So this is an … interesting reaction to that Buzzfeed piece about Paul Elam. And by “interesting” I mean “WTF?”
Over on The Spearhead — remember The Spearhead, home to some of the crankiest misogynists on the Internet? — our old friend WF Price offers a rather unique analysis of Elam’s life story.
Price admits right off the bat that Elam is indeed as much of an “asshole” as the Buzzfeed article makes him out to be, snarkily commenting that this fact “isn’t exactly news to anyone who has dealt with him personally, or read his articles.” And then he goes on to blame Elam’s assholery on feminism.
Wat.
Well, as Price sees it, Elam hasn’t exactly suffered for being an asshole. The fact that he basically got away with abandoning his daughter proves
that telling your wife and kids to screw off when your marriage goes bad is a better strategy if you’re concerned about yourself than trying to be a niceguy. What could be a more damning indictment of feminism than that?
Um, do you really want an answer to that?
Meanwhile, Price argues, the fact that Elam has had three failed marriages shows that ladies just love assholes. No, really. According to Price, Elam’s life story
proves that being an asshole doesn’t torpedo one’s prospects with women. Quite the opposite, in fact: Paul’s many walks down the aisle are testament to the fact that there’s something about the guy that contemporary women find appealing. Elam’s a major hit with women to this day.
Checkmate, feminism!
Price then works me into the equation, for some reason.
And I don’t write this out of envy; on the contrary, I think his popularity with women has probably been his biggest problem in life (Futrelle wouldn’t understand).
Price concludes with this, er, zinger:
So if feminists were to say to me that Paul Elam proves that MRAs are terrible people, I’d respond by saying “he’s the product of your philosophy, not mine.”
It will take someone more versed in formal logic to explain exactly what logical fallacies Price is committing here, or if he’s somehow come up with a new logical fallacy all his own.
I didn’t mean to imply you were, sorry. : (
I was just stating his backstory for those that didn’t know, and insisting to cover my own ass that his overall very nice childhood with a few episodes of abuse didn’t excuse his actions.
Hell, my brother-in-law’s ex kept doing this (except that they alternates every other weekend and shared weekdays – same town, same school system) – he’d have their daughter for great swaths of time and every weekend (or all weekend but one day).
He brought it to court said that the unpredictability was disrupting their daughter’s life (it was), and won primary custody (the ex-wife now has every other weekend…which she apparently frequently skips).
I will not argue with a straight face that you won’t run into biased judges, because you will (either and every way); but most of the time I’ve seen it play out the court bends over backwards to keep a competent and non-abusive parent in the picture.
QFT.
I know you sometimes get batted around on here, GOM (and sometimes…well, you do mansplain your way into it), but Iiiiiiii like ya.
Mike, dude – You said that you’re going to walk away from conversations like this.
Do.
You seem like a decent enough (if, in my opinion, horrifically ill-informed with bass-ackward thinking) guy.
Archive the Spearhead, close the computer (or device, whatever), spend time with your new baby.
I’ll offer one final anecdote to (maybe?) fuel some congnitive dissonance:
I consider myself a feminist.
My ex decided during a deployment that marriage was no longer “where his head was at” (I later discovered that his was because it was firmly turned towards a female contractor).
Many military spouses that I knew recommended that I take a scorched earth approach – clean out our accounts (which I had painstakingly built up), charge everything to cards in his name and then not pay them, etc.
The people who recommended this were decidedly and vocally not feminists.
I, being a person who both understands how joint credit works and who is (I like to think) not a vindictive weirdo, secured a place to live back at our historic home area (where our sets of parents lived and where there were plenty of jobs to be had), networked my way into a job through some old friends, divided our physical assets* – he got most of the furniture, fwiw, because I knew that I’d be moving into a single wide “modular home”, put /his/ stuff into climate-controlled storage (by myself while singing to and otherwise entertaining a with a toddler and infant – it’s amazing how quickly hard and fast military friends can slough away when your husband leaves…it’s like your a leper with a particularly virulent strain), cleared contracted military housing WITH NO CHARGES (in caps for those of you who know), and moved all during the second part of his deployment.
