A startling new development on the frontiers of anti-male oppression. According to the loquacious lady MRA known as girlwriteswhat on Reddit, men are being oppressed by evil feminist dudes cruelly clamping down on their right to bitch about ladies in the bathroom. In a recent comment she writes:
No space is allowed to be male-only, or male-viewpoint-only, but women insist on female-only or female-viewpoint-only spaces all the time.
The only male safe space left on the planet is the men’s bathroom, ffs. And even then, there will be feminist-leaning men policing what is said. It’s very frustrating.
As a dude feminist who is a regular user of men’s restrooms, I should note that dudes do not actually talk in restrooms.
Happily, this does not prevent me, as a dude feminist, from policing the non-existent speech of other dudes in said restrooms.
Here is the complete transcript of a restroom discussion I recently policed:
Dude One: [silently urinates]
Dude Two: [silently urinates]
Dude Three: [silently poops]
Me: Goddessdamnit, keep it down with all your lady-bashing! Men are bad!
Always glad to help.
HT to Shit Reddit Says, which has just ended its month-long moratorium on r/mensrights posts, for pointing me to girlwriteswhat’s observation.
I think this is my second favorite Antz line, after the “come to the dark side” speech. Why, all this time I’ve been using birth control, when instead I could have been getting FREE MONEY! And when Congress had that big fight about whether or not to fund Planned Parenthood, it was all just a feminist plot so that poor women would get *more* free money because birth control would be less available!
Jeebus Christmas, Antz, this is why we think your kids aren’t real. I was the child of a single mom, we were hardly rolling in dough! It was all living with relatives to save money and shopping in thrift stores and cupon cutting and my mom having to go back to school in hopes that it’d help her career. Or do you think that’s luxurious compared to living in the street?
“There’s panic the threads of the Spearhead…”
panic *in* rather
Kids are more like debit cards that someone else is using to drain your bank account.
Maybe what I described *is* luxurious to Antz. Maybe he actually lives in a cardboard box, so a trailer with easy access to affordable fast food looks scandalous to him?
Yeah, Molly, I was about to point out that while it’s unlikely your situation is attractive to AntZ specifically, it *is* luxurious compared to homelessness.
AntZ: This is why we call you a moron. Because we disagree with your description of how contempt of court in longstanding refusal to pay child support was described we were/are all bigots who hate men.
When a completely different set of topics (not at all related) to that one comes up, and you discover feminism is all for it, suddenly the opinions of years (most of which you can find being held of long-standing, and discussed on this very blog) is “when one feminist goes against the tide and embraces (essentially) the entire MRA platform, all of you sudenly de-bigotify and become human beings who feel emotions like compassion and pity.”
So what gives is that you are an idiot. That you don’t read. That you are so full of your own delusions that anyone who doesn’t agree with every one of your claims is a bigot.
And you don’t even read what you offer in support of your inanity.
Every person who is obligated to pay child support pursuant to an order or decree established by or registered with the family court pursuant to chapter 11 of title 15, who has incurred arrearage of past-due child support in the amount of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) five thousand dollars ($5,000), and who shall willfully thereafter,
having the means to do so, fail to pay three (3) or more installments of child support in an amount previously set by the court, according to the terms previously set by the court, shall be guilty of a felony for each instance of failure to make the subsequent payments and upon conviction shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not to exceed five (5) years.
Willfully. That means they choose to. It means that a person (note the bill doesn’t say, “men”, it says “every person”,/i>. Also note that when men contest custody they are as likely as not to get it. As with my sister, who doesn’t have custody of her kids, but I digress) who isn’t able to pay, isn’t going to prison. That’s what, “willfully” means.
It means chooses not to. It doesn’t mean, “is unable to.”
English, it’s your mother tongue, learn to use it.
It’s also willfully refusing to pay, for three payments (we shall assume the payments are monthly, but they might not be), after they have let themselves get 5,000 in arrears.
This is the formula for Child support in Texas:
• 20 % for one child
• 25 % for two children
• 30 % for three children
• 35 % for four children
• 40 % for five children
• Not less than 40 % for six children
So, assuming an income of 6,000 per month, and two kids, that’s 1,500 a month. A guy making $72,000 a year would have to pay nothing for eight months to have action initiated.
A guy making 2/rds of the family income (prior to divorce) is making about 30,000 a year (median household income in Texas from 2006-2010 was $50,000, per the US Census).
That’s $625 a month in statutory support. That means it takes eight months to get 5,000 in arrears, and three more to start proceedings.
So it takes a year for him to be at risk, and if he’s too broke, then he’s off the hook, so long as he makes the effort to show the court his failure to pay isn’t willful.
