By David Futrelle
Manosphere men are obsessed with the idea that women are naturally unfaithful, willing and eager to cheat on their husbands or boyfriends with any alpha male that happens to glance in their direction — a female proclivity these guys like to call “hypergamy,” a highfalutin word borrowed from anthropology and radically redefined to give their altogether unscientific, and thoroughly misogynistic, assumption the patina of SCIENCE.
For these guys, the worst-case scenario, hypergamy-wise, would be to discover that their partner not only cheated on them, but got pregnant in the process — and decided to pass off the resulting child as theirs. These guys see paternity fraud — which they assume is rampant — as not just a breach of trust, but as the ultimate form of cuckolding and a violation of what they see as their God-given right to pass their genes on to the next generation.
A post on Roosh V’s now-dormant Return of King’s site, summing up the view of many in the manosphere, claimed that “paternity fraud is worse than rape.”
But some go even further — with one commenter I recently ran across declaring paternity fraud to be a kind of murder.
“Paternity Fraud is Evolutionary Rape & Murder, Emotional Abuse and Financial Fraud,” wrote an angry Redditor calling himself MixedMartialArtsGuy in an open letter to Mr. Dr. Jordan Peterson urging him to stop advocating for marriage.
“[T]here is little to no recourse for men in the law,” MMAGuy continued.
This [is] why no man with any self respect or Red Pill knowledge gets married in 2019 onwards and any man with kids needs to get paternity tests – 1/3 kids tested have the wrong father.
The one-third claim gets pulled out pretty much any time manosphere men start talking about paternity fraud. But it turns out to be, well, utter garbage, like pretty much everything else these guys say. If these guys bother to give a source for this claim, they generally refer back to a New York Times piece on paternity testing. But the NYT piece itself offers no source for this number.
Several years back, sociologist Michael Gilding made an effort to track down the source of this “stubborn figure,” ultimately discovering that it came from “the published transcript of a symposium on the ethics of artificial insemination that was held nearly forty years ago, in 1972.” The numbers originated in a never-published study of patients in one English town. And we don’t even know how the study was conducted; as Gilding notes, neither the “precise tests [nor the] population sample were [ever] identified.”
So what’s the real number? Gilding, writing in 2011, looked at 2008 date from US and Australian paternity testing labs and found a “non-paternity rate” of roughly 25%.
“The problem with these figures is obvious,” he adds.
The participants are not a random sample of the population. On the contrary, they are a group of people who have doubts about the paternity of a child or children. The main thing we can say on the basis of these figures is that about three-quarters of people who have some reason to doubt paternity will find that their doubts are unfounded.
So what is the actual percentage? We don’t know. Gilding reports that recent — or recent-ish — published studies range from 0.78% — (from a 1994 Swiss study) to 11.8% (from a 1999 Mexican study). He notes that “the best North American study, published in 2009, proposes a rate between 1 and 3 per cent.”
But don’t expect to convince MMAGuy of this. When I poked around online trying to see if anyone else agreed with his “paternity fraud is murder” stance, I ran across an almost identically worded comment from someone with a suspiciously similar name under a video on “paternity fraud and the modern cuckold” by our old friend nemesis Paul Elam. (I think it’s safe to assume that MMAGuy and MMAFather are the same guy.)
In these even-less-hinged comments, the artist now calling himself MMAfather seemed to suggest that paternity fraud was not only equivalent to murder; it could also possibly justify murder.
You may wonder how exactly someone gets to the point at which they think the mass murder of divorced women and family court judges is somehow a sensible plan for political change.
In the case of MMAGuy/MMAFather, it’s clear that at least part of the reason is that he spends a great deal immersed in the manosphere — reading posts and comments, making posts and comments, watching videos, even reading the occasional book or two.
In fact, we know exactly which videos he’s watched and what books he’s read — because he has spelled this out explicitly not only by dropping comments on a Paul Elam video but by posting links to the works of other manosphere-associated ideologues he follows.
In one highly upvoted post on the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, for example, he strongly urges his fellow MGTOWs to read books by reactionary dating guru Rollo Tomassi and antifeminist ideologue Helen Smith; to watch videos from self-described Men;s Rights Activist and alt-right YouTube “philosopher” Stefan Molyneux as well as MGTOWs Turd Flinging Monkey and Sandman; and even Jordan Peterson, though he doesn’t like JP’s take on marriage. Oh, and he also encourages them to watch Cassie Jaye’s Red Pill documentary, a sort of love note to the Men’s Right movement that was funded in part by the very people Jaye was “reporting” on.
