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.
Yeah, the nerve of those of us with functioning uteri in heterosexual relationships. How dare we be female mammals! With urges to reproduce unrelated to our socio-economic status! The horror of having children If you can’t provide each offspring with its own room, unlimited after-school activities, and Iphone, I cannot describe it. I have often heard my father speak in hushed, broken tones of how awful it was to grow up with 11 siblings on a subsistence farm, where a lack of modern material goods could only be poorly compensated for by the paltry substitutes of parental love, closeness with brothers and sisters, and a sense of shared enterprise. They didn’t even get electricity until sometime in the 50s! I mean, no one else in rural Alberta had it either, but that is no excuse.
Brandon, for the majority of human history, the majority of human beings have been poor. They still are, globally speaking if not in North America, where only a sizeable minority of people are poor, but don’t worry, people who think like you are doing their best to change that.
Given that a lot of people do want to reproduce at some point in their lives regardless of their income level, and are going to do so whether you like it or not, you have a few choices. You can tut disapprovingly about how poor people having children is abusive, while doing nothing to alleviate poverty; you can provide some assistance for poor parents so they and their children don’t starve/freeze to death on the streets; or you can work to change society so that fewer people are poor. Only the latter two choices actually do something about child poverty. The first just props up your own feeling of self-righteousness.
Rutee:
Agreement, not argument: as recently as the 1970s, the Swiss government took children away from Roma parents and placed them with, ahem, appropriate families. For no better reason than that otherwise they’d be brought up Roma.
I understand the Australian government used to do the same thing with Australian Aboriginal children.
“@Societal: It’s his fault since you told him.”
Yes. However, I want to say one more thing. Since when does just dating someone mean exclusivity? There was a time, not so long ago, when it was assumed that of course a girl was going to be dating other guys unless you asked her to “go steady” and then only if she agreed to “going steady” with you was it assumed she would stop dating other guys.
It seems that in today’s sexual marketplace that if you go out with someone regularly, even if it is as few as 4 or 5 times, they assume you are automatically going steady (exclusive).
Ridiculous.
“@Molly: For one, I am not attracted to shy, geeky and awkward women. So what works for your social circle might not work for mine.”
Well, okay, I may have laid the “shy, geeky, awkward” thing on a little thick. But… do you know anyone *normal* in a relationship? Like, an average guy with a girlfriend who is neither an asshole nor geeky? I am sure other models exist, but I’m not sure you think anything less than being an asshole will get you anywhere.
At what point in this scenario can I talk about the gold standard and about how Social Security is a tax upon society’s real productive class: upper-middle-class IT dudes? Because unless what you’re talking about will allow me to do that, not interested.
I know, I’m just lucky in that my girlfriend hates the little creatures as much as me. The gay, in this context, is that kids *absolutely aren’t happening while I am poor*. It’s not much an option. It’s really got nothing to do with what I hope for people’s opinions of me, as he seemed to be implying.
Because you say so? No, to abuse you have to specifically do things that actively hurt the kids. You’re just a classist asshole.
Ain’t *That* the truth.
Hershele Ostropoler: Yeah, the American government did this with Native kids, too. I know in Australia, it was justified because ‘they might be sad for awhile, but they’ll forget they ever had kids.’ (paraphrase – I know the cite is in Bill Bryson’s book about Australia, but can’t find my copy)
True. Having kids doesn’t exactly happen to us lesbians without a significant outlay of cash. Sorry I misinterpreted, Rutee!
@kristinmh: Again, I am not saying that you have to buy kids Iphones and Diesel Jeans. But you should be able to provide a basic life for them. They should have a bed to sleep in, clothes on their back and food in their stomachs. You assume that I am asking the world of parents, but I think those are pretty damn reasonable. I know…I must be a huge asshole because I don’t want to see children needlessly on the streets or with bloated stomachs because of malnourishment.
Yes, people all over the world are poor. However we live in a society that protects children much more than say Ghana. While children in Africa are forced to work to feed their families, us Americans are lucky that we can send our children to school instead of the factory.
I am not attacking poor people, I am looking out for the children and saying they shouldn’t suffer.
@Molly: I know people of all demographics. Also, as I have said before, being brash, aloof, mildly indifferent and actually not doing what women want me to do has gotten me far better results that playing the “nice, polite, non-offensive” guy bit. I basically find what “normal” guys do, watch them get shot down…then do the opposite. And lo and behold I get a phone number or a date right then and there. Weird huh?
Which is not a detailed answer, Brandon. Like normal guys usually smile, flirt, find things in common and then ask me out. If I find them attractive and funny/interesting, I say yes (or frankly I ask them out first). I look for things like-eye contact, mirroring, being nice to wait staff, lots of interests they are willing to share and so forth.
