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.
I know that we’ve moved on from this point, but I was struck by the ‘we should be self-sufficient’ thing. Seriously – self-sufficiency, unless you live alone on a farm and grow all your own food and get your water from a rainwater tank that you built yourself from materials that you yourself mined from the ground, just isn’t possible. Human beings work together to survive – we are interdependent creatures even though we like to THINK that we are self-sufficient. OK, sure, you might be in a position to make enough money to look after your own needs for periods of your life, but for other periods you must rely on others to look after you. As a baby, as a child, as an older person, if you get injured, if you have a disibility… This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do your best to contribute to maintaining your own life and that of the people around you, but no-one is freaking self-sufficient for their whole life.
To make out like it’s the worst thing in the world to be co-dependent ignores the fact that we are all dependent on others to a degree. I guess I agree that marriage and how it’s constructed in our culture (I do not think this is inherent to marriage) fosters a sense that men and women in a heterosexual couple should be the only people looking after themselves and each other and that this is problematic because what is needed is a wider approach* which acknowledges the contributions of friends and other family members (if you’re lucky enough to have them) to your continued survival and comfort. It’s easy to think that women are more dependent because, when they have babies, they do require support. But this ignores the fact that men were all babies once and, if their mothers hadn’t been helped in some way, they wouldn’t be around.**
*Also, the emphasis on a heterosexual couple working together to look after one another etc. marginalises other gendered pairings which is totally uncool.
**one of my friends just had a baby – I just learned that the whole breastfeeding every three hours is timed from the start of each feed…and some babies spend about two hours feeding when they’re new. So, that’s two hours of feeding, one hour break, two hours feeding, one hour break. How the hell is anyone supposed to do that and work, or sleep or do any of the other necessary bits and pieces? Note too, that this is not about women being not self-sufficient, which is the fiction, but that babies and hence all people, are not self sufficient for some time and require lots of looking after. Too bad we can’t all just lay eggs and abandon our young…
Nooooo, but redlocker, you don’t understand. Catalogue thinks that mothers are more likely to abuse their children than fathers, plus he has all these links to newspaper articles. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES!!! Those are never flawed or biased. Some of them don’t even say anything substantive about the topic under discussion — they talk about different government departments that are completely unrelated to the department Catalogue was being asked about!
I haz been baffled with bullshit, I tells you!
“Nooooo, but redlocker, you don’t understand. Catalogue thinks that mothers are more likely to abuse their children than fathers, plus he has all these links to newspaper articles. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES!!! Those are never flawed or biased. Some of them don’t even say anything substantive about the topic under discussion — they talk about different government departments that are completely unrelated to the department Catalogue was being asked about!”
Yeah, I was going to address how he has been linking to newspaper articles as opposed to actual studies, but I digress.
Bee.
Your own governments stats demonstrate mothers are more likely to abuse children than fathers.
http://breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php
And feminist academics and feminists in the Aus. and UK gov. have an observable track record of covering up female abuse. I’m going to leave you to it now because watching feminists deny abuse is one thing but when you make a game out of denying child abuse as is happening here my patience gets a little tested.
And feminist academics and feminists in the Aus. and UK gov. have an observable track record of covering up female abuse.
Citation needed please
feminist advocacy research, designed to generate a certain outcome.
why would you admit to thinking something like this? you obviously want to have some sort of discussion, so why would you go around announcing that you intend to handwave away any evidence that disagrees with your position because you think its wrongthink? why would anyone make the effort of engaging with someone whose entire argument is couched in that sort of childish arrogance (seriously, people engaging with this chump- i dont get why youre bothering)
and dude, do you have any idea what a massive hypocrite you sound like. you dont get to prance in here and declare that your the high priest of objectivity and any contradictory evidence is tainted by bias. that makes you the prejudiced asshole operating from a foregone conclusion.
look youve got your pile of links and your here to unmask whatever sinister feminist conspiracy against fathers youve decided has to exists. congrats. i can find ctrl c and v on my keyboard too, but i dont try to pass it off as analysis. thats just lazy.
@Ozy: Most alimony is paid by men to women. Yes, I realize most of it is because women are predominately the ones that stay home with the kids. But I have very little faith in the legal system to award me alimony if the roles were reversed and I was the stay at home dad. I am not going to put my trust into the system that rarely if ever awards men alimony (it’s like 3% of the time last I checked). So being a man, I can say with a 97% certainty that I am leaving divorce paying alimony. I don’t like the state dictating what I have to do which is yet another reason why I won’t be getting married. I follow the law and I don’t need to subject myself to divorce and family court systems with more stipulations, regulations and restrictions.