It’s not surprising, though it is certainly distressing, that someone who regularly dumps this much poison into their brains ends up having some pretty poisonous views. What’s even more distressing is that MMAFather’s comments about murdering divorced women and judges were evidently so uncontroversial to the other commenters on Elam’s video that not a single one of them challenged him — or, indeed, said anything at all about his outrageous views.
That’s the kind of world that Elam, Molyneux, Tomassi and the rest have created with their terrible ideas and poisonous rhetoric over the course of the last decade.
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It’s hard to imagine why a family court judge would side with this guy’s ex over him, huh?
Jesus Christ a judge could probably smell the hate off these guys a mile away.
“Paternity Fraud is Evolutionary Rape and Murder,” and might itself JUSTIFY MURDER, argues dude high on manosphere fumes
It’s just a short step from contemplating whether this justifies murder, to saying that it does, to saying that all women should be murdered to make sure they don’t try to pull off this trick (or to punish those who have).
In other words, guys are usually wrong on this point.
Hello.
I do not know from where MMAFather is, but if he had done at least a bit of research, he would have find that paternity tests are not banned here. Their usage are just defined by a law.
From the last legal update (December 2018 – it is in French, sorry), it is allowed if there is a judiciary process aiming at :
– establishing or contesting a filiation bound
– being granted or stopping alimonies
The person to be tested must agree (yes, the father must agree. It is a man right, as they exist outside the narrow minded world vision of MMAGuy).
It has to be asked by a lawyer, and the judge of the district court had to order it.
Out if this frame, it is illegal.
If MMAGuy/Father practices MMA as efficiently as he builds his argumentation, he is far to be the next John Cena.
Have a nice day.
O/T: A woman on Twitter having a bad day muses, “what if the Joker in Batman was a woman who’d been told to smile once too often?” Awesome idea, right? Not to the man-babies of comicdom who had to come squat in her replies for daring to get girl-cooties on their precious, basically validating her original thought.
(Source: Charlie Stross)
@Cat Mara
I second your applause. I was also impressed by how she managed humour in the face of the hate tide.
I’d read a comic about that kind of Joker. Sounds like a good “what if?” opportunity.
@ Cat Mara:
my day hath been made
off-topic-ish, that pic of Orson Welles creeps me all the WAY out. The lighting effect they used on those ’50s/’60s B&W “sinister” films is, to me, way scary. Too many late-night Twilight Zone episodes on my pre-adolescent brain, I guess.
These people have way too much money to be throwing it at these effin’ grifters, I tells ya. Like Chapo sez, we gotta get a grift that funnels these dollars for the cause of good rather than another Nazi talking head.
OT, but a thought popped into my noodle as I was listening to Will Menaker interview Alan Moore on Chapo. Menaker and his merry band are in the UK at the moment and he came across Christ Church Spitalfield, which features heavily in Moore’s legendary From Hell, and Moore describes the way architecture informs our lives on a far more fundamental level than we think on the surface. For instance, the Christ Church was meant to impose its dominance over the Huguenot refugees that lived in Spitalfield at the time and cast shadows on every alleyway, leaving people to feel like rats trapped in a maze.
Moore went on to say that our capacity to imbue our surroundings with their own mythology is absolutely vital to them having lasting meaning for us. Definitely feeling that in this new Toronto springing up everywhere. These glass monstrosities downtown almost defy mythology. They literally hide nothing, showing off all of their tacky innards, or else just reflect our ugly selves like mirrors in the harsh sunlight.
It certainly explains why I’ve become so fascinated with heritage properties in Toronto. While many of the Victorian styles have the feel of the old country, it’s founding by a military man (Col. John Graves Simcoe) gives it a more orderly, regimented feeling than London. Streets don’t wind in the downtown core, they’re laid out in a grid pattern, but they were left very narrow due to the nature of the land allotments that stretched from Lot Street (now Queen Street) to the first concession (now Bloor Street). Perfectly emblematic of the Protestant commitment to order. With space at a premium, the tall narrow bay-and-gable style of house became the city’s hallmark, and there’s myths-a-plenty to be found in those old bricks.
I remember hearing the ghost stories about University College or Spadina House when I was a kid, even when I was attending U of T itself! University College is a National Historic Site, so it’s not in danger of being bulldozed to make way for a new facility, but the Banting and Best Institute buildings are on the chopping block to make room for this monstrosity. Just the latest casualty of a city with questionable dedication to its own mythos.
