This just in: Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most gullible nincompoops in the history of ever.
The latest evidence of this? The regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit were fooled by an obviously fake “screenshot” of an article from Jezebel that had been altered to make it look like a Jezebel staff writer thinks that paternity fraud is justifiable as a way to fight patriarchy.
No, seriously, the Reddit MRAs actually thought that Anna North of Jezebel had written that “the ability to lie about your children’s parentage is one way to break the rule of fathers.”
Here’s the “screenshot.” And here’s the original thread, which has been deleted from the Men’s Rights subreddit but which is still up, just not reachable from the subreddit.
The irony in many of the comments is off the charts. “It’s Jezebel, of course they think this way,” writes Riesea. “Wow,” says actorsspace. “If Jezebel had a sense of humor, I would suspect them of trolling.”
Blueoak9 — what happened to the original eight? — is stunned that even the evil feminists would sink so low:
There are, of course, a few teensy clues that North’s supposed quote about “break[ing] the rule of fathers” is a big fat fake (as are some of the others in that “screenshot”).
One is that nobody at Jezebel writes or thinks like that.
And second, there’s the tiny fact THAT THE REAL ARTICLE IS UP ON JEZEBEL AND IT DOESN’T SAY ANY OF THAT SHIT AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GO READ IT FOR FUCK’S SAKE IT’S RIGHT HERE.
In fact, Anna North, the author of the Jezebel article, makes an argument that’s the exact opposite of the one attributed to her in the “screenshot.” Challenging a writer in the London Times who had argued that “the ability to pass a child off on a man was a potent female weapon,” North countered that such a stance was not only morally questionable but also pretty antifeminist:
I’d rather “make male claims to omnipotence absurd” by, say, being economically and politically equal to men — not by making them raise babies that aren’t theirs.
Now, you might wonder why exactly the Men’s Rights crowd on Reddit was reading a screenshot of a Jezebel article and not an actual Jezebel article. Well, that’s because the Men’s Rights subreddit has banned all direct links to Jezebel and other Gawker media sites because the MRAs are still mad about that Violentacrez thing.
Yes, the subreddit that links in its sidebar to a site — A Voice for Men — that not only has offered thousand dollar bounties for the personal information of its feminist enemies but that also carries an open call to firebomb courthouses and police stations in its “activism section” is still pig-biting mad about Gawker’s “doxing” of the man who helped to ruin the lives of countless teenage girls by founding and protecting Reddit’s Jailbait subreddit and dozens of other noxious subreddits.
And so someone was able to use this fact to exploit MRA ignorance and paranoia about feminism and make the inhabitants of the Men’s Rights subreddit look like fools.
Again.
Or some MRA with zero ethics wanted to make feminists look bad and failed utterly. I think this is less likely, but with MRAs, anything is possible.
When you’re done reading the original discussion of the fake article on the Men’s Rights subreddit, you can read the discussion there about how they were trolled. Including the comments from this person who thinks that “even if it’s a troll… so what? It’s still presenting an opinion that many a feminist has held.” Straw feminism is REAL! And this person (with dozens of upvotes) who thinks they should just ban all links to all feminist blogs because, hey, what’s the point in knowing anything at all about something you talk about constantly?
EDIT: Thanks to the AgainstMensRights subreddit, I was able to find the link to the original banned post, and so I’ve put the link (and some comments from the discussion) into the post above.
“So unprotected PIV is the only sex act now? Wow, what a limited notion.”
Again, going on to twist my words around. I’m referring within the context of a wife cheating on her husband, so yes the sex will be PIV and if they stupidly chose to fuck without a condom, then yes a child will result. If the woman only have homosexual sex in extra-marital affairs, then paternity fraud wouldn’t be such a problem now would it? 🙂
Plus, are you trying to label me as a heterosexist? Don’t even try, because you don’t know me :).
““Paternity fraud apologism”? That’s a laughable term and you’re sounding more like an MRA every minute. You seem to think men are right to be paranoid about whether they fathered a child, yet complain about a man not knowing a woman is pregnant. How’s he supposed to know if she didn’t tell him and their relationship ended?”