@Rutee: Again, if you value being self-sufficient then you will make more decisions that work towards being more self-sufficient. Your examples only prove my point even further. I might have a mortgage with a bank that demands that I pay them every month (which I agreed to) but the bank can only tell me that I have to pay the mortgage. They can’t tell me I can’t paint the walls or create a sun porch off the back of the house. Employment goes from being held responsible to a small group of managers (probably one) to hundreds of customers. If one customer doesn’t like me, than tough shit…I have thousands more. It’s about minimizing risk and not creating a single point of failure (I am in IT so pardon the jargon).
Self-sufficiency can never truly be achieved but their is a large difference between a homeless man or woman begging for money and scraps of food to a middle class homeowner with his or her house paid off. We are all forced to live by the government to a certain extent, but I prefer the least amount possible.
@Rachel: If she is my equal then she has her own job with her own health insurance. Hence she doesn’t need to be placed on mine. Also, I am not insulting people that are getting married…I am criticizing the institution of marriage itself. I don’t look down on people that get married, but I do express my opinion as to the reasons why I think it is a bad choice. Most women I have met try there hardest to defend it while men often take pause and think of the benefits AND consequences of marriage.
@Pecunium: Most of those questions you put forth can be solved with a Power of Attorney and a Medical Proxy….so instead of one step (marriage license) I take 2-3 steps…but I completely avoid ALL the future liabilities of marriage and divorce courts. Seems like a no brainer. And Social Security benefits, ha I am not even 30 yet…I doubt I will even get SSI when I retire (which is why I funnel a lot of money into my 401K)
@kristinmh: You asked how old I was. My response was “old enough”. Your analogy between marriage and employment makes no sense. Most people are required to work, marriage is completely voluntary and no real damage happens to you if you decide not to get married. Lastly, it isn’t “theoretically possible”, it actually is possible. If I get a will, power of attorney and medical proxy, I have covered practically every benefit of getting married without opening myself up to the risk of divorce.
Just like women and feminists have changed the landscape for women to enter the workforce and do more than just be a stay at home mothers, I think men need to shake off the whole “provider/breadwinner role”. Marriage is the antithesis of this.
“(seriously, people engaging with this chump- i dont get why youre bothering)”
Meh, I just thought that maybe, just maybe, he would say something of substance.
That, and I’m bored and I’m still waiting for my copy of “The Room” to arrive in the mail so I can have The Room/Troll 2 doublebill at my house.
I haven’t read all the posts, but here is the law on shared parenting: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2008C00441
John Howard brought it in thanks to the Abusers’ Lobby.
You’d be amazed how much damage an abusive parent can continue to do in 1/2 hour supervised visit each month.
“Just like women and feminists have changed the landscape for women to enter the workforce and do more than just be a stay at home mothers, I think men need to shake off the whole “provider/breadwinner role”. Marriage is the antithesis of this.”
Wait, all marriage? Even the ones that all sides have voluntarily entered into, understanding the costs and adjustments that will have to be made as a result?
I know you answered earlier that people are free to marry as they choose and that you have no problem with it, but here you once again stated that all marriage is bad, ignoring any nuance or situations to the contrary.
I think Bee quoted from the Institute of Family Services study, which was commissioned to see how things were going under the law, five years on.
The institute is not part of the government.
If he wants news articles, remeber Darcey Freeman?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-10-07/daughter-thrown-off-bridge-on-first-day-of-school/1093894
“Yes mothers spend more time with children but I find that argument in bad taste.”
I noticed you find fact-based arguments to be in bad taste, yes.
Both parents at home full-time. Mother judged to be primary carer:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-10-02/starved-girls-mother-gets-life-sentence/1088990
Magpie, you are being totally unfair by using his own tactics against him by posting news articles!
Lol Elizabeth 🙂 Seriously, though, I wish the news articles would always include a link to the studies.
Here is a more positive link: http://www.theline.gov.au/
This is the ‘crossing the line’ campaign that Catalogue referred to earlier. It’s pretty tame, really, but it gives kids the chance to talk about it, and work it out themselves.
More of Magpie’s maunderings. Another problem with the Shared Responsibilities law is that there has to be so much face to face mediation and court – this means it is very difficult to go into hiding from an abusive spouse (eg a shelter interstate).
I couldn’t find the news article where a social worker pointed out that she and the kid’s mother were breaking Federal law if the child didn’t spend the weekend with it’s father, and State law if it did (because the father was a convicted child sex offender).
I was going to ask why Catalogue linked to a blogger instead of to the actual Department of Health & Human Services report, but I think I figured it out.
The DHHS report (I looked at the most recent one, not the one from a decade ago, as Catalogue’s blogger did) does show that mothers, either alone or with another person, are about twice as likely to be the perpetrator of abuse as fathers. It also shows that neglect and medical neglect make up over 80% of cases of abuse, and up to 9.6% of cases of abuse are due to things like abandonment and congenital drug addiction. (The total is about 130%, since some children suffer more than one type of abuse.)