*He announced his intent to end the marriage over the phone while deployed, made it clear that it was going to “stick” during his leave, and then went back.
We went through mediation because DAYUM divorce court. I’d calculated what I’d need to support our children and asked for that. Even our JOINT MEDIATOR said that I needed more, but I just wanted it to be done.
I made it work.
He’s gotten promotions, moved (both to change duty station and in with/away from various women), I’ve gotten remarried, had another child, began staying home (again) because childcare costs with three children’ll take a bite out of even a decent paycheque.
We’ve adjusted fire on child support ourselves, without the courts – always down, always because he said that he needed it and because we could absorb it.
He recently found out that he’s getting discharged from the military and asked to halve support (compared to the amount on paper) to help him adjust while he finds a new job.
We could do it (*laughs nervously while eyeing budget spreadsheet*)…ish…so we did (and so he doesn’t get screwed by the courts later if something *does* come up, he’s always paid the full amount and we’ve then “refunded” him the difference).
While we technically have joint custody, he lives several states over and only sees the children several times a year.
Whenever he asks for visitation, he gets it. My family gets pretty upset over this – they’re with him (while he’s in the area visiting) for both Thanksgiving and Christmas – but I figure that we can make our own holidays at any other time. They’re just dates, as they’re important to him and his parents (who our children see several times a month, by the way).
I’m a feminist, and I don’t breathe fire and I’m not trying to “twist” the court to punish my ex or suit my own ends.
I’m a feminist, and I recognize that, while he’s engaged in some pretty hurtful actions, my ex is a person, not an archetype or a target; and he deserves every reasonable chance to have a relationship with our children – as they deserve every reasonable chance to have a relationship with their father.
I’m a feminist, not a boogeyman.
Er, boogywoman.
ALTHOUGH I AM THE QUEEN OF TEAL DEERS ????
If you’re addressing this to the thread, don’t be so patronizing sweetie. If you’re addressing this to kirbywarp, that still stands. Many of us here do have personal or professional vocations that require court visitation. I myself am due in court tomorrow.
You spin a good story, Price. To anyone who does not care to take this scenario one step further and consider the subsequent devastating impact the lack of child support payment would have upon the mother (assuming she is the custodial parent in the Poor Menz picture you try to paint) and child/children. While he wallows in his bad feels, she is the one who must struggle to compensate for the financial obligations he will not or cannot meet (and very, very few single parents can hold down full-time employment that pays a living wage whilst meeting the vast responsibilities of child care, especially if the child/children are young and there is more than one). It is always, ultimately, the children who suffer. I assume you’re referring to sanctions for non-payment of CSA when you say “punished” for failing to meet child support costs. These are put in place to prevent negative financial impact on the CHILD. Reasons, they exist. Lord.
The welfare of the child is of tantamount importance, and is not something that seems to be reflected at all in your understanding of family courts. It’s clear that when parents seperate the best model for the good of the child is one in which the primary caregiver (often the mother) who has been meeting the larger share of the child’s emotional and developmental needs stays with the child, and one in which the non resident parent is obligated to support the child’s financial needs by paying regular maintenance, usually because they are in a much better position to do so. Again, this is stressful on both the primary care provider (in many cases the mother who must sacrifice her career and future earning ability) and the non resident parent (in many cases the father who must part with financial resources), but it is the model that currently best prioritizes the needs of the child *
Yet instead of tackling one of the root problems of “equality by the letter of the law does not mean equal opportunity or outcome” in this specific discussion (bias of family courts and the divvying up of parental responsibilities) by addressing the culture which normalizes a deeply gendered nature of parental roles (the mother as emotional caretaker, the father as traditional breadwinner), you propose .. what?