Well no fucking shit. If you have sex without a condom, you have to deal with the consequences. A man who is the victim of paternity fraud, on the other hand, did not choose to bring a child into this world. Yes there are cases where neither the father knows, which is why I said that a) that wouldn’t be fraud (so hence, no jail time), and b) both the two men and the woman should be understanding of the fact that a paternity test would be necessary for both of them.
“You want women jailed for this … are you going to jail men for adultery that might result in him fathering a child on some other woman instead of his wife? Maternity deprivation, or some such stupid title?”
And there you go again, twisting my words around to the way YOU want it to hear, so you can poke fun at a strawman argument. I said it a bazillion times that IT TAKES TWO TO MAKE A BABY. Yes, if both the woman and the biological father were involved in the fraud (and if it IS fraud), then BOTH CAN be jailed. Not should, can. How long? Depends on the severity of the fraud. As for men who cheat, yes of course. It should be punished. But can a man fraud a woman into becoming a mother of a child that she did not choose to bring into this world? No, because the child that is not hers will not be conceived by her. So we can punish the man for infidelity, but not for fraud. We have differences in our biology, and the differences in the way men and women give birth will result in men being much more susceptible to paternity fraud.
“You’re talking as if women and children are men’s property.”
For some reason I thought the MRA’s were being delusional when they say that feminists constantly throw the “objectification” card around. I’m not saying that you’re doing the same, but please point out WHERE did I SPECIFICALLY say that women and children are men’s property? I could easily do the reverse and say to you that you think men and children are women’s property because of how ridiculous you think it is to jail people that commit fraud. But I don’t want to sink down to your level.
Go ahead and call me an “MRA”. Call me a Nazi if you want. You don’t fucking know me, and the fact that you twist my words around and judge me based on a few words that you disagree with is pretty darn flattering :). Please continue.
Yeah, man, we should totally put women in jail for lying to their husbands! And then, after that, we can put men in jail for breaking off their engagements. And then we can bring back lobotomies. We can party like it’s 1885.
(This one’s attempt at pretending to be reasonable didn’t last for long, did it? Bad trolling effort, 3/10. Tipped your hand too early with the poison bit.)
Also, pro-tip – no modern government is actually going to do this. I hope that droning on about it on the internet brings you great joy, because that’s all you’re going to get.
Well, being French, I’m not personally concerned by this “restriction”, I’m just considerate (that’s a good thing to be considerate, isn’t it?) to these American guys who don’t have the right to chat with a foreign woman on a “for profit” dating site (it’s not “extra scrutiny”, it’s a restriction that forbids a guy to talk with a woman on a for profit dating site BEFORE the procedure to prove that he’s not a woman-beater rapist had occurred) before the woman in question had seen his criminal records and I hope that my country (or the technocrats of Bruxelles and Strasbourg) will never create a law like that, not because I plain to find a Russian wife using a dating site (there’s already a foreign lady in the house whom I still haven’t managed to persuade of the joys of bigamy), but because, you know, I think there’s certain fundamental rights, if you deprive some people of them, you threaten the rights of everyone.
And I note that the people who “mock” these concerns when the deprivation of rights only applies to men (“Oh you don’t like laws, go live alone on an island”), suddenly become able to see the creepiness and the danger of such measures when it involves mandatory medical tests on women’s bodies. Hypocrites.
Yep, that’s how you determine a child’s paternity. You test the body of the woman who just gave birth for Cheating Slut Spores. This has been today’s update from didn’t Brz promise he was going to leave land.
I have more than one male friend who actually has had cause (justified or not, I don’t really know) to be worried about paternity, mostly because the thought was put into their heads by a third party and especially after the relationship with the mother had ended. Ironically (not really, but I guess it would be to MRAs), these men did not want to get tested.
One of them would never consider it because he felt that even if the kid turned out to be “not his” it wouldn’t change how he felt about her.
The other, even though the child had just been born when these doubts surfaced, did not want to lose the opportunity to be a dad for any reason so he chose to ignore the rumors and innuendo.
Both of these men pay child support and do not live with the women. Neither of them feels like they are “victims” and only feel lucky to be dads to kids who love and appreciate them.