Mind you, if he’s never paid a penny… I’d say it’s pretty hard to show it’s not willful, since the amount assessed is based on income. It’s not random.
AntZ: “So you reckon we shouldn’t try to reduce violence against women and their children?”
They are not only YOUR CHILDREN. They have fathers too.
And the fathers ought to be allowed to beat them?
Because (again, it’s English, your mother tongue, and all that shit) that’s what you are saying. You can’t try to stop violence against children, because they have fathers.
Do those fathers have a right to abuse them? A right which shouldn’t be taken away?
Why do you think that man wants to buy guns and amo? Because he knows that he cannot get help in any other way. That is his last recourse.
Then he’s stupid.
Really. He’s STOOPID. I know guns. One of the things I know is that I can’t shoot more than one at a time. I also know that every weapon fires a little differently, so I can’t just grab a new one when the one I’m shooting runs out of ammo. It’s better just to reload.
Is he expecting a siege, and lots of friends to man the barricades? Because guns are heavy (even lightweight one’s like the M-16 family are about 11 lbs loaded. Doesn’t sound like much until you start trying to carry it everywhere). Ammo ain’t light neither.
So he’s got a ton of shit he can’t carry. It chains him to a base. That makes him easier to find, because there will be a limited area of operations for his attacks (recall the DC Snipers, one rifle, and even then they were caught because they refused to leave the vicinity. If they’d taken that show on the road, in a bigger way, they could have been killing people a lot longer, again, I digress).
So he’s plunking down $500 a pop, and more than a $100 bucks at a time for ammo, for no good reason. He’s a wanker.
Rutee, this kinda reminds me of something Ami said earlier, about how some people think schools are pushing a “gay agenda” when we’re lucky if they mention same-sex attractions at all. These guys seem to think women getting *any* help to pay for childcare is too much, and we *should* have been out in the street… either that, or they think single moms just let their kids run around naked and starving, and spend all the money on themselves.
or they think single moms just let their kids run around naked and starving, and spend all the money on themselves.
And bon bons. Don’t forget those.
@ Pecunium
How dare you? HOW VERY DARE YOU attempt to use facts and logic to challenge an MRA.
And not just any MRA, the hardest working MRA solidier in the blog-o-sphere, Anthony Zarat!
Pecunium,you spent time and energy in providing a well thought remedy to Antz’s worries but I fear it will be in vain. You see, Antz doesn’t care about facts or logic. In his mind, whenever a man is hurt, anywhere, that man is hurt because feminism.
Men in jail? Because feminism.
Men die at work? Because feminism.
War? Because feminism.
Violent, alcoholic, abusive father not able to see kids? Because feminism.
Antz is scared of losing his “wonderful wife and two children” because feminism.
His rational, logical and sensible solution to this? I kid you not, it is to divide the country along the Mississippi, females one side, males on the other.
Antz: I am 42 years old. I have a wonderful wife and two wonderful boys. My older brother has a daughter. I have no interest in a world where either gender is oppressed.
So now you are all full of love and compassion for your wife? The one you say you are terrified will leave you? The one you want to replace with a VR sexual simulator? The one who, like your niece, you want to ship to the other side of the Mississippi?
That world, where neither gender is oppressed, but neither gender gets to see the other?
English, your mother tongue…learn what the words mean.
Happy: I know all about AntZ plans. He’s been here a long time.
I think a male pill would be great, because it would be another way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. I do not, however, think the “paper abortion” is a good idea at all. It is a bad idea, and it would be disastrous for children. Here’s the deal. Pregnant men can already have an abortion. Cisgender men can not have an abortion, because they can not get pregnant. While I am against the idea of paper abortions, I don’t have ill feelings towards those who respectfully disagree with me. See, AntZ? Feminists do not share a hive mind. We disagree with each other all the time, but we don’t use violence to work out our disagreements.
The Fathers Rights activists already dress up like superheroes. AntZ here is taking it one step further and talking like a mixture of Batman and Darth Vader.
Antz: I went and read the article about the homeless guy.
I don’t see the feminism. What I see is the appalling militarisation of our society/police. I see the ever-present fear of the poor. I see stupidity, but I don’t see the feminism.
Unless you are trying to say that feminists are actually in charge of everything. That they a making all the decisions. That’s why the Susan G. Komen Foundation withdrew directed block grants for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood when a Republican started a witch hunt in the House… because FEMINISM.
That, or you don’t really understand things.
Not to blow your mind so early in the morning, Zarat, but my own parents, who are and always have been ardently feminist, set up this arrangement between themselves. In 1983. They both wanted to be involved in my upbringing, and they both realized that the genitals in their pants had zero effect on their ability to have a good parent-child relationship with me.
