The inhabitants of Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit seem to have developed a sudden crush on the authoritarian Chinese government. Why? Well, it seems that the lovable tyrants have decided to crack down on evil golddigger bitches. According to an article in The Telegraph, linked to in the subreddit,
In a bid to temper the rising expectations of Chinese women, China’s Supreme Court has now ruled that from now on, the person who buys the family home, or the parents who advance them the money, will get to keep it after divorce.
“Hopefully this will help educate younger people, especially younger women, to be more independent, and to think of marriage in the right way rather than worshipping money so much,” said Hu Jiachu, a lawyer in Hunan province.
The ruling should also help relieve some of the burden on young Chinese men, many of whom fret about the difficulty of buying even a small apartment.
Never mind that the lopsided demographics in China today — where young men greatly outnumber young women, making it harder for young men to find wives — are not the result of excess feminism, but the result of a toxic mixture of cultural misogyny and the authoritarian regime’s “one child” program. As William Saletan explains the logic in Slate:
Girls are culturally and economically devalued; the government uses powerful financial levers to prevent you from having another child; therefore, to make sure you can have a boy, you abort the girl you’re carrying.
The result? 16 million “missing girls” in China. Ironically, the skewed ratio of men to women gives young women considerable leverage in chosing whom to marry – and that’s what the Men’s Rightser’s seem to see as the real injustice here.
As Evil Pundit wrote, evidently speaking for many (given the numerous upvotes he got):
Wow. I’ve always disliked the authoritarian Chinese government, but for once, it’s done something good.
I may need to reconsider my attitude.
IncrediblyFatMan added:
China wants to become the next superpower and world leader. They aren’t going to do it by allowing the kinds of social decay that rot away at the competing nations.
Revorob joked:
If they brought that in over here, most women in Australia would be living on the street.
“Or,” Fondueguy quipped in response, “they could learn to work.”
At the moment, all the comments in the thread praising the Chinese government for this move (and there are many more) have net upvotes; the only comment in the negative? One suggesting that the Telegraph isn’t exactly a reliable source.
Speaking of which, here’s a more balanced look at the issue on China.org.cn that examines some of the consequences of the new ruling for Chinese women.
Let’s look at some of those. According to one Beijing lawyer quoted in the piece:
“[H]ousewives, especially those in the rural areas who have no job and are responsible for taking care of their families, will be affected most by this new change,” she said. “If their husbands want a divorce, they are likely to be kicked out of the house with nothing.”
Luo Huilan, a professor of women’s studies at China Women’s University in Beijing, agreed.
In rural areas, she said, men have the final say in family matters. All essential family assets, such as home, car and bank deposits, are registered in the men’s names, and women fill the roles of only wife, mother and farmworker.
“Their labor, though substantial, hardly gets recognition. Without a good education, they have to rely heavily on their husbands,” Luo said. “In case of divorce, a woman is driven out of her husband’s life, home and family, and finds herself an alien even in her parents’ home. No wonder the new interpretation of the Marriage Law has aroused concern among women.”
And no wonder it’s drawn cheers on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Absolutely! And, might I add, that that includes shared parenting and greater involvement of fathers in the lives of their children while a cohabitating relationship with the mother is still intact. Why are most MRAs and FRAs only concerned about shared parenting when the relationship has broken down and the partners are going their separate ways?
Ozy – some of the divorced parents I know have a form of shared custody where the primary caregiver has the children most of the time and the other parent has them every Wednesday (or whatever weekday they choose, but for some reason it’s often Wednesday) and alternate weekends. So it’s actually not that hard in practice to juggle appointments and activities – either the non-primary parent does them on Wednesdays or the primary parent schedules them on the unaffected days. It seems to work better than alternating weeks, since the child is under one set of rules most of the time, and
Brandon – old enough for what? 😉 Look, it may be theoretically possible to put together legal documents to duplicate all the rights and duties that come along with marriage. Or you could, you know, just get married. I’m not going to insist that people spend $10K and a lot of time in a lawyer’s office when they could spend $100 and 15 minutes at city hall to wind up with the same suite of rights. Especially not just because it offends Brandon’s sense of aesthetics. There’s a lot wrong with marriage, of course (I should know – I’m married), but saying “Just don’t get married!” is about as helpful as saying “Just get a better job!” to people suffering under unjust working conditions.
“Pecunium, yes I understand that many average feminists would support shared parenting but average feminists have no political power, Its “governance feminism” or whatever we want to call it that does have political power, that is opposing it.
That’s where a lot of these conversations can get complicated
“Feminism is doing X!”
“No its not because I’m a feminist and I’m not doing X!””