Also my little brother was “adopted” by a man my mother began a relationship with while she was pregnant with him. My brother’s real father was a nutjob and basically took off, my mom just felt relieved to have him out of her life. The man who became my brother’s dad even treated my sister and I like his own children. Whenever I start to lose faith in the males of this species (no offense, but sometimes the internet is truly a horrible place to be as a female) I just think about him and feel warm, fuzzies.
When MRAs get all uppity about this paternity stuff it just feels like an insult not only to women (of course), but also to all those kids who have loving, wonderful parents…adopted or foster parents. Sorry for all the parenthesis, jeez I just realized how much I do that!
“Yeah, man, we should totally put women in jail for lying to their husbands! And then, after that, we can put men in jail for breaking off their engagements. And then we can bring back lobotomies. We can party like it’s 1885.”
Likewise, we could put men in jail for lying to their wives, and put women in jail for breaking off their engagements. Amazing how your strawmen thinking of how I’m biased with one gender can make you look all high and mighty, huh?
But you want to know why I focus more of my time in this thread talking about women lying to their husbands? Because the differences in our biology, the differences in the way we give birth makes it such that men are far more susceptible to be the victim of paternity fraud. A woman will know when a child does not belong to her, because she did not bear that child, unless child swapping exists, and if child swapping becomes a big of an issue as paternity frauds, then I will also equally focus on maternity frauds.
“Also, pro-tip – no modern government is actually going to do this. I hope that droning on about it on the internet brings you great joy, because that’s all you’re going to get.”
Which is why I said early on that they could POSSIBLY receive jail sentencing. Not definitely. Not indubitably. Reading – it’s what words are for :).
Therapy – it’s what fixes paranoia! You should look into it.
So do you agree with paternity tests or not? Do you think they should be made available for men?
And I agree with the therapy, because likewise, anyone who cooks eggs for the fear of salmonella poisoning should also receive that therapy.
Paternity tests are already available to men.
Um, biology doesn’t work that way…
BTW
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/salmonella.htm
As unfortunate as your deranged ideas are, I wouldn’t want you to inadvertently poison yourself just to prove a point. See how nice and helpful feminists are?
breadmold said:
“All I’m saying is that he has the right to feel that his life has been cheated by the wife and the biological father, and deserve the right to compensate the loss.”
As a parent, I find in extremely insulting that the idea of being cheated in any way can be associated with being a parent. I could understand if the nonbiological parent suddenly lost all rights to be a parent due to paternity tests or w/e, but in all other circumstances how can anyone be “cheating” anyone?
Here’s a bit of TMI, I am a single mom and I provide everything for my daughter with no help from her father or the government (not judging anyone who does either of these things). I do not feel “cheated” because I do this, even though he is still part of her life and his mother and father are too. He gets to see her whenever he can, I do not ask him for help or expect it. Here’s the thing, I have compassion for him because he is struggling and like someone else said, life is complicated. No matter how long he struggles, even if he never contributes a dime or spends more time than he does now (about 2 weeks total per year, and no he’s not in jail or out of state)…I will never, ever feel cheated! I feel almost guilty because I GET to be her full time parent and buy her things and spend all my free time with her. So yeah, fuck you.
I’m childless by choice and even so I’m appalled by how fundamentally child-unfriendly the stuff trolly is saying is, so I can only imagine how much worse it must sound to a parent.
Would cute animal videos as brain bleach help? Mr C met one of these today and won’t shut up about it. He says she was really super cute and nice, but huge.
Yeah, genes don’t really matter when it comes to parenting: you’re the father of the kids you’ve took care of, the kids who call you “father” and if you’re not the biological father, if the “real” father out there realize that he’d been deprived of his rights of being the father of his biological children, if he want custody of the children… I’ll say good luck with that because, at least in France, the justice won’t give a damn fuck about his “parenting rights as the biological father”: they will consider that it’s up to the children if they want to have a bond with their biological father and knowing that until a certain age the child don’t have the legal power to decide these kinds of things for himself, it’s the mother who decide for him, so it’s up to the mother.
