up in prison or involuntarily hospitalized, both of which can be dangerous situations. But regardless of how much violence is actually directed at psychopaths, I'm still troubled by the comment's dehumanization. For psychopaths in the classic "serial killer" mold, I can't bring myself to care overmuch, but people are beginning to talk about a sociopathy spectrum, where psychopathic traits are part of the explanation for the behaviors of some reasonably decent people.

>If I went around making those arguments, it'd be fair to assume I didn't know the first thing about water boarding.It's very telling from the arguments I have heard that none of you know the first thing about being put on the hook for child support for a child that you never, ever wanted and which might not even actually be yours. Admittedly I haven't experienced this either, but at least I have actually talked with men who have, some of whom have used rape as a metaphor in their description of what it's like. Of course, forced sodomy is also what may very well await them if they are ever unable to pay due to economic circumstances beyond their control.

>Amused,Is it above your abilities to address my actual points instead of making a ludicrous strawman and attacking that instead?

>Nah, I think I'll just call you a damn dirty liar.How incredibly empathetic of you."Hey kid version of Cold, I'm a time traveling rapist here to fulfill a bargain made by your future self. I'm going to forcibly sodomize you, but trust me, you'll thank me for this later when you don't have to cough up some money every month to support some kid who is just as innocent as you are now–or at least, as innocent as you were a few minutes ago."If some mad scientist with a time machine offered to go back in time and save me from being sexually abused as a child, at the price of also sending someone to jump me and forcibly sodomize me at some point in the near future, I'd make that trade because it's preferable to what happened to me all those years ago.Cold is either somewhere on the clinical psychopathy scale, or just lying his ass off.Why do you present that as an either/or scenario? Psychopaths have no problem lying about things. I wasn't, however, aware of any kind of scale for that condition.

>Actually I should add, at least one of the men to whom I talked about paying child support considers himself to have been "raped by deception" by the woman to whom he has to pay the money. He says that she told him she was completely barren, but as it turns out she was not only perfectly fertile but was actually taking fertility drugs. I'm inclined to agree with his assessment.

>I apologize for dehumanizing mentally ill people with my words. It was poorly spoken of me. I just meant to say that Cold's comments reveal a severe break from any sense of empathy, for himself or anyone else. I think either option–that he really was raped, and is now dismissing the experience as something that only lasted a few minutes (I mean, his current behavior by itself is testimony that the effects have been far more long-lasting than he's willing to admit to himself), or that he's lying about having been raped, reveals that he doesn't relate to himself or others in a, well, neurotypical way. By "neurotypical" I mean able to feel empathy. Both for himself and others. I am unfamiliar with the terminology, please forgive my awkwardness.

>False accusers make people less likely to believe genuine victims. How does that not make sense?Oh and Sally, you haven't exactly been demonstrating much empathy yourself. As far as my mental status goes, I have never been diagnosed with any kind of psychosis and as far as psychological testing goes I am either neurotypical or capable of pretending to be neurotypical so convincingly that I can fool trained professionals.