Why not do some activist work in the real world if there is “governance feminism” that makes the statements of the “average feminist” irrelevant? If we’re just “average feminists” who words and support of shared parenting don’t ultimately matter, why are WE the ones being challenged on this issue?
…first paragraph should continue:
and getting to and fro school etc. is mostly handled by the same parent.
Amused
“Aren’t mothers also more likely to be, you know, caring for their children and spending time with them?”
Yes mothers spend more time with children but I find that argument in bad taste.
“Putting aside the fact that these kinds of claims lump together abuse and neglect (which are two different things)”
No they are not, neglect is a form of abuse and in Australia mothers are more likely to commit all forms of abuse with the exception of sexual (which is 6% of the total, conformed cases show women commit 22% of it but that’s a whole other story as there is plenty of reason to to believe that much female sexual abuse flies under the radar because of various stereotypes.
“I love it how MRA’s fail to correlate the percentage of time spent with the child with the likelihood of abuse. I suppose it’s very easy to never abuse a child that you don’t actually care for.”
Women abuse children more, men are to blame.
“That research has been thoroughly debunked. Research that equates evasive action with aggression, and destruction of property with assault of the person is dishonest any way you cut it.”
They haven’t and there is no research instrument or study that equates evasive action with aggression, and destruction of property with assault of the person. The dishonesty here is coming from the sources that claim that all these DV experts, instruments and studies equate evasive action with aggression, and destruction of property with assault of the person. Its an absurd suggestion.
Well, we’ve been told now! Catalogue finds the argument in bad taste, so he will dismiss it! Argument won!
“Yes mothers spend more time with children but I find that argument in bad taste.”
It’s in bad taste? Uh-huh. Interesting. What exactly is in bad taste here — the fact that mothers do more parenting than fathers, or the fact that I mentioned it? You know what I find in bad taste? I find it in bad taste that mothers tend to spend more time with children than fathers, but according to you, that shouldn’t be a factor in evaluating the best interests of the child or the significance of child abuse numbers because, well, this simple fact of life offends your tender sensibilities. I find it in bad taste that MRA’s expect women to do most of the child care during the marriage, and most of the child care after the marriage, but to have, at most, equal rights with the father in legal custody. I find it in bad taste that MRA’s, as fathers, want to sit in on their asses and not do much of anything to raise their children, yet to be given legal authority to make decisions the consequences of which will have to be born by others. But you, apparently, find those arguments tasteful. N’est-pas?
They haven’t and there is no research instrument or study that equates evasive action with aggression, and destruction of property with assault of the person. The dishonesty here is coming from the sources that claim that all these DV experts, instruments and studies equate evasive action with aggression, and destruction of property with assault of the person. Its an absurd suggestion.
MRA’s rely entirely on Conflict Tactics Scales, not “all these DV experts” (though for the record, I don’t consider manosphere bloggers “DV experts”), and CTS does conflate data precisely as I described. CTS also, quite conveniently for male abusers, omits data on interspousal homicide and sexual abuse. It also ignores the intensity, context and consequences of individual actions, which would explain why women are far more likely than men to be injured by domestic violence. In fact, large-scale studies that aggregate data from multiple sources (not just self-reporting) conclusively show that female victims far outnumber male ones, and men assault female partners at appreciably greater rates than vice versa.
“Why not do some activist work in the real world if there is “governance feminism” that makes the statements of the “average feminist” irrelevant? If we’re just “average feminists” who words and support of shared parenting don’t ultimately matter, why are WE the ones being challenged on this issue?”
Well the mens movement does challenge governance feminism. We counter abuse misinformation which is feminism’s main tool and as you can see from Fathers and Families in your “boobz” list it is challenging feminist jurisprudence.
I guess average feminists get challenged because they are often perceived as supporting and lending credibility to feminist extremists and unknowingly spreading abuse misinformation on their behalf.
Amused
the cts does not conflate data as you describe that’s an unsupportable claim circulated by a certain group.
“”The physical assault scale, like all the CTS maltreatment scales, differentiates between less severe acts of violence, such as slapping and throwing things at a partner, and more severe acts such as punching, kicking, and choking, and the CTS provides the opportunity to weight the scores by the frequency of these behaviors.”[30] Strauss 2007
And MRA’s dont rely on CTS, the domestic violence research community does because its regarded as the best instrument available. Thats what its been used in 600+ studies. If the claims about it were true, instead of just being misinformation circulated by feminism, it wouldn’t be used at all and something else would be used in its place.
Can someone please tell me what “governance feminism” is?
From all evidence that’s been brought up this “governance feminism” is an attempt to redefine feminism to 100% reflect “Patriarchy.”