(The court actually tried to give my mother full custody. She fought with them for nearly a year before the judge finally asked her, “So you really think this could work?” She answered, “We’ve been doing it for six months already, so yes.” The judge relented.)
I seriously considered a career in family law because I wanted to see more families do this, because I benefited from it enormously, and because I find it an inherently feminist position. Also because it does benefit both parents to have lives sans children now and then, though my own parents never got over how much I would grow in the intervening weeks. 🙂
The one part I’d add, that you don’t mention (and that I wouldn’t expect you to think of if you hadn’t lived through such an arrangement yourself), is that in order for a 50/50 custody situation to work, the parents have to put the child first. Always. The parents have to be able to separate their personal differences from the parent-child relationship every single time they must trade kids, coordinate schedules, go to parent-teacher conferences, show up at kids’ recitals/soccer games/birthday parties/etc., or any time the kid brings up the other parent. A week-on, week-off situation especially means a lot of seeing and talking to the other parent – up to several times a day, especially when the kid is still a toddler. Parents who can’t deal with that much communication with their ex-spouse (due to abuse or anger or any other reason) will not be able to share custody effectively.
My parents could share custody because they still basically respected one another (still do), despite realizing they could no longer remain married to one another. And they shared a commitment to putting my happy and healthy growth before any personal conflict they had with one another (still do, even though I’m well past minority). Parents who cannot do this, for whatever reason, are not equipped to share custody.
(Finally, because I’m curious: you specify shared physical custody. Do you think legal custody should also be shared? Or should it be granted to only one parent? If the latter, which parent, and how would you deal with the inevitable problems that would arise for the parent who had physical custody but not legal custody?)
Also, if either spouse remarries, the new spouse has to put the kid first as well, and avoid ever badmouthing the other parent in the kid’s hearing. I somehow hit the cosmic jackpot on that one, since I now have four parents who all get along. But I’m well aware how unusual my situation is.
Kendra – The thing that gets me about the paper abortion is that unlike with a real abortion, the child still exists. They have wants and needs. Even if the mother (and social services) can provide for the kid enough to keep them alive, they’re still not living as well as they could if their father was supporting them.
The idea of a child growing up poor while their father does whatever he likes with his money just saddens me. And it happens enough already. Codifying it into law would be disgusting.
Whether you have a child is a choice. Whether you care for a child that you already have is not.
I saw a highly-upvoted AVFM comment blaming the number of homeless men on “feminist governance” so I could see Antz argue that. It really is impossible to Poe these guys.
Oh and Antz’s post was downvoted so much that it’s been hidden due to its low rating.
“The law gives women license to dismember and discard men, and so women do that. Women are not to blame — we men would do exactly the same thing if we had the power. The law is to blame. Feminism, and feminist corruption in family court, is to blame.
Women are not the problem.”
How dare you say something that counters Price’s misogyny?
I didn’t realize you were posting a hypothetical, so I never gave you an answer thereto. At the time, you sounded like you were denouncing a thing that Actually Happens In The Real World (news: it doesn’t!), so I explained some reality.
Here’s the answer to your hypothetical:
If any people (male or female) were actually being sent to prison for felony convictions based on inability to pay child support, that would not only be morally indefensible, but an obvious violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. No one, male or female, may be constitutionally jailed for a mere inability to pay. (Unwillingness to pay is a different can of beans.)
Dani: AntZ is lying. We told him just what you told him. He doesn’t really want that. What he wants is to be told we think it’s never justifiable to jail a parent who refuses to pay when able.
“The law gives women license to dismember and discard men, and so women do that. Women are not to blame — we men would do exactly the same thing if we had the power.”
Antz wrote that? Good to know exactly what he’d like to do if he ever got his way. Why would we have a good faith discussion about anything with this entity?
What he wants is to be told we think it’s never justifiable to jail a parent who refuses to pay when able.
Pecunium: Yeah, I’m basically repeating myself, because I remember when he “asked” that “question.” (Also, it wasn’t three months ago – I haven’t been here that long.)
Specifically, what he seems to want to hear is that we think it’s never justifiable to jail a father who refuses to pay when able. He doesn’t seem to realize – or care – that non-custodial mothers pay child support too, and women can also be held responsible by courts if they refuse to pay.
There’s more to that lovely comment I didn’t post:
“If men had the legal ability to take the children, expel the mother and enslave her as an ATM machine, I think many of us would do that. And we would move our new 24 year old blond bimboes into the bed recently vacated by the “old bag”, who now has to work 12 hours a day to stay out of jail. And we would deny the few precious hours of visitation that the “old bag” has a theoretical right to, whenever it suits us, for any reason or for no reason.”
Sounds like someone’s projecting…
QFT