I’m fine with that, genes don’t matter, but in the other hand, I don’t understand why the justice can force paternity on a man who had a baby with a woman with whom he wasn’t legally bound by a contract which implies presumption of paternity (marriage or civil union). No one should force me to be the father of a child I’ve never intended to have and if a woman make a baby with my semen without having requested my opinion on this matter and with me not having implicitly given my accord by contracting a marriage or a civil union with her, there’s no reason for the justice to force me being the father of this child. (the reason they give is “a child need a father”, meaning “we don’t give a fuck who’s the biological father normally but, hey, since there isn’t another man to replace the biological father, we’ll force the biological father to be the legal father, if the mother want that of course, if she decide that another random guy is a father, we’re cool, biological daddy doesn’t exist”, that’s ass).
Dawwwwww! I love gigantic slobbering puppies. I promised my daughter that as soon as I am able to buy our first home we will adopt a “rescue” Saint Bernard, so you def hit the brain bleach mark there! Actually, I have a very thick skin in general, but I really can’t help chiming in when a comment literally makes my mouth drop open in disgust. That’s why I am enjoying this site so much because you guys are so great at letting them have it, I hardly have to even contribute…but I just had to get that gift basket too! 🙂
Yay! I love big fuzzy dogs too, and would definitely have one if I had the space. Instead I just stare longingly at my neighbor’s Malamute.
Brz:
To me it seems like you are under the impression that there are a large number of women who get preggers just to trap a man or something? I’m going to help you out here, ok? Being pregnant and giving birth are not something any woman would take on lightly, especially in this age of information and sex education. These are scary ass things that happen to the body and sometimes even fatal.
So besides all that, even if there is a very tiny percentage of women who would do something so illogical and self destructive (I’m sure there is), why would they choose to assign fatherhood to someone who very clearly does not want to be a father, unless she actually thought he was?
Also, you have control over where you put your semen just as much as a woman has control over becoming pregnant (actually more because there are plenty of women who get pregnant due to rape). Why is there this recurring notion that there is some demographic of women out there who are out to “steal” semen. I call bullshit.
I can understand if you never wanted to be a parent and were paying for a kid you didn’t care about and then found out the kid wasn’t really yours, that you would feel cheated and want your time and money back. But surely that is a vanishingly rare scenario.
If on the other hand, if it’s a kid you did want and do care about then you *enjoy* being a parent then the time and money you put in is in exchange for that enjoyment and satisfaction. The absentee father didn’t get that enjoyment/satisfaction, so why is he on the hook for it?
If literally the only thing you care about is if the kid you don’t even like is carrying your genes, then a) you are ridiculously arrogant to think your genes are that special and b) you are seriously lacking in empathy.
So yeah, talking about this like it’s a huge issue is either some sort of intellectual exercise, you have serious emotional problems or you just have no understanding of probability.
Brzzzzzzzz: I thought you were so disgusted by us, you were leaving. I am disappoint, son.
Breadmold: what an apt name, since your arguments are old, stale, moldy, and nothing we haven’t heard before. Well, except for “paternity fraud apologism.” That was funny. Wrongheaded, but amusing.
Also, learn 2 read. No one said Ms Geta Lode was an MRA, but that hir points are major MRA hobbyhorses. I know, I know, it’s tough to be expected to read for comprehension when you’re fighting those pesky straw women.
Joe1: you’re just a moron in need of therapy for your rage issues.
“As a parent, I find in extremely insulting that the idea of being cheated in any way can be associated with being a parent. I could understand if the nonbiological parent suddenly lost all rights to be a parent due to paternity tests or w/e, but in all other circumstances how can anyone be “cheating” anyone?
Here’s a bit of TMI, I am a single mom and I provide everything for my daughter with no help from her father or the government (not judging anyone who does either of these things). I do not feel “cheated” because I do this, even though he is still part of her life and his mother and father are too. He gets to see her whenever he can, I do not ask him for help or expect it. Here’s the thing, I have compassion for him because he is struggling and like someone else said, life is complicated. No matter how long he struggles, even if he never contributes a dime or spends more time than he does now (about 2 weeks total per year, and no he’s not in jail or out of state)…I will never, ever feel cheated! I feel almost guilty because I GET to be her full time parent and buy her things and spend all my free time with her. So yeah, fuck you.”