In America “neglect” can be as simple as working 8 hours a day. I’ve talked with social workers who frequently investigate and dismiss these cases, but they are still on record.
Are you making the case that a working mother neglects her children by simply working to support them?
First of all, Catalogue — could you please still enlighten me on that bad taste comment? Is it in bad taste that fathers parent less than mothers, or is it in bad taste to talk about it? Thanks, much obliged.
Second: Even assuming Strauss is correct — and I note, you are picking one DV expert’s argument while ignoring multiple others, without any explanation as to what your selection criteria are, other than that it supports your argument — even assuming he is correct, how is throwing a newspaper at someone the same level of severity as slapping? When you say that women commit more DV then men, are you saying that women commit more DV in every single category — that is to say, women punch more, kick more and choke more — or are you saying that between a woman who throws a newspaper twice and a man who who punches her hard enough to fracture her skull, she is the more violent one? What is the point of distinguishing between less severe acts of violence and more severe ones if you ignore that distinction anyway by claiming women commit more total acts than men? Where are arguments addressing the fact that CTS excludes spousal homicide, rape, and the likelihood of injury? Is it that you can only conclude that women are more violent if you ignore murder, rape and the fact that more women than men are injured by DV? Or is mentioning the fact that more women are injured by men than vice versa “in bad taste”?
From the Australian Institute of Family Services:
“Findings from the ABS Personal Safety Survey (2005) indicated that of participants who had experienced physical abuse before the age of 15, 55.6% experienced abuse from their father/stepfather and 25.9% experienced abuse from their mother/stepmother.”
“A British retrospective prevalence study of 2,869 young adults aged 18-24 (May-Chahal & Cawson, 2005) found that mothers were more likely than fathers to be responsible for physical abuse (49% of incidents compared to 40%). However, part of the difference may be explained by the greater time children spend with their mothers than fathers. Violence was also reported to be perpetrated by stepmothers (3%) or stepfathers (5%), grandparents (3%) and other relatives (1%).”
“Evidence also suggests that mothers are more likely than fathers to be held responsible for child neglect. In a large representative study that examined the characteristics of perpetrators in substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect in the United States, neglect was the main type of abuse in 66% of cases involving a female caregiver, compared to 36% of cases involving a male caregiver (US DHHS, 2005). This finding is consistent with the fact that mothers tend to be the primary caregiver and are usually held accountable for ensuring the safety of children even in two-parent families. In light of societal views on gender roles, it has been argued that this may constitute unreasonable ‘mother blaming’.”
“Research focusing on perpetrators of child sexual abuse is extensive compared to other forms of abuse. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by males (ABS, 2005; McCloskey & Raphael, 2005; Peter, 2009). In a US study examining the characteristics of perpetrators in substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect (US DHHS, 2005), 26% of all cases involving male perpetrators were associated with sexual abuse compared to just 2% of cases involving female perpetrators.”
“Of these incidences of emotional abuse, 60% were perpetrated by males and 50% by females (these figures exceed 100% as in some instances both males and females were involved in emotional abuse).”
“Violence between intimate partners with children is overwhelmingly a gendered issue with the vast majority of incidents involving a female victim and male perpetrator (ABS, 2005; Holt et al., 2008; Mulroney, 2003). The ABS Personal Safety Survey (2005) found that of the women who had experienced physical assault since the age of 15, 31% said they had been assaulted by their current or previous partner compared to 14.3% of men who had been assaulted by their previous or current partner.”
“Yampolskaya, Greenbaum and Berson (2009), in a study examining 126 profiles of perpetrators of fatal assault in United States, found that males were three times more likely to fatally assault their children.”
God, I’m just a woman, so numbers confuse me. Catalogue, can you help me out and show me what part of these studies shows that mothers abuse children so much more? Thanks.
“And MRA’s dont rely on CTS, the domestic violence research community does because its regarded as the best instrument available. Thats what its been used in 600+ studies. If the claims about it were true, instead of just being misinformation circulated by feminism, it wouldn’t be used at all and something else would be used in its place.”
Regarded by whom? I am not aware of it being well-regarded at all in the context in which MRA’s use it. And just because it’s cited in studies doesn’t mean that it’s held up as the gold standard.
Bee
“Mothers are more likely than fathers to neglect and emotionally and physically abuse their children, information obtained under freedom of information laws reveals.
But figures from the WA Department for Child Protection show substantiated cases of child sexual abuse against fathers still far outnumber those against mothers.
The data shows that parents were the perpetrators in almost 39 per cent of the 1505 substantiated cases of child abuse in 2007-08. Of the 582 cases of abuse by parents, mothers were responsible for 73 per cent, while fathers committed 27 per cent.