If our structures are just left to rot, torn down and rebuilt every 50 years or so, then we can’t forge that mythology that imbues that meaning. Stephen King actually had a short story called “Willa” where the ghosts of a train crash ponder their fate when they realize that the station they’re haunting is about to be demolished. The protagonist ghost couple decide to leave, but the rest can’t bring themselves to acknowledge their fate.
A tangent, I know, but just one that perfectly explained actions that I really had little personal explanation for.
@Katamount
Tangentially related but lighter in tone the black clockface of St George The Martyr church.
@Katamount:
I remember hearing news reports about how at least one City Council meeting was winding to a close, got to “Is there any more business to discuss”, and then had one councilor propose designating a particular building as a heritage site. That proposal was seconded and voted on within minutes.
It was done this way because there’s lots of history to suggest that any proposal to declare a building as a heritage site that is actually on the agenda for City Council in advance tends to result in developers trying to knock the building down before the vote can happen.
And that’s on top of the rather contentious history between the City of Toronto and the Ontario Municipal Board where developers would appeal City decisions that they didn’t like to the provincial Board which was usually stacked with developer-friendly people and so would often overturned the city. That history is a good chunk of why the Ontario Municipal Board no longer exists as such.
(Mostly just noting that a lot of Toronto’s mythology was actually written not by the city, and in fact over the city’s objections.)
It may be worth noting that Dean Motter, the creator of the 1980s comic book ‘Mister X’ which involved architecture deliberately designed to evoke emotional responses, lived in Toronto at the time. (In the comic, cost-cutting and cheap materials had deformed the original ‘psychetecture’, and the corrupted design was slowly driving people in the city mad.)
Back on topic… wow. It really is all about them and the feelings that they can’t admit are actually feelings, isn’t it?
Speaking of architecture in an urban setting, has anybody else here read Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness? I first read that decades ago, and the story still haunts me. The first time I saw Ghostbusters (back when the boys were bustin’ ghosts on the initial big-screen release), I thought of Leiber’s megapolisomancy concept.
The 1%-3% figure has to be way off too – that would mean 10-30 pupils of every average British secondary school are “paternity fraud” babies. Which considering how rarely you hear of these cases (to the extent that its Jeremy Kyle-style TV worthy) can’t be true. Unless it includes kids knowingly raised by someone who is not their father from birth?
@Simon
Fascinating. Reminds me of the stories I heard about the Halifax Town Clock when I noticed that one of the faces was running a little fast a couple years back.
Toronto can stand to take some lessons from Halifax.
Victorious Parasol, yes, I have read that!
“When the weights are on
At Sutro Mount and Monkey Clay
THEN BE his LIFE squeezed away”
Yay, Robert! There should be more Leiber stuff in the world – it’s been years since any of his work was adapted for other media, and that’s a shame.
He’s rather difficult to adapt. Can’t really cut down any of his work to fit a movie since everything is important.
Never sure why most fans don’t class him up there with the big 3.
Granted, but a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser tv series could be excellent.
@Lollypop
I had read somewhere that estimated a worldwide ~2% of kids born to married couples had a father that was not the husband to whom the wife was married. They did emphasize this was a very rough estimate, and also that it varied widely by region.
I’d like to see a limited-run series of Conjure Wife. Yes, it’s already had several adaptations of varying quality, but as Shadowplay has pointed out, there’s a lot of story in Leiber’s stories. It would be nice if somebody could give Tansy room to breathe.
ETA: And wouldn’t the Change War stories work well in a TV format?
Regarding the whole discussion on architecture, I find it fascinating that Victor Hugo specifically wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame because he wanted to raise funds for restoring and preserving the building, and he considered the best way of doing so was to create a story revolving around the building that would get people emotionally invested in it, and I think he succeeded greatly.
It’s one of the things I didn’t like about the US when I was there on a vacation, with only a few exceptions, nearly all buildings looked very ugly and generic and there was very little individual character to any of it compared to other countries I’ve visited, but another thing that struck me was just how big all the streets and sidewalks were.
Can anyone explain why they are so wide and all the buildings are so far apart? As a swede, I just find it odd and impractical but I’d be curious to know.
Who do we bribe, blackmail or threaten for this to happen? Because it should. It really should. (As should Laumer’s Retief series).
Tales of Weird channel on youtube has some readings, done rather well. Guy’s got a nice voice for an epic tale.
@Scanisaurus:
My guess would be that a lot of N. American settlements were laid out *after* the widespread adoption of the automobile.