The opposite of that would be to sneer or frown, ignore, neg and act uninterested. Which I’d take as a sign of well, being uninterested. Even if I was really attracted to those guys I’d not pursue them, cause they weren’t acting fun.
And I’m a non shy non geeky (but with a wide variety of interests including geek stuff), hot woman. So unless you’ve got concrete examples your answer doesn’t do anyone any service. It’s just vague and we probably won’t believe you.
I don’t doubt there are women out there who enjoy being treated badly, or think it’s a challenge to win over a negging kind of dude, but then the whole thing seems set up as if both parties are playing major games, not just little ones.
Brandon: I don’t know. See I see guys playing the, “jerk” and then I act like myself, I talk, make eye-contact, see what they are interested in, what they do, make some small talk.
And I get them asking for my info, and sending me -mails, and if we like each other, we go out; hop in the sack, and all that other stuff. Sometimes they introduce me to their friend, and the cycle continues.
Weird, huh?
That
HitlerPol Pot fellow had a few interesting ideas!Yes you are. This is, once again, you claiming you are not doing something when you do.
By saying their parents abuse them by being poor. By ignoring that those parents may love their children and simply be going through a rough patch. And by refusing to answer if you think they should have their children taken away. It is one thing to soothingly say “oh I think you should not have a baby unless you can afford it” it is quite another to realise the implications of that policy idea.
But they would suffer. They would suffer from being taken away from their parents. A parent who is homeless and has a baby does not automatically not love the child-it means times are tough and we, as a nation, should be doing more to make sure that parent has what they need so that baby is cared for. That is the social theory behind WIC for heaven’s sake.
What Kristen said is true-you are just saying that you care (when you actually do not) because it lets you feel a sense of superiority to those who make decisions that you assume are bad.
@Elizabeth: I am talking prior to the child being born. You know, two people that don’t have squat and they think it is ok to actually have a child.
IF you already have a child and are providing food, shelter, clothing, education and medical needs, this does not apply to you.
A homeless woman with a child, needs to have the child taken away from her. She is unable to provide the 5 things I mentioned earlier. The child should be placed into a foster home until the mother is able to prove that she is able to provide to her son/daughter.
I am not saying the mother doesn’t love the child. But love doesn’t fill a child’s stomach or puts clothes on their back. What’s more important? Love or not starving. The immediate need is food.
Brandon – Providing the child’s mother with the resources to take care of the kid (shelter space, food stamps, school supplies, etc.) is cheaper than placing the kid in foster care and doesn’t involve taking them away from their mother, which is going to be traumatic for and resisted by both mother and child.
Foster care costs money too, and the number of foster families is limited. It’s a big decision for social workers to put kids who are for-serious abused in foster care; when the solution is as relatively simple as getting the biological mother somewhere to stay, that’s vastly preferable for a social worker.
Apparently in BrandonWorld, no one ever falls on hard times. Had a child back when you had a job, a home, and health insurance? Move to BrandonWorld! You will never lose your job, your health insurance, or your home. Until your youngest child is 18, you are in clover. And none of this is achieved with government assistance, btw. Just bootstraps and pulling them up.l
But Holly, that is not punishing the mother enough. Or the child for lacking the foresight to be born to permanently rich parents.
Yes you are.
@Elizabeth: No I’m not.
FelixBC, you have to remember that all that matters is that Brandon will never make an unwise financial decision, get into debt, suddenly lose his job, suffer from a catastrophic medical condition, or otherwise become insolvent. And neither will anyone else if they only do what Brandon says, i.e. buy a lot of gold and never get married.
I should tell this to my friend who just lost her job. For the last two months she’s been suffering from crippling sciatic nerve pain and can’t do her job anymore, so they had to let her go. Luckily she doesn’t have kids, so the only creature she can abuse with her hideous poverty is her cat, but she is in a bad financial situation, since she can’t work at a job that requires extended periods of sitting – which is most jobs. I’m sure it would be very comforting for me to tell her it’s all her fault for not having the foresight to have a properly positioned sciatic nerve!
No one who thinks that a person can love their child would demand to have that child taken from them for the specious reason of “they have little money.”
It also means that she is forever prohibited from having sex cuz that is nearly the only way to ensure one does not get pregnant.
Of course she could get raped and if she chooses to have the child despite the pain and misery the rapist caused her, she will have the child taken from her in BrandonLand.
That sucks. An injury that prevents you from getting a job that might get you health insurance is the worst. I hope she got some worker’s comp, at least?
Katz: Kristen is in Canada, so it’s not as bad as all that. Depends on the provincial healthcare baseline, and the actual area one lives in.
Naah, he doesn’t believe poor parents don’t love their children, he just thinks love is less important than money, which he’s already demonstrated amply in his conversations about marriage and dating.
@Holly: And who exactly is going to provide those resources to the mother?