Huh? What? Why are you giving an example of your single motherhood when my illustration was about a MARRIED/ENGAGED MAN felling cheated that he had to be forced to take care of a child that isn’t his via paternity fraud.
If it was about you being married to father #2 being forced to take care of a daughter that wasn’t his (who had no desire to be a father), and receiving no dime from father #1, then that would have made more sense.
Oh and you know what else? This might shock you, but I would fully support you on this and I think you are a wonderful parent. Surprised that I would say such positive things about you? In fact, I would go a step further and say that I give you a pat on the back for having compassion with a father that hardly spends time with his daughter. You’re much more tolerant than I am, I have to admit, because I’m not too particularly fond of people who don’t really do much to their biological child. I mean, your child’s dad was the one who chose to have sex, who knew the consequences, and he was the one who chose to barely spend a dime to your daughter. I would never blame you for the choice, Marci, and never in my life would I ever make the claim that you “tried to take the child away from him”.
But no, you gave an irrelevant example, and assumed that I meant ill because you took what I said the wrong way. Let me clarify everything that I said one time:
If a MARRIED MAN who HAD NO DESIRE to be a father, who is FORCED to be the father against his will suspiciously by his wife, then he has the right to suspect that the child may not be his. I’m NOT saying that all women do this. All I’m saying that THIS STUFF HAPPENS RARELY, but the FACT THAT IT DOES HAPPEN means that the father has the right to suspect it via paternity testing.
That’s everything I need to say from now on. I hope the best with you and your daughter. As long as you feel happy with what you have right now, then that’s all that matters. And please, read what I write.
Shorter Mold: “GET FREAKED OUT ABOUT THIS THING THAT RARELY HAPPENS!”
“BTW
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/salmonella.htm
As unfortunate as your deranged ideas are, I wouldn’t want you to inadvertently poison yourself just to prove a point. See how nice and helpful feminists are?”
I made a point about how if you think men who wants to get a paternity testing done for the suspect that the child may not be his needs to seek therapy, then you could also think that people who cook eggs for the suspect that they might be contaminated with salmonella should also seek therapy.
I’m baffled as to why you would assume I would “poison myself to prove a point”. But then again, much of the stuff you responded to me involved you twisting my words around, so this doesn’t surprise me.
“I’m childless by choice and even so I’m appalled by how fundamentally child-unfriendly the stuff trolly is saying is, so I can only imagine how much worse it must sound to a parent.”
ME TOO! I’m also childless by choice, and I would support another man’s choice to be childless. Would you like a hi-five for our mutual agreement?
Too bad it’s harder for men to be childless in this society than it is for women to be childless. Women have the option of using a variety of contraceptives, including birth control, female condom, sponge, tubal ligation and if all of them are not tried and/or don’t work out, then abortion. Not all are comfortable with abortions, but they have that option, which is 100% effective at getting rid of the child.
All men have are the condom, but once it breaks, then chances are, BAM you’re the father. There’s also the vasectomy, which is rather hard to get (in Toronto there are three clinics that do vasectomy procedures which is not a lot). At first I thought this was not fair, but eventually I started to learn that really, there’s nothing we can do about it.
And there’s also the paternity fraud. It’s easy to force a man to be a father of a child that isn’t his (even if he chooses to be childless), but it’s very difficult to force a woman to a mother of a child that isn’t hers. Because any child that isn’t hers won’t be born by her.
“I can understand if you never wanted to be a parent and were paying for a kid you didn’t care about and then found out the kid wasn’t really yours, that you would feel cheated and want your time and money back. But surely that is a vanishingly rare scenario.”
Rest assured that most of my post focuses on this issue. And just because it’s a “vanishingly rare scenario” (it isn’t) doesn’t mean that we should ignore it.
Fraud sucks, yes, but if the father is only interested in whether his genes are being passed down, then I agree that it’s an arrogant move on his part. However, he has been frauded, and he does have the right to demand compensation from the wife/girlfriend and the biological father.