You could focus on increasing the opportunities for men to eventually be in a position to claim primary care provider in family courts by, for a start, increasing paid paternity leave so they can spend more time with their children, particularly during the key developmental years (in the UK the maximum employers are required to pay is two weeks, a particular bug bear of mine), or push for parenting educational classes in the current curriculum which promotes the idea of men, not just women, as primary child care providers. To start.
But no. You blame feminists. You actually, genuinely blame feminists.
(FYI the ones who are advocating for the above).
*Sorry for the generic ‘splainathon y’all. The consistent selfish focus on teh feels of teh menz when it comes to child maintenance, completely ignoring the potentially devastating impact on the child’s welfare if this was not put in place, makes me exhausted.
http://imgur.com/gSJngS0
And, per usual, please excuse typis and confusing autocorrects.
I look at this site on my phone because I’m like, “I’m just browsing! I won’t write any long replies!” and then I do.
And now it’s time to wake up some stinky kids and feed them oatmeal!
*s eyes at self*
Bill.
That was to Bill, not Mike.
It’s a pain to look at other posts on my phone and “Mike” stuck in my head for some reason.
Bill, you still have yet to back up any of your assertions with any kind of evidence. Your thinking these things doesn’t make them so. Where is your data that fathers who bother to fight for custody don’t get it? What sctions did feminists take to make the family court system allow fathers to be physically but not financially neglectful (as you see it)? When did feminists demand money as punishment for decency (specific instances)?
It’s still here, huh?
I don’t have personal experience in court, but i have done some research and satatistics look-ups. I’ve also had my parents recently go through divorce. Luckily us children are old enough to have custody not be a thing. Unluckily, it was a situation where my dad was such an asshole, both during the marriage and during the divorce, that my mom wanted to settle as quickly as possible just so it’d be over, even though her lawyer said she settled for far too little.
It still dragged on forever. My dad was the wage earner and he had the money to afford a nice lawyer. He had the personality to make practically every step of the divorce a living hell for my mom, even without meaning to be malicious, from making every conversation about moving stuff around to the split properties tortuous to threatening all sorts of drastic legal actions.
They’d been married for 20-30 years and my mom had been retired for a while now (at my dad’s urging, which is a whole other story), so they basically split their assets down the middle (although I believe the minority went to my mom). My dad is still angry that she walked away with so much of his money (which is not how a marriage works). My mom is afraid she won’t be able to live unless she gets some sort of income soon, and she’s afraid she can’t get a job due to medical issues and a long period of inexperience.
As you can see, the idea that you should be as much of an asshole as possible hits kind of close to home for me. Too much and the court will notice, but if you can put on a nice mask in public being an asshole makes the divorce even more of a living hell than it needs to be.
No, I don’t have experiences with the worst of how divorce court works. I’m sure there are cases where men can screwed over, just as I’m sure there are cases where women get screwed over (I’ve lived one of those). I can’t say every individual case works out to the ideal, but what I can say is that statistics and lawyer-driven advice sites that fail to mention gender dynamics show that Price’s (and MRA’s) conception of a super skewed divorce court is faulty. They need to start getting stories of divorces from outside their self-selected bubble, or at least do a little objective research.
Just like feminists wanted it all along! /s
Bill is going to write a book titled: “Being Cruel to Your Children for Fun and Profit and How You Can Blame It on Feminism”.
I’m sure it will be a hit with selfish, neglectful asshats everywhere.
Bill has met actual feminists you guys! Shut up and let him tell you what you think because he is an authority on icky ladies and their ball busting ways.
/s
*sigh*
OMG, Bill. What is happening in your brain? You are ridiculous.
We’re just children who should be left to raise “men’s” children on our own if raising them should be too much of a hassle for those men.
Raising kids is so easy that even girls can do it, but it is even easier to dump them like a sack of garbage.
If those children grow to resent their absent fathers, clearly we girls brainwashed them.
Really?
@Bill:
This would be the classic ‘telling people what they believe’ tactic.
I don’t think there’s anyone on here that feels like that, I’ve never seen views even close to that expressed – in fact I’ve seen the exact opposite expressed on many occasions.