As already noted, mothers are more likely to be help responsible for neglect, simply because they’re seen as the default child caregiver. So, I don’t know. I’m not really surprised. Saddened, yes. It’s a very sad state of affairs.
But let’s look back at what you’ve been saying throughout this thread, Catalogue. To recap, you said that family courts’ hands should be tied, and shared parenting should be the default, without regard for what’s in the best interest of the child. If shared parenting is not in the child’s best interest, you said that a court could make an adjustment later, after putting the child through months of hardship.
You said that this was good because mothers are more likely to abuse their children. When you were given evidence that there had been studies that showed that mother and fathers were pretty similarly likely to be perpetrators of child abuse, you dismissed that by saying that those studies were done using feminist statistics. When you found news articles or blogs that supported your view, you said that those were unbiased evidence of the truth.
So yes, while I agree that a game of denying child abuse would be very, very sad indeed, I’m going to have to disagree with your assessment of who’s playing that game, Catalogue. I can’t find a thread in your comments that shows a concern for abused children; only a strong interest in proving that women are evil.
@redlocker: I believe marriage, just like The Fed is rotten to the core. No amount of window dressings will change the fact that the foundation is crumbling as more and more time passes.
While I believe this and I can share my opinion with others, I can’t denounce people that do get married. It is their life not mine, and I have to at least afford them that much courtesy.
It often doesn’t work the other way though. I have gotten the whole “you need to get married”, “you need to find a good woman and start a family”, “why don’t you marry X (X being my current girlfriend)” and so on and so on and so on. But if I caved into that pressure, then what does that say of me, that I can be easily led and be a doormat to people.
“Self-sufficiency can never truly be achieved but their is a large difference between a homeless man or woman begging for money and scraps of food to a middle class homeowner with his or her house paid off. We are all forced to live by the government to a certain extent, but I prefer the least amount possible.”
What might that difference be? Luck? Any homeless person might have been a middle class homeowner with their house paid off before an earthquake, or a cyclone, or an illness which involved epic bills and an inability to work. Seriously, does this whole economic downturn not demonstrate that even when you invest as wisely as you know how, things can still go to pot? How many people’s super funds have been depleted significantly by the downturn, and what the hell are they going to do if they’re older, can’t physically work any more, and need their money now?
We are interdependent creatures. No amount of money in the world is going to help you unless you find someone else to do the things that you can’t manage or don’t have the skills for. What we need are systems in place that facilitate mutual care rather than taking advantage of one another.
Brandon you have a plan in case you ever need to go galt, dont you? im getting that vibe from your posts.
Hy beelevez dat der izt no problem dat can’t be hovercome vit a schuffishent hamount ov high explozives! Alzo too, dat the nizer de hat, de better de varrior.
@Lyn: Yes we are all interdependent to a certain extent and yes negative things can happen.
This is why if you own your own house you have insurance for it. Hell, banks even force you to get it while you are still repaying the bank. Investments are trickier depending on what people invest in. Someone investing in gold right now is probably doing very well. You don’t want to place everything you have into one or two things…it’s called diversification and we do this to help prevent massive losses in our investments.
While there is a certain amount of luck to life. The bigger and better qualities are persistence and perseverance. Make the best of what you got…then make it better.
@Sharculese: What?
@cynickal: umm…ok.
But what about 9/11, Brandon? LIHOP or MIHOP?
Brandon – ” If she is my equal then she has her own job with her own health insurance. Hence she doesn’t need to be placed on mine. Also, I am not insulting people that are getting married…I am criticizing the institution of marriage itself. I don’t look down on people that get married, but I do express my opinion as to the reasons why I think it is a bad choice. Most women I have met try there hardest to defend it while men often take pause and think of the benefits AND consequences of marriage.”
In a perfect world, most full time employment would also come with health care benefits. However, we don’t live in a perfect world and sometimes someone can be your equal with a job and still not have an opportunity to purchase health care (at least, not from an employer). In addition, some health insurance coverage is better than others. Also, some families choose not to pay two premuims for health insurance. Finally, in some instances you can stack your health insurance, using one policy as primary and the other as secondary.
Again, your choice to forgo marriage, and all of the benefits and burdens that go along with it, is your choice. But to just assume that there are no benefits that would ever make the marital relationship more beneficial than burdensome is an extremely egocentric way of looking at marriage that completely discounts the experiences and needs of other people.
Brandon –
I also forgot to mention – that was a really nice try with the whole “women irrationally defend marriage to the death, but men always take a considered approach to the benefits and consequences…” I assume your goal with a statement like that is to get me (and the other women here) backpeddling so that we show we are really considering all aspects…thing is, most of the people who have been responding to you have acknowledged the benefits and burdens of marriage. You, on the other hand, seem to be the only person who is looking at the issue from a single perspective.