Mothers were more than 17 times more likely than fathers to neglect their children, while fathers were responsible for 85 per cent of sex abuse cases against children.
Mothers carried out almost 68 per cent of cases of emotional and psychological abuse committed by parents, about 53 per cent of physical abuse and more than 94 per cent of neglect cases.
Cases of substantiated abuse jumped from 960 in 2005-06 to 1505 in 2007-08. In 2005-06, mothers committed 312 cases, while fathers were responsible for 165.
In 2005-06, mothers were responsible for 161 neglect, 72 emotional and psychological, 76 physical and three sexual abuse cases against their children. In the same financial year, fathers were responsible for 37 neglect, 41 emotional and psychological, 65 physical and 22 sexual abuse cases against their children.
A DCP spokesman said figures between years were not comparable because measuring methodologies may have changed.
Of the total substantiated cases of abuse in 2007-08, including by parents and where the gender of the perpetrator was determined, 463 were carried out by women and 353 by men.
University of Western Sydney academic Micheal Woods said yesterday that the statistics debunked the myth that fathers posed the greatest risk to their children.
Mr Woods, co-director of the university’s Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre, said if similar data was available in other States it would show similar trends.
Adults Surviving Child Abuse WA spokeswoman Michelle Stubbs said an initial look at the data did not present a clear explanation and other factors had to be considered.
She said it was important to keep in mind that mothers were often the primary caregivers for children and also may be held more responsible by the department in neglect cases.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6089613/mum-not-dad-more-likely-to-neglect-kids/
Amused
The CTS is best instrument available, its what feminist researchers use too, they just modify it not to ask men the same questions as women.
Bee
Here US figures, your studies might be feminist advocacy research, designed to generate a certain outcome.
http://breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php
Catalogue – “That looks like a good bill because what it tells a disputing couple is ‘sort out the dispute or you will be ordered to do this’. More a deterrent for those that would obstruct a reasonable arrangement than anything else.”
Unless the person who is obstructing a reasonable arrangement is a parent who is disinterested in their child but would use forced shared custody as a way to punish the other parent for leaving them. Or, you know, in various other situations where people leave a marriage on less then stellar terms and are unable to come to a mutually agreeable decision about child custody, but where shared child custody is still in no way in the best interests of the child.
Also, originally you said that the law does not require shared custody and all you want is a presumption of shared custody for the court to consider…but now that the law would require shared custody, that is what you think is best? You are very inconsistent.
Okay, so … it looks like the WA Department for Child Protection and the Australian Institute of Family Services have wildly divergent figures. Hell, the WA Department for Child Protection figures even conflict with themselves!
“Of the 582 cases of abuse by parents, mothers were responsible for 73 per cent, while fathers committed 27 per cent” versus “Of the total substantiated cases of abuse in 2007-08, including by parents and where the gender of the perpetrator was determined, 463 were carried out by women and 353 by men.”
I find myself … unconvinced. Sorry.
Unconvinced because of prejudice perhaps.
And here Bee. This paper explains how DV stats are manipulated by feminist academics.
GENDER SYMMETRY IN PARTNER VIOLENCE:
THE EVIDENCE, THE DENIAL, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR
PRIMARY PREVENTION AND TREATMENT
1
Murray A. Straus
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V70%20version%20N3.pdf
“Unconvinced because of prejudice perhaps.”
Or, you know … unconvinced because there are two hugely divergent reports from two different sources, both of which I’m pretty unfamiliar with, so I can’t really judge their merit on which is more credible. The Australian Institute of Family Services web site certainly looks pretty official, cites its sources, and seems to cover the entire country. On the other hand, you’ve linked to a newspaper article that references studies done in one Australian state, with wildly varying results from year to year.
But yeah, prejudice — that’s a really good guess, Catalogue.
Hey, you’re from Australia, right? Why don’t you tell me why the Australian Institute of Family Services isn’t to be trusted?
It’s not what Bee was saying. What Bee was saying (because this has been round on the playlist lots of times) is the presumptive state should be, “best interests of the child”.
The thing you aren’t seeming to notice is that the courts aren’t involved until/unless the parents are in dispute, so the “deterrent nature” of mandatory sharing isn’t useful, since it’s already past that point before it comes to it.
The assertion of, “average feminists” being different from “governance” feminists is… I don’t know, absurd comes to mind.
First, you are discussing two different systems (at the macro level) in that you are in Oz, and we are, by and large, in the states. NOW/NARAL, etc. can lobby for what they like. They do it with the funding they get from, “average” feminists. When they differ, those average feminists move their money to other support groups (NARAL, for example, lost me when they supported Lieberman over Lamont in 2006).