How does that affect your 100%?
I was going to explain to you what feminism actually is but you’re already making it clear you couldn’t care less so I’ll save my breath.
Bill, exactly what kinds of “needs” or “biological imperative” (is that what you said?!) do you think women have in spades that they just want the father out of the picture so they can “find another man”? Do you have any idea what the hell you are talking about?
Picture this: I got told to my face by my boyfriend when I told him I was pregnant “I don’t want it. We have to get rid of it”. Pretty straightforward, don’t cha think? WHY would I have wanted this jerk in my life after this? What kind of care and nurturing do you think he would have possibly provided to me during the pregnancy after this? OF COURSE I LET HIM GO. WHY WOULD I HAVE WANTED HIM TO STICK AROUND. HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH WANTING ANOTHER MAN. Would you want an asshole like that in the picture?
So, citation needed about the BS you spewed. Biological needs, my ass. He offered and provided nothing. Good riddance. The best damn decision I ever made. He “went his own way”, got a better paying job and picked up where he never left off with his ex-girlfriend. And as for wanting another man? Ha! You know, we single moms do support and talk to each other. Best damned advice I was ever given: forget about men, focus on the little family you created. And that’s precisely what I fucking did.
So up yours, drop dead, forget you, screw you and go pet a cactus.
To the others here, sorry if this is off topic. I just couldn’t believe what I read from this conceited person who thinks he knows what single moms want and our reasons for wanting the partner out of the picture.
Tina,
For one thing, you’re completely on topic. For another thing, if you weren’t on topic, we wouldn’t mind.
We’ve been nicer to Price than he deserves so rant if you want!
@Misha:
And that’s where it all falls down – they never suggest anything constructive, him or any of the other mrightsers. It’s always with the patronising, the complaining, the whining about how unfair it all is and then… absolutely nothing about how we might fix things. Unless you count returning to some mythical golden era of women as slaves/sex-toys/punch-bags, they’re all over that.
@Bill:
You know what, if you had a genuine complaint and could point out where the system is unfair and what we might do about it most people here would probably support you, as it would bring us closer to equality and is good for everyone.
But that’s not what you’re doing, you’re just complaining about how good the womenz have it and woe is you and all men everywhere. Apparently you can’t see how good you’ve got it because it’s so easy to think something just isn’t a problem if it’s not your problem.
As Misha says, women want to be in a position where they could maybe be the main breadwinner and not necessarily the main child raiser. Men also want to be in a position where they could maybe be the main child raiser. But until those are fixed, custody will most likely go to the mother.
So if you want the court system to award custody to fathers as often as they do to mothers, help us to help you.
@Tina:
What WWTH says, you’re totally entitled to that rant.
Three unsuccessful marriages. Because when women are attracted to you they obviously want to divorce your ass and have nothing to do with you. Quantity over Quality at the mra kingdom.
Not sure if this works since I’ve never embedded videos before but it’s the only thing that’s cheering me up right now
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eAjzA_XUds&w=560&h=315%5D
Thanks, Tina. The Myth of the Horny Single Mother is a hot one in the manosphere, but I decided I was not the right person to debunk it. In fact, I believe that for most single moms — while they might prefer being coupled — the last thing they need is another very large child to compete for their physical and emotional energy.
I also noticed that his feminists were “girls” — he does patronize quite a bit — but I figured someone else would pick up that one. I was mostly amused/dismayed by the Dudelogik(TM) that most self-identified feminists can’t be feminists because they aren’t screaming harpies. It’s like a right-wingernut saying that most self-identified liberals he meets aren’t really liberals because they aren’t America-hating communists. When almost every X you meet is an exception to your X-definition, then just maybe your X-definition is wrong.
ParadoxicalIntention: No worries. My bad if my reply came across as defensive or snappy, it wasn’t supposed to.
That’s a class issue, not a gender issue. The lawyer has the resources, funds, and knowledge to work the system to his advantage. The working stiff isn’t being punished for being a sap who follows the rules; he just doesn’t have the means to get around them.
Yes, that sucks and it isn’t fair, but it isn’t part of some nefarious plot by feminists to reward assholery and leave single moms stuck with the burden of raising kids all on their own. Why would feminists even do that? That would be self-defeating.
Over thirty years ago, when I realized that my wife’s parents weren’t going to let her come back to live with me and I was going to have to move on, I went to a seminar for recently separated and divorced people sponsored by the local hospital. I was the only man in the group — there were three women.
In each of their cases:their husbands had left them for another woman.
In each case their husbands had left a previous woman to be with them (i.e., he terminated an existing relationship rather than having been free at the time). That seemed like a pattern to me — that is, rather than thinking that they’d lost a man who was truly committed to relationships, they might observe that serial monogamy seemed to be his style.
But what interested me most was that their biggest regret was not that they had lost their partner, but that somehow by failing to hold him they had deprived their children of the presence of their father. It started me looking around — I already regarded myself as a feminist, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for a man to see life from a woman’s point of view — and I began to look around and notice that in a very large number of cases men tend to think of themselves first while women tend to think of their children first. Naturally there are plenty of exceptions, but as a general thing …
I would cut Bill a bit of slack — break-ups hurt, and it’s natural to feel a bit bitter afterward — except that he is far too concerned with his own situation rather than his kid(s). (Several others here have pointed that out here.) He seems to have little capacity to see things from his ex’s point of view, but then if he had had that capacity he might well still be married to her. He can blame feminism, but in fact it was surely his own behavior that caused the split — his whole spiel reeks of male privileged thought — at most feminism made it possible for her to dispense with him.
Yes, and that’s partly what I was getting at. If you’re a guy who doesn’t abuse his kids and/or have a severe mental problem, you’re going to get some visitation whether or not you split from the picture for a few years. This will probably be on the order of every other weekend, one weekday per week and half of vacation time, if you put a little effort into it. That works out to just under 35%, which is, incidentally, the point above which one can ask for a reduction in child support due to custodial time. See how things work here? The #1 priority is designating an obligor and an obligee. Not the kids’ best interests. Guys get what they want up to that magical point at which the custodial status becomes an issue, because that threatens the court and state’s bread and butter.
Truancy doesn’t apply to noncustodial parents, because they have the right to choose whether or not they want to exercise visitation. Sure, the court would look askance at someone who repeatedly failed to show up for a pickup, but if you inform the NCP in advance there’s no truancy. Not taking care of your kids is a right. It’s really the only right noncustodial parents have, because the court can technically deny visitation (although this is rare).
@lith
I do suggest a solution. Implement the Nordic model and take the profit motive out of divorce proceedings. Make an assumption of shared parenting responsibility, which is most fair after all, and don’t give people a financial incentive to challenge it. People often say men don’t do their share, but when the kid’s with them they have to, and the large majority of them can handle it. And also, wouldn’t this give women more opportunity to advance in their career? I mean, having dad take care of the kid half the time takes a big load off her shoulders, right?
In fact, I’m taking care of a baby all alone right now. He’s a little fussy because he’s teething and weaning, but he’ll be perfectly safe until mama comes home from her doctor’s appointment. And when she starts working, we’ll be trading off on childcare. Grownups can handle it, male or female. Actually, if you consider how many women died in childbirth in the old days, the human race would have been in a pretty precarious position if fathers were incapable of taking care of kids.
I love this website, and seriously, keep on doing a great job and making me laugh (and cry from the incredible lack of… composure of some people, to say it nicely) please =D
Hmmm… How to keep it short? Real, gritty feminism is power feminism. The feminist on the bench or in the prosecutor’s office, who can wreck your life with a signature.
It will teach you about how an entire profession profits from human weakness and misery, and uses a convenient ideology to justify doing so.
Yes. In chambers. Where I live they are called Court Appointed Special Advocates.