Where the conversation gets off the rails is when you, rather than saying, “X group is doing Y” say, “Feminists are against X because Group Y is doing Z”
Which is the reverse of the claim you make. We (or at least I) am not saying there aren’t feminists who are opposed to shared custody, I am rebutting your assertion that all feminists are against it.
Well the mens movement does challenge governance feminism. We counter abuse misinformation which is feminism’s main tool and as you can see from Fathers and Families in your “boobz” list it is challenging feminist jurisprudence.
I guess average feminists get challenged because they are often perceived as supporting and lending credibility to feminist extremists and unknowingly spreading abuse misinformation on their behalf.
If by counter you mean the sorts of “that’s in bad taste, I don’t want to talk about it” in response to people challenging your claims, color me unimpressed.
“Average feminists” get challenged because (as shown above) the MRM doesn’t really care about nuance, unless it’s aimed at them (so they can claim that only the “bad things” are being, “cherry picked” and there are, “really lots of moderate MRAs out there, you just ignore them”.
But when someone says, “perhaps it would be a good idea to norm the statistics to see what the ratio is when compared to the amount of time a parent spends with the child,” that’s not something to be talked about.
Double standards are bollocks.
“Hey, you’re from Australia, right? Why don’t you tell me why the Australian Institute of Family Services isn’t to be trusted?”
Gov Feminist sources cannot be trusted on abuse figures.
Ombudsman finds domestic violence campaign ‘misleading
A national men’s group is claiming victory over what it calls a feminist agenda on domestic violence.
An independent investigation has upheld the group’s complaint about a public awareness campaign in South Australia.
The Ombudsman’s inquiry found parts of the $870,000 campaign contained errors.
The Don’t Cross The Line campaign has been running in newspapers, on television and radio and on a website.
The Ombudsman in South Australia found some statistics initially published on the site were false and misleading.
Advocacy group Men’s Health Australia made a complaint against the Office of the Status of Women over 10 matters on the website.
The Ombudsman’s final report substantiates seven of them and another two in part.
The Government had said one in 17 women was a victim of domestic violence annually, but the figure related to violence generally.
Michael Woods is one of the men’s group’s supporters and is from the Men’s Health Information and Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.
“It is a shame that a government department is unable, despite being notified a year ago, to address its own shortcomings and it required this sort of action,” he said.
The ideological commitment of people in that department must be so strong that they would reject scientific data in favour of their own biases.”
The SA minister responsible for the campaign, Gail Gago, says the statistical errors were innocent ones.
“There were I think problems with individuals that were transferring information from one source to another and the degree of diligence that should have occurred simply didn’t,” she said.
She rejected the group’s claim of an agenda within her department.
“Our anti-violence campaign is not a contest about who’s the biggest victim,” the Minister for the Status of Women said.
Ms Gago says the Government has corrected the errors and there was no reason to end the campaign.
Domestic violence experts say the case highlights a tussle between men’s and women’s groups.
Men’s Health Australia has also complained of incorrect statistics in the New South Wales Domestic Violence and Family Action Plan.
But the NSW Ombudsman so far has found no reason to investigate.
Dr Michael Flood is a domestic violence researcher from the University of Wollongong.
He says the men’s group is muddying the debate.
“The group’s complaint is not motivated by a genuine concern for male victims of violence. I think that it’s motivated more by political agendas,” he said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-02/ombudsman-finds-domestic-violence-campaign/2245608
A couple of substantive posts by Rutee got held in moderation. One is on the previous page of comments; the other on this page.
Links:
http://manboobz.com/2011/08/22/dudes-republic-of-china/comment-page-1/#comment-53198
http://manboobz.com/2011/08/22/dudes-republic-of-china/comment-page-2/#comment-53221
“Gov Feminist sources cannot be trusted on abuse figures.”
All of this time you have been claiming that feminists somehow fudge the numbers of actual surveys and stats just to forward their agenda. You have yet to actually substantiate those claims, and at best you have only provided variations of, “Well, those studies counteract my view, therefore they’re feminist biased.” without showing how it all happens.
If I tell people that the moon orbits around the Earth because an invisible cyclops pulls it by rope, if I don’t show official scientific peer journals or research that proves that, people are under no obligation to believe me. People are under no obligation to believe me if I argue the opposite and provide facts to prove it, either, but if one makes a factual statement, one has to provide evidence for it.
Really, man, this circular game you’re playing is getting old.
Redlocker
” but if one makes a factual statement, one has to provide evidence for it.”
Right, that’s why I’ve been posing studies and articles as opposed to just making claims.